After Lesley had gone home to dinner, and Jack Raymond--in quaint contrast--was off to make certain that a rising in the city was expected before long, the station settled down once more into the silence and slackness of between-train time on a Sunday evening. The listless passengers to be, it is true, still sat in groups on the steps outside, and every now and again some one--who ought to have been on duty and was not--gave a look in, and went off again. Once, indeed, an assistant station-master called at the telegraph-office perfunctorily; but the baboo had by that time recovered from his paralysis of terror, and begun to see his own advantage clearly. True, he had so far been in with the conspirators, as to have promised his collaboration, should the authorities be enough on the alert to use the telegraph to Fareedabad; but in doing so he had thought himself safe from detection. He had not been so; but now he had once more a hope of safety that wild horses would not have dragged him to lessen. Therefore the assistant station-master went, as he had come, in ignorance of anything unusual.
Up on the turret of the bastion too, which abutted on to the river only a few yards from the first bridge-pier, and which therefore gave full on the station, the kite-flyers went on with their match undisturbed. Jehân was there and Burkut Ali, together with most of the Royal Family; the former jubilant because his kite was one of those still defying the falling dew. And Lateefa was there also, his pile of vanquished kites growing steadily. He sat on the ground beside it, his slender hands crossed over his knees, his thin, acute face upturned. It had an odd amusement on it, and every time he rose to pull in a fresh victim, his high trilling voice quavered of 'oughts' and 'naughts.'
And on the bathing-steps, also, down on the other side of the terraced track which ran between them and the turret, there was peace. They were, in fact, emptier than usual at that hour; for the 'Circling of the Sacred Lights' must be nigh at hand, since the priests were already coming for the office; among them, Viseshwar Nâth----
The baboo saw him, and salaamed at the unusual sight, when--with his whole-hearted betrayal of everything likely to be a personal disadvantage--he walked out beyond the station to satisfy himself that the signalman obeyed his instructions. For realising--as he sat on his stool, still trembling with fear lest by any mischance the soldiers should not come in time and he be blamed for it--that it was necessary to have 'line clear' for the unexpected train, he had sought out the right man, and told him that a special from the north had just been wired to pass through Nushapore in half an hour on its way south. So he stood watching, waiting to see the red light change to green on the tower-pier, and catch the first echo of that change in the far distance at the other end of the bridge. And as he stood, he beguiled his fat body and mind from a faint remorse, by telling himself that, under the circumstances, he was doing the wisest thing for his own party also--that party of progress which had seized on the ignorant alarm of the herd as a fitting time in which to record their own protest against illegal tyranny. Since, if their plans had been blown upon, they were better postponed.
He heaved a sigh of relief, therefore, when the signal 'Line clear, go ahead' showed close at hand and far off. But at the same moment he heard a step behind him, and turned hastily to see Chris Davenant. Chris, still in his frock-coat and with a flower in his buttonhole; with his wife's diploma of membership in the 'Guild for Encouraging Intercourse between the Rulers and the Ruled,' also, in his pocket. For he had not been home since he left the 'memorable occasion'; neither to the home in Shark Lane, nor the home in the city, nor that betwixt-and-between home in the garden of plantains. In a way they all claimed him, and yet they were all alike insufferable, impossible to the man himself. Looking round his world, there was but one thing which brought no sense of revolt with it; and that was his work. He felt that if he could leave, not one thing, but all things behind him save this, life might still be endurable.
And so, when the foundations of flowers (freshened for the time into a promise of stability by the romance of moonlight) were deserted alike by the Rulers and the Ruled, he had, almost mechanically, wandered off to the scene of that work, and had ever since been strolling up and down among the general litter and order of his new goods station. It soothed him. The sight of the piles of brick that would fall into line after his plan, the whole paraphernalia brought together to give form to his idea--an idea which would take shape bit by bit according to his will as surely as the sun would rise--comforted him. And yet it brought no strength for the moment that was coming, as surely.
Half-past eight! And at nine the Circling would begin. Half an hour left--for it would not take him a minute to reach the temples--they were close enough----
Close! God in heaven! they were too close! Was it possible to escape from them? was there foothold for an honest man between them and the Palace of Lies in which he had lived so long?
Was there? Only half an hour left for decision, and he had not argued out the matter with himself at all. He had only felt.
He must think; and that seemed impossible out here with the moonlight showing each rib of the skeleton roof, each tier of bricks waiting for the next.