"The mem is afraid," cried Tara exultantly. "So be it! I will go back and tell the master. Tell him I was right and he wrong, for all the English he chattered. I will tell him the mem is not suttee--how could she be----"
The old taunt roused many memories, and made Kate ready to risk anything. "I am coming, Tara--but where?" She stood facing the tall figure in crimson, a tall figure also, in white, her hands full of the roses she had gathered.
Tara looked at her with that old mingling of regret and approbation, jealousy and pride. "Then she must come at once. He is dying--may be dead ere we get back."
"Dead!" echoed Kate faintly. "Is he wounded then?"
A sort of somber sullenness dulled the excitement of Tara's face. "He is ill," she replied laconically. Suddenly, however, she burst out again: "The mem need not look so! I have done all--all she could have done. It is his fault. He will not take things. The mem can do no more; but I have come to her, so that none shall say, 'Tara killed the master.' So come. Come quick!"
Five minutes after Kate was swinging cityward in a curtained dhooli which Tara had left waiting on the road below, and trying to piece out a consecutive story from the odd jumble of facts and fancies and explanations which Tara poured into her ear between her swift abuse of the bearers for not going faster, and her assertion that there was no need to hurry. The mem need not hope to save the Huzoor, since everything had been done. It seemed, however, that Tiddu had taken back the letter telling of Kate's safety, and that in consequence of this the master had arranged to leave the city in a day or two, and Tiddu--born liar and gold grubber, so the Rajpootni styled him--had gone off at once to make more money. But on the very eve of his going back to the Ridge, Jim Douglas had been struck down with the Great Sickness, and after two or three days, instead of getting better, had fallen--as Tara put it--into the old way. So far Kate made out clearly; but from this point it became difficult to understand the reproaches, excuses, pathetic assertions of helplessness, and fierce declarations that no one could have done more. But what was the use of the Huzoor's talking English all night? she said; even a suttee could not go out when everyone was being shot in the streets. Besides, it was all obstinacy. The master could have got well if he had tried. And who was to know where to find the mem? Indeed, if it had not been for Sri Anunda's gardener, who knew all the gardener folk, of course, she would not have found the mem even now; for she would never have known which house to inquire at. Not that it would have mattered, since the mem could do nothing--nothing--nothing----
Kate, looking down on the bunch of white flowers which she had literally been too hurried to think of laying aside, felt her heart shrink. They were rather a fateful gift to be in her hands now. Had they come there of set purpose, and would the man who had done so much for her be beyond all care save those pitiful offices of the dead? Still, even that was better than that he should lie alone, untended. So, urged by Tara's vehement upbraidings, the dhooli-bearers lurched along, to stop at last. It seemed to Kate as if her heart stopped also. She could not think of what might lie before her as she followed Tara up the dark, strangely familiar stair. Surely, she thought, she would have known it among a thousand. And there was the step on which she had once crouched terror-stricken, because she was shut out from shelter within. But now Tara's fingers were at the padlock, Tara's hand set the door wide.
Kate paused on the threshold, feeling, in truth, dazed once more at the strange familiarity of all things. It seemed to her as if she had but just left that strip of roof aglow with the setting, sun, the bubble dome of the mosque beginning to flush like a cloud upon the sky. But Tara, watching her with resentful eyes, put a different interpretation on the pause, and said quickly:
"He is within. The mem was away, and it was quieter. But the rest is all the same--there is nothing forgotten--nothing."
Kate, however, heard only the first words, and was already across the outer roof to gain the inner one. Tara, still beyond the threshold, watched her disappear, then stood listening for a minute, with a face tragic in its intensity. Suddenly a faint voice broke the silence, and her hands, which had been tightly clenched, relaxed. She closed the door silently, and went downstairs.