L'ADDIO DEL MARITO
Once outside, where they could discern friend from foe, the troopers
instantly realized their mistake, and rallied round Roshan.
But it was too late for that now. As he stood, centring them, there was
a wild contempt, a vague relief, in his face. He knew now where his
sympathies lay. Not with these men, treacherous to their salt, but with
those who could hold--who _had_ held--their own against all odds. Yes!
even with that dead figure, still with its back to the door that must
not be opened.
The thought stung and seared like hot iron.
No! Not with that! not with that! That was--What?--
He could have killed himself for the unwavering testimony which every
scrap of him gave to the heroism, the defiance of such a death. He knew
he would give everything to die one like it; and he knew he could
not--not _now_. He knew he must die a useless death, to save himself
from a worse one.
"There is no real harm done, _Khan-jee_," broke in his lance-_duffadar_
in hurried excuse, seeing the expression on his face. "We can get in
easily again. Those holding the horses say there were but a score of
them all told--the cursed Sikhs--God knows how they got out of the
Fort! I thought we had them safe. And there was a woman with them--a
Miss-_baba_"--he laughed savagely. "Well! if they be brave as men,
these infidel women, let them die like men--the hell-cats!"
Roshan Khan looked at the man, whom he had known for years, as if he
had never seen him before. And the thought of another woman--with his
own blood in her veins--who had been brave also, and who had died--died
by his hand--returned to sweep him from every bearing, from every
landmark, eastern or western, and leave him rudderless, drifting, in a
storm of sheer despair. He laughed suddenly--an insane laugh--at the
hideousness, the hopelessness of it all. Laughed like the madman he was
for the time, at the horror which drove him mad.
"Kill her, if thou wilt, fool! I have done my share of that," he cried
brutally, striking out at the voice as he had struck at the other which
had told him of Vincent's victory. Striking as he felt inclined to
strike at anything and everything; most of all at the hateful confusion
in himself, and in his world. So, without another word, he broke
through the circle of troopers, dashed to where his horse awaited him,
and was off like a whirlwind; that strange possession of the Oriental
races, which, in a way, claims kindred with the Berserk rage of the
north, thrilling to his finger-tips; yet held in check, diverted from
sheer, mad, uncalculating desire to kill, by that acquired sense of
fair play.
"He goes to rouse the city," said some of his men, following him
hurriedly.
"And time, too!" assented some of the conspirators. "The dawn is upon
us, and if the pilgrims drift away, our hope is gone!"
But most of the crowd, troopers and conspirators alike, felt vaguely
that the dawn had indeed come, that the midsummer night's dream of
madness was over; that those who were wise would try, while they had
the chance, to escape from its consequences.
And that such a chance existed, even now, was patent. The very madness
of the night, its lack of reasonable explanation, were in their favour.
And its darkness, the outer darkness of the storm, which had sprung
up in a minute, must have hidden much. Who, for instance, was to
say--except those impenitent ones whose evidence, if given at all, must
be doubted as the evidence of condemned men seeking to drag others down
to their fate--whether such and such a one had been a rebel at first?
Provided, always, that there was no doubt about his staunchness at the
last; that is, now that the dawn had come--the dawn which showed doubt,
almost a surprise, in so many faces.
What had come to them? Why were they there?
"_Kuchch saiya pur gya!_" (some shadow fell on me) muttered one man
below his breath, as he sheathed his sword.
And another, with an oath, said boldly, "This one is for the winning
side," then gave the cry, "To the rescue, brothers, to the rescue! Cut
down the mutineers"--so, promptly, began operations on the nearest
defenceless prisoner.
Thus, almost before those who had galloped in hot haste after Roshan's
lead were out of sight, the prisoners, even the resisting warders, had
been driven into the portico, and penned like a flock of sheep between
the troopers outside and the pioneers within.
