On the Face of the Waters

BOOK V
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 passing 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 passing 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 shivered 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 cockatoo, 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 brass 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 cockatoo."

"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 nobler 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.

Yet he, as he lay without a complaint, was telling himself he had been blind. He had sought more from his world than there was in it. And so, though the news of the capture of the Burn Bastion brought a brief rally, he sank steadily.

But Hodson, coming into his tent to tell him of the safe capture of the King and Queen upon the 21st at Humayon's Tomb, found him eager to hear all particulars. So eager, that when the Sirdars of the Mooltanee Horse (a regiment he had practically raised), who sat outside in dozens waiting for every breath of news about their fetish, would not keep quiet, he emphasized his third order by a revolver bullet through the wall of the tent. Greatly to their delight since, as they retired further off, they agreed that Nikalseyn was Nikalseyn still; and surely death dare not claim one so full of life?

Even Hodson smiled in the swift silence in which the laboring breath of the dying man could be heard.

"Well, sir," he went on, "as I was saying, I got permission, thanks to you, to utilize my information——"

"You mean Rujjub Ali's and that sneak Elahi Buksh's, I suppose," put in Nicholson. "It was sharp work. The King only went to Humayon's Tomb yesterday. They must have had it all cut and dried before, surely?"

"The Queen has been trying to surrender on terms some time back, sir," replied Hodson hastily. "She has a lot of treasure—eight lakhs, the spies tell me—and is anxious to keep it. However, to go on. After stopping with Elahi Buksh that night—no doubt, as you say, pressure was put on them then—they went off, as agreed, to meet Bukht Khân, but refused to go with him. Of course the promise of their lives——"

"Then you were negotiating already?"

"Not exactly—but—but I couldn't have done without the promise unless Wilson had agreed to send out troops, and he wouldn't. So I had to give in, though personally I would a deal rather have brought the old man in dead, than alive. Well, I set off this morning with fifty of my horse and sent in the two messengers while I waited outside. It was nearly two hours before they came back, for the old man was hard to move. Zeenut Maihl was the screw, and when Bahâdur Shâh talked of his ancestors and wept, told him he should have thought of that before he let Bukht Khân and the army go. In fact she did the business for me; but she stipulated for a promise of life from my own lips. So I rode out alone to the causeway by the big gate—it is a splendid place, sir; more like a mosque than a tomb, and drew up to attention. Zeenut Maihl came out first, swinging along in her curtained dhooli, and Rujjub, who was beside me, called out her name and titles decorously. I couldn't help feeling it was a bit of a scene, you know; my being there, alone, and all that. Then the King came in his palkee; so I rode up, and demanded his sword. He asked if I were Hodson-sahib bahâdur and if I would ratify the promise? So I had to choke over it, for there were two or three thousand of a crowd by this time. Then we came away. It was a long five miles at a footpace, with that crowd following us until we neared the city. Then they funked. Besides I had said openly I'd shoot the King like a dog despite the promise at the first sign of rescue. And that's all, except that you should have seen the officer's face at the Lahore gate when he asked me what I'd got in tow, and I said calmly, 'Only the King of Delhi.' So that is done."

"And well done," said Nicholson briefly, reaching out a parched right hand. "Well done, from the beginning to the end."

Hodson flushed up like a girl. "I'm glad to hear you say so, sir," he replied as nonchalantly as he could, "but personally, of course, I would rather have brought him in dead."

Even that slight action, however, had left Nicholson breathless, and the only comment for a time came from his eyes; bright, questioning eyes, seeking now with a sort of pathetic patience to grasp the world they were leaving, and make allowances for all shortcomings.

"And now for the Princes," said Hodson. "Did you write to Wilson, sir?"

Nicholson nodded, "I think he'll consent. Only—only don't make any more promises, Hodson. Some of them must be hung; they deserve death."

His hearer gave rather an uneasy look at the clear eyes, and remarked sharply: "You thought they deserved more than hanging once, sir."

The old imperious frown of quick displeasure at all challenge came to John Nicholson's face, then faded into a half-smile. "I was not so near death myself. It makes a difference. So good-by, Hodson. I mayn't see you again." He paused, and his smile grew clearer, and strangely soft. "No news, I suppose, of that poor fellow Douglas, who didn't agree with us?"

