“That baby—Miss Wilmot, what is wrong with it? It doesn’t seem to be asleep.”
“It is dead,” said Helen, with a catch in her voice.
“How?”
“I don’t know. It hasn’t moved at all. Adie, do you think if you went to her—you lost your baby—do you think—”
“Oh, no!” said Adela. “Oh, I couldn’t— Helen, I couldn’t; how unkind you are!”
She began to cry again, and Helen without a word left her and went to where Mrs. Elliot stood, like a woman turned to stone.
Helen touched her lightly.
“My poor dear, do sit down. You’ll want all your strength,” she said, and then stopped, the other woman’s eyes were so terrible.
Yesterday—was it yesterday or all the ages ago?—Mrs. Crowther had said that, for all she pretended to be so girlish, Mrs. Elliot must be close on thirty. Every feature of the worn face confessed to more than thirty now, and the eyes stared out of a strained network of lines.
“Gilbert?” she said in a whisper.
“They say so,” said Helen, crying. The tears which she could not shed for Dick came hot and fast for Gilbert Elliot, whom she had scarcely known. “Oh, my dear, God comfort you—they say so. Give me the little baby, you poor, poor dear, and sit down, and cry if you can, for it helps, it does indeed.”
Helen felt a long shudder pass through the arm which was next her own.
“Gilbert too,” said Grace Elliot, in a strained, choking breath. “Gilbert too”; and with that she moved forward a halting step or two and sat down, letting the child fall across her knees, and clutching with both hands at the rough, prickly stem of a little tree.
She turned her head aside, and rested it upon her hands. The long hair covered them, and covered her face too.
Then like a flood came the tears. Helen Wilmot sat down beside her with her hands folded in her lap. Her own tears were dry again. There was a passion of pity and trouble at her heart, but it was a frozen passion that could find no outlet.
She sat quite still and waited until a dull silence followed rending sobs. Then again she waited for what the endless day might yet bring forth.
The sun was at its full strength, the heat of it like a weight suspended overhead. And this weight seemed to come lower and lower, compressing the air as it came, making it dense and heavy, so that the lungs laboured and the blood beat against the temples and the drum of the ear.
The tree beneath which they were gathered gave a thin and ineffective shade, shot with blinding, dusty sunshafts, and beyond it was a glaring belt of dry, uncovered ground, which gave back the fierce sunlight with an unendurable fidelity. Heat and light struck upwards from it, and the air above it trembled with a faint incessant tremor that troubled the senses.
A dreary, pain-haunted sleep came to some of them. When they roused from it, it was like waking into some phantasy which the mind could not accept.
Carrie Crowther lay with her head upon her mother’s stained dress. Her eyes were only half shut, her hand twitched, and her lips kept moving—moving, even in her sleep.
Adela slept too, and the little boy had crept up close beside her. Helen watched them, struggling to realise that only yesterday they had laughed and flirted, chattered and gossiped at the Club—and now? What new existence did these awful birth pangs herald? The old life was gone as entirely as if they too were dead. They were lost in a new world, a world of flaring light and pitiless cruelty. What were they to do in it? and what would be the end?
Helen slipped into a dream of heat and terror, in which Dick called to her, and she could not reach him. He kept on calling, and calling, and she woke gasping, with George Blake’s voice in her ears.
As the day wore on his unconsciousness had become less complete. Now and then he stirred, and once flung round upon his side, with so sharp a cry of pain that a thrill of sheer terror ran through all the little company. It was this cry that woke Helen Wilmot. It startled them all. They had been drifting among shadows, looking into the past, suffering with a suffering of the mind, and this sharp cry of bodily pain was like the voice of reality crying aloud in the wilderness of the unreal.
Mrs. Crowther stopped her mechanical fanning and a slow shudder ran over her heavy form. Carrie muttered in her sleep, and little Johnny whimpered, but there was only that one cry, and after it the sick man slid into a deeper unconsciousness than before.
After what seemed like a week of days, Imam Bux returned. He was shivering with the strain of the day’s work, and a little fever burned in his blood and made his hand shake as it went up to make the salaam, but he was full of pride.