"The Lord is King," said the lance-_duffadar_, piously, to a
neighbour,--he had started back from Roshan's blow with a scowl, and
watched his retreat resentfully,--"the Handle-end of His Sword is
safest! Lo! Have at them, brothers!"--he added aloud--"have at the
evil-born ones who would have killed the _mems_ and the _baba-logue_
as such scum did in the Great Breathing, making the faces of the
soldiery black for all time! Show them our mettle. Forward!
'Gord--save--the--Ka-veen!'"
"Gord--save--the--Ka-veen!"
The cry grew to a shout, and Dr. Dillon, who, with a great incredulity
lessening the values of all he saw and heard, had promptly swung
himself down into the courtyard, looked through a crevice in the
barricade--which was fast taking form under the willing hands of the
pioneers--to see what the noise meant.
"It is all over," he said slowly, his face pathetic in its
bewilderment; "the troopers are siding with us!"
He stood for a moment as if unable to grasp the reality, and his keen,
inquisitive eyes seemed to search almost reproachfully for some cause,
some hint of reason, in his surroundings. In the splintered door, in
every cranny and foothold of the broken stair, and so, past the
parapet, they continued their question to the lightening sky, against
which, faint and far, those distant peaks where lay the "Cradle of the
Gods" had begun to show dimly.
"All for nothing!" he muttered to himself, almost petulantly. "Poor
Dering!" So, swiftly he passed down the alley,--swiftly, but
hopelessly; for he knew what those iron shackles meant on a man's bare
head.
He drew the body to one side with tender care, then knocked at the
closed door and called to the man within. "Smith, open the door! You'd
better come out--I think it's all over now; be quick, please."
There was a pause, then a fumbling at the bolts and bars. So, in that
grey, cold light, a figure stood at the open door, tall, gaunt, with a
hunted look in its eyes, almost a terror, as they looked down--down to
the threshold--down for what they knew should be there.
"Dering?" asked Eugene Smith, rather hoarsely; then, seeing what lay to
one side, covered his eyes from the sight with a cry like a woman's,
and trembled all over. That strain of patient, idle inaction had been
awful.
"Oh, God damn them!" burst out the doctor, fiercely. "And all for
nothing--for nothing. At least I think so. Come on, Smith, and make
sure."
For nothing! For nothing!
The words were echoing in Roshan's brain also, as with loose rein,
recklessly, he galloped over the frail bridge of boats, making it
quiver and thunder beneath his horse's hoofs, and send curved waves of
light and shadow over the clear, steely surface of the water, seen like
a polished shield in the dawn. The air was clear also; the distant
hills steel grey as the water, the sky steel grey as the hills. And
there was the bright keenness as of a glittering sword in the chill
breeze that swept from west to east. But Roshan did not feel it; he was
absorbed in himself, in the useless battle of his life.
For nothing! For nothing!
He did not even hear the soft yet sonorous roar, beginning like the
rush of a big breaker on a beach, ending with a wild, musical note,
like the wail of new-weaned lambs and their mothers on a lone hillside,
which suddenly echoed out over the water, making those who galloped
behind look at each other and whisper joyfully:--
"'Tis all right, _Khan-sahib_," said one, urging his horse alongside;
"the pilgrims are waiting still--hear you not their cry? They grow
impatient!"
Roshan looked at him with lack-lustre eyes. What were the pilgrims to
him, or their impatience? What was salvation, immortality, to one whose
only desire was death--death and forgetfulness? He dug his spurs into
his horse, savagely glad to give pain, and rode on.
"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"
The roar was articulate now, and those behind looked doubtfully at each
other.
"If it should be the miracle?" suggested one conspirator; but another
shook his head, "How can that be? None know the trick save those two,
Gu-gu and Am-ma, and they are safe."
"Unless it _be_ a miracle," put in a third, almost timidly. "God's club
makes no noise, and the night has been full of marvels."
So an uneasy silence fell upon the rest.