"None, sir; I warned him it was useless and foolhardy to go back when my information——"

"No doubt," interrupted the dying man gently. "Still, I'd have gone in his place." He lay still for a moment, then murmured to himself. "So he is on the way before me. Well! I don't think we can be unhappy after death. And, as for that poor lady—when you see her, Hodson, tell her I am sorry—sorry she hadn't her chance." The last words were once more murmured to himself and ended in silence.

Kate Erlton, however, did not get the message which would, perhaps, have ended her lingering hope. Major Hodson was too busy to deliver it. Permission to capture the Princes was given him that very night, and early the next morning he set off to Humayon's Tomb once more, with his two spies, his second in command, and about a hundred troopers. A small party indeed, to face the four or five thousand Palace refugees who were known to be in hiding about the tomb, waiting to see if the Princes could make terms like the King had done. But Hodson's orders were strict. He was to bring in Mirza Moghul and Khair Sultân, ex-Commanders-in-Chief, and Abool-Bukr, heir presumptive, unconditionally, or not at all.

The morning was deliciously cool and crisp, full of that promise of winter, which in its perfection of climate consoles the Punjabee for six months of purgatory. The sun sent a yellow flood of light over the endless ruins of ancient Delhi, which here extend for miles on miles. A nasty country for skulking enemies; but Hodson's pluck and dash were equal to anything, and he rode along with a heart joyous at his chance; full of determination to avail himself of it and gain renown.

Someone else, however, was early astir on this the 22d of September, so as to reach Humayon's Tomb in time to press on to the Kutb, if needs be. This was the Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni. Ever since that day, now more than a week past, when the last message to the city had warned her that the supreme moment for the House of Timoor was at hand, and she had started from her study of Holy Writ, telling herself piteously that she must find Prince Abool-Bukr—must, at all sacrifice to pride, seek him, since he would not seek her—must warn him and keep his hand in hers again—she had been distracted by the impossibility of carrying out her decision. For, expecting an immediate sack of the town, the Mufti's people had barricaded the only exit bazaar-ward, and when, after a day or two, she did succeed in creeping out, it was to find the streets unsafe, the Palace itself closed against all. But now, at least, there was a chance. Like all the royal family, she knew of these two spies, Rujjub-Ali and Mirza Elahi Buksh, who was saving his skin by turning Queen's evidence. She knew of Hodson sahib's promise to the King and Queen. She knew that Abool-Bukr was still in hiding with the arch-offenders, Mirza Moghul and Khair Sultân, at Humayon's Tomb. Such an association was fatal; but if she could persuade him to throw over his uncles, and go with her, and if, afterward, she could open negotiations with the Englishmen, and prove that Abool-Bukr had been dismissed from office on the very day of the death challenge, had been in disgrace ever since—had even been condemned to death by the King; surely she might yet drag her dearest from the net into which Zeenut Maihl had lured him—with what bait she scarcely trusted herself to think! The first thing to be done, therefore, was to persuade Abool to come with her to some safer hiding. She would risk all; her pride, her reputation, his very opinion of her, for this. And surely a man of his nature was to be tempted. So she put on her finest clothes, her discarded jewels, and set off about noon in a ruth—a sort of curtain-dhoolie on wheels drawn by oxen, gay with trappings, and set with jingling bells. They let her pass at the Delhi gate, after a brief look through the curtains, during which she cowered into a corner without covering her face, lest they might think her a man, and stop her.

"By George! that was a pretty woman," said the English subaltern who passed her, as he came back to the guard-room. "Never saw such eyes in my life. They were as soft, as soft as—well! I don't know what. And they looked, somehow, as if they have been crying for years, and—and as if they saw—saw something, you know."

"They saw you—you sentimental idiot—that's enough to make any woman cry," retorted his companion. And then the two, mere boys, wild with success and high spirits, fell to horse-play over the insult.

Yet the first boy was right. Newâsi's eyes had seen something day and night, night and day, ever since they had strained into the darkness after Prince Abool-Bukr when he broke from the kind detaining hand and disappeared from the Mufti's quarter. And that something was a flood of sunlight holding a figure, as she had seen it more than once, in a wild unreasoning paroxysm of sheer terror. It seemed to her as if she could hear those white lips gasping once more over the cry which brought the vision. "Why didst not let me live mine own life, die mine own death? but to die—to die needlessly—to die in the sunlight perhaps."

There was a flood of it now outside the ruth as it lumbered along by the jail, not a quarter of a mile yet from the city gate. Half-shivering she peeped through the gay patchwork curtains to assure herself it held no horror.

