Devil's Wind (13 page)

When they were clear of the house, they had to cross the wide dusty sweep which ran all round it. The dust already raised by all those hastening feet flew up, and hung about them like a mist, only it was dry. It parched their throats, and stung their eyes.

Beyond the sweep a narrow grassy path ran between low rose hedges whose flowers were dead, and whose long thorny trails stretched out across the path, and caught at the women's dresses as they ran. When they had gone twenty yards the path turned off at right angles, and for another twenty yards there was no cover at all, and they were full in view of the black advancing crowd.

For the Sikhs were all down now. Every man of them dead, with the dead he had killed around him. In the gateway the corpses lay so thick that it was easier for the mutineers to climb the outer wall than to pass the gate which was guarded by the dead. They broke over the wall as a wave breaks—Cavalry, Infantry, men in the English red, with the English rifle in their grip, and hate of the English in their hearts, men in the loose white native dress, high-caste Brahmins, fanatic Mussulmans, bazaar scum, united by a common thirst for blood and loot.

After one glance Helen looked only in front of her. She had to drag Adela along, for panic was passing with exhaustion, and she was thankful that she herself felt neither.

Instead there was an excitement—almost elation—that urged her on, and gave her strength. She found herself noticing everything,—the blazing heat of the sun, the fact that the sky was hazy and showed no blue. She wondered if that were because of the dust of their flight, and a strange and terrible verse came into her mind and stayed there, “And the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon to blood.” Only which of them would live to see the moon?

There seemed no end to the path. There were bright indigo shadows on it, odd crisscross shadows, that changed the colour of the grass, and flickered on the women's gowns. Suddenly the grass at Helen's feet was ripped up. A puff of dust rose from it, and her foot felt a little roughness as she passed. Adela screamed, and hung back, and a loud crackling noise came from the direction of the gate. Helen's mind, working quite clearly and, as it seemed to her, quite slowly, informed her that they were being fired upon, but that they must keep on—because that was what Dick had told them to do.

She dragged Adela forward, and just in front of them she saw some one, Miss Darcy she thought, fall sideways across the path. She made no sound, but she moved a little, and one of the clear indigo shadows became blurred with red. Mrs. da Souza, the fat Eurasian woman, called wildly, and shrilly, upon her Maker, and dropped among the bushes, covering her head, but Helen stepped across the body, and pulled Adela after her by main force.

Helen looked down as they passed and saw the woman's face. It was Miss Darcy, and she was dead. You must be dead if a bullet goes in at your temple, and leaves a strange ragged hole like that. Helen felt no emotion. She was rather glad that Miss Darcy was quite dead, because otherwise she would have been obliged to wait, and try and pick her up, and Miss Darcy was heavy.

It would probably have ended in Adela being shot too, and whatever happened to other people, she must save Adela. Mr. Hill was down now. Not wounded, but too exhausted to go any farther. He lay on his face and sobbed, and his wife sat down beside him, and tried to screen the sun from his head with her small, useless hands. The tears ran down her face all the time, and spoilt little Jacky tugged at her skirts.

Helen caught the child's hand as she went past, but a yard or two farther on he wrenched away from her, and stumbled back to his mother. Adela noticed nothing, and Helen's eyes were set on the turn of the path only just ahead of them now. There was cover there—tall clumps of oleander and bamboo. To come into the shade of them was like coming into safety, but as they reached it, and pressed on, Helen heard a scream, and something seemed to cry out in her, with a loud insistent calling.

She pushed Adela behind the bamboos, and said in a strained whisper:

“Not a child. One can't. It's no good; go on, Adie—I'll come,” and she turned and ran back.

But when she came to where Mr. Hill had fallen, he had stopped panting for breath, and Mrs. Hill lay across him with a bullet in her breast, and a dead child clutched in her arms.

Helen crouched between the roses, and stared at them, but none of the three moved, or would move again.

She felt neither grief nor horror. They were dead. Now she could go on, and that clear insistent calling would trouble her no more. She looked towards the house and saw that it was on fire. The mutineers were looting it, but it would not occupy them for long. A bullet sang past her cheek, and another ripped the muslin of her skirt, but she reached the turn of the path again, and pushed her way into the bamboo clump to where she could see Adela Morton's white dress.

“Come, Adie.”

