A DEADLY STRIFE.
“Your arrival is well-timed,” said Jewan, turning to Zeemit.
“I see that it is so,” she answered. “I soon discovered in Delhi that you had left, and I determined to follow you, for poor old Zeemit is alone in the world now. I was lucky in meeting with Wanna. Some years ago I was in Cawnpore, and I knew her then. When she learnt that I had followed you, she lost no time in conducting me here.”
“I am glad of it,” said Jewan. “My prize will be safely kept now. Guard her well, Zeemit; and you, Wanna, if you value your life, look to her! You understand? She has dared to defy me, and I swear to subdue her!”
He crossed the room to where Flora still trembled, and crouched upon the floor. He stooped over, and said, with bitterness—
“I leave you now. Business calls me hence, but I shall return to-night, and then we will see who conquers.”
He passed out of the room, and Wanna locked the door after him. It was an inexpressible relief to Flora when he had gone. But when she raised her head, and her eyes fell upon Wanna’s face, she shuddered. It was a face scarcely human in its expression of hate. She turned to Zeemit—she had given her hope in Meerut—why had she failed her now? She could read little or nothing in the dusky features. Her heart sank, for the glimmering ray that had supported her hitherto seemed to fade entirely.
“Come,” said Wanna, spurning the trembling girl with her foot, “here is food for you; I suppose I must keep life in you until Jewan has sucked your sweetness. What he can see in you I know not. It is a mad infatuation, and he will get the better of it; but if I had my way I would torture you. I would spoil your beauty—I would pluck your eyes out—I would lop off a limb from your body every day—I would burn you with hot irons. Ah, ah, ah! it would be sport! Eh, Zeemit, what say you? We have been ground as corn in a mill by these accursed Feringhees; and now that our day has come, have we not a right to be glad?”
She hummed the air of an Indian ditty, and fairly danced about the room with fiendish glee.
“Oh, woman!” moaned the unhappy Flora, “if you are not altogether inhuman, have pity, and kill me.”
“Ugh, bah, pish! pity indeed,” cried Wanna, moving about backwards and forwards in that restless and strange manner peculiar to caged, wild animals. “Have we ever had pity from your countrymen? Have you not crushed us into the earth?—subdued us with fire and sword? And now that our power is coming back we know well how to retaliate.”
As she spoke she spat upon the floor twice, and made a sort of hissing sound with her lips.[5]
“Why do you not get up?” asked Zeemit, in a tone that contrasted strangely with the savageness and cruelty of Wanna.
The ray brightened again for Flora. She caught comfort from that voice; but when she looked into the face she saw nothing to justify the inference she had drawn. The kindliness displayed in Zeemit’s voice did not escape Wanna, who turned sharply upon her country-woman and cried—
“How is this? You speak to the white-faced cat as if she were your pet dove, instead of an enemy.”
“Scarcely an enemy, Wanna. Her only crime seems to be that she is a Feringhee.”
“She is a beast.”
“She is a woman, and I feel as a woman should do for her.”
Zeemit’s words were to Flora like water to the parched earth. They gave her hope, they gave her joy; she drank them in with avidity, and gained strength. She rose up and would have clung around the neck of her ayah, had not the attitude of Wanna appalled her.
The hag stood facing Zeemit. The bangles on her legs and arms chinked as she shook with passion. She was clawing the air, and almost foaming at the mouth. She struggled to speak, but her passion well-nigh choked her. Words came at last.
“You sympathise with this Feringhee woman. I see through you—you are an enemy to us, a friend to her. But, if you thought to liberate her, you have set up a trap into which you yourself have blindly walked. I go for Jewan.”
She made a movement towards the door. To let her go would frustrate every plan. Zeemit knew that it was no time for reflection. It was woman to woman—age to age; for on both the years pressed heavily. With a lithe and agile spring she fastened upon Wanna, who, with the sudden instinct of self-preservation and the ferocity of the jungle cat, twisted her bony fingers round and dug her nails deep into the flesh of the other’s arms.
It was a strange scene. From the wall the picture of the idol seemed to grin hideously. Speechless with terror, poor Flora stood wringing her hands. The two women, panting with the first shock of attack, glared at each other, and over all there fell the weird, flickering light of the swinging cocoa-lamp.
As in all Indian buildings of this kind, there was a long window in the room opening on to a verandah. The jalousies were thrown back. The stars in the heavens were shining, and from below came up the sounds of the voices of the natives, who were beating their tom-toms and making merry.
Miss Meredith moved to this verandah. She peered over. She could see groups of people below. Her first impulse was to call for assistance, but in an instant she was convinced of the madness of such a proceeding. On the issue of the struggle her life depended. She might go free if Zeemit conquered—die if the triumph was Wanna’s.
“Give me the key of that door,” demanded Zeemit, when she had recovered breath enough for speech.
“Never while my heart beats,” answered the other.