God and his Holy Prophet! What was that crowd on the road ahead? No, not ahead, she was in it, now, so that the oxen paused, unable to go on. A crowd, a cluster of spear-points, and then, against the jail wall, an open space round another ruth, an Englishman on foot, three figures stripped. No; not three! only two, for one had fallen as the crack of a carbine rang through the startled air. Two? But one, now, and that, oh! saints have mercy! the vision! the vision! It was Abool, dodging like a hare, begging for bare life; seeking it, at last, out of the sunshine, under the shadow of the ruth wheels.

"Abool! Abool!" she screamed. "I am here. Come! I am here."

Did he hear the kind voice? He may have, for it echoed clear before the third and final crack of the carbine. So clear that the driver, terrified lest it should bring like punishment on him, drove his goad into the oxen; and the next instant they were careering madly down a side road, bumping over watercourses and ditches. But Newâsi felt no more buffetings. She lay huddled up inside, as unconscious as that other figure which, by Major Hodson's orders, was being dragged out from under the wheels and placed upon it beside the two other corpses for conveyance to the city. And none of all the crowd, ready—so the tale runs—to rescue the Princes lest death should be their portion in the future, raised voice or hand to avenge them now that it had come so ruthlessly, so wantonly. Perhaps the English guard at the Delhi gate cowed them, as it had cowed those who the day before had followed the King so far, then slunk away.

So the little cortège moved on peacefully; far more peacefully than the other ruth, which, with its unconscious burden, was racing Kutb-ward as if it was afraid of the very sunshine. But the Princess Farkhoonda, huddled up in all her jewels and fineries, had forgotten even that; forgotten even that vision seen in it.

But Hodson as he rode at ease behind the dead Princes seemed to court the light. He gloried in the deed, telling himself that "in less than twenty-four hours he had disposed of the principal members of the House of Timoor"; so fulfilling his own words written weeks before, "If I get into the Palace, the House of Timoor will not be worth five minutes' purchase, I ween." Telling himself also, that in shooting down with his own hand men who had surrendered without stipulations to his generosity and clemency, surrendered to a hundred troopers when they had five thousand men behind them, he "had rid the earth of ruffians." Telling himself that he was "glad to have had the opportunity, and was game to face the moral risk of praise or blame."

He got the former unstintingly from most of his fellows as, in triumphant procession, the bodies were taken to the chief police station, there to be exposed, so say eye-witnesses, "In the very spot where, four months before, Englishwomen had been outraged and murdered, in the very place where their helpless victims had lain."

A strange perversion of the truth, responsible, perhaps, not only for the praise, but for the very deed itself; so Mohammed Ismail's barter of his truth and soul for the lives of the forty prisoners at the Kolwâb counted for nothing in the judgment of this world.

But Hodson lacked either praise or blame from one man. John Nicholson lay too near the judgment of another world to be disturbed by vexed questions in this; and when the next morning came, men, meeting each other, said sadly, "He is dead."

The news, brought to Kate Erlton by Captain Morecombe when he came over to report another failure, took the heart out of even her hope.

"There is no use in my staying longer, I'm afraid," she said quietly. "I'm only in the way. I will go back to Meerut; and then home—to the boy."

"I think it would be best," he replied kindly. "I can arrange for you to start to-morrow morning. You will be the better for a change; it will help you to forget."

She smiled a little bitterly; but when he had gone she set to work, packing up such of her husband's things as she wished the boy to have with calm deliberation; and early in the afternoon went over to the garden of her old house to get some fresh flowers for what would be her last visit to that rear-guard of graves. To take, also, her last look at the city, and watch it grow mysterious in the glamour of sunset. Seen from afar it seemed unchanged. A mass of rosy light and lilac shadow, with the great white dome of the mosque hanging airily above the smoke wreaths.

Yet the end had come to its four months' dream as it had come to hers. Rebellion would linger long, but its stronghold, its very raison d'être, was gone. And Memory would last longer still; yet surely it would not be all bitter. Hers was not. Then with a rush of real regret she thought of the peaceful roof, of old Tiddu, of the Princess Farkhoonda—Tara—Soma—of Sri Anunda in his garden. Was she to go home to safe, snug England, live in a suburb, and forget? Forget all but the tragedy! Yet even that held beautiful memories. Alice Gissing under young Mainwaring's scarf, while he lay at her feet. Her husband leaving a good name to his son. Did not these things help to make the story perfect? No! not perfect. And with the remembrance her eyes filled with sudden tears. There would always be a blank for her in the record. The Spirit which had moved on the Face of the Waters, bringing their chance of Healing and Atonement to so many, had left hers in the shadow. She had learned her lesson. Ah! yes; she had learned it. But the chance of using it?

