WHAT THE MORNING BROUGHT
How Tom lived through the next few moments he never knew. The next thing of which he was distinctly conscious was standing in front of the hut and looking within and seeing nothing but blackness. As he groped forward with arms extended blindly, Bâl Narîn, who had been busy kindling another torch, came up behind him, and the flashing light flamed suddenly upon a spectacle that made Tom's heart stand still, and brought a wild cry to his lips.
There were three figures in the small enclosure. On one side, rigid in death, lay the fearfully emaciated body of an old man. A couch of dried grass was his bier, and his limbs were covered with the long robe that he had worn in his lifetime. On the other side, the little heap of grass on which he lay pressed close against the opposite side of the hut, and as far as possible from that sight of fear, was a child with golden hair, whose tiny face, thin and pinched with suffering, bore upon its lips the tranquil smile of sleep, or her twin-sister death. This in the flashing of an instant Tom saw. But it was not this, for all its pitifulness, that brought the sick chill to his heart, and that wrung from his lips that tortured cry. For he saw something else. She was lying there—his love—his darling! On the damp floor, but close beside the couch, and with arms outspread, as if her last conscious effort had been spent in defending the child, she lay before him motionless. She did not stir when Bâl Narîn's light fell upon her. The cry of irrepressible anguish that had broken from Tom brought from her pale lips no answering note of recognition. It was as he had so often dreamed it would be. He had found her, indeed; but she was dead—dead—dead!
For the space of an instant he paused. Love and a reverence that almost slew him were waging war in his heart. He was sick with the longing to raise her in his arms, and press her against his breast, and breathe into her lips of his own life and energy, and he dared not.
In that instant Bâl Narîn looked over his shoulder. 'Quick, master, quick!' he cried. 'They are not dead. This is the shock of a great joy. A few moments ago the gracious lady was speaking to me. Bring her out under the moonlight. And here are my chuddah and girdle to make her a bed. You have the cordial?'
'Yes, Billy; I have the cordial. Thank God that I remembered it. So!' as he lifted up the light form in his arms; 'gently! gently! Take away the torch, Billy. Let there be nothing to frighten her when she awakes! And the child, poor little Kit! bring him out—let him be near her! God! how light she is! My sweet one! my love! how you must have suffered! But it is all over now!' He laid her down reverently on the couch that Bâl Narîn had prepared, and wet her lips with the cordial. Then her eyelids fluttered, and a tremor ran through her limbs, and her lips parted in a long, shuddering sigh that went straight to Tom's heart. He was chafing one of her hands softly. 'My poor love!' he whispered. 'Is it cruel to bring you back? Have you suffered enough? But you shall never suffer again—never, so long as I have life and strength to protect you. Will you not open your eyes and look at me?'
Her lips parted, though her eyes were still sealed. He stooped over her and caught one word—'Kit.'
'Kit is safe, darling. My good friend Billy is with him. Ah! I hear his voice.'
Not his voice only. It was a little feeble laugh that came at that moment from the door of the hut, for Kit, who was a proficient in children's and bearers' Hindoostani, and Bâl Narîn were already on the best of terms.
'Do you hear?' said Tom. 'Do you hear him, Grace?'
'Thank you,' she whispered.
Then her eyelids lifted, and her sweet eyes, deep with the passion of pain and horror that, so long as she lived, would haunt her, rested upon his. 'You are our Tom,' she said.
'I am Tom. Your Tom——'
'I have something to tell you. It is very strange—very horrible. I don't quite understand it myself. Sometimes I think it is a dream; but, if it were——'
'Dearest, you must tell me nothing now. See! You are exhausted. You have suffered so much. And we are here now, Billy and I, to look after your little Kit and you. Let me give you some of this cordial—it is better than food—and then go to sleep and I will watch over you, and in the morning, which is very near, dearest Grace, Billy and I will carry you through the jungle to our camp.'
She did as he begged her. She was as weak as a little child, and the feeling of security, absent from her for so many long days and nights, was of itself enough to make her drowsy. But before she settled herself to sleep, she opened her eyes once more.