"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"
There was no mistaking the cry now. It rose exultant, yet with that
wailing note in it still, which lingers always in humanity's claim to
have found its lost Paradise, its lost purity.
Yet there was no trace of doubt in the almost frantic joy on every face
in the dense multitude which stopped the little cavalcade, as it
entered the square around the Pool of Immortality; stopped it
hopelessly, as if the moving, breathing, living mass had been a dead
wall.
"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"
It was almost a yell. The patience was gone utterly, and far as the eye
could reach, in all the wide square, in every street and alley
converging to it, there was the restless ineffectual movement
of the sea, when, on a summer's day, it beats itself calmly yet
persistently--rising and falling--upon a sheer cliff, against the
impossible. There was no one to check the crowd now, to prevent it from
finding Death and Immortality at the same time. What matter? What were
a few hundreds of crushed bodies, when the soul found what it sought?
The riders behind Roshan threw up their hands at the sight. No hope
here for the littlenesses of life; for principalities and powers, even
for political liberty.
This was the bed-rock; this, in its unalterable aspiration--not for
something better, but for the best--neither culture nor conspiracy
could touch; this was as much beyond the control of kith and kin as of
strangers and aliens.
"Come, _Khan-sahib_!" they called to the figure with the lack-lustre eyes
which sat its horse like a statue, staring at itself, at its world,
conscious only of the hideous discords which were, perforce, the music
of its sphere. "Come! _Nawab-jee!_ There is still a chance with the
'_Teacher of Religion_.' The _jogi_ will have held _his_ folk, for
sure. They will be ready for blood, since Mai Kali"--the speaker spat
his Mahomedan contempt for the idolatry ere he went on--"lets none go.
She's a true woman for that!"
So, by back alleys and crooked ways, Roshan--why he did not know, since
he meant nothing by it--led the cavalcade past the palace, through the
archway into the courtyard with its union-jack of raised paths.
And found it empty.
Empty of all save the _jogi_, Gorakh-nath, who was busy, resignedly, in
rethreading his chaplet of skulls, ere starting to seek safety over the
British border in some far recess of the holy hills, whence, when this
affair had blown over, he could swoop down with added sanctity on some
other religious fair.
"He and his God stole them from me not the saying of a rosary past," he
said cheerfully, after he had explained the position. "They went by
yonder door to the old road. So what matter! They are in it. They will
come back to Her by and by. It is so always. Men follow other leads,
other loves. But they do not find what they seek; so they come back to
Her, to the many named Woman. _Jai! Kali Ma!_"
Those behind Roshan looked at each other.
"It is the end," they said briefly. "Come, _risaldar-jee_--" the change
of title was significant--"we shall have to ride far and fast if we are
to live."
Once more, every atom of the man, soul and body, seemed to strike out
furiously at the voice, at the truth and the untruth in it; at the
assertion of failure, the linking of his need with theirs.
"Ride for your lives if you want them," he cried fiercely; "I seek
death."
They left him, after unavailing protests, and rode helter-skelter on to
the Fort, warning their comrades that the game was up, so, on towards
safety. And the _jogi_, naked but not ashamed, still swinging his
chaplet of skulls, followed them leisurely; for he knew himself safe in
the superstition and the devotion of every woman in India. Since he,
Her servant, could not fail of shelter in every Hindoo homestead, far
or near, in which a woman's hand closed on a man's, holding him tight
for herself alone, as the Great Mother holds all men.
Roshan, thus left alone, rode his horse on slowly to the central
plinth, dismounted, and, hitching the bridle over the muzzle of the
"_Teacher of Religion_" stood staring out dully at what lay before him;
so quiet, so commonplace!
Nothing changed from the day, barely a month ago, when he had stood
beside the old gun with Vincent Dering and Lance Carlyon, contemptuous
of the ignorance of others, satisfied with himself.
And now?--what had come to him?
