by Talbot Mundy
She knew that he would have killed a thousand men for her with equal generosity and equal disregard of what she thought was right, and she did not doubt that he would think himself both justified and worthy of renown for doing it. She could have begged his release that minute, had she thought for an instant that Alwa would consent, and but for Cunningham. She had grown aware of Cunningham’s gray eyes, staring straight at her — summing her up — reading her. And she became conscious of the fact that she had met a man whose leave she would like to ask before deciding to act.
The mental acknowledgment brought relief for a few seconds. She was tired. The woman in here went out to the man in Cunningham, and she welcomed a protector. Then the Scots blood raced to the assistance of the woman, and she bridled instantly. Who, then, was this chance-met jackanapes, that she should lean on him or look to him for guidance?
The rebellion that had made her disobey her father back in Howrah City — the spirit that had kept her in Howrah City and had given Jaimihr back cool stare for stare — rallied her to resist — to ridicule — to rival Cunningham’s pretensions. He saw her flush beneath his gaze, and turned away to where Mahommed Gunga watched from the parapet.
The leaders of Jaimihr’s calvary were arguing. They could be seen gathered together out of rifle-shot but in full view of Alwa’s rock, and from their gestures they seemed to be considering the feasibility of an attack.
But it needed no warrior — it needed less even than ordinary intelligence — to know that as few as forty men could hold that fastness against two thousand. Eight hundred would have no chance against it. Even two thousand would need engineers, and ordnance, as well as plans.
Presently half of the little army rode away, back toward Howrah City, and the other half proceeded to bivouac where they could watch the iron-shuttered entrance and cut off the little garrison from all communication or assistance.
“We might as well resume our conference,” suggested Alwa, with the courtly air of a man just arisen from a chair. No one who had not seen him ride would have dreamed that he was fresh from snatching a prisoner at the bottom of a neck-breaking defile. Cunningham nodded acquiescence and followed him, turning to stare again at Miss McClean before he strode away with long, even strides that had a reassuring effect on any one who watched him. She bridled again, and blushed. But she experienced the weird sensation of being read right through before Mahommed Gunga contrived adroitly to step into the line of view and so let Cunningham’s attention fix itself on something else. The Risaldar had made up his mind that love was inopportune just then; and he was a man who left no stone unturned — no point unwatched — when he had sensed a danger. This might be danger and it might not be; so he watched. Cunningham was conscious of the sudden interruption of a train of thought, but he was not conscious of deliberate interference.
“That very young man is an old man,” said Duncan McClean, wiping his spectacles as he walked beside his daughter to the deep veranda where their chairs were side by side. “He is a grown man. He has come to man’s estate. Look at the set of that pair of shoulders. Mark his strength!”
“I expect any one of those Rajputs is physically stronger,” answered Rosemary, in no mood to praise any one.
“I was thinking of the strength of character he expresses rather than of his actual muscles,” said McClean.
“Bismillah!” Alwa was swearing behind the thick teak door that closed behind him and Cunningham and Mahommed Gunga. “We have made a good beginning! With the wolf in a trap, what has the goat to dread? Howrah may chuckle himself to sleep! And I — I, too, by the beard of God’s prophet! — I, too, may laugh, for, with Jaimihr under lock and key, what need is there to ride to the aid of a Hindoo Rajah? I am free again!”
“Alwa-sahib!”
Cunningham had fixed him with those calm gray eyes of his, and Mahommed Gunga sat down on the nearest bench contented. He could wait for what was coming now. He recognized the blossoming of the plant that he had nursed through its growth so long.
“I listen,” answered Alwa.
“I represent the British Government. I am the only servant of the Company within reach. Do you realize that?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“I have no orders which entitle me to deal with any crisis such as this. But, when my orders were given me, no such crisis was contemplated. Therefore, on behalf of the Company, I assume full authority until such time as some one senior to me turns up to relieve me. Is all that clear to you?”