'Rungya is in there,' she whispered. 'He died for Kit and me. You won't let the wild birds have him?'
'No; Bâl Narîn shall watch.'
'He killed two of the birds,' said Grace. 'They were watching for us. I could not keep them away.'
And then her eyelids fell, and she slept peacefully until the morning.
Kit slept, too. He was in Bâl Narîn's arms, just as he had thrown himself when he had eaten biscuit and tinned meat and drunk a glass of cordial. The guide had, in the meantime, lighted a large fire, which blazed and crackled, keeping effectually all the wild things away. As he held the little one, and fed the fire with dried grass and sticks, he and Tom were holding a council of war. Which would be the best plan—to carry Grace and Kit between them to the spot where they had left the men and waggons, or for Bâl Narîn to rush thither at once and bring assistance?
Billy was for the latter alternative. He would take an hour to go, and an hour to come back. By the time the sun was well up they could start together.
But Tom, who, since the adventure of the previous evening, which might have had so terrible a termination for himself, clung to his Ghoorka guide as to a sheet-anchor of strength and hope, was of a contrary opinion. 'Let us keep together, Billy,' he said. 'To-night we have both escaped from almost certain death, and how can we expect to escape a third time?'
'But, Sahib, consider——'
'I have considered. If there were ten bearers I should carry her myself. And you, if you will, shall help me. How if we contrived a litter——?'
'Out of our garments and those of the holy man,' said Bâl Narîn.
'He will not want them any more——'
'We must burn him, Sahib. That is the burial for the Hindu-Saint. Before we leave this place we will fire the hut.'
'Could we do it now, while they are sleeping?'
'I am afraid of the flame spreading, Sahib. With the first break of day, I will set my torch to it, and we shall be far on our road before it blazes high.'
Giving Kit over into Tom's arms. Bâl Narîn proceeded to make his arrangements. Out of the hermit's robe and the rajah's upper garment, and a long straight branch from the cotton-tree, he devised such a litter as could be carried on the shoulders of two men: then he took a parcel of dried twigs and grass into the hut, scattered them over the old hermit's body, and anointed them with oil. This done, he went outside again, cleared from the neighbourhood of the hut everything of an inflammable nature, cut two or three stout stakes from the cotton-tree, and hammered them into the ground at a sufficient distance from the hut to allow of their escaping from the fire that was presently to consume it.
'Rungya was a holy man,' he said, in explanation, 'and the time may come when his friends and disciples will wish to do honour to his ashes. We leave these stakes as a signal.' By the time all this was done the light of the morning was beginning to peep in the east, and the wild world of the jungle was sinking to rest.
'It is time for us to move,' said Bâl Narîn.
Tom looked down regretfully at Grace's sleeping face. 'Couldn't we wait a little?' he said. 'It seems such a pity to disturb her.'
'We will not awake her,' said Bâl Narîn. 'Will his Excellency allow me?'
Tom moved aside while, with a dexterous gentleness which he envied but could not emulate, the clever Ghoorka, who in his youth had served an enforced apprenticeship to a robber tribe in the plains, transferred the sleeping girl from her bed on the ground to her bed on the litter.
Kit, in the meantime, had awoke. He was much stronger, he said, though to Tom his poor little legs looked piteously weak and slender. It was possible for him, however, to walk, and when he was tired Bâl Narîn said he would carry him on his shoulder. Then a match was applied to the touchwood under the hut; Grace, who had only stirred once, was lifted slowly and carefully to the shoulders of her bearers, and, with light hearts, they set out to rejoin the rest of their party on the robbers' road.
The sleep which had fallen upon Grace when she knew that her task was done, lasted for many hours. Passing through the air, resting for brief spells when the shoulder of the rajah, which was unaccustomed to weight-carrying, threatened to give way, taken up again with reverent care, and lifted skilfully over the various obstructions of the way, she neither moved nor spoke. Tom would, now and then, look at her with alarm; but Bâl Narîn smiled.
'The gracious lady is a child of the Supreme Spirit,' he said, 'and this is His sleep which has fallen upon her. When she awakes, Sahib, her trouble will be gone.'
