Devil's Wind (18 page)

CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF THE PATH

This is the end of the path.

Since hope is gone,

We, with unfaltering feet,

Must travel on.

On, and over the brink

Of the gulf we know,

And down in the rush of death

To the dark below.

On the twenty-first day of the siege the Nana's envoy came into the entrenchment with the Nana's terms— a strange and most miserable envoy, with terms that were to be broken after a strange and most miserable fashion.

Sir Hugh Wheeler sat amongst the men he trusted, with a letter in his hand—a letter in Azimullah's handwriting.

It was very short, but he read it again and again.

“All those who are in no way connected with the acts of Lord Dalhousie, and are willing to lay down their arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad.”

Sir Hugh let the hand which held the letter,

fall upon his knee and fixed his tired eyes upon the half-caste woman who had brought it. She had been fainting, and she was ghastly under the brown of her skin. There was a little sickly baby at her breast, and she hugged it and trembled. A strand of black hair fell across her shoulder, and over the bosom of the torn and ragged gown which was her only garment. Tottering, and in terror of her life, she had come across the sun-scorched plain, only to fall in a swoon at the first barricade, where she had narrowly escaped being shot. Now she met the General's eyes, and tears gushed from her own.

“Mrs. Green way, who gave you this letter?” said Sir Hugh.

She caught her breath, her voice came unsteadily. After the manner of her kind, she had many words. Also it eased her to complain.

“Azimullah gave it to me,” she said. “Oh, he is a great budmash, that Azimullah. All the world knew that we were rich, and he has taken our money, and he has promised to let us go, and always he is verree, verree sorree, but we must give more money. Already he has had one lakh of rupees, and my children have not enough to eat, oh, he is a verree great budmash.”

Captain Moore, the big fair Irishman, held up his hand.

“You saw Azimullah? He gave you the letter? Did you see the Nana Sahib?”

Oh, no—no, I did not see him. Oh, he is a monster, that one. God will punish him. Oh, yes, some day God will punish him. He is verree wicked. They are all verree wicked, wicked men. See, even my ear-rings they have pulled out. They have torn the flesh of my ears and pulled them out. Oh, my God! I screamed, but they tore them out. And they took my clothes and the clothes of my children. Oh, yes, certainly God will punish them.”

The men moved farther away, and spoke in low voices.

“Why did they send this woman?” said Sir Hugh.

Captain Moore gave a half shrug of the shoulders.

“Heaven knows. Poor creature, she was nearly shot by Mowbray Thompson's picket. He only just knocked one man's musket up in time. Perhaps the Nana was thrifty and didn't want to risk a man.”

Sir Hugh Wheeler made a restless movement. He was an old man and irritable. Only a few weeks ago Henry Lawrence had spoken of him as a tower of strength. But he had served in India for more than fifty years, and under the strain of the siege he had grown conscious of his age. His small, spare figure was no longer erect, and his brown skin showed line upon deep-carved line of weariness, illness, and suffering. Private grief had laid a crushing weight upon his over-burdened shoulders. It was only ten days since he and his wife had seen their son torn to pieces by a round shot before their very eyes. His hair had turned quite white since then. Fate had struck him too hard, and though his spirit was still brave, it was with the courage that faces death because it dare not look life in the face any more.

His hand shook now as he moved it, and his eyes were very heavy.

“What are we to say, Moore?” he said. “What are we to do?”

“Have we any choice, sir?” said Captain Moore.

“You would surrender?”

“Sir, we have only food for three days now.”

“Relief.” The word was almost a groan.

“I am afraid not.”

“Moore, it must come. Our last letters were urgent. They must be pushing on.”

“We don't know what is happening down country, sir. Even if we had the food, there are the rains to be thought of. They may break any day now—any day—and the moment they break, we shall be flooded out. But we haven't got the food. Relief, to be of any use, must come within three days' time. Can we for a moment deceive ourselves into supposing that it will do so?”

Captain Moore's merry blue eyes were very grave as he spoke. All through the siege, his voice, his smile, had heartened the fearful, the despondent. He had been leader of forlorn hopes, deviser of cunning stratagems, comforter of the sorrowful, friend to the bereaved, and through it all, hopeful, buoyant, and confident. Now that his face was grave, the lines upon it showed; now that he smiled no more, an instant conviction that the situation was indeed desperate, came upon all who watched.

There was a pause. The other officers spoke among themselves, but in low voices. Then Sir Hugh Wheeler brought his shaking hand down with a crash upon the table, beside which he stood.

