by Louis Tracy
Produced by D Alexander and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive)
THE RED YEAR
A STORY OF THE INDIAN MUTINY
BY LOUIS TRACY
AUTHOR OF "THE WINGS OF THE MORNING," "THE PILLAR OF LIGHT," "THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS," ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1907 BY EDWARD J. CLODE
_Entered at Stationers' Hall_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE THE MESHES OF THE NET 1
CHAPTER II A NIGHT IN MAY 19
CHAPTER III HOW BAHADUR SHAH PROCLAIMED HIS EMPIRE 39
CHAPTER IV ON THE WAY TO CAWNPORE 54
CHAPTER V A WOMAN INTERVENES 72
CHAPTER VI THE WELL 91
CHAPTER VII TO LUCKNOW 110
CHAPTER VIII WHEREIN A MOHAMMEDAN FRATERNIZES WITH A BRAHMIN 131
CHAPTER IX A LONG CHASE 151
CHAPTER X WHEREIN FATE PLAYS TRICKS WITH MALCOLM 169
CHAPTER XI A DAY'S ADVENTURES 190
CHAPTER XII THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM 210
CHAPTER XIII THE MEN WHO WORE SKIRTS 227
CHAPTER XIV WHY MALCOLM DID NOT WRITE 247
CHAPTER XV AT THE KING'S COURT 268
CHAPTER XVI IN THE VORTEX 290
CHAPTER XVII THE EXPIATION 309
_The Red Year_
CHAPTER I
THE MESHES OF THE NET
On a day in January, 1857, a sepoy was sitting by a well in thecantonment of Dum-Dum, near Calcutta. Though he wore the uniform of JohnCompany, and his rank was the lowest in the native army, he carried onhis forehead the caste-marks of the Brahmin. In a word, he was more thannoble, being of sacred birth, and the Hindu officers of his regiment, ifthey were not heaven-born Brahmins, would grovel before him in secret,though he must obey their slightest order on parade or in the field.
To him approached a Lascar.
"Brother," said the newcomer, "lend me your brass pot, so that I maydrink, for I have walked far in the sun."
The sepoy started as though a snake had stung him. Lascars, thesailor-men of India, were notoriously free-and-easy in their manners.Yet how came it that even a low-caste mongrel of a Lascar should offersuch an overt insult to a Brahmin!
"Do you not know, swine-begotten, that your hog's lips would contaminatemy lotah?" asked he, putting the scorn of centuries into the words.
"Contaminate!" grinned the Lascar, neither frightened nor angered. "Byholy Ganga, it is your lips that are contaminated, not mine. Are not theGovernment greasing your cartridges with cow's fat? And can you loadyour rifle without biting the forbidden thing? Learn more about your owncaste, brother, before you talk so proudly to others."
Not a great matter, this squabble between a sepoy and a Lascar, yet itlit such a flame in India that rivers of blood must be shed ere it wasquenched. The Brahmin's mind reeled under the shock of the retort. Itwas true, then, what the agents of the dethroned King of Oudh weresaying in the bazaar. The Government were bent on the destruction ofBrahminical supremacy. He and his caste-fellows would lose all that madelife worth living. But they would exact a bitter price for their fallfrom high estate.
"Kill!" he murmured in his frenzy, as he rushed away to tell hiscomrades the lie that made the Indian Mutiny possible. "Slay and sparenot! Let us avenge our wrongs so fully that no accursed Feringhi shalldare again to come hither across the Black Water!"
The lie and the message flew through India with the inconceivable speedwith which such ill tidings always travels in that country. Ever northwent the news that the British Raj was doomed. Hindu fakirs, aglow withreligious zeal, Mussalman zealots, as eager for dominance in this worldas for a houri-tenanted Paradise in the next, carried the fiery torch ofrebellion far and wide. And so the flame spread, and was fanned to redfury, though the eyes of few Englishmen could see it, while nativeintelligence was aghast at the supineness of their over-lords.