He had found a man, and the man would not fail. He would bring a cart—a cart with a cover to it. In the face of death he had arranged everything. As soon as it was too dark to tell a white thread from a black one, the man would bring the cart and wait in the shadow beyond the old bridge. Blake Sahib they must carry. He had brought a sheet. Thus he could be carried without danger. Also he had brought—this, and out of the folds of the sheet Imam Bux proudly produced two bottles of soda-water.
“More I could not hide; I was in fear of my life,” he said, and stood to be applauded, like a child that knows it has been good and wise. A murmur went up from all the parched lips, and Johnny da Souza put out both hands and wailed:
“Pani! Pani!”
Helen spoke quickly in the old servant’s ear:
“And the Sahib?”
The pleased look disappeared.
“Ai—my Sahib,” he said; “God knows. In the bazaar they say that all the sahibs are dead.”
Two bottles of soda-water do not go very far amongst eight persons who have had nothing to drink all day, but each had a couple of mouthfuls; and then again they waited, whilst the shadows lengthened, and the sun-glare waned.
In this time of waiting a strange experience came to Helen Wilmot. She was looking out from the shady patch, where she sat beside Mrs. Elliot. She saw the dusty scrub, and the dark scrawled shadows that lengthened as the sun went down—and then quite suddenly she heard a cuckoo call. She heard it quite plainly. It was very far away, but sweet—so sweet, like a low laugh heard through a thin clear sheet of water, falling. Cuckoo—and the notes fell nearer. And at the third cry the dust was gone, and the dry jungle scrub, and instead she saw a pale sweet sunlight falling between fresh burgeoning trees, upon a sheeted mist of bluebells. A hyacinth splendour, like sea-water in a bloomy transmigration. A breeze rippled it into waves, and the waves lapped nearer, nearer, trembling under the breath of that invisible sound, nearer and nearer, till with the final laughing cuckoo note, the flower spray beat against Helen’s outstretched hands. She felt it cool and exquisite, like a touch of the visible blue of heaven, and then, with a quick-drawn breath, she shut her eyes, and broke the vision midway. When she looked again, the light had fallen suddenly, and the dusk was about their feet.
That night as they jolted over the dry road, packed in the hot covered bullock cart, with the sick man laid full length and the rest crouched about him, Helen dwelt on this strange seeing of hers.
Adela leaned on her shoulder and slept, but Helen waked. Once only she dropped into a half sleep, and dreamed that she stood barefoot in the midst of that hyacinth sea. Her feet were wet with the rainbow dew of it, and she plunged bare arms amongst the flowers, and gathered them to her bosom. Then as she straightened herself, and breathed divine cool air, she saw that Richard Morton stood beside her.
He laid his hand upon her shoulder, and looked into her eyes. Something broke in her heart for very gladness, and she awoke into the close heat of darkness of the covered cart, with a strange parched laughter in her throat.
Through the opening in the front of the cart, she could see the driver swaying sleepily, a white sheet covering him from head to foot. There was a glare of moonlight that turned each little shadow to a pool of indigo with an o
range-coloured edge. Helen looked out with dazzled eyes, and heard the galloping of a horse, very far away. It came nearer, and as the rider shouted a masterful “Hut, byle-wallah—hut!” the drowsy driver started awake, and pulled the cart with a jerk to the side of the road.
Adela wakened whimpering. Mrs. Crowther fell heavily against her daughter, who uttered a protesting murmur. Captain Blake groaned once, and drew a long shuddering breath, and the horseman went by with a clatter, leaving the moonlight heavy with the dust he stirred.
Helen, her trembling hand upon George Blake’s silent pulse, saw his face as he passed, and recognised it.
Fatehshah Khan was out of the burning house. Oude flared in the mutiny behind him, and his face was set towards Cawnpore.
CHAPTER XIV
HOW THE NANA SAHIB SWORE BY THE GODAVERY
Would’st thou be Master of Men, then learn to govern thy Will,
For if thou rule not thyself, another will master thee still.
