Devil's Wind (15 page)

Baba Bhut, stout as his brother, swayed a little too, as if in sympathy. Sometimes he said, “True words, brother.” Sometimes he merely nodded his heavy head. Bala watched them both with a hard look of contempt.

Suddenly there were sounds from the outside world. There was a distant shouting, the clatter of horses' feet, and a hum of voices. The smell of stirred-up dust came into the room, and the smell of burning with it.

The air was full of it, and full of a clamour of confused noises, out of which came a cry of “Maharaja! Maharaja! Maharaja!” that mounted and mounted still.

With feet that slipped on the rough matting, a barefoot servant ran in, too frightened to salaam, and close on his heels there pressed two men with reddened hands, stained clothes, and fierce, excited faces. Without ceremony they pushed the servant aside, and Teeka Singh, the foremost, raised his cavalry sabre in the salute. It was his moment of triumph. Behind him in the verandah clustered his comrades of yesterday, his followers of to-day. He spoke loudly, insolently, without deference:

“Here I am, Maharaja, and the Army waits for my word. When I give it, they will kill the English, and all who hold by the English. Say now, Maharaja, will you join us and take a kingdom, or will you join our enemies and take death?”

Dhundoo Punth ceased his swaying; here was decision clamouring at the doors red-handed. The sabre with which Teeka Singh had saluted was red too. Half-way up the blade the dull stain showed, and Dhundoo Punth, beholding it, let this insistent menace outweigh all fear of the white man's possible vengeance. Fate and his own ambition beckoned, fear pricked him, and he took Fate's way. Who was he to fight against Fate, that real, unchanging deity of the East?

As the man finished, he spoke, straightening himself, seeking a more kingly pose.

“What have I to do with the English? I am altogether yours!” Tantia and Bala came forward. They stood one on either side of the Nana.

Teeka Singh spoke again.

“Will you swear it, Maharaja?” he said.

“By the holy Godavery, I will swear it.”

“Swear it on our heads,” said Teeka Singh.

Dhundoo Punth hesitated no more. The two men bent before him, and he put his right hand on the head of Teeka Singh, and his left hand on the head of Gopal Singh, Brahmins both, and took the oath which a Brahmin cannot break.

“I swear that I am yours. On your heads

I swear it,” he said, and a murmur of approval broke from his followers.

Teeka Singh rose, and fell back a step. His manner became more respectful.

“We go to Delhi,” he said briefly; and, saluting, he passed out on to the verandah, and called aloud to his men. A burst of cheering and shouting came in through the doors which he had left standing wide.

Azimullah bent quickly to the Nana's ear.

“What are you in Delhi?” he whispered. “Here you would be Peishwa—at Delhi nothing. This is your kingdom. What have we to do with Delhi?”

The vehemence of the low words disturbed the new look of satisfaction upon the Nana's heavy face.

“What can I say?” he demanded. “If I say I will not go, they will be angry. They will go all the same. And what am I without them?”

“Bid them sack the Treasury here,” said Tantia Topee. He was the soldier of fortune—alert, resourceful. “I will see that we get our share”; and he smiled, remembering the elephants brought from Bithoor, the carts and the waggons stored near at hand. He and Azimullah had made their plans well.

Bala touched his brother's arm.

“When their hands are full of rupees, they will think less of Delhi,” he said. “There are English to be killed here too. You shall tell them that their faces will be blackened before all Hindustan, if they leave these accursed people in their entrenchments. Let them slay these first, and then we will think of Delhi.”

The others nodded, breaking into voluble assent.

The Nana rose from his seat.

“I will go with them. We will go to the Treasury,” he said. “We will go on elephants. I and my brothers will go. We will open the Treasury and take what is in it. I will fill their laps with rupees. We will make a proclamation also. Bid Jowala Pershad see to it. Bid him draw out a proclamation in the name of the Emperor of Delhi, and in my name; Azimullah, see to it.”