“Yes, sahib.”
Mahommed Gunga went through considerable pantomime of being angry with a fly. He found it necessary to conceal emotion in some way or other. Alwa sat motionless and stared straight back at Cunningham.
“I understand, sahib,” he repeated.
“You are talking to me, then, on that understanding?”
“Most certainly, huzoor.”
“You can raise two thousand men?”
“Perhaps.”
“Say fifteen hundred?”
“Surely fifteen hundred. Not a sabre less.”
“All horsed and armed?”
“Surely, bahadur. Of what use would be a rabble? I was speaking in terms of men able to fight, as one soldier to another.”
“Will you raise those men?”
“Of a truth, I must, sahib!” Alwa laughed. “Jaimihr’s thousands will be in no mind to lie leaderless and let Howrah ride rough-shod over them! They know his charity of old! They will be here to claim their Prince within a day or two, and without my fifteen hundred how would I stand? Surely, bahadur, I will raise my fifteen hundred.”
“Very well. Now I will make you a proposal. On behalf of the Company I offer you and your men pay at the rate paid to all irregular cavalry on a war basis. In return, I demand your allegiance.”
“To whom, sahib? To you or to the Company?”
“To the Company, of course.”
“Nay! Not I! For the son of Cunnigan-bahadur I would slit the throats of half Asia, and then of nine-tenths of the other half! But by the breath of God — by my spurs and this sabre here — I have had enough of pledging! I swore allegiance to Howrah. Being nearly free of that pledge by Allah’s sending, shall I plunge into another, like a frightened bird fluttering from snare to snare? Nay, nay, bahadur! For thyself, for thy father’s sake, ask any favor. It is granted. But thy Company may stew in the grease of its own cartridges for ought I care!”
Cunningham stood up and bowed very slightly — very stiffly — very punctiliously. Mahommed Gunga leaped to his feet, and came to attention with a military clatter. Alwa stared, inclining his head a trifle in recognition of the bow, but evidently taken by surprise.
“Then, good-by, Alwa-sahib.”
Cunningham stretched out a hand.
“I am much obliged to you for your hospitality, and regret exceedingly that I cannot avail myself of it further, either for myself or for Mahommed Gunga or for Mr. and Miss McClean. As the Company’s representative, they, of course, look to me for orders and protection, and I shall take them away at once. As things are, we can only be a source of embarrassment to you.”
“But — sahib — huzoor — it is impossible. You have seen the cavalry below. How can you — how could you get away?”
“Unless I am your prisoner I shall certainly leave this place at once. The only other condition on which I will stay here is that you pledge your allegiance to the Company and take my orders.”
“Sahib, this is — why — huzoor—”
Alwa looked over to Mahommed Gunga and raised his eyebrows eloquently.
“I obey him! I go with him!” growled Mahommed Gunga.
“Sahib, I would like time to think this over.”
“How much time? I thought you quick-witted when you made Jaimihr prisoner. Has that small success undermined your power of decision? I know my mind. Mahommed Gunga knows his, Alwa-sahib.”
“I ask an hour. There are many points I must consider. There is the prisoner for one thing.”
“You can hand him over to the custody of the first British column we can get in touch with, Alwa-sahib. That will relieve you of further responsibility to Howrah and will insure a fair trial of any issue there may be between yourself and Jaimihr.”
Alwa scowled. No Rajput likes the thought of litigation where affairs of honor are concerned. He felt he would prefer to keep Jaimihr prisoner for the present.
“Also, sahib” — fresh facets of the situation kept appearing to him as he sparred for time— “with Jaimihr in a cage I can drive a bargain with his brother. While I keep him in the cage, Howrah must respect my wishes for fear lest otherwise I loose Jaimihr to be a thorn in his side anew. If I hand him to the British, Howrah will know that he is safe and altogether out of harm’s way; then he will recall what he may choose to consider insolence of mine; and then—”
“Oh, well — consider it!” said Cunningham, saluting him and making for the door, close followed by Mahommed Gunga. The two went out and it left Alwa to stride up and down alone — to wrestle between desire and circumspection — to weigh uncomfortable fact with fact — and to curse his wits that could not settle on the wisest and most creditable course. They turned into another chamber of the tunnelled rock, and there until long after the hour of law allowed to Alwa they discussed the situation too.