But Adela was leaning against the bamboo stems half sitting, half kneeling, and her face was white and wet.

“I'm fainting!” she gasped, and Helen's grasp tightened on her arm.

“If you faint, they will kill you!” she said in a low hard voice; and Adela clung to her and trembled, and aided by the slope of the ground, Helen dragged her a few yards, but the weight on her arm grew heavier and heavier, and it was all she could do to keep from falling.

“I can't.”

The words were only just audible. They ended in a long shudder and Adela sank helplessly to the ground. Helen let her go and straightened herself. Then she unfastened the large brooch at her neck, and ran the pin very deliberately into Adela's arm.

The blood spurted, and Adela came out of her half-swoon with a scream.

“Get up, Adie,” commanded Helen. “They'll hurt you more than that. Being killed will hurt!”

Adela stumbled to her feet sobbing, and again they ran. They were quite out of sight of the house by now, and every moment the ground sloped more. It grew very rough too, and seemed damper. Here and there were high tussocks of grass, and there was a quantity of low, dusty scrub, and a few tall trees.

Helen proceeded in a definite direction. She had a clear picture in her mind and kept constantly to the right, calling to Mrs. Elliot to do the same. Grace Elliot's long fair hair had come down, and there was a blood-stain on her shoulder, but she ran steadily, holding her baby, and keeping beside Helen, until the sound of the noise and the shouting died away, and their breath failed them.

At last Helen slackened her pace, and stood for a moment listening.

“No one is coming,” she said in a husky voice. “No one is coming,” and she let go of Adela, and took a deep breath.

Mrs. Elliot had halted too. She came a few paces nearer, panting.

“Is it safe? Ought we to stop?”

And Helen repeated the same words again.

“No one is coming.”

“Are you sure? Is it safe?”

Safe? Nothing was safe any more, but Helen nodded, and Grace Elliot sat down, and rocked her little silent baby.

Helen stood for a moment longer, still listening. Then she too sat down, and laid her head in her hands. So often in the last few days she had wondered what it would be like when it came, what she should feel—and do. She had wondered whether she would be afraid; whether she would run, and scream. The idea had terrified her more than the idea of death. She had had a vision of herself screaming, and running, and a long thin knife coming nearer and nearer, until it touched the flesh—the warm, live flesh. The thought of that knife was dreadful. It would be cold, very cold, and the cold chill of death would slide along the blade, and pierce between the pulsings of her heart. That was the picture—the vision.

The reality was quite different. She did not feel afraid, because all feeling had quite, quite stopped. She did not feel at all. From battle and murder, and from sudden death, good Lord deliver us. She had seen all three, and she felt nothing at all. She had seen women killed, and a little child, and she had felt nothing.

Adela was crying beside her, as if her heart would break, and Helen lifted her head for a moment, and rebuked her coldly and sternly, and then felt vaguely sorry. After all it was proper for Adela to weep, since Adela was a widow now. Widows ought to cry. Dick was dead. Yes, Dick must certainly be dead, or they two would not be sitting there so comfortless in the dust.

Sharp on her wandering thoughts came Mrs. Elliot's voice.

“Helen! Helen Wilmot!”

Helen raised her head.

“What is it?”

“I can't wake my baby.”

“Why do you want to wake her?”

It was like a conversation in a dream, all about nothing, and yet instinct with some nightmare quality, which quivered behind the common words.

“I can't wake her,” repeated Mrs. Elliot, in a low, hurrying voice.

Helen leaned forward and touched the baby's hand. It was lax and warm. Somehow the warmth of it shocked her. She knew as she touched it that she had expected to find it cold. Dead hands were cold.

“Its hand is quite warm,” she said vaguely, and Mrs. Elliot gave a sharp, terrified cry.

“Of course her hand is warm,” she said, and then went back to her old complaint; “but I can't wake her!”

Adela Morton looked up with the tears running down her face.

“Is the baby dead?” she whispered to Helen, but the mother heard.

“What?” she said, and gave her a fierce look of hatred. Then she turned away her head, and they could see nothing but the long fair hair that fell all around her, and the smear of blood on her left shoulder.

“Hush, Adela!” said Helen, and Adela began to cry again, whilst Helen sat staring, and Mrs. Elliot rocked and rocked with the baby on her knee.