'Grace never slept,' said Kit, who was perched now on Bâl Narîn's unoccupied shoulder, and holding on by his head, 'after Rungya died.'
'How long was that, my little Sahib?' said Bâl Narîn.
'I don't remember,' said Kit wearily. 'A long time, I think. The big birds came and frightened us. Grace had some candles and she lighted them. I tried to keep awake; but I couldn't. She kept awake always.'
'She is making up for it now,' said Tom from the other side of the litter.
'Yes, she is sleeping beautifully,' said Kit. 'She'll be all right when she awakes, won't she?'
'All right? What do you mean, Kit?'
'She used to look so funny—just as if she were somewhere else. She didn't look so at first, when that dreadful man was with us—but'—pulling himself up, 'I mustn't say anything about that. I promised.'
'No,' said Tom. 'Grace will tell us everything herself when she awakes.'
What the sleep was to her—how delicious it had been to close her eyes, and to let herself drift away on the sea of unconsciousness that, for these many days, had been wooing her; to half open her eyelids just to be sure that she had not dreamed this strange and sudden bliss, and then to close them again; to hear, without understanding, Kit's bird-like voice throbbing through the air, and Tom's grave, kind answers; to know that there was no need for her to rouse herself, that she might sleep—sleep till the death-like languor had gone from her limbs and the pain about her heart was stilled—of the rapture of all this what tongue can tell? Only those who have passed suddenly, as I did once, from peril and anguish, and the mad terror of the hunted, to perfect rest and security, can have the faintest idea of what it means.
It was impossible, meanwhile, that their progress could be swift, for they could not tear straight through the jungle as they had done the night before; and Bâl Narîn had to make many a detour to avoid the wild beasts' haunts.
When the sun rose, he rigged up a leafy umbrella, which he fixed at the head of the litter, and under it Grace lay like a sylvan queen being borne in a trance to her woodland home. At last, after three hours' steady tramp, they came out into the robbers' road, and sighted their waggons and horses in the distance.
There had been much excitement in the camp. When they arose in the morning, and Abiman, one of the Ghoorka soldiers, reported that the rajah had left them shortly after moon-rise in search of Bâl Narîn, and that neither of them had returned, it was felt that some calamity must have happened.
'This is what comes of killing a serpent,' said Abiman to Purtab; and, indeed, Purtab's conscience had already been reproaching him.
But when a swift-footed coolie, who had run back to see if anyone was coming, rushed into camp with the joyful news that the rajah and Bâl Narîn were on the road, and that they carried a litter between them—then Purtab and Abiman changed places.
'The gods have won the day,' said Purtab seriously, 'and the demons of the jungle may mourn.'
Everyone knew what to do, for the rajah had often prepared his followers for this moment. In a trice the coolies dragged out and rigged up the tent which was held in readiness, and the water-carriers brought water from a neighbouring stream and heated it in jars over the camp-fires, and the bearers unpacked the soft cushions and fresh garments with which Gambier Singh had supplied Tom, and laid them out temptingly, and toilet-appliances were hunted out from their cases and set in order, so that before Grace, who had been brought in and set down amongst them, had found strength to open her eyes, her tent in the jungle was as well-served with all that was needful for her refreshment and comfort as the room from which she had fled when insurrection broke out in Nowgong. So wonderful are Indian servants.
As for Tom, when he came in and looked round, he was so glad and thankful that he would fain have scattered, then and there, rich largesse amongst his people; and it was fortunate, perhaps, both for himself and his guests, that he had nothing at that moment to dispense but promises.
It was Kit who took Grace by the hand and led her into the tent, and it was Kit who served her with the tea and biscuits which had been prepared for her. They were together for a few minutes, and then he came out, and dropped the curtain, and they saw that there was an awed look on his little face.
'She is somewhere else still,' he said to Tom; 'but I think if we don't make any noise she will come back to us.'
'You are sure, Kit?' said Tom, in a broken voice.
'She always came back when she could sleep a little,' said Kit. 'Poor old Rungya used to watch sometimes. Then he died. I will look, in and see how she is presently,' he added, with an encouraging nod, and then he went on to play the hero, and to be petted and tenderly cared for by the Indian servants.