“No, by Heaven, no!” he exclaimed. “I don't trust them. I can't trust them. Does any one trust a Mahratta? Better blow up the magazines.”

The younger men looked at one another. A murmur of protest broke from them. Some of them had wives and children in the entrenchment. Hope dies very hard, and when hope for oneself is dead, there is still a little left for those we love. If it is more prayer than hope, it is none the worse for that, and it lingers until the last spark of life has gone.

Captain Moore had a wife—and children. He spoke quickly.

“Sir, only the very last extremity would justify—There are the women.”

And Sir Hugh flared up.

“Do I forget them? My God, if I could.

Isn't my wife here, and—and my daughters? But you are all against me. Have it your own way, gentlemen, but at least let us take what precautions we may.”

He made an effort and controlled himself. If the indecision of age was upon him, its caution was also his. The flare of anger died down, and he began to speak quietly, soberly, discussing details, going over the old arguments once again, and coming in the end to the old conclusions.

“This letter is not signed,” said Sir Hugh at last. “We must have the Nana's signature—and all reasonable safeguards. Some one should inspect the boats, and we must have hostages. Send this woman back to her children, and say that they must send some responsible person, if they wish us to treat with them.”

When all was arranged the council broke up. One by one the ragged, haggard men went away to busy themselves over this forlornest of forlorn hopes. Sir Hugh watched them go.

Captain Moore and a civilian were the last. Just as they reached the shattered doorway, the old General stretched out his right hand and spoke in a weary and yet passionate voice:

“Gentlemen, this is against my judgment,” he said. Then he sat down by the rickety table and put his head in his hands.

Silence and heat brooded over the entrenchment. There was no firing all through that long day, and the jackals and the vultures came up close under the walls to feed upon the dead, who had lain unburied since the great attack on the night of June 22. There was little left now but gleaming bone and tattered cloth, but the jackals slunk and yapped over the fragments of their horrible feast, and the great white vultures brooded obscenely over the dead.

Backwards and forwards across the scorched plain went the messengers of the Nana.

Now it was a mounted trooper, who galloped across with a written message demanding the immediate evacuation of the entrenchment and threatening a renewed bombardment. Now again it was Azimullah and Jowala Pershad, who assured the Englishmen of the excellence of their master's intentions, and agreed with polite compliments to the safeguards demanded by Sir Hugh.

Finally the messenger was an Englishman, who carried the treaty of capitulation into the Nana's very presence, and saw him sign it, after many courteous compliments and expressions of his admiration for such a brave defence.

An intense excitement pervaded the entrenchment towards sundown. The unwonted silence pressed strangely upon nerves which for so long had been strung to endure the ceaseless sound of firing. The women whispered among themselves, and every now and then, a man would pass through the long barrack-room and be asked a hundred questions, which neither he nor any one else could answer. For once no one was thirsty, for the well was no longer a point of danger. Double rations were served out, and Ernest and Lucy played at feasts and made merry.

Richard Morton had fetched them out of their trench when the firing stopped, and they sat in the shade of the barrack all through that day. It was not so hot as the trench, for there was more air and they were out of the sun and had room to move and play, but they kept as far as they possibly could from the ruined steps which led to the barrack-room. A girl with wide, vacant eyes and long floating hair sat there, twisting her fingers in and out, in and out, in some pattern which no one but herself could follow. At regular intervals she laughed, on one high tone that never varied. Then when she had laughed, she threw back her hair, stared for a moment at the sky, and fell to twisting her fingers again. It was Carrie Crowther, and she knew no one, and never spoke at all. Lucy and Ernest were very much afraid of her, though Helen told them that they need not be.

Helen had been busy. She had saved a spoonful of water at the bottom of her cup, and dipping a rag into it she washed the children's faces and her own. For three weeks no one had been able to wash at all. Even this spoonful was luxury and added to the holiday feeling. When Helen had used every drop of the water, she set down the cup and began to comb out Lucy's hair with a pocket comb, borrowed from Lizzie Carthew. She had just finished when Captain Morton came by again.

He paused beside them, and Helen forced a smile.

“Do we really go out to-morrow?” she asked. “We are making ourselves as tidy as we can, you see. When we get to Allahabad we shall have clean clothes, shan't we, Lucy? Then we shall be so beautiful that you won't know us.”

No one was beautiful now. Dirt, hunger, and terror had done their work too well. Lizzie Carthew squeezed Helen's arm.

“I shall put on all my trousseau things when I get to them,” she declared. “No, Captain Morton, not all at once, of course not, but one at a time, one after the other. I shall change my dress five times a day. Mamma often scolded me for being lazy about putting on an afternoon dress; she'll never have to scold me again.”