* * * * *
One evening in the month of April, a slim, straight-backed girl stood inthe veranda of a bungalow at Meerut. Her slender figure, garbed in whitemuslin, was framed in a creeper-covered arch. The fierce ardor of anIndian spring had already kissed into life a profusion of red flowersamid the mass of greenery, and, if Winifred Mayne had sought aneffective setting for her own fair picture, she could not have found onebetter fitted to its purpose.
But she was young enough and pretty enough to pay little heed to pose orbackground. In fact, so much of her smooth brow as could be seen under abroad-brimmed straw hat was wrinkled in a decided frown. Happily, herbright brown eyes had a glint of humor in them, for Winifred's wrath wasan evanescent thing, a pallid sprite, rarely seen, and ever ready to bebanished by a smile.
"There!" she said, tugging at a refractory glove. "Did you hear it? Itactually shrieked as it split. And this is the second pair. I shallnever again believe a word Behari Lal says. Wait till I see him. I'llgive him such a talking to."
"Then I have it in my heart to envy Behari Lal," said her companion,glancing up at her from the carriage-way that ran by the side of the fewsteps leading down from the veranda.
"Indeed! May I ask why?" she demanded.
"Because you yield him a privilege you deny to me."
"I was not aware you meant to call to-day. As it is, I am paying astrictly ceremonial visit. I wish I could speak Hindustani. Now, whatwould you say to Behari Lal in such a case?"
"I hardly know. When I buy gloves, I buy them of sufficient size. Ofcourse, you have small hands--"
"Thank you. Please don't trouble to explain. And now, as you have beenrude to me, I shall not take you to see Mrs. Meredith."
"But that is a kindness."
"Then you shall come, and be miserable."
"For your sake, Miss Mayne, I would face Medusa, let alone the excellentwife of our Commissary-General, but fate, in the shape of an uncommonlyheadstrong Arab, forbids. I have just secured a new charger, and he andI have to decide this evening whether I go where he wants to go, or hegoes where I want to go. I wheedled him into your compound by sheertrickery. The really definite issue will be settled forthwith on theGrand Trunk Road."
"I hope you are not running any undue risk," said the girl, with asudden note of anxiety in her voice that was sweetest music to FrankMalcolm's ears. For an instant he had a mad impulse to ask if she cared,but he crushed it ruthlessly, and his bantering reply gave no hint ofthe tumult in his breast. Yet he feared to meet her eyes, and was gladof a saluting sepoy who swaggered jauntily past the open gate.
"I don't expect to be deposited in the dust, if that is what you mean,"he said. "But there is a fair chance that instead of carrying me back toMeerut my friend Nejdi will take me to Aligarh. You see, he is an Arabof mettle. If I am too rough with him, it will break his spirit; if toogentle, he will break my neck. He needs the _main de fer sous le gant develours_. Please forgive me! I really didn't intend to mention glovesagain."
"Oh, go away, you and your Arab. You are both horrid. You dine hereto-morrow night, my uncle said?"
<
br /> "Yes, if I don't send you a telegram from Aligarh. I may be broughtthere, you know, against my will."
Lifting his hat, he walked towards a huge pipal tree in the compound.Beneath its far-flung branches a syce was sitting in front of afinely-proportioned and unusually big Arab horse. Both animal and manseemed to be dozing, but they woke into activity when the sahibapproached. The Arab pricked his ears, swished his long and arched tailviciously, and showed the whites of his eyes. A Bedouin of the desert, atrue scion of the incomparable breed of Nejd, he was suspicious ofcivilization, and his new owner was a stranger, as yet.
