THE PALACE OF THE MOGUL.
As that awful night of the 11th of May wore on, a drama was enacted in the fair city of Meerut, that the most graphic pen would fail to do justice to. For a time the mutineers held their own. They burned and pillaged, they massacred and drank. In their mad fury nothing was held sacred. Even their own temples and mosques fell a prey to the incendiary firebrands. Innocent children were ruthlessly slaughtered; helpless women were dismembered, and many a gallant officer rolled in the dust without being able to fire a shot at his unseen and cowardly foe.
But soon the tide turned. The panic, which for a short time seemed to have paralysed those in command, gave place to reaction. The Rifles and the Dragoons were let loose. Desperate and terrible was the conflict, but the “Great White Hand” was too powerful to be crushed by a howling rabble. The gallant English soldiers warmed to their work. Their blood fired as they thought of their cruelly-murdered wives and daughters, and country-women. And so, with carbines and sabres they cut lines for themselves through the crowded streets, until from thousands of throats went up the warning cry—
“Gora-logue, aya” (the Europeans have come). Then out of the city of Meerut, and on to the great high road that led to Delhi, went the cowardly mutineers—a disorderly, beggarly, undisciplined rabble now. The Dragoons followed some little distance, and made terrible havoc among the flying crowds. But suddenly, and for some inexplicable reason, the English soldiers were ordered to return. They did reluctantly—sorrowfully. Nay, they were half-inclined to disobey that order, for their blood was up, and they knew that they could have cut that flying horde to pieces. Somebody had blundered again! But who? And to the present day echo answers, Who?
The men returned to their lines, and the rebels straggled on. Before them was the Imperial City, with its gorgeous Palace, its stupendous magazine and arsenal, its countless treasures, its almost impregnable defences. It was a goal worth pressing forward to. Behind them was a town of smouldering and blackened ruins, of slaughtered women and children, and dauntless British soldiers burning to revenge the foul murders, but who were held in check by the marvellous stupidity of those in office.
The Palace of the Mogul, in Delhi, was one that might have vied with any similar building in the whole of India; it was a majestic pile, worthy of the traditions that surrounded it, and the noble line of kings who had dwelt beneath its roof, but who were now but a name, for their ancient splendour had set never to rise again.
In one of the stateliest rooms in the stately Palace sat the aged King—a man upon whose brow the years had gathered thickly and set their stamp. A long beard, white as the driven snow, reached to his waist; his face was wrinkled and puckered, and his eyes dull and bleared, but they were restless, and plainly told that within the spirit was chafing. Around him was a brilliant retinue, and on each side of the marble hall stood an armed guard.
The King was seated on a raised dais, and was holding counsel with some of his ministers.
“Things work well,” he replied, in a low voice, to some remark that had just been made by one of his courtiers. “Our sun is rising, and power is coming back to us; we shall yet live to enjoy some of the glory which made the reign of our predecessors so conspicuous before these cursed Feringhees came and trampled on our power. Death to them!”
He ground his teeth and clenched his emaciated hand, and his eyes sparkled for a moment with a burning feeling of hatred.
“Do not distress yourself, great lord,” said a tall and handsome woman, whose massive bangles, flashing diamonds, and gold chain, bespoke her one of the King’s favourites. “The power of these foreigners is great, and better to submit to it than to rise only to fall again and be crushed.”
The King turned upon her, his whole frame quivering with wrath.
“Peace, fool—beast!” he cried; “thy sympathies have ever been with the hated race. Beneath thy breast there beats a traitorous heart. Have a care. Bridle thy tongue, or thy head may pay the forfeit.”
“I own no traitor’s heart, my lord and king,” the woman answered, as she drew herself up proudly.
“Peace, Haidee, I tell thee!” cried the monarch, in a voice husky with passion; “we brook no insolence, and no answer. Thou art a slave. Know thy place.”
The eyes of Haidee burned and her lips quivered, while her bosom heaved with suppressed emotion.
“Take my life if it so pleases you, my lord, but to your face I say I am no slave,” she answered.
Haidee was as yet but in the first flush of womanhood; she had not numbered more than two-and-twenty years. She was a native of Cashmere, and of the true Cashmere type of beauty. Her form was perfect in symmetry; her face a study. Her eyes were large and liquid, and fringed with long silken lashes; her skin a delicate brown, almost cream colour, and the cheeks tinged with pink, while down her back, reaching below the knees, fell a wealth of the dark auburn hair peculiar to her countrywomen; it was kept from her face by a small tiara studded with diamonds, the points being many butterflies, composed of rubies and pearls; her arms, beautifully proportioned and rounded, were bare to the shoulders; and on the right arm up to the elbow were massive gold jewelled bands. She was arrayed in all the gorgeousness of Eastern costume—flowing silk studded with pearls, and looped up with massive gold knots, was suspended from her shoulders; trousers of light blue silk, and slippers of the same material, ornamented with small gold fire-flies, completed a costume that was at once picturesque and beautiful. Nature and art had combined to make Haidee a picture of perfect beauty.