No, Lizzie, never again—never again any more.

Helen saw something in Richard Morton's face that made her drop the comb into Lucy's lap and get up. She walked a few paces beside him in silence. Then she asked:

“Is it settled, Dick?”

“Yes.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Carrie Crowther's wild, high laugh rang out.

“We've surrendered,” said Richard Morton.

“Todd has just come back with the Nana's signature. We march out at dawn. They are giving us boats, and Delafosse, Turner, and Goad have gone down to the ghaut now to see that they are all right.”

Helen hesitated for a moment, and then said in a low voice:

“Will it be all right, Dick?”

He had begun some cheerful speech when he met her eyes. Something in them—an intelligence, a courage that equalled his own— spoke and was answered, in silence.

They stood for a moment, and then he turned away, and she went back to the children.

The poor mad girl upon the steps laughed on her high, wild note.

That night the shattered guns of Eckford's, Ash's, and Dempster's batteries were still, and the guard that was set, was a guard of the Nana's men. They stared about them in surprise, wondering how this handful of starving, dying men had fought these ruined guns.

“Devils—yes, they are certainly devils,” was the word that went from one to another as the garrison of Cawnpore lay wrapped in the sleep of their last night on earth.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SUTTEE CHOWRA GHAUT

Are you afraid, my heart?

See, this is Death.

He will come very near,

And take your breath.

He will come very near,

And close your eyes,

Lest they should look on him,

And become wise.

He will come very near,

And touch your hand,

Then you will fall asleep,

And understand.

The twenty-sixth of June dawned greyly, and the hour before the dawn was full of mist. Away to the south the clouds were gathering, and the smell of rain came drifting on a chill small breeze. The rains were coming, but as yet no drop had fallen in Cawnpore, and the road to the river was ankle deep in a white stinging dust, which rose in clouds about the feet that stirred it. Many feet were stirring it in the hour before dawn. Great softly-treading feet of elephants whose loaded howdahs swayed to their rhythmic tread. Slow feet of patient bullocks, straining forward drawing rough country carts, each with its load of wounded men, who groaned and cursed as the wheels jarred and the dust flew up.

Bare feet of dhoolee bearers and blistered feet of men who had stood at their posts through twenty-one days of sleepless horror and privation.

The blistered feet stumbled along—some bare, some wrapped in rags, a few with boots that gaped and showed the skin beneath. One helped another forward upon that halting march to death. They were a feeble company, but when the gathering crowd of Sepoys pressed nearer, the weakest straightened his bent back, and the most suffering kept in the half-uttered groan.

Hardly a man was unwounded; all were weak with hunger and lack of sleep, and many were haggard with private grief.

The children and the women went—some in carts, some in palanquins, and some on foot—in the midst of that sad procession. There were mothers who sobbed bitterly as they left that Fort of Despair, because their children lay buried there. And there were mothers who smiled to their children as they went, and spoke of meeting daddy, and being at home again. There were women who chattered restlessly, keeping thought at bay, and there were women who watched as silently as if this were a dream and the haze around them the haze of sleep.

So they went down to the river, their river of Death.

Adela Morton had a place in one of the carts. She had altered less than most of the other women, and excitement had brought a little of the old colour to her white cheeks. Helen's hat covered the limp chestnut curls, and in the crowded cart one could not see how ragged and filthy her fine white muslin dress had become.

Helen Wilmot walked by the cart, holding Lucy by the hand. Richard Morton had brought some money with him into the entrenchment, and Helen had given a native five rupees for his coarse white cotton sheet. It was fairly clean, and she was glad to cover her head and her rent gown with it, since the Sepoys pressed so close and stared so hard.

“You look like an ayah,” said little Lucy very seriously; and Helen laughed and said:

“Very well then, I'm your ayah, yours and Ernest's. You must be very good children, or I shall take off my slipper and beat you.”

Whereupon Ernest peered down into the dust and said:

“They're not slippers, they're shoes, and there's a new hole since yesterday, Miss Wilmot.”

Lizzie Carthew was walking too.

“Oh, Miss Wilmot,” she exclaimed, “how long do you suppose it will take us to get to Allahabad? Three days? Four? How long do you think it will take?”

“Nearer five than four,” said Captain Morton.

Adela turned her head in his direction.

“Richard, is that you?” she said complainingly. “This cart does jolt so dreadfully. I believe I'll walk after all.”

“Very well.”

“Or at least I would walk if my shoe hadn't a hole in it. Is it very dusty?”

