Athelstane Ford Part 26

From the shouts of the crowd in answer to our questions we gathered that Surajah Dowlah had entered the city secretly after his flight from the field of battle, that he had called his parasites around him, that there had been rumours of another levy and another battle, that his heart had again failed him, that he was expected to fly once more, that he might at that very moment be making his escape before the approach of his successor.

As the palace came into view it was evident that if Surajah Dowlah were not already gone, his presence had ceased to act as a restraint on his former servants. The courtyard was crammed with a struggling throng of palace menials and robbers out of the streets, all engaged in the work of plunder. Some were staggering down the steps, entangled in the folds of brocades and sumptuous shawls, others bore tulwars and scymetars encrusted with gems, some were stripping the gold off robes, others picking rubies and sapphires out of their sockets with the points of daggers, and secreting them about their persons. The ground was strewn with plunder thrown away in favour of something more valuable, rich vessels of green jade lay broken in one place, and silken garments were trodden underfoot in another. And all this was merely the loot of the outer rooms of the palace, for the treasury was not yet touched.

At our approach the work ceased. The rioters began to escape, and the eunuchs and soldiers belonging to the palace shrank back to their quarters. Leaving Meer Jaffier's officer to deal with them, I dismounted from my elephant and pressed my way through into the deserted palace, taking with me only two men as a protection. I did not stay to explore the empty halls and dismantled chambers, but hurried as fast as I could go into the garden, and on to the well-remembered summer-house where I had caught my last glimpse of Marian on that night a year ago. I ran up to the door at which we had knocked the same night. It was standing open. I darted through, ran into each room, climbed the stair, and searched every nook and cranny above. Not a trace of her I sought was there.

Without lingering a moment I went on and explored the other buildings in the garden. In some of them I found frightened women, left alone, and expecting that I had come to slay them. But from none could I hear anything of the English captive. Here and there a frightened eunuch, dragged cowering from his hiding-place, recalled Marian's presence a year before, but could or would tell me nothing of her fate. I raved and stormed through the seraglio like one possessed, but it was all in vain.

I turned back to the main building, by this time in the hands of the new Nabob's servants, who were restoring it to some sort of order.

They told me that Surajah Dowlah had got away an hour previously, having let himself down by a rope from a lattice into a boat on the river, with only two attendants. When I showed them the papers I had received from their master and also from Colonel Clive, they offered me every a.s.sistance, and even joined in the search. During several hours we ransacked every part of the palace, but found no signs of either of the English prisoners. The princ.i.p.al eunuchs were called and questioned. At first they declined to speak, but when one of the Moors with me threatened them with torture they became more communicative, and finally one of them asked if we had gone down into the secret dungeons.

This hint sent a cold s.h.i.+ver through my veins. I bade the eunuch lead the way, and he conducted us through a secret door, down a narrow winding stair into a horrible bas.e.m.e.nt, constructed under the bed of the Ganges, where no light could come by day or night, except that brought by the torches of the gaolers. The place was like a maze, with branching pa.s.sages and cells, almost every one of which held some victim of Oriental tyranny. But I had neither eyes nor thoughts for what was around me, as we hurried down pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage and opened door after door in the search for those two whom I had come to save. Finally the eunuch stopped at a certain door at the very end of the darkest pa.s.sage we had yet traversed. It was opened, and I looked in.

I could not at first believe that what I beheld was a human being.

Stretched out on the damp soil of the den lay a miserable, shrunken object, a thing like a skeleton wrapped in parchment, with the faint outlines of a man. On our entrance it moved and just raised its head.

"What do you want?" it asked in Indostanee. And then in English it breathed, "Is this the end?"

It was the voice of my cousin Rupert!

With a cry, I was on my knees by his side, lifting his woeful head in my arms.

"Rupert! Look! It is your cousin Athelstane!"

He moved slowly and sat up. Then a shudder went through his attenuated frame.

"Don't you see what they have done to me?" he groaned. "The devils have put out my eyes!"

And the devils had. Rupert Gurney, the bold, handsome, careless, wicked, swaggering Rupert, whom I had loved and feared and hated all my life, would never be bold nor handsome nor swaggering any more, and I should never need to fear or hate him again. His wickedness had been rewarded; his crimes had met a heavier retribution than any I had ever thought to inflict. He had fallen into the hands of one compared to whom he had been but a beginner in iniquity; one fit of Surajah Dowlah's cruel frenzy had struck upon him, and had left him branded for life.

Of Marian's fate he knew nothing. As soon as I had given directions to have him carried up out of the dungeon I renewed my search for her with a heart ready to burst at the thought of what I might find.