They happened to be in a comparatively wholesome region when they halted, and it was decided, in the brief consultation which Tom held with his followers, that they should remain where they were for that day and part of the next night, starting for the Maharajah's Road with the rising of the moon. Grace and Kit would have a cart to travel in, so, although their progress would be slow, the fatigue would not be great, and as there would be no need now for any of those tentative flights into the open spots amongst the jungle that made their former journey tedious, they would get over the ground more quickly. Bâl Narîn calculated that in two or three days, at the outside, they would reach the Maharajah's Road, at the point where they left it. Here Tom hoped to pick up Hoosanee. It had been arranged that if he found no trace of the fugitives on the lower slopes of Sisagarhi, he should return to the point where the cavalcade had divided, and wait there a certain specified time for his master, after which time, should no news come, he would hasten back to Gambier Singh, acquaint him with what had happened, and ask his advice. It was almost certain now that the rajah and his party would reach the meeting-point before the time agreed upon, and Tom's only fear was that Hoosanee, who was so much of his friend that he longed to let him know speedily his success and happiness, would not be there so soon. But, in such case, a plan for communicating with him could soon be devised.
After all this, having heard through Kit that Grace wanted nothing, the rajah and Bâl Narîn gave themselves up to the rest which they needed so sorely. The hours of the day rolled on. The sun rose high in the heavens, and a deep noontide silence, unbroken by the noises that at dead of night and early morning make the jungle terrible, brooded over the camp. Everyone slept but the two or three who remained on watch to keep the camp-fires burning.
It was in the midst of this silence that the English girl came slowly to herself. Up to this she had been in a dream. All she had distinctly realised was that she might rest—that the strain, which had tried her to the utmost limit of endurance, was over. Now, as she opened her eyes and, by the light that stole in through the canvas walls and closed chicks, saw the curtains of rose and amber, and the pretty camp-furniture, and the fresh garments, and the bowls of clear water, she began dimly to understand that this was not a dream, such as those that had visited her in her wanderings, but a reality. The gates of the dear old life—the life of safety, and love, and reverence—were opening to her once more. It was the horror she and Kit had lived through that was the dream. This was true.
For the first few moments her mind was too weak to be able to take in anything more than this: she was with her own people: she was travelling back into the past: some day, if God was gracious to her, she might see her mother and her sisters again: she might give up her darling Kit to his friends. Then, gradually, as her mind grew stronger, the events of the night, and of the days that had preceded it, shaped themselves before her.
They had been on their way to Nepaul. The good Rungya, who had rescued them one night from a horde of brutal villagers, had promised to take them thither, and place them under the protection of the minister, Jung Bahadoor. They had crossed the plains and entered one of the great sâal-forests of the Terai together. Then their cart broke down, and the animals sickened, and word came to them that a party of fugitive sepoys, who had taken up robbery as a profession, were haunting the great highway. So they turned aside, walking painfully on foot through the jungle, till they reached the Aswalia village. They had scarcely left it before Kit sickened with the fever. They carried him on between them, hoping to reach opener ground, where they might rest, when Rungya bethought him of the clearing into which they turned. A holy man, a Brahmin, who had passed through his life's different stages, and who was preparing himself in solitude and meditation for his eternal rest, lived there once. Rungya had visited him when his own life was lusty within him, and had kissed his feet reverently as a spiritual teacher. It could not be that the holy man was alive still; but his hut, which even the savage tribes of the jungle would respect, might be standing, and it, for a few days, would afford them shelter. Before they reached it Kit began to mend; but Rungya was stricken down. For two days Grace tended him as if she had been his daughter. On the third day he died; and then began that awful struggle between the heroic girl and the wild things of the wilderness, which had nearly reached its limit when Bâl Narîn found her. How long it lasted she could not tell—neither could Kit. When it began they had water and rice, and faggots for firing; when it ended their little stock was exhausted. She dared not leave the hut so much as to cut a stick of wood or fill her brass lota with water at the pool. It was like a horrible siege. The wild things without; she and her dead and dying within.