“Is it, Lucy?” said Helen. She looked straight at Adela for a moment, with a kind of bitter humour.

“It is very dusty,” observed Lucy in her deliberate fashion. “Very dusty, indeed, Mrs. Morton.”

Richard came up close to the cart and spoke in a low voice:

“Change with that child for a bit, Adela,” he suggested. “She looks ready to drop, poor mite.”

“But my shoe has a hole in it,” was Adela's reply, and her husband fell back again.

“Like a ride, Lucy?” he asked, and without waiting for an answer, he swung the child up on to his shoulder, whence she looked with a patronising glance at Ernest, walking in the dust.

“I can see the river,” she cried; “I can see it quite plain.”

They had turned off the high-road into the deep sandy lane that led to the Suttee Chowra Ghaut, where the boats awaited them.

“I can see boats too,” said Lucy, jigging up and down. “Oh, Captain Morton, I can see the boats! Miss Wilmot, I can see the boats.”

“I should think Richard would be tired, carrying that great child,” said Adela. “You and he are so strong, Helen. I only wish I were. No one knows what I have gone through. The shock of Richard's return alone. Now, Helen, what is the good of pretending it wasn't a shock. Why, even you felt it, and imagine what it was to me. My heart isn't at all strong. It might have been really dangerous”

Adela had made this remark a great many times since her husband's return. Once Helen flashed into speech and asked if she thought true consideration for her feelings should have led Richard to remain dead, in order to spare her a shock. Adela had sobbed and replied that Richard never did have any consideration for her feelings. Now Helen said nothing at all, but plodded on in the dust.

A ravine ran down to the river and the landing-stage. The landing-stage was thronged with a dense crowd of spectators. Upon its right-hand side at the top of the steep bank stood a small Hindu temple, scarcely larger than an English summer-house. It overhung the water and a flight of steps led down from it to the river. On a masonry platform outside the temple a group of men were waiting.

At the eastern end one of these men had spread a small carpet. He looked towards the dawn, and as the first pale ray of sunlight gilded the dusk, he fell upon his knees with his face towards Mecca, and bowed himself with his forehead to the ground. It was Azimullah, very gorgeous in a green and gold brocaded coat, and his morning prayer would not be omitted because there was murder to follow.

At the other end of the platform there burned a small charcoal brazier, and the Nana's brothers squatted beside it, with embroidered shawls drawn close, for the mist from the river was damp and chill in this hour of dawn.

As the light strengthened, Bala rose and joined Tantia Topee who stood upon the edge of the platform, looking fixedly inland. Bala's eyes took the same direction, and both together heard the sound of trampling feet coming nearer in the silence. Tantia swung round, his white teeth showing.

“They come,” he said.

And Bala answered him.

“Yes, they come.”

Upon Tantia's other side stood a young man muffled in a thick white shawl with a gold embroidered edge. Every now and then, in spite of his shawl, a slight shudder passed over him.

The morning chill had crept into his bones and was heralding an attack of fever. He too leaned forward as Tantia spoke, and looked eagerly towards the cloud of dust which could be seen at the head of the ravine.

“Why is my uncle not here?” he asked; but the two men made no reply, and he did not repeat the question.

The sun lifted clear of the horizon. The boatmen waiting below stood up, breaking the silence with their chatter and busying themselves about the boats. The first of the little band of English came down through the crowd to the waterside, and Azimullah having finished his devotions, arose from his knees and came to the edge of the platform to look at them.

There was a crowding and a confusion. The mass of spectators were driven back by Sepoys. Carts blocked the way. The Sepoys themselves gathered and pressed nearer. Just below the temple two of them were talking.

“Yes, they come out grandly. See how they come, with elephants and with palanquins and all. Let them now ask God to pardon them.”

“They are devils,” said the other with conviction.

Bala smiled as he caught the words. He moved his head a little, and the sunlight danced upon the pearl and diamond aigrette showing white against the white turban. Under it his small, dark, pitted face seemed almost black.

Francis Manners, beyond him, drew a little away. A long shiver shook him, and he clutched his shawl close, drawing it forward so as to cover his head.

The boats, to the number of forty, lay all along by the landing-place. They were heavy boats, lying deep in the water, wide and roomy, with thatched roofs as a protection from sun and rain. Most of them were grounded, for the river was at its lowest and the bed of it was full of ridges and banks of sand which showed in the muddy stream like the bones of derelict monsters.

Richard Morton lifted his wife out of the cart in which she had ridden, and hurried his whole party through the crowd and down to the water's edge, with what Adela thought most unnecessary haste. In a business-like way he picked out a boat which lay in deeper water than the rest, and issued his orders.