“The point was well taken, sahib,” said Mahommed Gunga, “but he should have been handled rather less abruptly.”
“Eh?”
“Rather less abruptly, sahib.”
“Oh! Well — if his mind isn’t clear as to which side he’ll fight on, I don’t want him, and that’s all!” said Cunningham. And Mahommed Gunga bitted his impatience fiercely, praying the one God he believed in to touch the right scale of the two. Later, Cunningham strode out to pace the courtyard in the dark, and the Rajput followed him.
CHAPTER XXVII
The trapped wolf bared his fangs and swore,
“But set me this time free,
And I will hunt thee never more!
By ear and eye and jungle law,
I’ll starve — I’ll faint — I’ll die before
I bury tooth in thee!”
WHILE Alwa raged alone, and while Mahommed Gunga talked to Cunningham in a rock-room near at hand, Rosemary McClean saw fit to take a hand in history. It was not her temperament to sit quite idle while others shaped her destiny; nor was she given to mere brooding over wrongs. When a wrong was being done that she could alter or alleviate it was her way to tackle it at once without asking for permission or advice.
From where her chair was placed under the long veranda she could see the passage in the rock that led to Jaimihr’s cell. She saw his captors take him up the passage; she heard the door clang shut on him, and she saw the men come back again. She heard them laugh, too, and she overheard a few words of a jest that seemed the reason for the laughter.
In Rajputana, as in other portions of the East, men laugh with meaning as a rule, and seldom from mere amusement. Included in the laugh there usually lies more than a hint of threat, or hate, or cruelty. And, in partial confirmation of the jest she unintentionally overheard, she saw no servant go to the chuckling spring to fill a water-jar. She recalled that Jaimihr only sipped as much as he could dip up in the hollow of his hand, and that physical exertion and suffering of the sort that he had undergone produces prodigious thirst in that hot, dry atmosphere.
She waited until dark for Cunninham, growing momentarily more restless. She recalled that she was a guest of Alwa’s, and as such not free to interfere with his arrangements or to suggest insinuations anent his treatment of prisoners. She recalled the pride of all Rajputs, and its accompanying corollary of insolence when offended. There would come no good — she knew — from asking anybody whether Jaimihr was allowed to drink or not.
Cunningham, with that middle-aged air of authority laid over the fire and ability of youth, would be able, no doubt, to enforce his wishes in the matter after finding out the truth about it. But Cunningham did not come; and she remembered from a short experience of her own what thirst was.
The men-at-arms were all on the ramparts now, watching the leaderless cavalry on the plain. They had even left the cell door unguarded, for it was held shut by a heavy beam that could not be reached from the inside; and they were all too few, even all of them together, to hold that rock against eight hundred. It was characteristic, though, and Eastern of the East, that they should omit to padlock the big beam. It pivoted at its centre on a big bronze pin, and even a child could move it from the outside; it was only from the inside that it was uncontrollable. From inside one could have jerked at the door for a week and the big beam would have lain still and efficient in its niche in the rock-wall; but a little pressure underneath one end would send it swinging in an arc until it hung bolt upright. Then the same child who had pushed it up could have swung the teak door wide.
Rosemary, growing momentarily thirstier herself as she thought of the probable torture of the prisoner, walked down to the spring and filled a dipper, as she had done half a dozen times a day since she first arrived. She had carried almost all her own and her father’s water, for Joanna was generally sleeping somewhere out of view, and no other body-servant had been provided for her. There was a fairly big brass pitcher by the spring. She filled it. Nobody noticed her.
