There are moments sometimes in a person’s existence when life seems full of nameless horrors—when death is viewed in the light of a loving friend who brings peace and rest.
Such a moment as this was Walter’s experience. His cup of sorrow was full; it was overflowing, but then, when the tide has reached its highest flood, it commences to recede. Night was nearly passed. The fairy-like glamour which precedes the coming dawn, especially in India, was over the land. It was like a flush on the face of nature—surrounding objects were commencing to assert their presence. The outlines of trees and buildings could be faintly discerned, standing out against the roseate-flushed sky.
With the departing darkness and coming light, a faint glimmer of hope appeared upon the path of Walter Gordon; he began to think that things might not be so bad after all; and then his senses were suddenly and unexpectedly soothed by the melody of a bird. For weeks the roar of the guns had scared all the feathered songsters away; but the cessation of the din for the last twenty-four hours had induced a stray bul-bul—that gem of the Indian feather tribe—to alight on the branches of a blackened and shot-shattered tree which stood some little distance away.
Perhaps the tiny singer had wandered from its tribe, and, missing the rich foliage which the storm of fire had destroyed over an extensive area, it was uttering a lament; for there was ruin, desolation, and decaying mortality around—the work of man’s hand; and the song of the bird might have been a song of sorrow. Who can tell? But as it sat there a mere speck on the leafless and blackened tree, and trilled its beautiful and mellow notes that sounded clear and soft on the still morning air, the soul of Walter Gordon was touched.
The wand of the enchanter, in the shape of the piping bul-bul, had changed the scene. From the fierce glare and the strife-torn land of India, he was suddenly transported to his native shores. He saw the peaceful valleys of smiling England—he heard the clanking of the wheels of industry as they brought bread to toiling millions, and sent forth their produce to all the corners of the earth. He saw the happy homes where the laughter of merry children made light the hearts of their parents. He saw that land with all its beauty—a land free from the deadly strife of contending armies; and, as the vision passed before him, hope sprang up again strong and bright with the dawning day. The little bul-bul’s notes had been to him like a draught of an elixir that can banish the sickness of the heart, and lift up the human soul from darkness into light.
The bird’s notes ceased, but another sound fell upon his ear. It was a long-drawn sigh of a woman. It was Haidee. She had been sleeping on a sheepskin some few yards away from where Gordon was sitting. As he turned his eyes to where her form reposed, he remembered the promise he had made to Harper with reference to this woman. During the few days that had elapsed since his friend’s departure, he had tended to Haidee with the loving solicitude of a brother. He had told her of all his troubles, and how by a most singular chance Flora had been separated from him again, and conveyed back to Delhi.
And he felt now, as he turned to Haidee, that for his friend’s sake—a friend he looked upon as dead—it was his sacred duty to protect her until he could place her out of the reach of danger.
He knew but little about her, for Harper had volunteered no information beyond the fact that she was from the King’s Palace, and to her he owed his life. It was sufficient for him to know that this was the case—to feel for her in Harper’s behalf all the anxiety and tenderness which was due to her sex.
He had speedily discovered that she was possessed of a true woman’s nature, and that she entertained a strong love for his friend. But he looked upon it purely as a Platonic feeling, for he had too much faith in Harper’s integrity to think that he would have encouraged any other.
“You have slept soundly, Haidee,” he remarked, as he observed that she opened her eyes.