The heat of the day increased. The sun beat down. The thin shade overhead seemed to be burning away. Helen leaned her head against the tree behind her, and shut her eyes.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW ONE WAS TAKEN AND ANOTHER LEFT

Why do we gather so slowly the strength that must pass away,

Wrested in patience from Time and spent in an hour, in a day?

Month upon month to the birth, and afterwards year upon year,

Fashioned in labour and pain, nurtured in striving and fear,

All we have gathered from Time, passes, is gone like a breath

Into the vast, unknown, unharvested garner of Death.

It might have been an hour later, or it might have been some much shorter time, when Imam Bux came to them through the bushes, guided by the sound of Adela's low persistent sobbing.

For a moment he stood and watched the three women, with the tears running down his brown and wrinkled cheeks. Then he called, “Mem Sahib! Mem Sahib!” and Adela's little scream woke Helen from the doze into which she had fallen. At first she saw only a dazzle of glittering light and dusty green. Then her eyes cleared.

“It is Imam Bux,” she said. “Adela, hush! Do you hear?—hush! Be quiet, don't cry. It is Imam Bux.”

“Huzoor,” said the old man, salaaming with a shaky hand.

Helen got up, pressing her hands upon her temples. The dreamlike feeling had faded. She felt clearer, and she was responsible. Dick had made her responsible. A stab of pain brought her completely to herself.

“Imam Bux, what must we do? The Sahib said ‘Go to Cawnpore—' How can we go? Do you know how we can reach the road?”

“Huzoor, I know.”

She drew the old servant aside.

“Where is the Sahib?” she asked. “Is he dead? Do you think he is dead?” and her voice was steady because her strong will kept it so.

Imam Bux wrung his hands.

“God knows!” he said. “Many sahibs are dead. It is a madness. It is the devil's breath. These sons of Satan have killed many sahibs. Perhaps my Sahib is dead. They say he must be dead. God knows.”

“Who says?” asked Helen sharply.

“It was Purslake Sahib who said it.”

“Where is he? When did you see him?”

“He also is hiding here in the jungle, and with him is Blake Sahib, very sorely wounded, and the Colonel's Mem, and one of the Miss Sahibs.”

“Are they far?”

“A half mile, Miss Sahib. Also the child I carried is with them. I returned to look for my Mem Sahib, and my Miss Sahib—”

“We will go to them,” said Helen, and she went back to Adela and Mrs. Elliot.

“Imam Bux says that Captain Blake and Mr. Purslake are a little farther on; Mrs. Crowther is with them, and one of the girls.”

Adela Morton sprang up with a cry of relief. A man—any man—spelled protection and safety. She had cried until she could cry no more, and was ready now to be saved and comforted. The idea that this was only the beginning of troubles had not presented itself to her mind.

But Mrs. Elliot rose slowly. She was shivering although the heat was so great, and she turned the baby's face into her bosom, so that Helen should not see it.

They came upon the other little band of refugees quite suddenly. Carrie Crowther saw them first, and she came running to meet them, sobbing, and trembling with excitement. Her eyes were bright, and there was a colour in her cheeks. She looked very pretty.

“Oh, Miss Wilmot! Oh, Mrs. Elliot!” she panted. “Oh, isn't it dreadful? Isn't it too dreadful? My poor papa and Milly! Do you know they shot them? They shot poor Milly.” She choked and caught at Helen's arm. “Mamma had gone back to fetch the Sergeant's baby, and they shot poor Milly whilst we were running together. We were holding hands, and she fell down, and I couldn't lift her up, and then mamma came, and she made me run again. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

Adela Morton pushed past her and clutched at Mr. Purslake.

“Oh, I thought every one was dead! Thank God! Thank God!” she cried.

To do her justice it was not the man with whom she had flirted to whom she clung, but to safety, protection, help, all personified in the one able-bodied man of the party.

Mrs. Crowther, on the ground beside Captain Blake's unconscious form, lifted her head heavily, and stared at the new arrivals. She frowned a little at Adela, and then looked vaguely towards Helen and Mrs. Elliot.

Oddly enough Helen's first pang of pity stirred in her at the sight of this woman whom she had so cordially disliked.

Mrs. Crowther's brick-coloured face was now of a uniform streaming crimson. Her brilliant hair hung in wet wisps across her forehead and down upon her shoulders. There were horrible stains, not yet dry, upon the front of the light dress she wore. Her harsh features twitched, and she made two attempts to speak before any words would come.