"Ready for the fray, I see," murmured Malcolm with a smile. He wasted notime over preliminaries. Bidding the syce place his thumbs in the steelrings of the bridle, the young Englishman gathered the reins and a wispof gray mane in his left hand. Seizing a favorable moment, when thestruggling animal flinched from the touch of a low-lying branch on theoff side, he vaulted into the saddle. Chunga, the syce, held on untilhis master's feet had found the stirrups. Then he was told to let go,and Miss Winifred Mayne, niece of a Commissioner of Oudh, quite the mosteligible young lady the Meerut district could produce that year,witnessed a display of cool, resourceful horsemanship as the enragedArab plunged and curvetted through the main gate.
It left her rather flushed and breathless.
"I like Mr. Malcolm," she confided to herself with a little laugh, "buthis manner with women is distinctly brusque! I wonder why!"
The Grand Trunk Road ran to left and right. To the left it led to thebazaar, the cantonment, and the civil lines; to the right, after passinga few houses tenanted by Europeans, it entered the open country on along stretch of over a thousand miles to Calcutta and the south. In 1857no thoroughfare in the world equaled the Grand Trunk Road. Beginning atPeshawur, in the extreme north of India, it traversed the Punjab for sixhundred miles as far as Aligarh. Here it broke into the Calcutta andBombay branches, each nearly a thousand miles in length. Wide andstraight, well made and tree-lined throughout, it supplied the two greatarteries of Indian life. Malcolm had selected it as a training-groundthat evening, because he meant to weary and subdue his too highlyspirited charger. Whether the pace was fast or slow, Nejdi would becompelled to meet many varieties of traffic, from artillery elephantsand snarling camels down to the humble bullock-cart of the ryot.Possibly, he would not shy at such monstrosities after twenty miles of alathering ride.
The mad pace set by the Arab when he heard the clatter of his feet onthe hard road chimed in with the turbulent mood of his rider. FrankMalcolm was a soldier by choice and instinct. When he joined the Indianarmy, and became a subaltern in a native cavalry regiment, he determinedto devote himself to his profession. He gave his whole thought to it andto nothing else. His interests lay in his work. He regarded everyundertaking from the point of view of its influence on his militaryeducation, so it may be conceded instantly that the arrival in Meerut ofan Oudh Commissioner's pretty niece should not have affected the peaceof mind of this budding Napoleon.
But a nice young woman can find joints in the armor of thesternest-souled young man. Her attack is all the more deadly ifit be unpremeditated, and Frank Malcolm had already reached theself-depreciatory stage wherein a comparatively impecunious subalternasks himself the sad question whether it be possible for such a one towoo and wed a maid of high degree, or her Anglo-Indian equivalent, anheiress of much prospective wealth and present social importance.
But money and rank are artificial, the mere varnish of life, and the hotbreath of reality can soon scorch them out of existence. Events werethen shaping themselves in India that were destined to sweep asideconvention for many a day. Had the young Englishman but known it, fivemiles from Meerut his Arab's hoofs threw pebbles over a swarthy moullah,lank and travel-stained, who was hastening towards the Punjab on adreadful errand. The man turned and cursed him as he passed, and vowedwith bitter venom that when the time of reckoning came there would notbe a Feringhi left in all the land. Malcolm, however, would have laughedhad he heard. Affairs of state did not concern him. His only trouble wasthat Winifred Mayne stood on a pinnacle far removed from the beaten pathof a cavalry subaltern. So, being in a rare fret and fume, he let thegray Arab gallop himself white, and, when the high-mettled Nejdi thoughtof easing the pace somewhat, he was urged onward with the slight bututterly unprecedented prick of a spur.
That was a degradation not to be borne. The Calcutta Brahmin did notresent the Lascar's taunt more keenly. With a swerve that almostunseated Malcolm, the Arab dashed in front of a bullock-cart, sweptbetween the trees on the west side of the road, leaped a broad ditch,and crashed into a field of millet. Another ditch, another field, breasthigh with tall castor-oil plants, a frantic race through a grove ofmangoes--when Malcolm had to lie flat on Nejdi's neck to avoid beingswept off by the low branches--and horse and man dived headlong intodeep water.