The madness, which his wild gallop from the gaol had calmed somewhat,
returned in a fierce rush, and with it that one desire for revenge; for
something by which to show the contempt, which was not now merely for
the ignorant; but for those others, self-righteous, tyrannical, who had
dared to touch him--dared to make him what he was--a prey both to
ignorance and wisdom, savagery and culture--a laughing-stock even to
himself!
And who had begun the fooling? Who had taught him as a boy?
Pidar Narayan! Who else? Who else had begun the game giving some
things, withholding others? And who else was within reach? Who else
could be followed up and forced to fair fight? Forced to admit that the
pupil was ahead now of the master.
He laughed a laugh of absolute exultation; and a wave of purely
childish satisfaction swept through the mind in which there were still
so many depths of childish ignorance and misconception; unavoidable
depths in the culture of a bare score of years. Leaving his horse
tethered to the old gun, he ran hastily across to the palace, so,
finding the door open, the whole place quiet, went on down the arched
passage. It was still dark there, but a glimmer of light showed the
entrance to the chapel, and to the armoury beside it, which was his
goal.
He had no other thought except for that armoury, until, with the tall
tapers burning at the head and feet, he saw the dead body of the woman
who had deceived him lying on the Altar steps. Then the pitifullest
clashing of satisfaction and despair, of desire and disgust, came to
him that ever rent a man in twain. For a moment he fought for bare
reason between them, then with a savage cry, he flung himself beside
the dead girl, caught her to him, covered her with frantic, cruel
kisses, and, almost flinging her from him again, ran on into the
armoury, the red of her dress, her bosom, in his eyes--the red of
blood!
The armoury! Where he had had his first lesson in the foils! There they
were, harmless in their buttons, crossed on the wall, and above them
something more murderous; the dangerous delicate rapiers to which those
others were but the prelude. No! one was gone! One Father Ninian had
used against the _jogi!_ One he must have with him. So much the better!
He tore down its fellow, and passing the dead girl without a look,
dashed out into the courtyard again, his last trace of sanity gone.
The next instant his horse's feet were echoing madly along the
pilgrims' road. His enemy must have a quarter of an hour's lead, but
that was nothing; he could overtake him, anyhow, at the first station
in the pilgrimage,--a temple under a vast _banyan_ tree at the foot of
the first rise, where the pious must pause to make offerings.
The road was almost empty at first; for the news that the miracle had
only been deferred had spread instantly through the unrestful town, so
to a space beyond it, making those who heard the tale turn back to see
for themselves. But after a few minutes' wild gallop, he came up with
those who had been beyond recall, who had gone on content with that
strange lead of a strange God; of a saint, a sinner. Yet, after a time,
forgetful of that leadership utterly. For they needed it no more. The
danger of novelty had passed with their first step along the beaten
track which their fathers had followed. Father Ninian, wise with the
wisdom of long years, of secret sympathy, had known this; had counted
on it in his forlorn hope of leading them into familiar bondage. He had
told himself that he need only go as far as that first station; that
then, during the pause for offerings, he might return, as it were, to
realities, to something more consistent with the nineteenth century!
But to him, also, as he led the way, chanting his offices for the day,
had come a strange peace, a strange desire to go on to the end of the
pilgrimage; a strange desire to leave those realities behind him in a
world from which he was taking nothing, not even his love.
Surely it was time. Surely he was old enough to claim rest. No! not
rest. It was something more than that. Surely, now that he had left
every atom of earth behind him lying with a dead woman on the Altar
steps, he also was free to find the "Cradle of the Gods"!
"_My soul fleeth unto the Lord! before the morning watch I say, before
the morning watch_," he chanted; he had gone on blindly from psalm to
psalm intent on the desire to lead those voices behind.
"Have a care, _baba-jee!_ thou and thy God!" said a half-tender,
half-jesting one as he stumbled among the stones, and a dark hand
stretched itself out to steady the old priest, and a dark face turned
to nod approval at other saffron robes; since here was a true pilgrim,
a true madman, forgetful of this world, to judge by the face lifted
towards those distant hills.