Angered almost beyond control by her last remark, the King raised his hand as a sign to one of the guards, to whom he was going to issue orders to have her taken away; but, before he could speak, a messenger entered hurriedly, and prostrating himself before the dais, waited for the King’s pleasure.
“What hast thou to communicate?” asked the monarch, as he resumed his seat with difficulty.
“An English officer, the bearer of despatches from Meerut, seeks audience with your Majesty,” was the answer.
“Ah!” exclaimed the King, as he nervously clutched the arms of the chair with his withered hands. “An English officer, eh?—an English dog, thou shouldst have said. Let him wait our pleasure then,” he added angrily.
“He is importunate, your Majesty, and says his business permits of no delay.”
“A palsy seize him, and the whole of his race!” answered the King. “But we must not be premature. It were better, perhaps, to admit him.”
With a low bow the man withdrew, returning in a short time in company with Lieutenant Harper, whose ride from Meerut had been performed in an incredibly short space of time, and on whose face the perspiration was still wet, while his uniform was white with dust.
“Your Majesty will pardon me for dispensing with all ceremony,” he said, as he made a respectful salute to the King. “I have the honour to be the bearer of most important despatches from the Commandant of Meerut. Their contents are private, and intended for no other eyes but yours.”
As Harper spoke he handed a package of official documents to the King, who in turn was about to hand them to his secretary, as he remarked—
“We will have them read to us at our leisure.”
“Pardon me, but they must not leave your Majesty’s hands,” Harper said, hurriedly.
“Must not!” the King echoed, sternly. Then checking himself, he said—“Well, well, you English are an impetuous race! We will comply with your request. My spectacles, Zula. Let us see what these important documents contain.”
A native boy stepped forward, and presented to the King his spectacles on a gold plate.
Then, with nervous, trembling hands, he broke the seals of the packet, and unfolding the long blue sheets of paper, he slowly perused them. As he did so, there flitted across his face an almost perceptible smile of triumph, and over the gold rims of his spectacles he darted a look full of meaning to a powerful Sepoy who stood near.
This man was an orderly of the guard, and his name Moghul Singh. He was evidently in the King’s secret, for he seemed to understand the look, and made a sign, with his right hand, to his comrades.
Quickly as this was done, it did not escape the notice of Haidee, who shifted her position, ostensibly to converse with a group of ladies, but in reality to place herself nearer Harper.
During the time that the King had spent in reading the documents, Harper’s gaze had frequently wandered to the lovely form of Haidee, and their eyes met, until every nerve in his body thrilled with the electrical fire of her wondrous eyes.
When the King had finished reading, he removed his spectacles and handed them back to the bearer. And as he slowly folded up the paper he remarked with an ill-concealed look of scorn—
“Your commandant fears that there is a conspiracy between the Meerut troops and those of Delhi. It may be so, but we know nothing of it. We have ever been faithful in our allegiance to your sovereign, and these suspicions are unjust. But our agents shall lose no time in ascertaining to what extent dissatisfaction exists in this our Imperial City, and steps shall be taken to give the mutineers of Meerut, should they come here, a warm reception. Moghul Singh,” he added, turning to the orderly, “see this officer comfortably quartered until to-morrow, when we will receive him again, and give him safe escort back, should he desire it.”
Harper made a salute, and prepared to go. The orderly also, in acknowledgment of his commands, saluted, but in obedience to a sign from the King he approached the dais, and the King, bending slightly forward, whispered—
“The stone room, Singh.”
Harper’s movement had brought him close to Haidee—so close that the skirts of her garments touched him.
He looked up. His eyes met hers; and in accents that were scarcely audible, but which reached his ears, as they were intended to do, she whispered—
“On your guard! Danger!”
For a moment he was startled, but only for a moment. He comprehended in an instant that he was in peril, and that this beautiful woman, for some unknown reason, had given him friendly warning.
As Harper followed his guide from the audience chamber he began to suspect treachery; and knowing that the Commandant of the Palace Guard was a Scotchman, by name Douglas, and also that there were an English chaplain and several ladies in the Palace, he made a request to the orderly that he might be conducted to the presence of his countrymen and women.
“The sahib’s wishes shall be obeyed,” the orderly answered, with a military salute. But there was something in the man’s tone and manner which caused Harper to mistrust him, and the young officer instinctively moved his hand to the sword which hung at his side, and which was clanking ominously on the marble pavement.
Down long corridors, along numerous passages, through stately apartments, Harper went, led by his guide. At length an open court-yard was reached. On one side was a guard-room, at the door of which several Sepoys were lounging. The orderly led the Englishman close to the door, and as he did so he raised his hand and muttered something in Hindoostanee. Then, quick as thought, two tall, powerful Sepoys sprang upon Harper, and seized him in a grip of iron.
