On the Face of the Waters

BOOK II
CHAPTER VII

THE WORD WENT FORTH.

The Procession of the Hours had a weary march of it between the yellow sunrise and the yellow sunset of the 10th of May, 1857; for the heavens were as brass, the air one flame of white heat. The mud huts of the sepoy lines at Meerut looked and felt like bricks baking in a kiln; yet the torpor which the remorseless glare of noon brings even to native humanity was exchanged for a strange restlessness. The doors stood open for the most part, and men wandered in and out aimlessly, like swarming bees before the queen appears. In the bazaar, in the city too, crowds drifted hither and thither, thirstily, as if it were not the fast month of Rumzân, when the Mohammedans are denied the solace of even a drop of water till sundown. Drifted hither and thither, pausing to gather closer at a hint of novelty, melting away again, restless as ever.

Mayhap it was but the inevitable reaction after the stun and stupefaction of Saturday, the sudden awakening to the result—namely, that eighty-five of the best, smartest soldiers in Meerut had been set to toil for ten years in shackles because they refused to be defiled, to become apostate. On the other hand, the old Baharupa may have been right about the yellow fakir: the silent, motionless figure might have set folk listening and waiting for the word. It was to be seen by all now sitting outside the city; at least Jim Douglas saw it several times. Saw, also, that the beggar's bowl was fuller and fuller; but the impossibility of asserting that all the passers-by saw it, as he did, haunted him, once the idea presented itself to his mind. It was always so with Tiddu's mysteries; they were no more susceptible to disproof than they were to proof. You could waste time, of course, in this case by waiting and watching, but in the natural course of events half the passers-by would go on as if they saw nothing, and only one in a hundred or so would give an alms. So what would be the good?

No one else, however, among the masters troubled himself to find a cause for the restlessness; no one even knew of it. To begin with, it was a Sunday, so that even the bond of a common labor was slackened between the dark faces and the light. Then a mile or more of waste deserted land and dry watercourse lay on either side of the broad white road which split the cantonment into halves. So that the North knew nothing of what was going on in the South, and while men were swarming like bees in the sun on one side, on the other they were shut up in barracks and bungalows gasping with the heat, longing for the sun to set, and thanking their stars when the chaplain's memo came round to say that the evening service had been postponed for half an hour to allow the seething, glowing air to cool a little.

It was not the heat, however, which prevented Major Erlton from taking his usual siesta. It was thought. He had come over from Delhi on inspection duty a few days before and had intended returning that evening; but the morning's post had brought him a letter which upset all his plans. Alice Gissing's husband had come out a fortnight earlier than they had expected, and was already on his way up-country. The crisis had come, the decision must be made. It was not any hesitation, however, which sent the heavy handsome face to rest in the big strong hands as he rested his elbows on a sheet of blank paper. He had made up his mind on the very day when Alice Gissing had first told him why she could not go back to her husband. The letter forwarding his papers for resignation was already sealed on the table beside him; and the surprise was rather a gain than otherwise. Alice could join him at Meerut now, and they could slip away together to Cashmere or any out of the way place where there was shooting. That would save a lot of fuss; and the fear of fuss was the only one which troubled the Major, personally. He hated to know that even his friends would wonder—for the matter of that those who knew him best would wonder most—why he was chucking everything for a woman he had been mixed up with for years. Yet he had found no difficulty in writing that official request; none in telling little Allie to join him as soon as she could. It was this third letter which could not be written. He took up the pen more than once, only to lay it down again. He began, "My dear Kate," once, only to tear the sheet to pieces. How could he call her his when he was going to tell her that she was his no longer; that the best thing she could do was to divorce him and marry some other chap to be a father to the boy.

The thought sent the head into the hands again; for Herbert Erlton was a healthy animal and loved his offspring by instinct. He had, in truth, a queer upside-down notion of his responsibilities toward them. If the fates had permitted it he would have done his best by Freddy. Shown him the ropes, given him useful tips, stood by his inexperience, paid his reasonable debts—always supposing he had the wherewithal.

