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.”
FOOTNOTE:
[5] When the Hindoos wish to express a thorough loathing and contempt
for anything, they spit upon the ground, and make a peculiar movement
with the lips. During the mutiny, and for long afterwards, it was
common for the native servants in the European houses, when ordered to
do anything, to spit upon the ground when they thought their masters
were not looking. The language put into the mouth of Wanna, and the
ferocity depicted, are by no means an exaggeration. In fact, words
would almost fail to accurately express the inhuman hatred for the
English, which the natives--men and women--took every opportunity of
displaying during the revolt.