It was past midnight ere the pony pulled up of its own accord at a ruinous door, and the owner with mighty shouts and much impatient rattling of his sword-hilt on the panels roused the inmates. "Come forth, Fâtma," he cried to the white-sheeted form muttering faint excuses which appeared at length. "Heed not the stranger to-night,--Haiyât also. He is my brother, and this, look you, is my sister. We will carry her within to the women's room, and ye must see to her as women should, and bring us word of her state speedily. 'Tis best so, Huzoor; Fâtma is learned in woman's lore and hath simples. She will tell us if there be hurts or danger. For to-night the mem had best stay here, since there is nought to be done save rest."
"Not so, Khân sahib; I must return and see after--"
The old Mussulman raised his right hand solemnly. "Let the dead rest in peace also for tonight, Huzoor. I saw Raby sahib fall, and I know how dead clay toucheth the earth to which it returns. The knife struck home, Huzoor; right through the heart! Lo, it was Kismet! Raby sahib is dead, but his slayer is dead also, so we, his comrades, may rest awhile till dawn comes."
"I will wait till dawn," said Philip, "and hear what the women say."
So the Khân disposed himself to sleep with the calm of an old campaigner, and Philip sat out in the warm night air waiting for the dawn. The storm had ended in weak-minded thunder and a few spots of dry rain, which had nevertheless left a freshness behind them. Here and there through the parting drifts of cloud and dust the stars twinkled brightly, making Philip's thoughts turn to a future more peaceful than past or present. He drove the erring fancies back to realities with a certain scorn of himself, but they broke from control again and again with the insistence which truth brings to bear on conventionalities. It was true that by and by time would heal the present trouble; it was true that by and by regrets would soften. There was no hurry, no thought but pity and sorrow for what was, and yet he started from a vision of peace to find old Fâtma by his side. The Khân had long since been snoring placidly, so the old matron's eyes could look into Philip's with straightforward confidence.
"The mem will do for now, Huzoor. There is no danger, none at all. But by and by, in the months to come, may God save from harm the child that will be born!"
He rose to his feet white to the very lips. Just Heaven! Was this poor Belle's last legacy!
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
The old Khân's forecast proved correct in every particular. By noon on the day after the outbreak the ringleaders were safe in the lock-up awaiting trial, and, save for the smouldering house and the yellow flood of water sliding down the old channel, there was nothing to tell of the past night's work. For the dead bodies had been carried to their homes, and the women wailed over them discreetly behind mud walls, as if they had died in their beds. All save John Raby's, and that was making a dismal procession towards the nearest railway station, preceded at a little distance by poor Belle, crushed and but half-conscious of the truth. Philip, riding by the side of the litter, felt there was something exasperating in the absolute insignificance of the whole affair. It almost seemed as if some one must be to blame, as if something could surely have been done to avert so terrible an ending to what was, after all, but a storm in a tea-cup. But then neither he, nor the authorities who had to inquire into the matter, were in possession of that master-key to the whole position which was to be found in Shunker Dâs's desire for revenge. For he had worked carefully, leaving scarcely a trace behind him; and though Kirpo came forward boldly to declare his responsibility, her palpable motive for spite discredited her statements. Besides, at the very outset of the inquiry, it became clear that John Raby's murder by Râmu had nothing whatever to do with his action in regard to the water; and however absurd the man's jealousy might seem, it was certainly sufficient to explain the rancour with which Kirpo's husband had set himself to conspire against the Englishman. It was evident therefore that the latter had met his death, not from his harshness towards the people, but from the good-nature with which he had originally espoused the woman's cause. Both Philip Marsden and the Khân could only witness to the freedom from all attempt at personal violence on the part of the crowd, even when John Raby had thrown himself among the workers and taken a spade from them by force; while the subsequent burning and looting of the factory was evidently an after impulse caused by the rage of the survivors at the loss of their companions. The whole affair, in short, being one of those perfectly maddening mistakes and misapprehensions which serve sometimes to emphasise the peculiar conditions of life in our Indian Empire.
All this, or most of it, was in due time dinned into the widow's ears by kindly but strange voices; for there was one familiar voice which she dreaded to hear because the owner knew of something which the others did not know: something she could not remember without despair. So day after day she lay in the spare room of the head official's house,--that spare room which shelters such an odd variety of guests, the travelling Member of Parliament, the widow, the homeward and outward bound, the dying, sometimes the dead--and when Philip's name was mentioned she would turn her head away and beg to be left alone a little longer, just a little longer. Hurt as he could not fail to be at her avoidance of him, he understood the reason of it all too well, and waited patiently. Then the last day of his leave came, and he sent to say he must see her before he left; so Belle, white as her widow's cap, nerved herself for the interview with the man whom she had preferred before her dead husband. That is how, in her abject remorse, she put it to herself. She had chosen her lover. The natural indignation at deceit, the generous instinct, the sense of injustice which had forced her to the decision were all forgotten before the memory of those minutes of delay. How could she meet Philip?--Philip, round whose neck she had thrown her arms while defying the husband whom she had sent alone to seek death! That Philip had refused to play the part she gave him, that he had forced her to play a better one herself, brought her no comfort. She was too much absorbed in the scene as it affected her and the dead man to care what Philip had said or done. The very fact of his entering into it at all was an offence. She would not consider him in the least, except to tell herself that she was also responsible to him for the loss of his money. To this additional self-reproach she clung firmly, as if to a protection, and when she saw him pausing for half a second at the first glimpse of her in her widow's weeds, she thrust it forward hastily, like a shield against his sympathy.