“Scum, cowards,” he cried, as he realised in an instant that he was the victim of a plot, and making a desperate struggle to free his hand and draw his sword. But other Sepoys came to the assistance of their comrades; the sword was taken away, his accoutrements and jacket were torn from him; then he was raised up, carried for some little distance, and forcibly thrown into a large apartment. Bewildered by the suddenness of the movement, and half-stunned by the fall—for his head had come in violent contact with the floor—Harper lay for some time unable to move.
When his senses fully returned, he stood up to examine the place in which he had been suddenly imprisoned. It was a large, square apartment, with walls of solid masonry, and a massive iron door, that seemed to render all chance of escape hopeless. The only light came from a narrow slit on one side of the room, near the roof. When his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, he made a more minute inspection of the place. It was evidently a dungeon, for the walls were damp and slimy, and the most repulsive reptiles were crawling about the floor; while in the corners, and on every projecting angle, huge tarantula spiders sat waiting for prey.
In one corner of the room Harper noticed that there was a recess, and in this recess was a small arched doorway. He tried the door. It was made of iron, and as firm as the solid masonry in which it seemed to be built.
He was a brave man. He could have faced death unflinchingly in open fight, but he sank into the apathy of despair as he realised that he had been trapped into this place, from which escape seemed impossible, to be murdered in cold blood when the rising took place; for he had no doubt now that the appearance of the Meerut mutineers would be the signal for a revolt in Delhi, and that when the time arrived every European would be ruthlessly butchered. As he remembered the words Haidee had uttered as he left the audience chamber, he reproached himself for not having been more on the alert.
“Fool that I was,” he cried, “to be thus taken off my guard! That woman gave me warning, and yet I have failed to profit by it.”
There was a small stone bench near where he was standing, and on to this he sank, and pressing his hands to his head, he murmured—
“My poor wife, God bless her; we shall never meet again.”
In a little time he grew calmer, and, rising from his seat, he once more made an inspection of his prison. But the slimy stone walls and the solid iron door seemed to mock all thought of escape, as they certainly shut out every sound—at least no sound reached his ear. The silence of death was around him. The awful suspense was almost unendurable. He felt as if he should go mad, and he was half-tempted, in those first moments of despair and chagrin, to dash his brains out against the dripping wall. He paced the chamber in the agony of despair. He threw himself on the stone seat again. And as the thought of those he loved, and that he might never see them any more, flashed through his brain, he felt as if he were really going mad.
Suddenly, out of his confused ideas, out of the mental chaos to which he had been well-nigh reduced, a question suggested itself to him, and an image rose up before his view.
It was the image of Haidee. The light of her eyes seemed to shine upon him from out of the thick darkness. He saw the beauty of her form, veiled in her costly, jewelled drapery, and her magnificent hair floating around her.
“Who is that strange beautiful woman?” was the question he asked, as in his imagination he saw her stand before him.
Then he followed it by another.
“Why did she interest herself in me? I must surely be totally unknown to her?”
But the questions were more easily asked than answered. It was a mystery of which he could scarcely hope at that moment to find the solution.
Exhausted with his long ride, and the great excitement under which he had laboured, he sank into an uneasy doze. How long he had remained thus he had no means of knowing; but he was suddenly startled by the boom of a heavy gun, that seemed to shake his dungeon, solid as it was.
He sprang to his feet. He thought he would hear wild shouts and the clashing of arms.
Boom!
Again a gun gave tongue. It appeared to be directly overhead.
Another and another quickly followed. His heart beat violently; a clammy perspiration stood upon his brow; not from any craven fear, but from the awful thought that murder and rapine were broken loose, and he, young and active, with an arm powerful to wield a sword, was imprisoned there, and utterly helpless as if he had been bound in iron gyves.
“Heaven above,” he cried, “is there no hope for me?”
Scarcely had the words left his lips than he was made aware that a key was being inserted in the lock of the small iron door in the recess. He would have given much at that moment for a weapon. Even a stick he would have been grateful for. But his arms were yet free. He had the power of youth in them, and he was determined to make a bold effort, to let at least one life go out with his own, and he resolved that the first man who entered he would endeavour to strangle.
He stood up in the recess, ready to spring forward. The key grated harshly; the lock had evidently not been used for some time. Then there was the sound of bolts being worked in their sockets. It was a moment of awful suspense. Nay, it seemed an age to him, as he stood there panting and waiting, with rapidly beating heart, for what might be revealed.
Presently the bolts yielded. The key was turned, and a long strip of light illuminated the recess.
“Hush, silence, for your life!” a soft voice whispered; and to his astonished gaze there appeared the form of Haidee, who bore in her hand a small lamp, and whose figure was clothed in the ordinary muslin garments worn by the native peasant women.