Once the party had reached Bithoor the Nana’s tone changed. Instead of sending his European guests into Cawnpore, whence safe transit to Calcutta was still practicable, he kept them in his palace, on the pretext that the roads were disturbed. He contrived, at first, to hoodwink Mr. Mayne by giving him genuine news of the wholesale outbreak in the North-West, and by adding wholly false tidings of massacres at Allahabad, Benares, and towns in Upper Bengal. At last, when Mayne insisted on going into Cawnpore, the native threw aside pretense, said he could not “allow” him to depart, and virtually made uncle and niece prisoners.
But he treated them well. A clear-headed Brahmin, to whom intrigue was the breath of life, was not likely to make the mistake of being too precipitate in his actions. The wave of religious fanaticism sweeping over the land might recede as rapidly as it had risen. Muslim and Hindu, Pathan and Brahmin, hereditary foes who fraternized to-day, might be at each other’s throats to-morrow. So the Nana was a courteous jailer. Beyond the loss of their liberty the captives had nothing to complain of, and he met Mayne’s vehement reproaches with unmoved good humor, protesting all the while that he was acting for the best.
Winifred took fright, however. Her woman’s intuition looked beneath the mask. For her uncle’s sake she kept her suspicions to herself, but she suffered much in secret, and her distress might well have moved a man of finer character to sympathy. Each time she met the Nana he treated her with more apparent friendliness. She recoiled from his advances as she might shrink from a venomous snake.
Fortunately there were others in Bithoor who understood the Brahmin’s motives, and saw therein the germ of failure for their own plans. Nana Sahib was an exceedingly important factor in the success of the scheme that meditated the re-establishment of the Mogul dynasty. Recognized by the Mahrattas, the great warlike race of western India, as their leader, looked on as the pivot of Hindu support to the Mohammedan monarchy, it was absolutely essential that he should captain the rebel garrison of Cawnpore in a triumphant march to Delhi. For that reason a marriage distasteful to both had already been arranged between him and the Roshinara Begum. For that reason he had traveled to many centers of disaffection during the months of March and April, winning doubtful Hindu princes to the side of Bahadur Shah, by his tact and ready diplomacy. For that reason too, the native officers of the first regiments in revolt at Cawnpore made him swear, even at the twelfth hour, that he would lead them to Delhi.
His unforeseen infatuation for an Englishwoman might upset the carefully-laid plot. Under other conditions a dose of poison would have removed poor Winifred from the scene, but that simple expedient was not to be thought of, as the Nana’s vengeful disposition was sufficiently well known to his associates to make them fear the outcome. Therefore they left nothing to chance, and actually brought the Princess Roshinara post haste from the north, believing that her presence would insure the inconstant wooer’s return with her at the right moment.
While the majority pulled in one way there was an active minority that wished the Nana to set up an independent kingdom. His nephew and his Mohammedan friend, Azim-ullah, were convinced that their faction would lose all influence as soon as their chief was swallowed up in the maelstrom of the imperial court. If Winifred supplied the spell that kept the Nana at Bithoor, they were quite content that it should be allowed to exercise its power.
Hence, Malcolm’s arrival gave the Begum a chance that her quick wit seized upon. Why not, she argued, connive at the Englishwoman’s escape, and let it become known that she had fled back to Meerut? When the Nana returned from Cawnpore, flushed with wine and conquest, this should be the first news that greeted him, and his amorous rage would go hand in hand with the other considerations that urged his immediate departure for the Mogul capital. That was not the device of a woman who loved—it savored rather of the cool state-craft of a Lucrezia Borgia.
No more curious mixture of plot and counterplot than this minor chapter of the Bithoor romance came to light during that disastrous upheaval in India. Never did events of the utmost magnitude hinge on incidents so trivial to the community at large. A truculent thief like Abdul Huq was able to defeat the intent of a king’s daughter, and a couple of alert troopers, riding to a bluff overlooking the river, could report that they saw the budgerow on which the sahib-log escaped drifting down stream towards Cawnpore! Thus the intrigue miscarried twice. Winifred was free; the clear inference to be drawn from the boat’s course was that her uncle and Malcolm would bring her straight to the protection of their friends in the cantonment.
There was a scene of violence, nearly culminating in murder, when Nana Sahib came to Bithoor at dawn. He met the scorn of Roshinara with a furious insolence that stopped short of bloodshed only on account of the prudence still governing most of his actions. Not yet was he drunk with power. That madness was soon to obsess him. But he lent a willing ear to the counsels of Rao Sahib and Azim-ullah. Soon after daybreak he galloped to Kulianpur, on the road to Delhi, whither some thousands of sepoys had already gone, and harangued them eloquently on the glory, not to speak of the loot, they would acquire by attacking the accursed English at Cawnpore.
They were easily swayed. Acclaiming the Nana as a prince worthy of obedience they marched after him, and thus sealed the doom of many hundreds of unhappy beings who thought until that moment they would be spared the dreadful fate that had befallen other stations.