When we did find her I was almost relieved. After the frightful apprehensions I had entertained, it seemed to be good fortune that she should be merely wasted away, without any outward disfigurement of that face that had been my beacon in dreams and raptures for those vain years. In my own arms I bore her out of that doleful place and up into the open air, through the palace now swarming with the stir and bustle of the newly arrived Nabob's Court, into the garden where the day was breaking and the birds were beginning to sing, and laid her down, at her own desire, on a bed in that very summer-house where I had tried--ah, why had I failed?--to rescue her on the night that seemed so long ago.

There for two days I never left her. Some of the eunuchs first, and afterwards some Indian women, came and waited on us, and brought us all the food we needed--and that was not much for either of us. She lay still, saying little, and sometimes holding my hand while she slept, and then waking up to shed tears upon it, and to murmur the grat.i.tude which I had done so little to deserve. On the second day I had Rupert brought to her. He was better by this time, though still very weak, and just able to walk across the room with his arm resting in mine. I guided him to a seat beside her, and placed their hands in one another's, and then I came out quickly. I left them together; for if I had loved Marian, he had loved her too, and if my love for her had been the stronger, so had been hers for him. And I could not feel jealousy any longer now that Marian was dying.

For this was the end of it all, the end of my stormy love and rivalry and my adventures in the Indian realms. Marian, the beautiful Marian, the woman whose fascination had led me so far, and involved me among such strange events in such unwonted scenes, was dying. I had come too late to save her, and all I had done or attempted for her sake had been in vain. And when I knew this, when I looked back over those three troubled years and saw the outcome, there came borne in upon my mind a great resignation; I beheld myself as if I had been another person, and the folly and wickedness that was in my heart stood revealed to me as they had never been even in those dreadful hours in the Calcutta dungeon, when I sank down, as I believed, to die.

Standing beside that bedside of the woman I had loved and sinned for, watching the grey stain of mortality creep out upon those glorious features, the world and all its prizes and possessions became to me a mockery, and all that remained to comfort me was the memory of words I had read in that old Book at home: there, in that heathen palace, surrounded by the temples and trophies of false G.o.ds, was vouchsafed to me the light which I had refused to receive when I dwelt among Christians in a Christian land, and the Divine mercy which had followed me through so many wanderings overtook me at the last.

On the morning of the third day one of the Indian servants who waited upon us took me aside and whispered something in my ear--something which made my heart beat fiercely and sent a tingle through my veins.

I left the summer-house and took my way into the palace. Through the stately halls and along the marble pavements, amid the servile crowd that swarmed to pay homage to Meer Jaffier, I pa.s.sed, and on till I came to that hideous stair up which I had brought two of Surajah Dowlah's victims such a short time before. On the way I gathered something of what had taken place.

One of Surajah Dowlah's former subjects, a man whose ears the young Nabob had barbarously cut off for some offence, had recognised him in his flight, and had betrayed him to the agents of his successor. He was brought back in chains to Moorshedabad and carried before Meer Jaffier, at whose feet he flung himself, sobbing, and beseeching that his miserable life might be spared. Meer Jaffier, partly moved by his entreaties, partly restrained by regard for Colonel Clive, had shown a wish to spare him. But in Meer Jaffier's son, young Meeram, the fallen tyrant had found a spirit as ferocious and ungovernable as his own.

This boy--for he was scarcely sixteen--thirsted for his cousin's blood, and even attempted to stab him in Meer Jaffier's presence. Meer Jaffier, afraid of his son, had ordered the prisoner to be removed into the dungeons under a guard, and this was done. But the fury of Meeram was not to be appeased. In the dark hours of the night, unknown to his father, he had descended into the dungeon, bribed or overawed the guards, and----

They threw open the door. They held up their torches over a dark object lying on the ground. There, with a dozen red rents in the bosom of his tunic, with blood thickly soaked into the dye of his silk robe, with blood caked upon the rubies and emeralds in his turban, I saw Surajah Dowlah, dead!

For some minutes I stood still in the presence of this impressive retribution, recalling the brief but terrible career which had thus tragically ended. There lay the cruellest despot of his age, the pract.i.tioner of horrible debaucheries, the sworn enemy of the English name, who had driven us out of Bengal, and perpetrated the never-to-be-forgotten ma.s.sacre in which I had been so nearly included.

I was but newly come out of the presence of two of his victims, and here I beheld him cut off from light more surely than the man he had blinded, dead while the woman he had murdered still breathed. I gazed, and was satisfied. The evil desires of vengeance which had tormented me for so long were utterly extinguished. I beheld before me the justice of high Heaven, and I came away, not exulting, but awed and subdued.

I returned to Marian's bedside, and from that time I did not leave her till the end. Occasionally she would talk to me in a low, sweet voice, calling back memories of the old town of Yarmouth and the pleasant scenes of her youth. Once she spoke to me of myself.

"I have treated you very ill, Athelstane. I knew that I could never repay you for your love, but it made me proud to have it; I liked to count upon your devotion to me, and I deceived and tempted you."