“That boat,” he said. “Yes, Adela, I'm afraid you must wade. I must carry the child. Take my arm. It is not really deep. Helen, are you all right? Can you manage, and you, Miss Carthew?”

Helen nodded and caught Ernest by the hand.

The boat which Richard Morton had indicated lay in about three feet of water. It was of rather lighter draught than most of the others. About half a dozen yards separated it from the bank. The shallow waters were full of people by now, and the cool current seemed to give new strength and vigour to the scorched and weary limbs it washed.

“I want to paddle too. Oh, let me paddle,” cried Lucy, and turned away from Helen, who had scrambled first into the boat, and was holding out dripping hands to take her.

“The boatmen—why are they all going ashore?” called Lizzie Carthew.

She stood up in the boat and uttered a piercing scream.

“Oh! there is a boat on fire—the other boats—they are burning—the thatch is burning. Oh, Captain Morton!”

As she spoke, Bala, the Nana's brother, leaned from the temple platform and fired the pistol which he had kept hidden under his shawl. The sharp report hung for a moment upon the air, and the shawl itself, a brilliant scarlet square, patterned in a dozen exquisite shades, fell from Bala's shoulders, and fluttered down upon the yellow waters below.

Then with a crash that seemed as if it must dissolve the very heavens in wreck and wrath, the hidden guns broke out, and from behind each patch of grass, each dark tamarisk clump, the liers-in-wait poured upon the helpless English a paralysing hail of lead.

The wood of the boats was splintered, and the thatch of their roofs broke out in flame. The thick grass along the river's edge caught alight and the noise of the fire went up to heaven with the crash of the guns, the shattering rattle of musketry, and the wild, agonising screams of those who died in the water and those who died in the fire.

It was not like the surprise of an ordinary ambush. It did not come with the common shock of war. They had endured all things already—these men, their women and their little children. They had become used to suffering. Nerves, strained to the utmost tension through weeks of fear, had grown numb and unresponsive to any common dread. But this thing came as the lightning might come upon the eyeballs of one half blind. It tore the dimness with a rending flare of horror. It woke the dulled nerves to feel, to suffer, and to agonise afresh. Suddenly, and very terribly, they felt—they saw.

They saw the house of life shattered, and the streams of life mingled with this yellow river of death. They saw flames that crept and leaped and hissed in the blood of the dying. They saw those red, hissing flames reflected from water that ran horribly, vividly crimson, until between the fire above and the blood below, there came a drifting smother of thick black smoke that was like a horror of darkness made manifest, because the deeds that were done in it were the deeds of that outermost darkness, where there are weeping and gnashing of teeth, the worm that does not die, and the fire that none can quench.

Helen Wilmot had expected, she knew not what—but when it came her heart seemed to stop beating altogether. Richard thrust the child into her arms, and she crouched there in the forepart of the boat, holding a limp little body that never moved again. She did not know that the child was dead. She did not know where Ernest was. He had been with her in the boat, and then suddenly he was not there any more. She knew nothing, except that this was the end, the very end of all, and that it was dreadful, unexpectedly dreadful, because she must look with her eyes, and see Dick die before she died herself. They had been saved for this, that she might see him die.

These thoughts passed in her mind instantaneously. They were there as Richard straightened himself after leaning towards her with little dead Lucy in his arms. She saw him turn to Adela, who had fallen on her knees in the stream, and at the same moment he uttered a cry, which she rather felt than heard, and fell across the side of the boat, with the blood streaming from his head. In an instant Helen's heart began to beat again and she came back to life. She thrust the child aside, and caught him by the arm, but strain as she might, she could not drag him in. He had fallen face downwards and lay across the side of the boat, half out of it and half in, with the lower part of his body in the water. Helen tore the sheet from her shoulders and passed it twice about him, under the armpits. Then she held it tight with both her hands and knelt there waiting for the end. That hour was like one of the hours of Eternity. One hour was all the hours, and all the hours were one.

There was no time any more. Helen looked through the smoky air and her brain played her a strange trick. She lost all sense of perspective, all sense of distance. Near and far were confounded, and she perceived all these fated and fatal things, all these faces of wrath and fear and vengeance, all these forms distorted by passion and suffering, as if they were ranged in one long, straight line that had no end. For ever afterwards she thought that that was how the nations of men and the untold souls of the dead would appear upon the great Day of Judgment. None before or after another, none greater or less than another, but all equal, all terribly equal, as men are only equal in death or in the eyes of God, who kills and makes alive.