The splash, far more than the ducking, frightened the horse. Malcolm,in that instant of prior warning which the possessor of steady nerveslearns to use so well, disengaged his feet from the stirrups. He wasthrown clear, and, when he came to the surface, he saw that the Araband himself were floundering in a moat. Not the pleasantest ofbathing-places anywhere, in India such a sheet of almost stagnant waterhas excessive peculiarities. Among other items, it breeds fever andharbors snakes, so Malcolm floundered rather than swam to the bank,where he had the negative satisfaction of catching Nejdi's bridle whenthat disconcerted steed scrambled out after him.
The two were coated with green slime. Being obviously unhurt, theyprobably had a forlornly comic aspect. At any rate, a woman's musicallaugh came from the lofty wall which bounded the moat on the furtherside, and a woman's clear voice said:
"A bold leap, sahib! Did you mean to scale the fort on horseback? Andwhy not have chosen a spot where the water was cleaner?"
Before he could see the speaker, so smothered was he in drippingmoss and weeds, Malcolm knew that some lady of rank had watched hisadventure. She used the pure Persian of the court, and her dictionwas refined. Luckily, he had studied Persian as well as its Indianoff-shoot, Hindustani, and he understood the words. He pressed back hisdank hair, squeezed the water and slime off his face, and looked up.
To his exceeding wonder, his eyes met those of a young Mohammedan woman,a woman richly garbed, and of remarkable appearance. She was unveiled,an amazing fact in itself, and her creamy skin, arched eyebrows, regularfeatures, and raven-black hair proclaimed her aristocratic lineage. Shewas leaning forward in an embrasure of the battlemented wall. Behindher, two attendants, oval-faced, brown-skinned women of the people,peered shyly at the Englishman. When he glanced their way, theyhurriedly adjusted their silk saris, or shawls, so as to hide theirfaces. Their mistress used no such bashful subterfuge. She leanedsomewhat farther through the narrow embrasure, revealing by the actionher bejeweled and exquisitely molded arms.
"Perhaps you do not speak my language," she said in Urdu, the tonguemost frequently heard in Upper India. "If you will go round to thegate--that way--" and she waved a graceful hand to the left left--"myservants will render you some assistance."
By that time, Malcolm had regained his wits. A verse of a poem by Hafizoccurred to him.
"Princess," he said, "the radiance of your presence is as the full moonsuddenly illumining the path of a weary traveler, who finds himself onthe edge of a morass."
A flash of surprise and pleasure lit the fine eyes of the haughty beautyperched up there on the palace wall.
"'Tis well said," she vowed, smiling with all the rare effect of fullred lips and white even teeth. "Nevertheless, this is no time forcompliments. You need our help, and it shall be given willingly. Makefor the gate, I pray you."
She turned, and gave an order to one of the attendants. With anotherencouraging smile to Malcolm, she disappeared.
Leading the Arab, who, with the fatalism of his race, was quiet asa sheep now that he had found a master, the young officer took thedirection pointed out by the lady. Rounding an angle of t
he wall, hecame to a causeway spanned by a small bridge, which was guarded by themachicolated towers of a strong gate. A ponderous door, studded withgreat bosses of iron fashioned to represent elephants' heads, swungopen--half reluctantly it seemed--and he was admitted to a spaciousinner courtyard.
The number of armed retainers gathered there was unexpectedly large. Hewas well acquainted with the Meerut district, yet he had no notion thatsuch a fortress existed within an hour's fast ride of the station. TheKing of Delhi had a hunting-lodge somewhere in the locality, but he hadnever seen the place. If this were it, why should it be crammed withsoldiers? Above all, why should they eye him with such ill-concealeddispleasure? Duty had brought him once to Delhi--it was barely fortymiles from Meerut--and the relations between the feeble old King,Bahadur Shah, and the British authorities were then most friendly, whilethe hangers-on at the Court mixed freely with the Europeans. His quickintelligence caught at the belief that these men resented his presencebecause he was brought among them by the command of the lady. He knewnow that he must have seen and spoken to one of the royal princesses.None other would dare to show herself unveiled to a stranger, and awhite man at that. The manifest annoyance of her household was thuseasily accounted for, but he marveled at the strength of her bodyguard.