Then how was he to tell Kate all the ugly story. He had left her in his thoughts so completely, she had been so far apart from him for so many years now, that he hesitated over telling her the bare facts, just as—being conventionally a perfectly well-bred man—he would have hesitated how to tell them to any innocent woman of his acquaintance. Rather more so, for Kate—though she was sentimental enough, he told himself, for two—had never been sensible and looked things in the face. If she had, it might all have been different. Then with a rush came the remembrance that Allie did—that she knew him every inch and was yet willing to come with him. While he? He would stick through thick and thin to little Allie, who never made a man feel a fool or a beast. Something in the last assertion seemed to harden his heart; he took up his pen and began to write:

"My Dear Kate: I call you that because I can't think of any other beginning that doesn't seem foolish; but it means nothing, and I only want to tell you that circumstances over which we had no control (he felt rather proud of this circumlocution for a circumstance due entirely to his volition) make it necessary for me to leave you. It is the only course open to me as a gentleman. Besides I want to, for I love Alice Gissing dearly. I am going to marry her, D. V., as soon as I can. Mr. Gissing may make a fuss—it is a criminal offense, you see, in India—but we shall tide over that. Of course you could prevent me too, but you are not that sort. So I have sent in my papers. It is a pity, in a way, because I liked this work. But it is only a two-year appointment, and I should hate the regiment after it. For the rest, I am not such a fool as to think you will mind; except for the boy. It is a pity for him too, but it isn't as if he were a girl, and the other may be. It will do no good to say I'm sorry. Besides, I don't think it is all my fault, and I know you will be happier without me.

"Yours sincerely,

"Herbert Erlton.

"P. S.—It's no use crying over spilled milk. I believe you used to think I would get the regiment some day, but they would never have given it to me. I made a bit of a spurt lately, but it couldn't have lasted to the finish, and after all, that is the win or the lose in a race.

"H. E."

The postscript was added after rereading the rest with an uncomfortable remembrance that it was the last letter he meant to write to her. Then he threw it ready for the post beside the others, and lay down feeling that he had done his duty. And as he dozed off his own simile haunted him. From start to finish! How few men rode straight all the way; and the poor beggars who came to grief over the last fence weren't so far behind those who came in for the clapping. It was the finish that did it; that was the win or the lose. But he would run straight with little Allie—straight as a die! So he lost consciousness in a glow of virtuous content with the future, and joined the whole of the northern half of Meerut in their noontide slumbers; for the future outlook, if not exactly satisfying, was not sufficiently dubious to keep it awake.

But in the southern half, humanity was still swarming in and out, waiting, listening. In one of the mud-huts, however, a company of men gathered within closed doors had been listening to some purpose. Listening to an eloquent speaker, the accredited agent of a down-country organization. He had arrived in Meerut a day or two before, and had held one meeting after another in the lines, doing his utmost to prevent any premature action; for the fiat of the leaders was that there should be patience till the 31st of May. Then, not until then, a combined blow for India, for God, for themselves, might be struck with chance of success.

"Ameen!" assented one old man who had come with him. An old man in a huge faded green turban with dyed red hair and beard, and with a huge green waistband holding a curved scimitar. Briefly, a Ghâzee or Mohammedan fanatic. "Patience, all ye faithful, till Sunday, the 31st of May. Then, while the hell-doomed infidels are at their evening prayer, defenseless, fall on them and slay. God will show the right! This is the Moulvie's word, sent by me his servant. Give the Great Cry, brothers, in the House of the Thief! Smite ye of Meerut, and we of Lucknow will smite also." His wild uncontrolled voice rolled on in broad Arabic vowels from one text to another.

"And we of Delhi will smite also," interrupted the wearer of a rakish Moghul cap impatiently. "We will smite for the Queen."

"The Queen?" echoed an older man in the same dress. "What hath the Sheeah woman to do with the race of Timoor?"

"Peace! peace! brothers," put in the agent with authority. "These times are not for petty squabbles. Let who be the heir, the King must reign."

A murmur of assent rose; but it was broken in upon by a dissentient voice from a group of troopers at the door.

"Then our comrades are to rot in jail till the 31st? That suits not the men of the 3d Cavalry."

"Then let the 3d Cavalry suit itself," retorted the agent fearlessly. "We can stand without them. Can they stand without us? Answer me, men of the 20th; men of the 11th."