As she sat on the plinth of the ruined veranda, watching the city growing dim through the mist of her tears, John Nicholson's words came back to her once more, "If ever you have the chance"; but it would never come now—never!

She started up wildly at the clutch of a brown hand on her wrist—a brown hand with a circlet of dead gold above it.

"Come!" said a voice behind her; "come quick! he needs you."

"Tara!" she gasped—"Tara! Is—is he alive then?"

"He would not need the mem if he were dead," came the swift reply. Then with her wild eyes fixed on another gold circlet upon the wrist she held, Tara laughed shrilly. "So the mem wears it still. She has not forgotten. Women do not forget, white or black"—with a strange stamp of her foot she interrupted herself fiercely—"come, I say, come!"

If there had been doubts as to the Rajpootni's sanity at times in past days, there was none now. A glance at her face was sufficient. It was utterly distraught, the clutch on Kate's arm utterly uncontrolled; so that, involuntarily, the latter shrank back.

"The mem is afraid," cried Tara exultantly. "So be it! I will go back and tell the master. Tell him I was right and he wrong, for all the English he chattered. I will tell him the mem is not suttee—how could she be——"

The old taunt roused many memories, and made Kate ready to risk anything. "I am coming, Tara—but where?" She stood facing the tall figure in crimson, a tall figure also, in white, her hands full of the roses she had gathered.

Tara looked at her with that old mingling of regret and approbation, jealousy and pride. "Then she must come at once. He is dying—may be dead ere we get back."

"Dead!" echoed Kate faintly. "Is he wounded then?"

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 assertion 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 assertions 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-brât, 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 passed, 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 glass, a spotless fringed cloth on the brass 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! I suppose it couldn't be helped."

She followed his thought unerringly; and a great pity for this man who had done nothing, where others had done so much, surged up in her and made her seek to show his fate no worse than others. Besides, this discouragement was fatal, for it pointed to a lack of that desire for life which is the best weapon against death. She might fail to rouse him, as those had failed who, but a day or two before, had sent a bit of red ribbon representing the Victoria Cross to the dying Salkeld—the hero of the Cashmere gate—and only gained in reply a faint smile and the words, "They will like it at home." Still she would try.

"Yes, it is over!" she echoed, "and it has cost so many lives uselessly. General Nicholson lost his trying to do the impossible—so people say."

Jim Douglas still lay staring at the fading glow. "Dead!" he murmured. "That is a pity. But he took Delhi first. He said he would."

"And my husband——" she began.

He turned then, with curiously patient courtesy. "I know. Nicholson wrote that in his letter. And I have been glad—glad he had his chance, and—and—made so much of it."

Once more she followed his thought; knew that, though he was too proud to confess it, he was saying to himself that he had had his chance too and had done nothing. So she answered it as if he had spoken.

"And you had your chance of saving a woman," she said, with a break in her voice, "and you saved her. It isn't much, I suppose. It counts as nothing to you. Why should it? But to me——" She broke off, losing her purpose for him in her own bitter regret and vague resentment. "Why didn't you let them kill me, and then go away?" she went on almost passionately. "It would have been better than saving me to remember always that I stood in your way—better than giving me no chance of repaying you for all—ah! think how much! Better than leaving me alone to a new life—like—like all the others have done."

She buried her face on her arm as it rested on the pillow with a sob. This, then, was the end, she thought, this bitter unavailing regret for both.

So for a space there was silence while she sat with her face hidden, and he lay staring at that darkening dome. But suddenly she felt his hot hand find hers; so thin, so soft, so curiously strong still in its grip.

"Give me some more wine or something," came his voice consolingly. "I'll try and stop—if I can."

She made an effort to smile back at him, but it was not very successful. His, as she fed him, was better; but it did not help Kate Erlton to cheerfulness, for it was accompanied by a murmur that the chikken-brât was very different from Tara's stuff. So she seemed to see a poor ghost glowering at them from the shadows, asking her how she dared take all the thanks. And the ghost remained long after Jim Douglas had dozed off; remained to ask, so it seemed to Kate Erlton, every question that could be asked about the mystery of womanhood and manhood.

