WAKING DREAMS.
To Harper and Martin it was weary waiting through that long day. They dozed occasionally, but suspense and anxiety kept them from enjoying any lengthened or sound sleep.
Occasionally sounds of firing, and yells of riotous mobs reached them, but nothing to indicate that an action was being sustained in the city.
In fact, with the massacre of the Europeans, and the destruction of the magazine, there was nothing for the mutineers to do but to quarrel amongst themselves and to bury their dead.
The city was in their hands. Its almost exhaustless treasures, its priceless works of art, its fabulous wealth, were all at the disposal of the murderous mob.
And never, in the annals of history, was city sacked with such ruthless vandalism, or such ferocious barbarity. Some of the most beautiful buildings were levelled to the ground from sheer wantonness. Costly fabrics were brought out and trampled in the dust, and the streets ran red with wine.
All the gates were closed, the guards were set. And for a time the hypocritical and treacherous old King believed that his power was supreme, and that the English were verily driven out of India.
But he did not look beyond the walls of his city. Had he and his hordes of murderers cared to have turned their eyes towards the horizon of the future, they might have seen the mailed hand of the English conqueror, which, although it could be warded off for a little while, would ultimately come down with crushing effect on the black races.
Perhaps they did see this, and, knowing that their power was short-lived, they made the most of it.
As the day waned, Harper and his companion began to gaze anxiously in the direction of the avenue, along which they expected Haidee to come.
The narrow limits of their hiding-place, and the enforced confinement, were irksome in the extreme, and they were both willing to run many risks for the sake of gaining their liberty.
“That is a strange woman,” said Martin, as he sat on a stone, and gazed thoughtfully up to the waving palm boughs.
“Who?” asked Harper abruptly, for he had been engaged in cogitations, but Haidee had formed no part of them.
“Who? why, Haidee,” was the equally abrupt answer.
“In what way do you consider she is strange?” Harper queried, somewhat pointedly.
“Well, it is not often an Oriental woman will risk her life for a foreigner, as she is doing for you.”
“But she has personal interests to serve in so doing.”
“Possibly; but they are of secondary consideration.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. There is a feeling in her breast stronger and more powerful than her hatred for the King or Moghul Singh.”
“What feeling is that?”
“Love.”
“Love! For whom?”
“For you.”
“Well, I must confess that she plainly told me so,” laughed Harper; “but I thought very little about the matter, although at the time I was rather astonished.”
“I can understand that. But, however lightly you may treat the matter, it is a very serious affair with her.”
“But what authority, my friend, have you for speaking so definitely?”
“The authority of personal experience. I spent some years in Cashmere, attached to the corps of a surveying expedition. The women there are full of romantic notions. They live in a land that is poetry itself. They talk in poetry. They draw it in with every breath they take. Their idiosyncrasies are peculiar to themselves, for I never found the same characteristics in any other nation’s women. They are strangely impetuous, strong in their attachments, true to their promises. And the one theme which seems to be the burden of their lives is love.”
“And a very pretty theme too,” Harper remarked.
“When once they have placed their affections,” Martin went on, without seeming to notice the interruption, “they are true to the death. And if the object dies, it is seldom a Cashmere woman loves again. But when they do, the passion springs up, or rather, is instantly re-awakened. There are some people who affect to sneer at what is called ‘love at first sight.’ Well, I don’t pretend to understand much about the mysterious laws of affinity, but the women of Cashmere are highly-charged electrical machines. The latent power may lie dormant for a long time, until the proper contact is made—then there is a flash immediately; and, from that moment, their hearts thrill, and throb, and yearn for the being who has set the power in motion.”
“But you don’t mean to say that I have aroused such a feeling in Haidee’s breast?”
“I do mean to say so.”
“Poor girl!” sighed Harper, “that is most unfortunate for her.”
“She is worthy of your sympathy, as she is of your love.”
“But you forget that I have a wife.”
“No, I do not forget that. I mean, that if you were free, she is a worthy object.”
“But even if I were single, I could not marry this woman.”
“Could not; why not?”
“What! marry a Cashmere woman?”
“Yes; is there anything so outré in that? You would not be the first Englishman who has done such a thing. Why, I have known Britishers mate with North American Indian women before now.”
“True; but still the idea of Haidee being my wife is such a novel one that I cannot realise it.”
“The heart is a riddle; and human affections are governed by no fixed laws.”
“But really, Martin, we are discussing this matter to no purpose. If Haidee entertains any such passion as that you speak of, it is unfortunate.”
