Part 14

The shadow that had so suddenly and cruelly fallen upon us rendered the Christmas festivities out of the question, and most of the guests sorrowfully departed the following day. Many long weeks ensued--dark, torturing weeks to me, for my loved one was suspended, as it were, by a single hair over that profound abyss into which all living atoms finally fall, and from which no sound ever comes to break the mystery. But if they were dark weeks to me, how much, how infinitely, how unspeakably darker to him who, in the pride of his manhood, had been deprived of the power of ever again beholding the wonders of God’s creation. And yet he murmured not, nor uttered complaint nor groan. To me the one consolation I had in this hideous calamity was being near him, being able to tend him, and hear his voice, which had lost none of its old cheerfulness. Slowly, very slowly, as the summer drifted by, he began to regain some of his lost strength, and we led him out beneath the trees and into the sunlight, though it was ever, ever night to him, for not a glimmer of vision remained. And as I looked at his sightless orbs and his maimed and torn face, from which no human power could banish the cruel and ghastly scars, I hated the Grange with a hate that hath no words.

One day he asked to be taken to where my father was, and, putting his arm in mine, we entered my father’s presence.

‘Mr. Stainsby,’ he began, with an attempt at a smile, ‘I am not quite the same man I was when I came here last Christmas. But in my misfortune an angel has watched over me in the person of your daughter, who, but for this mishap, would now have been my wife. She has brought me out of the shadow of the grave, and I owe a duty to her no less than to you. That duty is to release her from all promises and vows, and leave her perfectly free to bestow her heart on someone who is whole and sound. I am now but a battered wreck, and all I can hope for is to break up soon and drift away into the great and mysterious ocean of eternal silence. But let me ask you, sir, to see to it that the man upon whom you bestow your daughter is as near perfection as a man may come; for no more perfect woman than she is walks the world. I have nothing more to add further than, in such poor words as well up from my stricken heart, to thank you for your hospitality.’

He had tried so hard to be strong and collected, and show no sign of the awful despair that was crushing him. But is the man born who could go through such an ordeal unmoved? His lips quivered, his voice grew weak, and something like a spasm caught his breath.

My own eyes were filled with blinding, scalding tears, and my heart fluttered like the wing of a bird in pain. Gliding over to where he stood, I placed my arms about his neck, and laying my cheek against his scarred face, I found voice to say to my father, who was also deeply affected and moved:

‘Father, the man whom Herbert would have you choose for me need be sought no further than this room. He is here. My heart beats to his heart; my face is pressed to his.’

My father came to us. He laid one hand on Herbert’s shoulder, and the other on my head; and thus he spoke:

‘A woman’s love that clings not to a man when calamity overtakes him is worthless. Freely do I bestow her upon you, Herbert, if it is her wish and your wish that you should be united.’

‘My husband,’ I murmured, as I clung closer to him, and it was my only answer.

Herbert tried to persuade me that it was to my happiness and my interest to abandon him; but he might as well have tried to convince the winds of heaven that they should not blow. Externally the Herbert as I had first known him had changed. His handsome face was handsome no longer, and his wondrous eyes were sightless for ever. But his heart was the same. What could change that--the bravest, truest, tenderest that ever beat in man’s breast? And so ere the next Christmas had dawned I was Herbert’s wife, and soon after that my father abandoned the accursed Grange to the gloom and the silence and the melancholy from which he had reclaimed it, and a little later it was burned to the ground. We never knew how the fire originated; but it was generally supposed that some of the superstitious people in the neighbourhood wilfully set it alight, under the impression that a place that was accursed by the spilling of human blood should no longer be allowed to encumber the earth. When I heard of its destruction I confess that I rejoiced, and I said to myself:

‘Never again will the White Raven bring calamity to a household as it has brought to ours.’

For five years I walked with my husband in his darkness, and let him see the world through my eyes. Two children blessed--literally blessed--our union, a girl and a boy. But my beloved husband never fully recovered from the shock of the awful accident on that dark and memorable Christmas Day; and, though he uttered no moan, his blindness preyed upon his mind, and a short, brief illness took him from me.

For long years the grass has waved over his grave. Other men have praised my face and sought my hand; but to all I have turned a deaf ear, for my love was buried in Herbert’s grave. But in my son the father lives again, and when I gaze upon his handsome face and splendid figure, I feel that God is very good, and that He chastens us to make us more perfect in His sight.

VIII

WITH FIRE AND DEATH

A STORY OF A GREAT DEED.

What though the field be lost? All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield.