On the morning of the fifth of June, a small group of men were gathered in one of the inner rooms of a house opposite the Civil Court at Cawnpore. The room was high and dark, for it had no outside door, and was lighted only by two very small windows, set twenty feet up in the stained and dirty wall. The untidy matted floor was only half covered by a priceless Persian carpet, whose dim, lovely tints could scarcely be distinguished in the dusk.
In one corner on a native string bed a young man lay tossing and muttering; his half-closed eyes were bloodshot, and his face was drawn and thin. A richly embroidered scarf lay across his feet, and a brilliant silken cushion supported his head, which turned continually from side to side. Other cushions lay upon the floor, their bright colours emerging from the shadows with a curious and rather startling effect. Half a dozen common Mora chairs, made of yellow cane, and bound with scarlet cotton stuff, were grouped about a table upon which stood a golden inkstand studded with jewels, a brandy bottle with the top knocked off, and a high cut-glass tumbler.
In one of the chairs sat a very stout man, dressed all in white. His thin muslin shirt was fastened at the neck by a great red jewel, but it opened below, exposing two handbreadths of the fat unwholesome flesh upon his chest. His small white turban was almost entirely covered with gold lace, and a thick gold chain hung down into his lap. Between the gold lace and the gold chain his face had a yellowish look, for the skin was fair, and tightly stretched across the fat cheeks and heavy, sensual chin. He was clean shaven, and there were lines about the mouth and eyes which should not have been on any human face, but in spite of these the general effect was one of good-natured self-indulgence. Only the dark glancing eyes were wild, brilliant, and restless, like the eyes of the young man upon the bed. Emerald peacocks perched upon golden pinnacles ornamented the hookah from which he smoked, and as he smoked, his eyes went to and fro continually, and showed a bloodshot rim.
Every now and then he leaned sideways and spat into a golden bowl which stood on the floor beside him. Then again he smoked, and again his eyes looked every way. For this was his day of fate. This day he must decide whether he would remain the Nana Sahib of Bithoor, a mere native gentleman, denied the honour of a salute, mulcted of the princely rank and pension of his adopted father, Bajee Rao, last of the Mahratta line, or whether he would make a bold bid for power and a kingdom. On the one side there was sovereignty, the title of Peishwa, wealth, power; on the other, what was there to tempt him? An extra slice of land, a little favour from the lord Sahib, some trifling indulgence in the Courts—the hushing-up, perhaps, of that business of his adopted sister’s death. Nothing more. Nothing further. Only on the one side and the other there was danger, there was ruin, there was death, and who could say upon which side the menace was strongest?
To be Peishwa—perhaps the most powerful of all the Peishwas—there was the lure. Up to now he stood uncommitted. He had proffered help to the English, whilst sending his emissaries amongst the native soldiery to fan their growing discontent. He had set a guard upon the Treasury, and the English Magistrate leaned upon him. Yet that same night he had listened for an hour to the counsels and ambitions of Teeka Singh, the ringleader of the Mutineers.
Now he had come to the dividing of the ways, for smouldering Cawnpore had sent up its first tongue of flame in answer to the challenging beacons of Oude, and the roar and the smell of burning blew all abroad on the breath of the rising storm.
Already the sky leaned red and lowering above the city that was to wear for ever such a brand of blood. Already there was a prophetic tinge upon that sacred river, of which the peasant folk were soon to say shuddering, “We cannot look upon it—it is red—all red—”
Dhundoo Punth drew the delicate mouthpiece of his hookah from between his lips, and drank a long draught from the carved glass at his side, whilst about him his followers talked incessantly, and their voices—fierce, arguing voices—echoed high up amongst the dusty rafters overhead.
Tantia Topee, the soldier of fortune; Baba Bhut and Bala, the Nana’s brothers; Azimullah, the ex-khitmutghar, the late lion of a London season—they all talked, separately and all together, urging, flattering, cajoling, whilst the Nana swayed, and smoked, drank, and smoked again, with those restless eyes of his glancing from one to another, and seeing now Tantia’s fierce eyes, now the heavy stare of Baba Bhut, now the fever-stricken boy on the bed, and now nothing—nothing at all but his own burning, wavering dreams.
Suddenly he spoke, in the slow, mellow voice of a fat man:
“Who broke out first?”
