And down on the very edge of the boiling stream, when the rain ceased, a light went twinkling up and down, up and down. It was the potter looking for his dead daughter as the débris of the old wall, beneath which she had been buried sixteen years before, crumbled away bit by bit before the furious stream.
[CHAPTER XX]
The dawn broke upon a new world as far as Hodinuggur was concerned. Where the desert had stretched thirsty and dry, lay a shoreless sea. Where the streak of silver had split the round horizon into halves, the double line of the canal banks looked like twin paths leading to some world beyond the waste of waters. They steered straight out of sight on either side, almost unbroken save for the great gap where the sluice-gate had stood. There the stream still swept sideways to circle round the island of Hodinuggur, which bore, like an ark, its company of refugees from the surrounding levels; a little company which straightway, taking advantage of the coming sun, began to wring out its wet garments and spread them to dry, until a general air of washing-day reduced the tragedy of the past night to the commonplace. And after all, what had happened? An old woman or two had been drowned, the Diwân and his tower swept away. But the world held too many old women and more than enough of nobles. For the rest, it had not been the Flood of the Most High; and though Death came to all in the end, and the loneliness of it must be dreary, still it was somehow more terrifying to die in batches, wholesale.
So, clothed in their white, new-washed robes like the elect, they went down after a time in companies to see the extent of damage done to their belongings, and test how far it was possible to wade through the water towards the village homestead or two which rose above the flood. Canal-wards, of course, passage was barred, would be barred for days until the stream ceased flowing or a boat was brought. So the horseman whom they could see picking his way flounderingly along the northern bank might be the only survivor of the big world beyond, and they be none the wiser--for the time. It was Dan Fitzgerald who, after an enforced shelter at the half-way village, was wondering who could have taken the responsibility of anticipating the telegram he carried in his pocket by opening the sluice-gates, and so, in all probability saving the big Sunowlie embankment farther down. For the sluice had been opened; that was evident to his experience at once, since without the lead of the current to cut, the flood would have swept on to do its worst elsewhere. Well! whoever had done it, be he watchman or Diwân, deserved something at the hands of the Department, and be the past record a bad one or not, this act should have its reward--its just reward--if he could compass it.
Ten minutes after, he had driven the chattering servant from the room, and grief-stricken, yet convinced into a sort of calm acceptance of the inevitable, had lifted the poor lad's body tenderly to the bed. He scarcely even thought of a reason for the tragedy; perhaps there was none, for Dan in his rough and ready life had seen such a thing before; had known the useless search for some adequate cause. And was there not cause enough here for a sudden loss of balance? That race down from Paradise to Purgatory!--the intolerable journey--the horrible homecoming; and then the cursed bottle he had left. The remembrance sent his whole mind into useless regrets. If he had only ridden faster, if somehow he could have been there in time to prevent the loneliness, the awful desolation of it all! for he had been through such loneliness himself, and knew what it had meant to him. Perhaps, taking his own excitability as a standard, he over-estimated the effect on George's nature. At any rate, as he stooped mechanically to pick up the revolver round which the boy's dead hand had still been closed, he felt that, given the necessity for sudden return, the rest might be inferred. And then, beside the revolver he saw the open locket, with Gwen's smiling face staring up at him. Gwen! Great God! what did it mean? His own locket, of course, and yet----he sat down at the table white as death, looking first at the pretty face, then at the still figure on the bed, now decently shrouded from the glaring light of day. And by degrees the colour returned to his cheek. No! it could not be so. She was not cruel, only careless; and ah! what a grief this would be to her! Besides, George was not one to put a life-long regret of that sort into a friend's life. So pondering, he realised that among other incidents of the home-coming had been that of learning who his sweetheart really was. That, then, did not happen at Simla, so that could not have been the cause of the lad's sudden return.
Why, then, had he come? The new lock and keys lying on the table, gave him a clew, and his quick wits suggested danger to the gates. Then it came to him in a flash confusedly, almost irrationally, that it had been done for his sake and hers, and he was on his knees by the bed in a minute.
'Oh! George! George! why did you do it?'
So with the answering silence came a decision, impulsive, yet immutable. Such blame as could be taken he would take. No one should know or dream of failure. No one should ever say--'Ah, poor fellow, he shot himself; must have been something wrong, you know.' Rapidly he counted the costs, the possibility of silence. Hodinuggur, separated from him by an impassable stream, could not be taken into account, so he must accept the risk there. It would not be much, if the servants' tale was true, that they had only discovered their master's death when the storm began, and had done no more than send word to the palace. No one, then, could have seen the body save those four or five servants, who loved their master, and worshipped rupees, and, above all, desired peace and quiet, and not the dangerous rakings up of the past which always followed on the advent of the police. Then for the Department itself. What he had said in his ignorance was true. Whether George had opened the sluice when, as the servants said, he went out in the middle of the day, or whether the palace folk had done it, the Department, in either case, owed the opener a debt of gratitude. If the latter, the Moghuls would be glad to keep silence; if the former, even if they set up a claim for compensation for damage, they would have been due so much had he, Dan, arrived in time to carry out his orders; thus no injustice would be done.
So half an hour afterwards, one of the servants started along the path to the outer world with a telegram to headquarters, and that evening, when the flood had subsided a little, Dan chose out the driest spot he could find in the sandy compound, and read the Church service over his friend's body. No one, he told himself, should know the truth; except some day perhaps, Gwen, when she came there as his wife. Then he would tell her, the pity, the needlessness of it all; and yet the needlessness had this virtue in it, that it made concealment possible; for the flood had swept away the error, if error there had been.
The telegram reached Colonel Tweedie next morning, among many more telling of disaster and death along the line of the great canal. Yet none was more pitiful than this one which ran thus--