A thunderous shouting broke upon his speech. For a moment he turned pale, then as he caught the sound of words amongst the tumult, he passed with his brother Bala at his side into the outer room, where a long open door showed the empty verandah, and beyond a wild, disordered crowd, all leaping, waving their arms, and shouting vigorously. Some one had fired the Courthouse, and a dense cloud of smoke hung over it, shadowing the strip of road and the fierce, angry crowd which filled the compound of the Nana's temporary abode. The sun slanted beneath the smoke with a lurid effect. It glittered on the gold in the Nana's turban as he came out on to the raised verandah, and looked down on his new followers. When they saw him they shouted louder still.

“Victory to the Maharaja! Victory to the Nana Sahib! Victory to the Maharaja!”

CHAPTER XV

THE FANNING OF THE FLAME

Love, if you were dead, would you not come to me

In breath, and change, and sleep, in dream and mystery,

Close as the blood of the heart, and dear as the heart's desire,

Vision, and Essence, and Flame, till we met and mingled in fire?

Yet if I find you at all it is only in memory,—

If you were dead, Love, would you not come to me?

The mid-June sun beat down on the light haze of heat and dust which hung above Sir Hugh Wheeler's entrenchment. The Christian population of Cawnpore—to the number of about one thousand—was collected within an irregular space some two hundred and fifty yards square. A four-foot mud wall enclosed the entrenchment, and within its bounds were two barracks, built of bricks, the one thatched, and the other roofed with masonry. To the left, at rather more than a mile's distance, lay the city of Cawnpore. To the right, eight partly finished barracks of hot red brick ran in a slanting line down towards the road that led from the city to the Grand Trunk road. All round the entrenchment lay the enemy. Their guns commanded every point of the low-lying camp.

Their pickets were drawn about it in so close a ring that it was fast becoming impossible for even a native spy to pass between the besieged and the outer world.

With the blindness of the fated, General Wheeler had made his stand in a place where defence meant exposure, where no supplies from friendly natives could reach him, whence no retreat was possible. It is said that he staked all on his expectation that the Mutineers would immediately proceed to Delhi.

Doubtless his spies had informed him of their intention of so doing; but he reckoned without the factor of the Nana Sahib's ambition, and his desire to found a kingdom of his own, rather than to swell the train of a Mohammedan Emperor.

The mutinous troops, their pockets full of rupees from the looted Treasury, were easily worked upon to remain at a spot which had already rewarded them so richly. They had pleasing visions of looting the city and of squeezing the bankers. Delhi was far. They would first sweep their own house clean, purge it with blood and fire from the foreign taint, and then with something to show for their time, they could move Delhi-wards. and continue their conquering career.

So the Nana held his state in Cawnpore, his batteries rained a dreadful hail upon the doomed entrenchment, and his chief ally, the terrible June sun, poured down his maddening floods of light and heat, killing the weakly, and weakening the strong.

On the afternoon of June 14th, Helen Wilmot came out of the thatched barrack, which served as a hospital, and ran quickly across the angle between it and the second building. She drew a breath of relief as she slipped in at the open space from which the door had been shot away, and stood for a moment accustoming her eyes to the dim light.

The long barrack room, which she reached by a second open door, presented a very curious appearance. It resembled the deck of an emigrant ship, for the whole of the available floor space was taken up by groups of women and children, sitting, lying, or standing. One or two had fastened a sheet, or a shawl, across some corner, in order to obtain a little privacy, but for the most part they remained in full view, the women reading, writing, or attending to their children. Smaller rooms opened from the main room, at intervals; the roof of these only rose to half the height of the main building, and above its level were the windows that had lighted the long room. They were wide, gaping holes now, with the framework almost entirely shot away. Sometimes a brick fell down amongst the little groups below. Sometimes a glancing bullet followed it. Sometimes a round shot crashed its way through the masonry, and brought a quick, terrible death to man, or woman, or child.

There was a continual crackle of musketry, a continual sharp rattle of bullets against the heated brick of the walls. Some of the women still winced at each fresh impact, but the children took no notice at all. After the first day no one cried out or made a noise.

Even when the torn air whistled overhead, and shell or round shot went screaming past, there were perhaps clasped hands, pale lips, and beating hearts, but no spoken tribute to terror. So soon do terrible things become a custom.

The children took no notice. The boys played marbles with the spent bullets, and the little girls arranged a mimic hospital, and nursed poor wounded soldiers made out of scraps of rag or splinters of bamboo.