“Then I will take it from you when your heart has done beating,” said Zeemit.
Mehal was slightly the taller of the two women, and her arms were longer. In this respect she, perhaps, had an advantage.
The women struggled furiously. Now they were locked in a deadly embrace, now parted, only to spring together again with increased ferocity. Never did wild animals grip and tear, and hiss, and struggle more savagely than did these two women. But the springs which moved them both to action were of a totally different nature. A kindly desire to render assistance to one in distress was Mehal’s motive—a deadly hatred for the Englishwoman was the other’s.
They dragged each other round the room; they panted with the extraordinary exertion which each made to gain the victory; their muslin garments were encrimsoned with blood and rent to shreds. Now they dashed against the stone walls, then reeled and tottered to the floor, writhing in the agony of the terrible grip which each had of the other. Rising again, covered with dust and blood, and their limbs locked together like snakes—their faces contorted with pain and passion, and their breath coming thick and fast.
It was an awful moment for Flora. She would have rendered assistance to Mehal, but that was impracticable, as she found, for Wanna twisted herself about so rapidly as to frustrate the attempts which Flora made to grasp her.
It was truly a struggle for life; for, ere it ceased, one of the strugglers must die. They knew that, and so they fought with the desperate energy which nerves a human being when dear life is at stake.
The efforts of Wanna were growing gradually weaker. Mehal had worked one of her hands up to the other’s throat, and she was pressing her thumb and fingers together, until Wanna’s eyes started.
The hag knew now that only by a desperate effort could she free herself, and save her life. But even if that were impossible, she was determined that her antagonist should not live to enjoy her triumph.
She put forth what little strength remained in her withered frame. It was an upleaping of the dying fire again, and for a moment the battle raged fiercer than ever. They spun round, and reeled, and staggered.
The end was coming. Wanna felt that. With an almost superhuman effort, she managed to drag her foe to the verandah, and, with a quick and sudden movement, drew the key from her girdle, and, uttering a cry of ferocious joy, was about to hurl it over the railings. But a counter-movement of Mehal’s broke the force of the jerk, and the key fell on the extreme edge.
Flora darted forward, but she could not pass the combatants.
Wanna saw that her chance had gone. But nerving herself for one final struggle, she dragged Mehal round. They lost their balance—they fell to the floor—they rolled against the wooden railings, which, old and rotten with age, broke down with a crash. Away went the key into space. The two women were on the extreme edge of the verandah!
Flora rushed forward once more. She made a frantic clutch at their garments, with a view of dragging them back.
It was too late!
Death let fall his spear, and took the stakes. The fighters rolled over, and Flora stood petrified with horror, still holding in her hands some remnants of blood-stained garments.
The wind moaned amongst the ivy on the walls. In its wailing she seemed to hear a prophetic voice that told her the struggle she had been an unwilling witness to between the two women, but represented the greater struggle between two races that had just commenced; and, before it could end, the soil of India should be drenched with blood.
The night wind moaned. It sounded in her ears like a requiem for her slaughtered friends. It seemed like an agonised cry of pain, wrung from hearts suffering almost more than mortal sorrow.
The night wind moaned—a dirge-like moan, that told that the Angel of Peace had been beaten, broken-winged, into the dust; and through the Orient land were stalking the grim demons, War and Woe.
The night wind spoke. It told her that the catastrophe she had just witnessed destroyed every hope of escape she might have had, for with Zeemit her best friend had gone.
She heard Jewan Bukht’s voice in the wind—a voice malignant and cruel.
“I will return to-night, and then we will see who conquers!”
Those were his parting words. As the wind repeated them to her, it called her back to a sense of her awful danger. Her almost stilled heart sprang into life again. It throbbed with the wildness of fear and horror at what the consequences might be if he returned.
She could foil him yet; in her hands she held her own life. An effort of will, and she could snap the “silver thread” and break the “golden bowl.” Three paces forward, and a plunge down into the dark depth, whence had rolled the bodies of Zeemit and Wanna.
Were it not better to die than to live to shame and misery?
When all hope has fled, when everything that can make life endurable has gone, has not the time come to die? She thought this. And the moaning wind answered her, and said “Yes.”
A plunge, a rapid descent, a terrific shock, and then the end.
She looked up to the silent stars. They seemed to look down pityingly on her. Mentally her gaze wandered beyond the stars, to the plains of peace, to the White Throne of Mercy and Justice, and she put up a prayer for forgiveness.
Be still, wild heart! cease, oh, throbbing brain! death is merciful.
She took a step forward—she closed her eyes—she threw up her arms; and, bending her body, she was about to take the fatal leap, when a voice reached her.
Not of the wind this time, but a human voice, that cried for help, that told of pain.
She went down on her knees. She peered over the broken verandah into the darkness. She could see nothing. The voice had ceased, and there was silence again, save that the “ivy rustled and the wind moaned.”