"There be not many of us here," muttered a voice from a dark corner; "and maybe we could hold our own against the lot of you." It was Soma's, and the man beside him frowned. But the agent who knew every petty jealousy, every private quarrel of regiment with regiment, went on remorselessly. "Let the 3d swagger if it choose. The Rajpoots and Brahmins know how to obey the stars. The 31st is the auspicious day. That is the word. The word of the King, of the Brahmins, of India, of God!"

"The 31st! Then slay and spare not! It is jehad! Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!" said the Ghâzee.

The cry, though a mere whisper, electrified the Mohammedans, and an older man in the group of dissentients at the door muttered that he could hold his troop—if others who had risen to favor quicker than he—could hold theirs.

"I'll hold mine, Khân sahib, without thine aid," retorted a very young smart-looking native officer angrily. "That is if the women will hold their tongues. But, look you, my troop held the hardest hitters in the 3d. And Nargeeza's fancy is of those in jail. Now Nargeeza leads all the other town-women by the nose; and that means much to men who be not all saints like Ghâzee-jee yonder, who ties the two ends of life with a ragged green turban and a bloody banner!"

"And I see not why our comrades should stay yonder for three weeks, when there is but a native guard to hold them, and I and mine have made the Sirkar what it is," put in a man with arrogance and insolence written on him from top to toe; a true type of the pampered Brahmin sepoy.

"Rescue them if thou wilt, Havildar-jee," sneered the agent. "But the man who risks our plot will be held traitor by the Council. And the men of the 11th," he added sharply, turning to the corner whence Soma's voice had come, "may remember that also. They have had the audacity to stipulate for their Colonel's life."

"For our officers lives, baboo-jee," came the voice again, bold as the agent's. "We of the 11th kill not men who have led us to victory. And if this be not understood I, Soma, Yadubansi, go straight to the Colonel and tell him. We are not butchers in the 11th: Oh, priest of Kâli!"

The agent turned a little pale. He did not care to have his calling known, and he saw at a glance that his challenger had the reckless fire of hemp in his eyes. He had indeed been drinking as a refuge from the memory of the sweeper's broom and from the taunts and threats which had been used to force him to join the malcontents. Such a man was not safe to quarrel with, nor was the audience fit for a discussion of that topic; there was already a stir in it, and mutterings that butchery was one thing, fighting another.

"Pay thy Colonel's journey home if thou likest, Rajpoot-jee," he said with a sneer. "Ay! and give him pension, too! All we want is to get rid of them. And there will be plenty of loot left when the pension is paid, for it is to be each man for himself when the time comes. Not share and share alike with every coward who will not risk his life in looting, as it is with the Sirkar."

It was a deft red-herring to these born mercenaries, and no more was said. But as the meeting dispersed by twos and threes to avoid notice, the agent stood at the door giving the word in a final whisper:

"Patience till the 31st."

"Willst take a seat in our carriage, Ghâzee-jee," said a fat native officer as he passed out. "'Tis at thy service since thou goest to Delhi and we must return to-night. God knows we have done enough to damn us at Meerut over this court-martial! But what would you? If we had not given the verdict for the Huzoors there would have been more of us in jail. So we bide our time like the rest. And to-morrow there is the parade to hear the sentence on the martyrs at Barrackpore. Do the sahibs think us cowards that they drive us so? God smite their souls to hell!"

"He will, brother, he will. The Cry shall yet be heard in the House of the Thief," said the Ghâzee fiercely, his eyes growing dreamy with hope. He was thinking of a sunset near the Goomtee more than a year ago, when he had bid every penny he possessed for his own, in vain.

"Well, come if thou likest," continued the native officer. "That camel of thine yonder is lame, and we have room. 'Twas Erlton sahib's dâk by rights, but he goes not; so we got it cheap instead of an ekka."

"Erlton sahib's!" echoed the fanatic, clutching at his sword. "Ay! Ay!" he went on half to himself. "I knew he was at Delhi, and the mem who laughed, and the other mem who would not listen. Nay! Soubadar-jee! I travel in no carriage of Erlton sahib's. My camel will serve me."

"'Tis the vehicle of saints," sneered the owner of the rakish Moghul cap. "Verily, when I saw thee mounted on it, Ghâzee-jee, I deemed thee the Lord Ali."

"Peace! scoffer," interrupted the fanatic, "lest I mistake thee for an infidel."