But Tara herself asked none when in the first gray glimmer of dawn she crept up the stairs again and stood beside the sleepers. For Kate, wearied out, had fallen asleep crouched up on the stool, her head resting on the pillow, her arm flung over the bed to keep that touch on his hand which seemed to bring him rest. Tara, once more in her widow's dress, looked down on them silently, then threw her bare arms upward. So for a second she stood, a white-shrouded appealing figure against that dark shadow of the dome which blocked the paling eastern sky. Then stooping, her long, lissome fingers busied themselves stealthily with the thin gold chain about the sick man's neck; for there was something in the locket attached to it which was hers by right now. Hers, if she could have nothing else; for she was suttee—suttee!

The unuttered cry was surging through her heart and brain, rousing a mad exultation in her, when half an hour afterward she re-entered the narrow lane leading to the arcaded courtyard with the black old shrine hiding under the tall peepul tree. And what was that hanging over the congeries of roofs and stairs, the rabbit warren of rooms and passages where her pigeon-nest was perched? A canopy of smoke, and below it leaping flames. There were many wanton fires in Delhi during those first few days of license, and this was one of them; but already, in the dawn, English officers were at work giving orders, limiting the danger as much as possible.

"We can't save that top bit," said one at last, then turned to one of his fatigue party. "Have you cleared everybody out, sergeant, as I told you?"

"Yes, sir! it's quite empty."

It had been so five minutes before. It was not now; for that canopy of smoke, those licking tongues of flame, had given the last touch to Tara's unstable mind. She had crept up and up, blindly, and was now on her knees in that bare room set round with her one scrap of culture, ransacking an old basket for something which had not seen the light for years, her scarlet tinsel-set wedding dress. Her hands were trembling, her wild eyes blazed like fires themselves.

And below, men waited calmly for the flames to claim this, their last prize; for the turret stood separated from the next house.

"My God!" came an English voice, as something showed suddenly upon the roof. "I thought you said it was empty—and that's a woman!"

It was. A woman in a scarlet, tinsel-set dress, and all the poor ornaments she possessed upon her widespread arms. So, outlined against the first sun-ray she stood, her shrill chanting voice rising above the roar and rush of the flames.

"Oh! Guardians eight, of this world and the next. Sun, Moon, and Air, Earth, Ether, Water, and my own poor soul bear witness! Oh! Lord of death, bear witness that I come. Day, Night, and Twilight say I am suttee."

There was a louder roar, a sudden leaping of the flames, and the turret sank inwardly. But the chanting voice could be heard for a second in the increasing silence which followed.

"Shive-jee hath saved His own," said the crowd, looking toward the unharmed shrine.

And over on the other side of the city, Kate Erlton, roused by that same first ray of sunlight, was looking down with a smile upon Jim Douglas before waking him. The sky was clear as a topaz, the purple pigeons were cooing and sidling on the copings. And in the bright, fresh light she saw the gold locket lying open on the sleeper's breast. She had often wondered what it held, and now—thinking he might not care to find it at her mercy—stooped to close it.

But it was empty.

The snap, slight as it was, roused him. Not, however, to a knowledge of the cause, for he lay looking up at her in his turn.

"So it is all over," he said softly, but he said it with a smile.

Yes! It was all over. Down on the parade ground behind the Ridge the bugles were sounding, and the men who had clung to the red rocks for so long were preparing to leave them for assault elsewhere.

But one man was taking an eternal hold upon them; for John Nicholson was being laid in his grave. Not in the rear-guard, however, but in the van, on the outer-most spur of the Ridge abutting on the city wall, within touch almost of the Cashmere gate. Being laid in his grave—by his own request—without escort, without salute; for he knew that he had failed.

So he lies there facing the city he took. But his real grave was in that narrow lane within the walls where those who dream can see him still, alone, ahead, with yards of sheer sunlight between him and his fellow-men.

Yards of sheer sunlight between that face with its confident glance forward, that voice with its clear cry, "Come on, men! Come on!" and those—the mass of men—who with timorous look backward hear in that call to go forward nothing but the vain regret for things familiar that must be left behind. "Going! Going! Gone!"

So, in a way, John Nicholson stands symbol of the many lives lost uselessly in the vain attempt to go forward too fast.

Yet his voice echoed still to the dark faces and the light alike:

"Come on, men! Come on!"

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