Yet the desire in him to reach them seemed to the wise old heart
something that must be set aside. He must return. Yes! he must return.
To do what? What could an old man do who had left life, a useless life,
behind him? He crushed down that thought also, and stumbled on.
"_Man is like a thing of nought, his time passeth away like a shadow!_"
His voice spent itself tremulously on that one certainty, and those
behind him joined their testimony to his all unwittingly, as they
called on Hara or Hari; on the Creator, the Destroyer, as One and
Indivisible.
And in the rear again, Roshan in his search for Death, for
annihilation, bore witness also, as he came, cursing those who stood in
his way, his horse slithering among the stones in its effort to obey
whip and spur, and sending a dry clangour of hoof-beats through the
little stony valley to startle the sleepy snakes coiled on the distant
rocks, and drive them back to their crannies with a hiss.
So, every instant, the distance lessened between the old man and the
young one, both weary of life. It was broad daylight now, though the
sun was still low on the horizon. The mystery of dawn had left the
world, the very pilgrims, between their recurring cries, were
chattering, laughing, over the every-day details of life which would
make to-day as trivial as yesterday, to-morrow as trivial as to-day.
There had been a "Breathing" in the night, they told each other. Some
shadow had fallen. Some God or Devil had had power. But the shackles of
custom, of familiarity, were back again, the despotism of detail.
Only in those two strangely different minds in the van, in the rear,
the mystery still clouded the reality.
And the distance between them lessened as Roshan drove his way through
the saffron robes recklessly.
Yet, fast as he went, when he reached the end of the dry watercourse up
which the last part of the rough track had wound, and stood in the
hollow, backed by a further rise of the hill, where the quaint, dumpy,
black temple hid itself under the huge blotch of the _banyan_ tree--the
only green thing visible, far or near--the figure he sought was not to
be seen among the crowd.
Akbar Khan, indeed, he saw, utilizing one of the tall tapers as a
pipe-light before casting himself on the ground to suck contentedly at
the screwed _banyan_ leaf full of tobacco which he had gathered by
claiming a pinch in return for the loan of that same light to others.
But with a curious shame Roshan avoided him, and passed on in his
search among the jostling crowd, the continuous babel of trivial talk;
for this was resting-time, when men and women could be men and women,
and forget that they were on a pilgrimage; when they could even dream
themselves back in the village under the familiar shelter of some
village tree, asking no more than the familiar round of life.
But above the babel came every now and again the insistent clang of a
bell, telling that some new petitioner was seeking a favour of the
Gods, and making a golden oriole, which sat in the green leafage, flit
to another bower with a sudden fluting note, full, joyful, mellow.
"What dost seek, _Musulman?_" cavilled a saint, drawing back from
Roshan's shadow, as he gabbled invocations, all he knew, on a rosary,
ere solacing himself with the pipe which his disciple had prepared. "If
'tis the madman and his God--he hath gone yonder."
He pointed to a side track, which was a short cut to the road above.
Roshan flung himself from his horse without a word, and followed.
The distance lessened at every step now, for the old priest's breath
failed him at the steepness of the rise.
Still, it would not delay him long, he told himself, to take that one
look at the soft, white cloud which generally hid the goal of
pilgrimage, before he turned back over the hill, as best he could, to
find what task remained for him in the world.
He might have that one look, surely!
So, reaching the summit of this first bulwark of the unattainable, he
sat down, breathlessly, beside an upright black stone which showed
strangely distinct amid the redness of the surrounding rock; a plain
black stone, not three feet high, chipped rudely to a blunt point.
Father Ninian did not need the scattering of dead marigolds and dry
basil leaves about its base to tell him that it was a fragment of an
older faith than that of the temple below; a faith sterner, purer,
founded on a clearer perception of what humanity needed in that search
for the lost Paradise; on a closer memory of the cause which lost it.
