In two days all Simla knew of it, and in six months I was a ruined man.
There is no help for it--the verdict is against me; and yet for five years I have been through the fire, and I am strong now--there would be no blacksliding if another chance were given to me. Regrets! There is no use regretting--ten times would I give my life to live over the past again. "Mary, my dear, I have killed you: may God forgive me!"
Some one stepped out of the shadow into the moonlight as I raised my head with the bitter cry on my lips.
"Dick!"
"Mary!"
And we had met once more.
[THE MADNESS OF SHERE BAHADUR]
The mahout's small son, engaged with an equally small friend in the pleasant occupation of stringing into garlands the thick yellow and white champac blossoms that strewed the ground under the broad-leaved tree near the lentena hedge, was startled by an angry trumpet, and looked in the direction of Shere Bahadur.
"He is must," said one to the other, in an awe-struck whisper, and then, a sudden terror seizing them, they bounded silently and swiftly like little brown apes into a gap in the hedge and vanished.
There were ten thousand evil desires hissing in Shere Bahadur's heart as he swayed to and fro under the huge peepul tree to which he was chained. Indignity upon indignity had been heaped upon him. It was a mere accident that Aladin, the mahout who had attended him for twenty years, was dead. How on earth was Shere Bahadur to know that his skull was so thin? He had merely tapped it with his trunk in a moment of petulance, and the head of Aladin had crackled in like the shell of an egg. Shere Bahadur was reduced to the ranks. For weeks he had to carry the fodder supply of the Maharaj's stables, like an ordinary beast of burden and a low-caste slave; a fool to boot had been put to attend on him. It was not to be borne. Shere Bahadur clanked his chains angrily, and ever and anon flung wisps of straw, twigs, and dust on his broad back and mottled forehead. He, a Kemeriah of Kemeriahs, to be treated thus! He was no longer the stately beast that bore the yellow and silver howdah of the Maharaj Adhiraj in solemn procession, who put aside with a gentle sweep of his trunk the children who crowded the narrow streets of Kalesar. No, it was different now. He was a felon and an outcast, bound like a thief. Something had given way in his brain, and Shere Bahadur was mad. The flies hovered on the sore part over his left ear, where the long peak of the driving-iron had burrowed in, and, with a trumpet of rage, the elephant blew a cloud of dust into the air and strained himself backwards.