The Moghul ducked hastily from a wild swing of the curved sword, and moved off swearing such firebrands should be locked up; they might set light to the train ere wise men had it ready.

"No fear!" said the smart young troop-sergeant of the 3d. "Who listens to such as he save those whose blood has cooled, and those whose blood was never hot? The fighters listen to women who can make their flame."

Soma, who was drifting with them toward the drug-shops of the city, scowled fiercely. "That may suit thee, Mussulman-jee, who art casteless, and can sup shares with sweeper women in the bazaar; but the Rajpoot needs no harlot to teach him courage. The mothers of his race have enough and to spare."

"Loh! hark to him!" jibed the corporal of the 20th, who was sticking to his prey like a leech. "Ask him, Havildar-jee, if he prefers a sweeper's broom to a sweeper's lips."

There was a roar of laughter from the group.

Soma gave a beast-like cry, looked as though he were about to spring, then—recognizing his own helplessness—flung himself away from all companionship and walked home moodily. They had driven him too far; he would not stand it. If that tale was spread abroad, he would side with the Huzoors who did not believe such things—with the Colonel who understood, like the Colonel before him who had gone home on pension; for the 11th had a cult of their officers. And these fools, his countrymen, thought to make him a butcher by threats; sought to make him take revenge for what deserved revenge. For it was the Sirkar's fault—it was the Sirkar's fault.

In truth a strange conflict was going on in this man's mind, as it was in many another such as his, between inherited traditions, making alike for loyalty and disloyalty. There was the knowledge of his forbears' pride in their victories, in their sahibs who had led them to victory, and the knowledge of their pride in the veriest jot or tittle of ceremonial law. A dull, painful amaze filled him that these two broad facts should be in conflict; that those, whom in a way he felt to be part of his life, should be in league against him. All the more reason, that, for showing them who were the better men; for standing up fairly to a fair fight. By all the delights of Swargal he would like to stand up fair, even to the master—the man who, in his presence, had shot three tigers on foot in half an hour—the demi-god of his hunting yarns for years.

And then, suddenly, he remembered that this hero of his might be shot like a dog on the 31st at Delhi—would be shot, since he was certain to be in the front of anything. Soma's heat-fevered, hemp-drugged brain seized on the thought fiercely, confusedly. That must not be! The master, at any rate, must be warned. He would go down when the sun set, and see if he were still where he had been the day before; and if not?—Why! then it must be two days leave to Delhi! He was not going to butcher the master for all the sweepers' brooms in the world. Fools! those others, to think to drive him, Soma, Chundrabansi! So he flung himself on his string bed to sleep till the sunset came, and the tyranny of heat be overpast.

But there was one, close by in the cantonment bazaar, who waited for sunset with no desire for it to bring coolness. She meant it to bring heat instead. And this was Nargeeza the courtesan. She was past the prime of everything save vice, a woman who, once all-powerful, could not hope for many more lovers; and hers, a man rich beyond most soldiers, lay in jail for ten years. No wonder, then, that as she lay half-torpid among a heap of tawdry finery in the biggest house of the lane set apart by regulation for such as she, there was all the venom of a snake in her drowsy brain. The air of the low room was deadly with a scent of musk and roses and orange-blossom-oil. The half-dozen girls and women who lounged in it, or in the balcony, were half undressed, their bare brown arms flung carelessly upon dirty mats and torn quilts. Their harvest time was not yet; that would come later when sunsetting brought the men from the lines. This, then, was the time for sleep. But Nargeeza, recognized head of the recognized regimental women, sat up suddenly and said sharply:

"Thou didst not tell me, Nasiban, what Gulâbi said. Is she of us?"

A drowsy lump of a girl stirred, yawned, and answered sullenly, "Yea! Yea! she is of us. She claims our right to kiss no cowards—no cowards."