Slowly and painfully her mind travelled on. She remembered the determined attitude of the three great birds, and her own wild tempest of passion. She remembered vividly the ping of the shikari's bullet, and the fall of her enemies, and his friendly address. After that came a terror which she only dimly recalled, and which was followed by a blank—a peaceful falling away into forgetfulness.
That she had been taken from her dangerous position, and that she had heard Kit laughing and talking beside her was all she knew for certain.
The effort of thinking was great, and she fell into another brief sleep. When she awoke the day had begun to decline, and the camp was astir. Grace was stronger. Her mind worked fitfully. She was like one who is in search of something, and who has a clue which makes him believe that he will not be long in ignorance.
Suddenly, like a flash of light in midwinter darkness, there rose before her a scene out of the past—a little room, with bare mud walls and costly furniture: in its midst an Englishwoman, dressed in Oriental robes, and lovely as a vision, with soft eyes and dimpled cheeks, and a little voice like rippling waves on a pebbly shore. She—Grace—is standing before her. Her hands are bound; her face is stained; her garments are dirty and ragged. How vividly she feels the contrast between them! The lady in Oriental robes feels it too. She laughs—not brutally, as one who exults over a fallen enemy; but with gushing gladness like a child. 'Dearest Grace!' she says, 'this is shocking! What has come to you; and where, in the name of Heaven, is your rajah?' There is no answer. Grace cannot speak. The little rippling voice goes on: 'I think he is here, dear; but we cannot let him see you. You are so beautiful. You would turn his brain.' Silence again, and then: 'Won't you speak to me, you serious young person? Am I too frivolous for your taste? Well! but never mind. I mean to give you your liberty, now at once! Such fun! While Tom is in the fort expecting to see you! A friend of your father's, one of his favourite Soubahdars, will take care of you, and no doubt you will reach the English lines in safety'—and then there rises before her suddenly the wicked face with its sinister smile——
In a moment—in less than a moment—it sprang before her. She had no force to go further. There was something to be remembered still; something horrible; something that she would have to think out and tell before she had peace. But this for the moment was enough. It was the cry of her heart, the strong rapture of conviction, which, through all the shame and agony of those awful moments, had been present with her, that she remembered now.
'Tom is looking for us! Tom will find us!'
Tom, then, had traced them into the jungle. Tom had sent the shikari to slay the birds. Tom had taken them into his keeping and was transporting them to a place of safety. There had been war between him and the White Ranee and he had conquered.
Weary and spent with this strange flight of memory, she sank back and closed her eyes. But she could not rest any longer. An impulse, dead for all these terrible days, but so much a part of herself that even now she could not imagine how it had ever slept, was rising up within her.
Once more she opened her eyes, and this time they fell on a mirror which an officious servant had placed near her. She propped it up in front of her, and gazed at herself, and a blush of maidenly shame tinged her pale face. Was she Grace—Grace who had been so proud and dainty? Ah! but she had forgotten Grace. Grace must have lived long ago in some other world. Grace was a memory—a dream—it was this haggard woman, with the ragged robe and tangled hair, who was the reality. But could not Grace come back again?
With a swelling heart she looked round her. Some one had thought of this too. Everything she could want, clear water and English soap, and fresh and lovely garments were in the tent. If only she had the strength, she could, in a few minutes, make herself fit to be seen. Slowly and painfully she rose from her couch. How weak she was! Could it be she, her very self, who only yesterday had withstood the wild beasts and birds of the jungle? When she was on her feet she staggered and nearly fell; but she would not give up till she had washed the stains of travel away and put on the robe of pale blue and snowy white, which was lying ready for her. Then, once more, she looked into the mirror. Very white and haggard was the face that gazed upon her, and the eyes—oh! what was it? What was it? She dared not look into them. There was some awful tale; some picture of horror that would not fade, behind their half-dropped lids; something that was not Grace—that never would be. And yet she was happier, more tranquil, than she had been. The fresh water and the fair garments had helped her to dream that she was herself once more. She was ready to meet her deliverer.