Helen heard two of them talking as she picked her way across the crowded floor.

“Your man's dead, Nellie,” and Nellie whimpered:

“He isn't, then; I say he isn't.”

“'Course he is. He's got a bullet right frough and frough of his head. Just like my daddy had; he had a bullet right frough and frough of his head, and he died, so 'course your man is dead.”

“He's got a new head. A new mended head,” said Nellie with the immovable obstinacy of the weak, and Helen patted the child on the shoulder as she passed on.

She found Adela Morton sitting in a corner, fanning herself. Helen sat down, too, and leaned against the wall. A level beam of dusty light traversed the darkening room, very high overhead. A cloud of flies hung floating in it. They made a slow continual buzzing sound. Helen watched them for a moment with uplifted face. She looked very tired.

“Helen, you will kill yourself,” said Adela fretfully. “Every time you go over to that hospital, I think you are going to be shot. You don't know what I go through. And even if you don't get killed that way, you will wear yourself out with this dreadful nursing.”

“Some one has to do it,” said Helen with a gleam of humour.

“I should let it be some one else.”

Helen sighed.

“Oh, it is easier to be doing something,” she said. “Adie, I came to ask if you would come over for five minutes when the sun is down. Mr. Purslake was hit last night. He is very bad, and he keeps on asking for you.”

“Oh, I couldn't.” Adela stopped fanning, and turned terrified eyes upon her cousin. “I couldn't really, Helen.”

“Adie, I think he is dying.”

“People would think it so curious,” faltered Adela, and humour and anger together flashed from Helen's eyes.

“I don't think it will compromise you irretrievably,” she observed.

Adela hung her head a little.

“Helen, don't. Some one might hear you. I don't think you ought to say things like that. One has to be so careful. People do talk so, and you know it is different now—now I am a widow. Richard might—”

Helen lifted a perfectly colourless face, and looked at Adela with an anger which she herself did not understand.

“Hush!” she said imperiously, and Adela fell on a plaintive note.

“How unkind you are! I am sure, Helen, you might think how dreadful it all is for me. To be a widow at three-and-twenty, and not even proper mourning to put on, and no one to look after me or do anything. You are most unfeeling, I do think”; and she began to weep a little, silently.

“Richard wouldn't ask me to go out to that horrible hospital and see a lot of dreadful wounded people and be shot dead,” she sobbed; “and you know he never liked poor Mr. Purslake—you know that quite well.”

That new anger shook Helen again. She pressed her lips together, forcing them to be silent. But she could not silence her thoughts. Dick? What right had Adela to speak of him at all—Adela who had never loved him, who had troubled him so—had hurt him so. Now he could not be hurt any more, or comforted any more, and Helen's heart was like a thing in torment because there was nothing that she could do for him now, and she began to know how much she could have done. A fortnight ago—that fortnight that was like an age—it would have shocked her to look into her heart and find it full of the image of another woman's husband. Now she had come past that. Dick was in her heart, but if there was passion there, it was like the passion of thwarted motherhood. It ached only to be spent, to give, and to console—and Dick was dead. With each ebb and flow of her breath the thought ebbed and flowed. With each beat of her pulses, it beat upon her brain and upon her heart.

Adela had said that she was killing herself with work, but it was not the work which weighed so heavily upon her strength. Work was salvation, but whenever she tended any wounded man, her old enemy, the imagination, showed her Dick so torn, so hurt, and alone, with no one to ease the pain and bring him water, or take the hand that had once grasped life so strongly, and now relaxing—letting it go for ever—yet groped for one human touch before the utter darkness closed.

Adela dried her eyes and looked curiously at Helen.

“You do look tired,” she repeated. “Oh, dear, won't it be nice to sleep in a proper bed again, and have a bath. How long do you think we shall be in this dreadful place, Nellie?”

“I hope not very long.”

“Yes, you hope, but why doesn't some one do something to get us out of it? That is what I want to know. I am sure I should do something if I were a man. I suppose anyhow we should have to wait till September before sailing for home, though I am sure I don't know what I shall do when I get there, now that I haven't got poor mamma to go to. Of course I shall have to keep very quiet for a year, and I don't know what money there is. I suppose poor Richard's life was insured. Mamma is sure to have insisted on that.”