“It was Teeka Singh, Teeka Singh and the 2d Cavalry,” said Tantia, leaning on the table between Bala and Baba Bhut. His eyes flashed, his voice was low and harsh.
“They cut down the Subadar Major because he would not give them the colours, and they went away shouting, ‘Join us, brothers; join us, heroes!’ until the Gillis regiment came out too. To-morrow the rest will come. There is doubt in their hearts to-day, but to-morrow they will come. Then we can kill all these accursed English, and make a kingdom here.”
His dark lips lifted a little as he spoke, and showed the white teeth behind them. They were as white and sharp as an animal’s.
“There are many of them,” said the Nana, “very many. They are a very strong people.”
Azimullah, the Mohammedan, leaned his elbow on the table, stroking his handsome chin, with the dark curled beard upon it.
“They were strong, but they have become weak,” he said deliberately. “Their war with Russia has used up all their men. With my own eyes I saw their weakness. With my own ears I heard the tales that were told of it, when I was in Roum. They died in that war, as the wasps die when the cold weather comes. They were full of disease and weary to their bones of the fighting. They will not send more men to Hindustan now. They are weary. This is the time to strike. There is no other time. A wise man who finds his enemy weak and wounded, kills him quickly, and goes to his house rejoicing. Our enemy was weak, and we held our hands. Now he is wounded, he is in our hands to kill. If we are wise, we will kill now. Then we shall be in safety, and you will be Peishwa, and we, your servants, will come to honour. That is my counsel. These words are true words. The Rao Sahib also knows if I have spoken the truth.”
Azimullah ceased speaking, and looked across at the sick man, who had flung round upon his side, and was listening with a half-dazed expression, his pale face ghastly against the cushion of flaring orange silk.
A strong man’s anger finds vent in action, but the resentment of the weak turns inward, stagnating and breeding the creatures of stagnation. Francis Manners, whom they called the Rao Sahib, was full of the fruits of three years’ aimless, brooding hatred. When he had fever, and when he was drunk, he dreamed dreams of vengeance. When he was sane and sober his incompetence pressed upon him, and his thoughts were the more bitter.
Sometimes in those dreams of his he saw Adela Lauriston’s face. It was mocking, scornful, l
ovely with the unearthly loveliness of vision, and then it changed. The eyes wept—the bitter tears rolled down—the head bent, and bent to him. Imploring hands rose up from the night of sleep and caught at his. Then his own hands burned, and he awoke to the throbbing pulses of fever.
Out of such a dream as this he awoke now, and looked at Azimullah with his restless, brilliant eyes. He was full of opium, and his own voice sounded to him as if it came from some great height. He had a vision of the words, falling like knives—like bright flashing knives. They came swiftly, swiftly from very far away, and they fell into the dark room with a ringing sound.
“Curse them! Curse the English! What have I to do with them?” Bala, his fierce uncle, turned an angry look upon him, and he fell again into a muttering silence.
“Yet they are a strong people,” said Dhundoo Punth doubtfully. He put his hands together upon his stomach and looked down at the great ruby on the uppermost finger. It caught the light, and sent out gleams like blood.
“They are a very strong people,” he repeated, “and if they send many troops, many regiments—”
“Where will they get them from?” said Bala, in his quick, toneless voice.
He drew the fine line of his brows together, and spread out his small, strong hands. He was much darker than his brother, and of a thin, tough make—a small man, very fierce, and pitted with small-pox.
“Where will they get them from? They are gone. They are poured out like ghee, and like ghee the sun has melted them, and the earth has swallowed them up. Be bold, my brother!”
Azimullah had risen. He came near and spoke low, whilst Tantia broke into an argument with Baba Bhut, a fat man with a stupid face.
“The Mussulman folk talk of the Nunna Nawab for their king, if you draw back, Maharaja,” he said, his handsome eyes narrowed to a watching look.
The Nana frowned, putting out his hand to the tall tumbler. Suddenly his assumption of calm was broken up by an outburst of uncontrolled anger. With the gesture of a furious child, he flung the glass against the wall, and as Baba Bhut exclaimed, and the splinters flew, he spoke with a kind of enraged vehemence.
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