Then she said in a dull, strained voice:

“It is very hot. It is very, very hot.”

She turned her head away, and the effort with which she moved it was pitiable to see. Then she went on fanning George Blake with a wide, dusty leaf.

Helen came up to her, and knelt down.

“Is he dead?” she asked in a whisper, looking at the half-closed eyes and deadly pallor.

“Not yet,” said Mrs. Crowther. Then she lifted her own eyes, and Helen saw that they were rimmed with red, and bloodshot—dreadfully bloodshot.

“My poor Colonel is dead, and Milly, and they say Captain Elliot too. No, I don't know who told me.”

“And Dick?”

Helen spoke very quickly because she knew that if she waited for a moment, she would not dare to ask.

“Dick—where is Dick?”

Mrs. Crowther shook her head, and went on fanning.

“Mr. Purslake.” Helen's eyes compelled him, and it was at her, and not at Adela, that he looked as he replied:

“I don't know. I really don't know. It all happened so quickly.”

“Tell me what happened, please.”

He passed his hand over his brow.

“My orderly ran in and said that the barracks were on fire, and that Captain Elliot had been shot.” He lowered his voice. “Then we heard firing and ran out. Our lines were on fire. There was great confusion. Noise. Blake caught hold of a bugler and told him to sound the assembly, and then some one rushed up and said the Colonel was shot. I don't really know how it all happened. My head—I don't seem able to think. But some one called out Morton's name, and I saw him jump his horse over the ditch and ride towards us with a revolver in his hand. Then Blake was shot, and his orderly was holding him on his horse, so I got up behind him. One of the native officers helped; and I galloped off, and got across the nullah, and found Mrs. and Miss Crowther. That is really all I can tell you, Miss Wilmot.”

He passed his hand over his forehead again, and looked vaguely from her to Adela. His hazel eyes had the look of shallow shifting water.

“But Richard. Oh, I don't understand.”

This time it was Adela who asked:

“Where is Richard?”

Mr. Purslake looked dreadfully uncomfortable. He was not formed for tragedy. He felt bewildered and confused, like an actor who has learned his trivial part, and finds himself suddenly set to play the hero in some strange unknown drama.

Carrie Crowther broke the silence with a sob, and Adela cried out: “Why did he leave us? It was very wicked of him to leave us. What shall we do now!”

Helen Wilmot took a grip of herself. If this were a dream, an awful, awful dream, she would wake soon, because to every dream there comes the moment of awaking, and if it were not a dream, if it were real, then there was work to do, and a high part to play. By and by this too would end. Life's dream would break, and there would be a new awakening.

Meanwhile she must not let her reason go—must keep at bay the impulse that prompted her to sit down, there in the dust, and let the mists close in upon her brain.

Helen drew a little away from Mrs. Crowther, whose loud, slow breathing was more distressing to listen to than any sound of weeping. She was trying to think. Some one must think, arrange, direct; she was wondering to whom they could look. George Blake—so near that her hand touched his soiled uniform. He would have been their helper, but unconsciousness buried him now, as deeply almost as any grave of earth. She looked around her at the little band of forlorn creatures. Carrie with her high flush, fever-bright eyes, and lips that were never still for one moment. Adela, wearied out, her head against the rough bark of a tree, and a strand of her shining hair all in a tangle across her breast, which heaved with a continual sobbing. Beyond them, just where the shade began, Mrs. Elliot standing quite still, a tense, unmoving figure, with her head bent above the unmoving child. Farther off again, under a clump of bushes, Imam Bux, sitting on his heels, and swaying distressfully to an accompaniment of low whimpers from Johnny da Souza who squatted beside him.

Here was no help, only great helplessness. Helen's eyes and thoughts travelled back, and rested upon Charles Purslake. One shall be taken and another left. The words passed through her mind. It seemed very strange that he should be left when so many were taken. If only it were he who lay here unconscious, and George Blake were in his place. Or Dick. No, she must not think of Dick—only of what Dick had left her to do.

She looked again at Mr. Purslake—at the dejected droop of his shoulders, and the nervous movement of his hands. One of them hung down, and the fingers beat upon the ground as if spelling out a tune. Continually he cleared his throat, and every now and then he put his hand to it, and coughed, and then fell to drumming on the ground again.