“Adela, I can't bear it,” said Helen suddenly.

“Really, Helen, what did I say? And as to bearing it, I don't know what you mean. You haven't lost your husband, and I shall have to wear black, which never suits me, and a frightful widow's bonnet, and those bonnets make every one look forty; I've often noticed it. And I shall be burnt to a cinder in this dreadful heat. I try to be cheerful for the sake of other people; but I am sure it is enough to depress any one.”

“Of course it is,” said Helen in a curious voice. “Poor Adie, a lost complexion would be the last straw, wouldn't it?”

It was almost dark in the long room now, and almost silent too. Helen got up, wearily.

“The firing has stopped. I must go back,” she said. “Will you come?”

“Helen, I told you I couldn't, and oh, I wish you would stay here. It is so lonely, and I know you will be killed, and I shall have no one left.”

“Poor Adie,” said Helen again.

Her voice was quite gentle now.

“I will try not to get killed, my dear. It would be rather like deserting, wouldn't it?”

She moved away, retracing her steps amongst the fanning women and the pale, fretful children.

The shaft of sunshine was gone, for the sun had dropped, and the thick, hot darkness was coming down upon the room like a suffocating blanket. Beneath it some of the children were already beginning to fall into a restless sleep.

The firing had ceased at sundown, and the room was full of small fretful noises. Here and there a baby wailed, here and there a mother crooned some little cradle-song.

Helen stopped just by the door, and spoke to a small cross child of four, who was being undressed by a tired little lady in a soiled green

gown.

“Good-night, Jenny,” she said. “Not good-night, welly bad night,” said Miss Jenny with conviction. The mother gave a sad half-laugh.

“She does so hate not having her bath,” she explained. “But I've got a lovely plan. I am going to undress her, and take everything off, and we will pretend a beautiful bath, and rub, and scrub, and go to bed ever so clean and comfy.”

“Jenny wants real bath—Jenny hates pertence bath!” wailed Jenny.

Helen stooped again.

“This is a very special sort of pretence bath,” she whispered. “Just for Jenny. When Jenny has had it, she will go ever so fast asleep, and dream she is swimming in a lovely silvery sea, with pink fishes, and blue fishes, and sparkly goldy fishes, and to-morrow Helen will tell her a story all about real mermaids.”

“Now! Tell Jenny now.”

“To-morrow,” said Helen, nodding wisely. “First Jenny will have the pretence bath, and then she will have the lovely swimming dream, and to-morrow Helen will tell her the mermaid story; and she must have a kiss or else the dream will stay away.”

The child put up her face. Only the eyes were visible in the half-light, and they were full of pleased anticipation. Helen kissed the little damp chin, and passed on.

A very young girl with her fair hair in a loose plait was waiting by the door. She caught timidly at Helen's dress, and then drew back colouring.

“Oh, Miss Wilmot,” she breathed; and Helen smiled and said:

“What is it, Lizzie?”

“Oh, Miss Wilmot, don't you think I might come and help in the hospital? Do ask them to let me.”

“My dear, you are too young.”

Lizzie Carthew made a hesitating and yet impulsive movement.

“I am nearly eighteen,” she said. Her voice was the voice of a child who has always had all that it wanted.

“I shall be eighteen in September, and I am engaged to be married, you know, and mamma always said I was a good nurse.”

Helen laughed.

“Wait till you are married,” she said teasingly.

Lizzie pouted.

“Papa said I must wait till I was eighteen to be married. Mamma was married when she was seventeen. Oh, Miss Wilmot dear, do you think they are being very unhappy about me? I do wish I could write and say I was safe. Perhaps they have heard that poor Aunt Martin was killed, and don't know that I am safe. And John, perhaps he thinks I am dead. Oh, Miss Wilmot dear!”

“Poor little Lizzie,” said Helen.

“Dear Miss Wilmot, if you could get them to let me go to the hospital and help; if I might be doing something, I shouldn't fret so. You don't know how terrible it is to sit here all day long and think about poor Aunt Martin. I had only been staying with her for a week when it happened, and we were going to the hills a week later. I do want something to do so badly.”