I tried to protest, but she would have it so.

"I have been wrong in everything I did to you," she said. "I ought never to have treated you as a friend, but as a stranger. Then you would have grown out of your foolish pa.s.sion, and have forgotten me; for, believe me, Athelstane, I was not fit for you, nor you for me.

Beneath your hot temper and adventurous spirit, in which you resemble your cousin, you are a very different nature. You are a Puritan at bottom, and your conscience will not let you rest except in sober, honest ways of life. It is better that you should take a wife from among your own people, one whose nature is in accord with what is deepest and best in you, and not with what is worst. Forgive me, Athelstane, and forget me, as one that crossed your life by an evil chance and wrought you only harm."

But that, as I told her with tears, I never could do, nor would believe. And even now, when I look back across the years with calmer vision and a wiser judgment, I am still glad that I knew and loved Marian Rising, and never wish to root the memory of that wild romance out of my heart.

She spoke to me also of my cousin Rupert, saying that she had long ago forgiven--indeed, I think she never was really able to resent--his wrongs done towards her, and asking me to do the same. I a.s.sured her that I had long ago buried all remains of ill-will between us, and I promised her that I would take him back to England with me, and endeavour to make his peace with his father at Lynn.

Soon afterwards she became very weak, and, seeing that the last moment was approaching, I fetched Rupert in to her. He stood with his head bowed above the bed, his hair streaked with grey and the marks of the agony he had suffered on his face, while Marian caught hold of his hand, and, with the feeble remains of her strength, carried it to her lips and kissed it. In the doorway stood an Indian, gazing at the sight with solemn, unmoved visage. Outside we could hear the distant clash of the temple gongs in honour of some sacrifice, and through the lattices there was a glimpse of high white walls, with narrow slits of windows, shaded over by the dark-green foliage of a teak tree. Was it all real? I asked myself, or some vision which had come to me in the night, and from which I should awake to find myself abed in my own little room at home in Brandon?

So the hour pa.s.sed, and the last minute came.

"Pray for me, Athelstane," Marian whispered to me, "for I have been a great sinner, and for myself I hardly dare to pray."

So I knelt down upon the floor, and the blind man opposite me did the same; and as I used the familiar phrases which I had learned unconsciously in my youth from many repet.i.tions, a peace stole over the room, and Rupert's great sobs ceased to shake him, and the hand I held in my own grew very still and cold. And presently I looked up, and saw that Marian was dead.

CHAPTER XXI

_COLONEL CLIVE'S MESSAGE_

So now my career in the East Indies was over, and I set my face to return home.

The first person to whom I communicated my intention was Colonel Clive. He was at first astonished, and told me so.

"Why do you mean to leave me now, when all our affairs are prospering, and you have nothing to do but to stay on and enrich yourself? I have had it in my mind to promote you; indeed, I think you know that I am your good friend."

"I do, indeed, sir," I answered, "and I am most grateful for all your kindness to me. But it is right that I should tell you I am here in consequence of wrong-doing, which has, as I can now see, pursued my steps and caused me to be hara.s.sed with troubles and misfortunes from the very beginning to this hour."

"Why, what wrong have you been guilty of?" asked the Colonel, much interested. "I could have sworn you were the most honest young man in my company."

"I have run away from my home, sir. I have deceived and disobeyed my father and, I fear, caused great sorrow to my loving mother. I allowed myself to be tempted to leave them secretly, under cover of a falsehood, and to join a crew of privateers, who turned out to be pirates, the comrades of those whom you destroyed at Gheriah. In their company I fell into evil courses, and finally plunged into a murderous contest with one of my own flesh and blood. These things have long sat heavy on my mind. I have perceived their evil consequences, I have been visited with a bitter punishment, and I am now determined to go back to my parents and to obtain their forgiveness before it is too late."

Colonel Clive looked at me with some sympathy, mingled with wonder.

"I believe you have decided rightly," he said at last, when I had finished. "G.o.d forbid that I should keep you from making your peace with those who love you." His tone softened as he added: "My story is different to yours. I didn't run away; I was driven, pitchforked out of doors, and stuck into a miserable billet at Madras, where I nearly ate my heart out with loneliness and repining. When I returned to England it was not to ask forgiveness, but to give it, if a son can take it upon himself to forgive his parent. No matter, all that is past now, and I believe my family have found out that I am worth the love they have to give me. Look here, my boy, I have no business to talk like this to you; but, after all, we can't be always thinking of rupees and Moorish tricks. Since you are bent on going to England, you shall start in the s.h.i.+p which I am sending from Calcutta with the news of our late proceedings, and I will give you a letter, which you are to deliver privately into the hands of Mr. Pitt."

At this name I looked up with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks.

"The great Mr. Pitt?" I exclaimed.