“It is, indeed, unfortunate for her, because if her love is unreciprocated she will languish and die.”
“What do you mean?” asked Harper sharply, and with a touch of indignation. “Surely you would not counsel me to be dishonourable to my wife?”
“God forbid. You misjudge me if you think so. I speak pityingly of Haidee. It is no fault of yours if she has made you the star that must henceforth be her only light. What I have told you are facts, and you may live to prove them so!”
Harper did not reply. His companion’s words had set him pondering. There was silence between the two men, as if they had exhausted the subject, and none other suggested itself to them. The short twilight had faded over the land, the dark robe of night had fallen. It was moonless, even the stars were few, for the queen of night appeared in sullen humour. There were heavy masses of clouds drifting through the heavens, and fitful gusts of wind seemed to presage a storm. The boughs of the overhanging palms rustled savagely, and the child-like cry of the flying foxes sounded weirdly. There was that in the air which told that nature meant war. And sitting there with the many strange sounds around them, and only the glimmer of the stars to relieve the otherwise perfect darkness, what wonder that these two men should dream even as they watched and waited.
Martin had bowed his head in his hands again. Possibly his nerves had not recovered from the shock of the awful fiery storm that had swept over his head but a short time before; and he felt, even as he had said, that he was a waif. Like unto the lonely mariner who rises to the surface after his ship has gone down into the depths beneath him, and as he gazes mournfully around, he sees nothing but the wild waters, which in their savage cruelty had beaten the lives out of friends and companions, but left him, his destiny not being yet completed—left him for some strange purpose.
Harper was gazing upward—upward to where those jewels of the night glittered. He had fixed his eye upon one brighter than the rest. Martin’s words seemed to ring in his ears—“It is no fault of yours if she has made you the star that must henceforth be her only light.” And that star appeared to him, not as a star, but as Haidee’s face, with its many changing expressions. Her eyes, wonderful in their shifting lights, seemed to burn into his very soul. And a deep and true pity for this beautiful woman took possession of him; poets have said that “pity is akin to love.” If no barrier had stood between him and her, what course would he have pursued? was a question that suggested itself to him. Martin had spoken of the mysterious laws of affinity; they were problems too abstruse to be dwelt upon then. But Harper knew that they existed; he felt that they did. How could he alter them? Could he stay the motes from dancing in the sunbeam? He might shut out the beam, but the motes would still be there. So with this woman; though he might fly from her to the farthest ends of the earth, her haunting presence would still be with him. He knew that; but why should it be so? He dare not answer the question; for when an answer would have shaped itself in his brain, there came up another face and stood between him and Haidee’s. It was his wife’s face. He saw it as it appeared on the night when he left Meerut on his journey to Delhi—full of sorrow, anxiety, and terror on his account; and he remembered how she clung to him, hung around his neck, and would not let him go until—remembering she was a soldier’s wife—she released him with a blessing, and bade him go where duty called. And as he remembered this he put up a silent prayer to the Great Reader of the secrets of all hearts that he might be strengthened in his purpose, and never swerve from the narrow way of duty and honour.
The dreams of the dreamers were broken. The visionary was displaced by the reality, and Haidee stood before them. She had come up so stealthily that they had not heard her approach. Nor would they have been conscious that she was there if she had not spoken, for the darkness revealed nothing, and even the stars were getting fewer as the clouds gathered.
“Are you ready?” she asked, in a low tone.
“Yes, yes,” they both answered, springing from their seats, and waking once more to a sense of their true position.
“Take this,” she said, as she handed Harper a large cloak to hide his white shirt, for it will be remembered that his uniform had been stripped from him. “And here is a weapon—the best I could procure.” She placed in his hand a horse-pistol and some cartridges. “Let us go; but remember that the keenest vigilance is needed. The enemy is legion, and death threatens us at every step.”
Harper wrapped the cloak round him, and, loading the pistol, thrust it into his belt.
“I am ready,” he said.
She drew close to him. She took his hand, and bringing her face near to his, murmured—
“Haidee lives or dies for you.”
The silent trio went out into the darkness of the night. Heavy rain-drops were beginning to patter down. The wind was gaining the strength of a hurricane. Then the curtain of the sky seemed to be suddenly rent by a jagged streak of blue flame, that leapt from horizon to horizon, and was followed by a crashing peal of thunder that reverberated with startling distinctness.
“Fortune is kind,” whispered Haidee; “and the storm will favour our escape.”
Scarcely had the words left her lips than a shrill cry of alarm sounded close to their ears, and Harper suddenly found himself held in a vice-like grip.