The voice tailed off into sleep again, and Nargeeza lay back with a smile of content to wait also. So, after a time, folk began to stir in the bungalows. First in the rest-house, where, oddly enough, Jim Douglas occupied one end of the long low barrack of a place, and Herbert Erlton the other. The former having come back from the city in an evil temper to get something to eat before starting for Delhi, had found his horse, the Belooch, unaccountably indisposed; Jhungi, who had brought her there safely, professing entire ignorance of the cause, or, on pressure, suggesting the nefarious Bhungi. Tiddu asserting—with a calm assumption of superior knowledge, for which Jim Douglas could have kicked him—that the mare had been drugged. As if anybody could not tell that? And that the drug had been opium. To which the old scoundrel had replied affably that in that case the effects would pass off during the night, and the mare be none the worse; no one be any the worse, since the Huzoor was quite comfortable in Meerut, and could easily stay another day. It was a nicer place than Delhi; there were more sahibs in it, and the presence of the "ghora logue" (i. e., English soldiers) kept everyone virtuous.

His hearer looked at him sharply. Here was some other trick, no doubt, to cozen him out of another five rupees; for something, maybe, as useless as the yellow fakir. And there was really no reason for delay; it was only a case of walking the mare quietly. For the matter of that, the exercise would do her good, and help her to work off the effects of the drug. So he would start sooner, that was all. Nevertheless he gave an envious look at the Major's little Arab in the next stall. It would most likely be marching back to Delhi that night, and he would have given something to ride it again. But as he was returning from the stables, he learned by chance that the Major's plans had been altered. An orderly was coming from his room with letters and a telegram, and knowing the man, Jim Douglas asked him to take one for him also, and so save trouble. It did not take long to write, for it only contained one word, "No." It was in reply to one he had received a few hours before from the military magnate, asking him to do some more work. And as the orderly stowed away the accompanying rupee carefully, Jim Douglas—waiting to make over the paper—saw quite involuntarily that the Major's telegram also consisted of one word, "Come." And he saw the name also; big, black, bold, in the Major's handwriting. "Gissing, Delhi."

He gave a shrug of his shoulders as he turned away to get ready for his start. So that was it; and even Kate Erlton had not benefited by his sacrifice. No one had benefited. There had been no chance for any of them. "Come!" That ended Kate Erlton's hope of concealment, the Major's career. "No!" That ended his own vague ambitions. Still, it was a strange chance in itself that those two laconic renunciations should go the same day by the same hand. No stranger telegrams, he thought, could have left Meerut, or were likely to leave it that night.

He was wrong, however. An hour or two later, the strangest telegram that ever came as sole warning to an Empire that its very foundation was attacked, left Meerut for Agra; sent by the postmaster's niece.

"The Cavalry," it ran, "have risen, setting fire to their own houses besides having killed and wounded all European officers and soldiers they could find near the lines. If Aunt intends starting to-morrow, please detain her, as the van has been prevented from leaving the station."

For, as Jim Douglas paced slowly down the Mall toward Delhi, and Soma, his buckles gleaming, his belts pipe-clayed to dazzling whiteness, was swaggering through the bazaar on his way to the rest-house with his word of warning—the word which would have given Jim Douglas the power for which he had longed—another word was being spoken in that lane of lust, where the time had come for which Nargeeza had waited all day. But she did not say it. It was only a big trollop of a girl hung with jasmine garlands, painted, giggling.

"We of the bazaar kiss no cowards," she said derisively. "Where are your comrades?"

The man to whom she said it, a young dissolute-faced trooper, dressed in the loose rakish muslins beloved of his class—the very man, perchance, who had gone cityward that morning, and dropped an alms into the yellow fakir's bowl—stood for a second in the stifling, maddening atmosphere of musk and rose and orange-blossom; stood before all those insolent allurements, balked in his passion, checked in his desires. Then, with an oath, he dashed from her insulting charms; dashed into the street with a cry:

"To horse! To horse, brothers! To the jail! to our comrades!"

The word had been spoken. The speech which brings more than speech, had come from the painted lips of a harlot.

The first clang of the church bell—which the chaplain had forgotten to postpone—came faintly audible across the dusty plain, making other men pause and look at each other. Why not? It was the hour of prayer—the appointed time. Their comrades could be easily rescued—there was but a native guard at the jail. And hark! from another pair of painted derisive lips came the same retort, flung from a balcony.

"Trra! We of the bazaar kiss no cowards!"

"To horse! To horse! Let the comrades be rescued first; and then——"

The word had been spoken. Nothing so very soul-stirring after all. No consideration of caste or religion, patriotism or ambition. Only a taunt from a pair of painted lips.

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