The scene of this story is Meerut, the time May Day, 1857, a year in which England’s hold on India was well nigh shaken off. Meerut is situated on a plain, and lies forty miles or so to the north and east of Delhi. It is bounded on the east by the Ganges and on the west by the Jumna, and covers an area of, roughly speaking, about five miles in circumference. In the fateful ’57 it was one of the most important military stations, and the largest cantonment in British India. A great wall, or esplanade, which in its turn was cut in two by a deep nullah, divided the town into two separate parallelograms, one of which was occupied by the European force, the other by the natives.

The hot day--and Meerut is hot--had closed, and the short Indian twilight had given place to a night of exceeding beauty. A refreshing breeze was blowing from the east, and the moon burnished with a sheen that was almost dazzling the domes of the numerous mosques, and threw into silhouette relief the palms and cocoa trees, and the masses of native huts. The majority of the European population were taking their airing as was customary after the sun had set, and the ‘Park Road’ was a scene of gaiety. Strings of vehicles, numberless horsemen, and crowds of natives moved to and fro. The air was filled with the murmur of many voices; the laughter of women, the sweet prattle of children, and wafted on the breeze came the monotonous sounds of tom-toms, and the wail-like singing of groups of natives as they prepared their suppers over the open braziers of charcoal that scented the atmosphere with its fumes. Abutting on the Park Road, and commanding a wide and extensive view, was a handsome bungalow surrounded with a well kept garden. On the verandah were a party of ladies and gentlemen. The men were military men, and the ladies were their relatives, and playing about on the verandah, under the care of an old ayah, was a sweet English child, fragile, and white of face, as most English children are who are born in India, but of an exquisite beauty that promised a magnificent womanhood. But though well and hearty then, that dear child was in a few days to be lying dead, gashed and hacked almost beyond recognition. From the roof of the verandah a swinging lamp threw a soft light over the little group seated in a semicircle, with small tables before them, on which were glasses and the inevitable brandy pawnee. Two silent khitmurgars stood like dusky statues ready to obey the slightest order given by their master or mistress.

This bungalow was the home of an officer whom it is only necessary to refer to as the colonel. The sweet child playing there was his only daughter, and one of the ladies, whose beautiful face was clouded with an expression that might be described as half fear, half anxiety, was his wife. All the colonel’s male companions were officers, one of them being Lieutenant George Willoughby, of the Ordnance Commissariat Department. He was a young man, but was the officer in charge of the great Delhi magazine. He looked every inch a soldier, and his face expressed determination and force of character. Lounging there in a large chair, toying with a fragrant cigar, and apparently deeply interested in watching the little volumes of smoke curl upward as he puffed them from under his moustache, his legs crossed, his head thrown back, and one arm hanging listlessly over the rail of the chair, he was the picture of a quiet, unobtrusive English gentleman. But a slight study of the face would have convinced anyone that beneath that calm exterior lay a tremendous latent power that once aroused could be terrible and deadly to his enemies, and that this was really the case was soon to be amply proved.

Another of the group was a still younger man, handsome as Apollo, and with a frame that seemed to be knit with steel. Although younger his military rank was equal to Willoughby’s, for he too was a lieutenant of the Bengal Artillery, and was also stationed at Delhi. His name was Richard Shelton, and, like his friend and colleague, he had a pronounced soldierly bearing, and his fine bright blue eyes, of the true English type, and his clear cut features and firm mouth, spoke of a frank, open, loyal, and brave nature.

These two officers and friends had ridden over that afternoon from Delhi on a visit to their friend, the colonel, with the object of discussing the portentous signs of the times, for the air was filled with rumours, and mutiny had displayed itself. Discontent was rampant in the native regiments, and the question was to what extent would it go? If there were those amongst the British who read the handwriting on the wall with ill-concealed alarm, it is none the less true that the majority of the officers in Upper India were rather disposed to laugh these fears to scorn. For with the almost fatuous self-reliance peculiar to the English, they believed they were powerful enough to hold their own against any number of natives. With one exception, perhaps, all the gentlemen there belonged to the first category. The exception was Richard Shelton. He was young, and had but recently received his promotion, and not only was he endowed with an unusual share of animal spirits, but he was of a sanguine, almost enthusiastic temperament, and moreover he was in love. On the first blush that may seem a reason why he should have been more anxious, but love is ever hopeful, and indisposed to look on the gloomy side of things. At any rate, being full of the fire of youth, and not having yet acquired the staid wisdom of his elders, young Shelton did not trouble himself much about what the morrow or the next week might bring forth. Very likely, if somebody had said to him--

‘I say, Shelton, old fellow, if the natives were to rise what would you do?’ This answer would have come with a ringing laugh--‘Why, go for them, and smash them. What else would you have me do?’