He was given little time for observation. A distinguished-looking man,evidently vested with authority, bustled forward and addressed him,civilly enough. Servants came with water and towels, and cleaned hisgarments sufficiently to make him presentable, while other men groomedhis horse. He was wet through, of course, but that was not a seriousmatter with the thermometer at seventy degrees in the shade, and,despite the ordinance of the Prophet, a glass of excellent red winewas handed to him.
But he saw no more of the Princess. He thought she would hardly dare toreceive him openly, and her deputy gave no sign of admitting him to theinterior of the palace, which loomed around the square of the courtyardlike some great prison.
A chaprassi recovered his hat, which he had left floating in the moat.Nejdi allowed him to mount quietly; the stout door had closed on him,and he was picking his way across the fields towards the Meerut road,before he quite realized how curious were the circumstances which hadbefallen him since he parted from Winifred Mayne in the porch of heruncle's bungalow.
Then he bent forward in the saddle to stroke Nejdi's curved neck, andlaughed cheerfully.
"You are wiser than I, good horse," said he. "When the game is up, youtake things placidly. Here am I, your supposed superior in intellect, indanger of being bewitched by a woman's eyes. Whether brown or black,they play the deuce with a man if they shine in a woman's head. So ho,then, boy, let us home and eat, and forget these fairies in muslin andclinging silk."
Yet a month passed, and Frank Malcolm did not succeed in forgetting.Like any moth hovering round a lamp, the more he was singed the closerhe fluttered, though the memory of the Indian princess's brilliant blackeyes was soon lost in the sparkle of Winifred's brown ones.
As it happened, the young soldier was a prime favorite with theCommissioner, and it is possible that the course of true love might haverun most smoothly if the red torch of war had not flashed over the landlike the glare of some mighty volcano.
On Sunday evening, May 10th, Malcolm rode away from his own smallbungalow, and took the Aligarh road. As in all up-country stations, theEuropean residences in Meerut were scattered over an immense area. Thecantonment was split into two sections by an irregular ravine, ornullah, running east and west. North of this ditch were many officers'bungalows, and the barracks of the European troops, tenanted by aregiment of dragoons, the 60th Rifles, and a strong force of artillery,both horse and foot. Between the infantry and cavalry barracks stoodthe soldiers' church. Fully two miles away, on the south side of theravine, were the sepoy lines, and another group of isolated bungalows.The native town was in this quarter, while the space intervening betweenthe British and Indian troops was partly covered with rambling bazaars.
Malcolm had been detained nearly half an hour by some difficulty which asubadar had experienced in arranging the details of the night's guard.Several men were absent without leave, and he attributed this unusualoccurrence to the severe measures the colonel had taken when certaintroopers refused to use the cartridges supplied for the new Enfieldrifle. But, like every other officer in Meerut, he was confident thatthe nearness of the strongest European force in the North-West Provinceswould certainly keep the malcontents quiet. Above all else, he was readyto stake his life on the loyalty of the great majority of the men of hisown regiment, the 3d Native Cavalry.
In pushing Nejdi along at a fast canter, therefore, he had no weightiermatter on his mind than the fear that he might have kept Winifredwaiting. When he dashed into the compound, and saw that there was nodog-cart standing in the porch, he imagined that the girl had gonewithout him, or, horrible suspicion, with some other cavalier.
It was not so. Winifred herself appeared on the veranda as hedismounted.
"You are a laggard," she said severely.
"I could not help it. I was busy in the orderly-room. But why lose moretime? If that fat pony of yours is rattled along we shall not be verymuch behindhand."
