His face, which had remained calm enough so far, assumed a look of
agonised entreaty, as with an effort painful to see he dragged himself
to my feet and clung to them. "What would you have done, _Huzoor_, in
my place? What would you have done?"
Then a fearful fit of coughing seized him, and his lips were tinged
with blood. Water lay close at hand, yet I knew that this murderer
would sooner have died than accept it from my defiling hand; so I
called the old man who all this time had sat like a carven image in the
next archway. He came, and wiped the dews of death from his son's face
without a word; and as he did so, Shivdeo, looking at the faint stains
on the cloth, smiled an unearthly smile, and whispered, "I did not suck
my lord's blood, for all that. It comes from my own heart."
I am not ashamed to say that my brain was in such a whirl that I turned
to escape from a situation where I felt utterly lost. As I did so, I
heard Shivdeo's voice for the last time. The old man was holding a
little brass cup of water to the parched lips; but it was arrested by
the dying hand, and the dying eyes looked wistfully up into his
father's.
"Did I do well, O my father?" he asked.
"You did well, my son; drink in peace."
When I reached home, the English mail was in. It brought a letter from
Terence. He was in Dublin and engaged to be married; considering that
he was an Irishman, no more need be said. He wrote the kindest letter,
saying that the great happiness which had come into his life made him
all the more grateful to me, seeing that but for my care he would have
gone down to the grave without knowing how the love of a good woman can
make existence seem a sacred trust. He ended by these words: "And sure,
old man, if it be true that all happiness is bought, some one must have
paid dear for mine!"
I could not sleep that night--the war of conflicting thoughts waged too
fiercely; but it was nearly dawn before I found it impossible to
withstand the memory of Shivdeo's cry: "If the Presence had thought as
I did, what would he have done?"
He was dead before I reached the house, but surely if he knows
anything, he must know that I, for one, cast no stone.