He laid one hand on the stone almost caressingly, as, holding the pyx
in the other, he sat down facing the distant peaks. But there was no
cloud upon them. The day had dawned clear and still, and as he sat
looking wistfully over the valleys on valleys, the hills on hills,
which lay bathed in light between him and the "Cradle of the Gods,"
a sunbeam--still slanting from the curved edge of the eastern
plains--caught the jewelled star of what he held, and stayed there.
It was peaceful beyond words. The hurry, the strain, not only of that
long eventful night, but of the whole long eventful life, seemed over.
All things seemed behind him. The passion, the pride, the courage, the
manhood--all things that had made Ninian Bruce what Ninian Bruce had
been--where were they?
Only wisdom, only a tender knowledge, seemed to remain.
The clank of steel upon stone roused him, the clank of Roshan's spurs
upon the rocks; and Father Ninian turned to see him, a yard or two on
the path below, outlined clearly against the distant view of Eshwara,
against the world in which Ninian Bruce had lived and loved--the Ninian
Bruce whom he had left behind.
Behind!
No! It was Ninian Bruce and none other who was on his feet in a second,
a flush on his face--the face that was like the nether mill-stone in
its stern passion, and pride, and power. For, in a second, the old
man's soul was back in a world where a dead woman belonging to him lay
waiting for revenge. His hand was on his hidden rapier, as he flung his
first word of defiance at the man who had killed her.
"Murderer!"
"Your pupil at that, even!" gasped Roshan, "you began it!--your pupil
whom you taught--curse you--"
The words failed him--he paused inarticulate--but the keen eyes and
ears opposite him took in his meaning with the swift comprehension
which had been Pidar Narayan's always. A sort of contemptuous pity
fought with the passion of Ninian Bruce's face.
"My pupil, certainly," he assented. "Have you come to ask me for a
final lesson?"
Roshan glared at him. "You understand--you always did--that is the
worst. Yes! I have come"--here he laughed wildly--"for what you taught
me--fair play and no favour--and I mean to have it." In his fierce
excitement he pressed closer, flourishing his rapier.
"Pardon me," came a cold, courteous voice; "I did not teach you that
method of assassination, surely? I thought you desired fair play. If
so, you might allow me to meet you on equal terms."
Roshan drew back with a flush from the figure which had stood its
ground, which looked at him with bitter disdain. He scarcely seemed to
recognize it. No wonder! For this was Ninian Bruce himself. Ninian
Bruce as he might have spoken to an over-hasty antagonist in the days
when he was the most reckless swordsman in Rome, when the world held
him body and soul.
The years, his very priesthood, had slipped from him.
"I beg your pardon, sir!" muttered Roshan, standing aside. There was a
savage satisfaction in his heart. This man was not old, the odds were
equal; there was enough fire and passion here to please any opponent.
So, after a pause to lay aside the pyx--it found a strange
resting-place on the blunt summit of that upright black stone--a slim,
still elegant figure, divested of its priestly robings, took its stand,
its back to the hills, its face to the world.
Still upright, still active, with its black _soutane_ caught up and
tucked into the sash to give free play to its limbs.
"Now, sir," came the courteous voice, "I am ready."
Something in the proud grace of bearing, the reckless contempt, made
Roshan follow suit.
"The sun will be in your eyes," he said, "let us fight lengthwise to
the ridge."
"We _will_--by and by!" came that icy voice, as the speaker, without
moving, stood on guard. "We can omit the salute. If you are ready, I
am."
For an instant Roshan hesitated, realizing what the life that he meant
to take had been, what the man himself whom he meant to kill had been
and was. The man whose figure stood out like a black shadow against the
distant blue of the hills; and as he realized the fine fibre of his
enemy, a sense of powerlessness to touch, to harm him, kept Roshan
motionless.
"Shall I count five, and give you a start?" The question came with a
shrug of the shoulders.