Helen got up, and went over to him. Touching him on the shoulder, she beckoned him a little away from Adela.

“Mr. Purslake, what are we to do?” she asked in a low voice.

He threw out his hands.

“We must wait here till nightfall.”

“Yes, and then?”

“Heaven knows!”

“I think we must know too. Dick”—her voice was quite steady, “Dick said to make for Cawnpore, but it is thirty miles by the road. We can't walk. That is, you and I might perhaps, but not the others.”

Mr. Purslake began to pull himself together. Helen was looking him very straight in the face. He did not admire her composure, but it had a stimulating effect upon him.

“If you could get a cart—one of those big bullock carts,” she was saying, and the consciousness that it was she and not he who was taking the initiative stung him into making a suggestion of his own.

“Too slow. Why, a bullock cart only goes three miles an hour.”

“Yes, but it keeps on; and I've been thinking, it will attract less notice than anything else. If we start as soon as it is dark, we should reach Cawnpore in the morning.”

Purslake made an impatient movement.

“My dear Miss Wilmot, how are we to get a bullock cart, or any other cart, for the matter of that? There is Blake's horse, and that is all we can count on in the way of transport.”

He laughed feebly.

Helen put up her hand.

“Imam Bux must get us a cart.”

“And bring those rascals down on us?”

“Nothing is safe, but we can't stay here. Wait a moment and I'll speak to him. He will do what he can.”

Imam Bux was terribly shaken, and a sickly pallor showed beneath the brown of his skin. He put piteous hands together when Helen made it clear what she required.

He was a poor man. He was an old man. Whence could he obtain a bullock cart? The sons of Satan would kill him. Certainly they would kill him, and then there would be nobody to protect his Mem Sahib and his Miss Sahib.

Helen listened to the wavering excuses, and met each one with comfort, encouragement, and praise. Her heart sank, but she looked kindly at the old man, and by and by when he had talked his fill, he shuffled away through the bushes, and Helen took the little Da Souza boy by the hand, and went back to Mr. Purslake.

“He will do it,” she said. “And he will come back here, and let us know. He is very frightened, poor old man, but he will do his best. Now, Johnny, you sit down here by this lady, and no one will hurt you. There's a good boy.”

Adela drew away her soiled white skirts as Johnny squatted down. She gave a little sob, and looked round for sympathy. She thought Mr. Purslake might fan her, instead of talking to Helen. Johnny sobbed too, and Adela pulled at Helen's dress.

“I am so thirsty,” she said in a complaining voice. “Helen, I am so dreadfully thirsty.”

“Yes, we all are. Perhaps we shall get some water before long. Could you sleep a little?”

“In this heat?”

“Try, Adie. Shut your eyes and try. I must go to Mrs. Elliot now.”

“Why can't she sit down?” fretted Adela. “It gets on my nerves to see her standing like that. She hasn't moved once.”

“Nor has the child,” said Mr. Purslake. His eyes went from Mrs. Elliot to Helen, and she saw the shrinking look in them.

“That baby—Miss Wilmot, what is wrong with it? It doesn't seem to be asleep.”

“It is dead,” said Helen, with a catch in her voice.

“How?”

“I don't know. It hasn't moved at all. Adie, do you think if you went to her—you lost your baby—do you think—”

“Oh, no!” said Adela. “Oh, I couldn't— Helen, I couldn't; how unkind you are!”

She began to cry again, and Helen without a word left her and went to where Mrs. Elliot stood, like a woman turned to stone.

Helen touched her lightly.

“My poor dear, do sit down. You'll want all your strength,” she said, and then stopped, the other woman's eyes were so terrible.

Yesterday—was it yesterday or all the ages ago?—Mrs. Crowther had said that, for all she pretended to be so girlish, Mrs. Elliot must be close on thirty. Every feature of the worn face confessed to more than thirty now, and the eyes stared out of a strained network of lines.

“Gilbert?” she said in a whisper.

“They say so,” said Helen, crying. The tears which she could not shed for Dick came hot and fast for Gilbert Elliot, whom she had scarcely known. “Oh, my dear, God comfort you—they say so. Give me the little baby, you poor, poor dear, and sit down, and cry if you can, for it helps, it does indeed.”