The young lady with whom Shelton was in love was the colonel’s niece, Blanche Merton, an orphan girl of great beauty, and the colonel’s ward. She had only come out to India a year before as governess to her cousin--the colonel’s daughter. Blanche had been born and had spent most of her life in one of the sweetest and breeziest of Hampshire villages, and she had not resided long enough in India to become jaded and enervated by the climate, which, in course of time, insidiously undermines the constitutions of white women. A handsomer couple, and a couple more suited to each other than Lieutenant Shelton and Blanche Merton, could not have been found in the whole of British India. They had known each other eight months, and been desperately in love nearly the whole time. The conversation of the little party had flagged somewhat, but suddenly Willoughby asked in a preoccupied way:

‘What is going to be the upshot of matters, colonel, do you think?’

This question had reference to the mutinous spirit that had shown itself. There had been a parade on the 24th of April, when eighty-five out of ninety men had mutinied, and that very week, beginning with the 1st of May, they were to be tried, and the cantonment was accordingly greatly excited.

‘Well,’ answered the colonel, thoughtfully, as he stroked his moustache and twirled his cigar between his long white fingers, ‘the prisoners will be convicted on the clearest of evidence, and exemplary punishment meted out to them.’

‘And what after that?’ asked Willoughby, significantly.

‘Ah, that remains to be seen. I think and hope we are strong enough to hold our own, but if there was a general rising, that is about all we could do, and might succumb unless succour was speedily sent to us.’

This remark had rather a depressing effect, and there was silence again; but Blanche had gone into the house for something, and Shelton, thinking only of her, and how entrancingly beautiful she looked in her white gauze dress, and with the bunch of Indian roses in her dark hair, had slipped away after her.

Presently Willoughby said: ‘Yes, we might hold our own for a time--a short time, but it’s no use blinking the fact, we are weak in numbers.’

‘It seems to me,’ returned the colonel, with the same thoughtful air, ‘that you in Delhi are worse off than we are.’

‘True,’ said Willoughby, with a bitter little laugh, ‘for the first thing the mutineers would do if they got the upper hand would be to endeavour to loot the magazine to obtain the vast supplies of the munitions of war that we’ve got there.’

‘It would be a terrible thing if they should succeed in doing that,’ put in the colonel’s wife, and shuddering as she spoke.

‘It would,’ answered Willoughby, quietly.

‘And there are such a few of you to guard the magazine,’ added the lady.

‘Very few,’ said Willoughby in the same quiet way. Then, after a pause, he continued with a significant emphasis, ‘But, nevertheless, I don’t think if all the regiments here and in Delhi were to mutiny they would obtain possession of the magazine while I am in charge.’

‘Why not?’ asked the colonel’s wife.

‘Because I would blow it up if I found that I couldn’t hold the place,’ was the quiet but impressively emphatic answer.

‘Well, well,’ said the colonel, wishing to change the subject, for he saw that it was affecting the ladies, ‘it won’t come to that. We may have a little trouble, but we shall get over it. Any mutinous spirit will be put down with an iron hand. Besides, I really don’t think the natives generally have any bad feeling for us.’

Backwards and forwards along the road went a continuous stream of natives--Hindoos and Brahmins, high caste and low caste--mingling freely with the Europeans. And could the colonel at that moment have read the hearts that beat beneath those dusky skins he would have seen how grievously in error he was, for the hatred and loathing for the Feringhees were all but universal. And, though ‘white-robed peace’ seemed to smile on all that fair scene, there was beneath a seething mass of discontent, only wanting a tiny vent as a beginning, when the whole mine might explode and spread desolation and ruin throughout India. But little did any of those ladies and gentlemen sitting on that verandah that hot May night dream of the volcano beneath their feet, and least of all did Shelton and Blanche trouble themselves with the portents in the air. These two young people, so full of life and health and hope, were building castles in the air and dreaming of the day that should see them united.

There was a considerable pause again in the conversation, and then Willoughby, in that quiet, emphatic way of his which was well calculated to carry conviction, remarked in answer to what the colonel had just said:

‘I don’t altogether agree with you, colonel. My impression is the natives hate us heartily, and if they can but get the chance will sweep us out of the land.’

‘Ah, yes, if they can but get the chance,’ replied his host. ‘But there’s the point. They will not get the chance.’

In a few minutes a khitmurgar came to announce that tea was served, and the ladies and gentlemen went into the house, but the child still played about, and the ayah remained. She was squatted down in one corner of the verandah enjoying a few draws of a hubble-bubble. The khitmurgars who had been waiting on the colonel and his party commenced to clear the tables of the glasses and bottles; and one of the men, a stern, sullen-looking fellow, said to the other:

‘Heard you, Jewan, what these Feringhee dogs said?’