The taunt told. Roshan pulled himself together, and stood on guard
also. But the sense of powerlessness was intolerable; he lowered his
rapier for a word more--a word to raise his own self-esteem.
"I warn you," he said haughtily, "that the sun is in your eyes. That I
have learnt more than you ever taught me--that _this_ is to the death."
"It could scarcely be anything else, could it?" came the instant reply,
in a voice that vibrated harshly, like a harpstring struck to its
fullest, "with a dead woman between us! Engage, you devil, or I will
kill you as you stand!"
Roshan gave a short, sharp cry, like a wild beast. The next instant the
curious hiss of two meeting blades sliding along each other was the
only sound. It is a strange sound, which, to the listeners, the
onlookers, seems to say "hush" to the whole world.
"_Hush_--hush--_sh_--_sh_."
Then, short and sharp as that cry of Roshan's, came another sound; the
beaten, baffled clash when steel meets steel instead of flesh.
Roshan, with an inward curse, gripped his rapier closer. He had almost
been disarmed,--disarmed in that first encounter. Strange that he
should have forgotten his foe,--forgotten the deadly insistence of the
master's blade, slack as a snake in curves, firm as a vice in grip.
Then that almost invisible turn of the wrist which had so nearly done
for him. He had forgotten--these, in years of meaner adversaries. He
remembered them now, and would not forget again. And he had such
things; ay! and more, in reserve for himself.
So had his master; in reserve for both of them, if needful. And the
knowledge that it _would_ be needful came to Ninian Bruce at the first
touch of his adversary's sword; for there was that in it which told the
old hand that the young one was a master's also.
"My pupil has improved," he said quietly, as, abandoning the attack, he
parried Roshan's furious onslaught with scarcely a motion of the hand,
held level to his heart.
That he could do. But the other must surely come in the end, since he
was old, and Roshan young. If in the end, therefore, why not now? The
sooner the better.
A minute after the sun was no longer in Pidar Narayan's eyes. As he had
said, they were fighting lengthwise to the ridge; and he drew back,
choosing his ground, until under his feet he felt the dead marigolds,
the withered basil leaves that lay about the upright stone,--that
strange pedestal on which the star-shaped pyx stood as on an altar,
glittering in the sun-rays.
He seemed to see it, to feel it, standing there between the world below
and those faint, far peaks. And the eyes which had seen so much felt
they need see no more.
"_Sta' alerta, Signor!_" he cried jibingly, flinging himself savagely
forward. "And may the Lord have mercy on your soul," he added in a
lower tone; as, in an attack which held in it all the wildness, the
fire, the passion of his youth, he drove Roshan back a step,--one step
down the faint slope on which he had counted.
A fierce lunge or two, a swift parry, and then,--then an inch beyond
safety--given purposely--yielded room for the _riposte_ he sought from
that other rapier.
It came with a quick cry of triumph, as Roshan felt that thin, cold
steel slide silently on through a dull, faint resistance. A cry that
ended in a gasp, as the hand which held the rapier dropped for a
second, then flung itself upwards.
For Pidar Narayan had given the _reprise_; and '_L'Addio del Marito_'
had done its work.
So, for an instant--held upright by the lingering force of the old
man's hand--the two stood within a sword's length, their faces glaring
at each other,--stern, implacable, the one in death, the other still in
life.
Then the strength, the life, ebbed; the balance between it and death
wavered, and Ninian Bruce, overborne by his enemy's dead weight, sank
to his knee, then backwards.
But his hand still gripped the rapier. So Roshan Khan's body, as it
fell forward, slithered down the sharp blade, sending a little jet of
crimson blood backwards, till it stopped with a dull thud upon the
hilt.
So he lay, face downwards, beside the old man, whose face looked
skyward; whose head rested among the withered marigolds and the sweet,
dead leaves of the basil, which generations and generations of pilgrims
had offered to an unknown wisdom on their way to the "Cradle of the
Gods."