Then she recalled that nobody would notice her if she were to carry the brass pitcher in the direction of her room, for she had done that often. She picked it up, and she reached the end of the veranda with it without having called attention to herself. She set it down then to make quite sure that she was unobserved.
But some movement of the cavalry on the plain below was keeping the eyes of the garrison employed. Although a solitary lantern shone full on her, she reached the passage leading to the prisoner’s cell unseen; and she walked on down it, making no attempt to hide or hurry, remembering that she was acting out of mercy and had no need to be ashamed. If she were to be discovered, then she would be, and that was all about it, except that she would probably be able to appeal to Cunningham to save her from unpleasant consequences. In any case, she reasoned, she would have done good. She was quite ready to get herself and her own in trouble if by doing it she could insure that a prisoner had water.
But she was not seen. And no one saw her set the jar down by the door. No one except the prisoner inside heard her knock.
“Have you water, Jaimihr-sahib?” she inquired.
The East has a hundred florid epithets for one used in the West; and in a land where water is as scarce as gold and far more precious the mention of water to a thirsty man calls forth a flood of thought such as only music or perhaps religion can produce in luckier climes. Jaimihr waxed eloquent; more eloquent than even water might have made him had another — had even another woman — brought it. He recognized her voice, and said things to her that roused all the anger that she knew. She had not come to be made love to.
She thought, though, of his thirst. She remembered that within an hour or two he might be raving for another reason and with other words. The big beam lifted on her hands with barely more effort than was needed to lift up the water-jar; the door opened a little way, and she tried, while she passed the water in, to peer through the darkness at the prisoner. But there were no windows to that cell, and such dim light as there was came from behind her.
“They have bound me, sahiba, in this corner,” groaned Jaimihr. “I cannot reach it. Take it away again! The certainty that it is there and out of reach is too great torture!”
So she slipped in through the door, leaving it open a little way — both her hands busy with the brass pitcher and both eyes straining their utmost through the gloom — advancing step by step through mouldy straw that might conceal a thousand horrors.
“You wonder, perhaps, why I do not escape!” said a voice. And then she heard the cell door close again gently.
Now she could see Jaimihr, for he stood with his back against the door, and his head was b
etween her and the little six-inch grating that was all the ventilation or light a prisoner in that place was allowed.
“So you lied to me, even when I brought you water?” she answered. She was not afraid. She had nerve enough left to pity him.
“Yes. But I see that you did not lie. I am still thirsty, sahiba.”
He held out both hands, and she could see them dimly. There were no chains on them, and he was not bound in any way. She gave him the jar.
“Let me pass out again before you drink,” she ordered. “It is not known that I am in here, and I would not have it known.”
She could have bitten out her tongue with mortification a moment afterward for letting any such admission escape her. She heard him chuckle as he drank — he choked from chuckling, and set the jar down to cough. Then, when he had recovered breath again, he answered almost patronizingly.
“Which would be least pleased with you, sahiba? The Rangars, or thy father, or the other Englishman? But never mind, sahiba, we are friends. I have proved that we are friends. Never have I taken water from the hands of any man or any woman not of my own caste. I would have died sooner. It was only thou, sahiba, who could make me set aside my caste.”
“Let me pass!”
She certainly was frightened now. It dawned on her, as it had at once on him, that at the least commotion on his part or on hers a dozen Rangars would be likely to come running. And just as he had done, she wondered what explanation she would give in that case, and who would be likely to believe it. To have been caught going to the cell would have been one thing; to be caught in it would be another. He divined her thoughts.
“Have no fear, sahiba. Thou and I are friends.”
She did not answer, for words would not come. Besides, she was beginning to realize that words would be of little help to her. A woman who will tell nothing but the truth under any circumstances and will surely keep her promises is at a disadvantage when conversing with a man who surely will not tell the truth if he can help it and who regards his given word with almost equal disrespect.