‘Some of it, Meerza,’ returned the man addressed. ‘But I understand not so much of their hateful language as you.’

‘Well, the colonel sahib says we don’t hate his countrymen.’

Here the two men broke into a scornful laugh, and Jewan remarked:

‘Poor fool. Ere the moon has waned he may have learnt differently. If all goes well, the blood of all the white devils in Meerut shall dye the streets, and even the Gunga over there shall run red with it. Shiva the Destroyer has willed it, and it will be as I say.’

‘What is that you say, Jewan?’ asked the little girl, who had been arrested in her play by the words that fell from the man’s lips. Her question caused him to turn upon her with a look so wild and so full of fierce hatred that she screamed and rushed towards her nurse. The ayah sprang up and caught her in her arms, saying soothingly:

‘What is it, Missy Baba? What has frightened the pet lamb?’

‘Oh! ayah, Jewan looks so dreadful he has frightened me.’

Alarmed by the scream of the child the colonel ran from the house, asking excitedly what was the matter.

‘Oh, papa, papa!’ exclaimed his daughter, as she flew to him, ‘I heard Jewan say such dreadful things; and when I asked him what it was he had said, he frightened me by the way he glared at me.’

‘What does this mean, you rascal?’ demanded the colonel, angrily, and speaking in Hindostanee. ‘I am tempted to horsewhip your hide, you black dog.’

The man drew himself up to every inch of his height. He was a tall, commanding-looking man with a mobile face, and eyes that seemed to burn like glowing coals.

‘Sahib,’ he said, proudly and scornfully, ‘I am no dog.’

Then, without another word, he marched down the steps of the verandah into the garden and disappeared into the darkness.

The colonel was much distressed. It was another sign of the times. A few months before no servant would have dared to have answered his master in such a way.

The other ladies and gentlemen had by this time appeared on the scene, and many were the anxious inquiries as to the cause of the disturbance. But for the sake of the ladies the colonel gave an evasive answer, and, re-entering the house, leading his daughter by the hand, the others followed all but two--Shelton and Blanche. They lingered. With the artfulness of a lover he detained her by saying, ‘Oh, I say, Blanche, isn’t this a splendid night? How brilliant the moon is.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, linking her hands in his arm, and turning her own beautiful face up to his. ‘But I wish, dear, we were under an English sky instead of this Indian one.’

‘Why?’

‘I--I hardly know. I don’t like this country. If the fears that I have heard expressed that the natives may rise are realised how dreadful it will be.’

‘Tut--little woman,’ answered the brave lad cheerily. ‘Don’t let any gloomy forebodings trouble you. There is discontent, it is true, but we shall calm it down.’

‘I hope so--I hope so,’ said Blanche, with an unusually thoughtful air.

‘It will be so, my pet. But come, let us go in, for I heard the colonel suggest cards.’

‘But shall I not have you to myself for a few minutes again this evening? Remember that as you leave so early in the morning I shall not see you before you go.’

‘Of course, darling, we shall have another spoon to-night,’ he said in his hearty manner, and letting his lips come into contact with hers, to which she made no objection. ‘You see Willoughby and I must report ourselves in Delhi by eight o’clock, but I intend to come over next Sunday and see you.’

‘Oh, you love,’ she murmured, allowing him to embrace her still more closely, until they were suddenly startled by the voice of the colonel, who, coming on to the verandah, said:

‘I say, you young people, we want you, you know. You can surely manage to tear yourselves from each other’s arms for a little while.’

‘Certainly, certainly, colonel,’ answered Shelton in an embarrassed way. ‘But I was just drawing Blanche’s attention to that group of stars, and----’

‘Ah, how very funny,’ interrupted the colonel with a laugh. ‘It seemed to me you were trying to smother her, and I wasn’t sure which was your head and which was hers. But come now, get in. We want to make up some whist parties.’

A little later on Blanche did manage to get another few minutes alone with her lover, and with many warm embraces they separated--not for ever, for they were to meet again, but under circumstances that neither dreamed of then. His promise to see her again on the Sunday remained unfulfilled. Not from any fault of his, but for reasons that were not explained an order was issued of a peremptory character which prevented any officer or private going outside of Delhi.

On the following Saturday, that is on May 9, there was enacted in Meerut an extraordinarily dramatic scene, that was the prelude, though the white people knew it not, of a ghastly drama such as India had never before witnessed during the rule of the British.