"You must not speak disrespectfully of my pony. If he is fat, it is dueto content, not laziness. And you are evidently not aware that Evensongis half an hour later to-day, owing to the heat. Of course, I expectedyou earlier, and, if necessary, I would have gone alone, but--"
She hesitated, and looked over her shoulder into the immensedrawing-room that occupied the center of the bungalow from front torear.
"I don't mind admitting," she went on, laughing nervously, "that I am awee bit afraid these days--there is so much talk of a native rising.Uncle gets so cross with me when I say anything of that kind that I keepmy opinions to myself."
"The country is unsettled," said Frank, "and it would be folly to denythe fact. But, at any rate, you are safe enough in Meerut."
"Are you sure? Only yesterday morning eighty-five men of your ownregiment were sent to prison, were they not?"
"Yes, but they alone were disaffected. Every soldier knows he must obey,and these fellows refused point-blank to use their cartridges, thoughthe Colonel said they might tear them instead of biting them. He couldgo no further--I wonder he met their stupid whims even thus far."
"Well, perhaps you are right. Come in, for a minute or two. My uncle isin a rare temper. You must help to talk him out of it. By the way, whereare all the servants? The dog-cart ought to be here. _Koi hai!_"[1]
[Footnote 1: The Anglo-Indian phrase for summoning a servant, meaning:"Is there any one there?"]
No one came in response to her call. Thinking that a syce or chaprassiwould appear in a moment, Frank hung Nejdi's bridle on a lamp-hook inthe porch, and entered the bungalow.
He soon discovered that Mr. Mayne's wrath was due to a statement in aCalcutta newspaper that a certain Colonel Wheler had been preaching tohis sepoys.
"What between a psalm-singing Viceroy and commanding officers whohold conventicles, we are in for a nice hot weather," growled theCommissioner, shoving a box of cheroots towards Malcolm when the latterfound him stretched in a long cane chair on the back veranda. "Hereis Lady Canning trying to convert native women, and a number ofmissionaries publishing manifestoes about the influence of railways andsteamships in bringing about the spiritual union of the world! I tellyou, Malcolm, India won't stand it. We can do as we like with Hindu andMussalman so long as we leave their respective religions untouched. Themoment those are threatened we enter the danger zone. Confound it, whycan't we let the people worship God in their own way? If anything, theyare far more religiously inclined than we ourselves. Where is theEnglishman who will flop down in the middle of the road to say hisprayers at sunset, or measure his length along two thousand miles of ariver bank merely as a penance? Give me authority to pack a shipload ofbusy-bodies home to England, and I'll soon have the country quietenough--"
An ominous sound interrupted the Comm
issioner's outburst. Both men heardthe crackle of distant musketry. At first, neither was willing to admitits significance.
"Where is Winifred?" demanded Mr. Mayne, suddenly.
"She is looking for a servant, I fancy. There was none in the front ofthe house, and I wanted a man to hold my horse."
A far-off volley rumbled over the plain, and a few birds stirreduneasily among the trees.
"No servants to be seen--at this hour!"
They looked at each other in silence.
"We must find Winifred," said the older man, rising from his chair.
"And I must hurry back to my regiment," said Frank.
"You think, then, that there is trouble with the native troops?"
"With the sepoys, yes. I have been told that the 11th and 20th are notwholly to be trusted. And those volleys are fired by infantry."
A rapid step and the rustle of a dress warned them that the girl wasapproaching. She came, like a startled fawn.
"The servants' quarters are deserted," she cried. "Great columns ofsmoke are rising over the trees, and you hear the shooting! Oh, whatdoes it mean?"
"It means, my dear, that the Dragoons and the 60th will have to teachthese impudent rebels a much-needed lesson," said her uncle. "There isno cause for alarm. Must you really go, Malcolm?"
"Go!" broke in Winifred with the shrill accents of terror. "Where areyou going?"
"To my regiment, of course," said Frank, smiling at her fears. "Probablywe shall be able to put down this outbreak before the white troopsarrive. Good-by. I shall either return, or send a trustworthy messenger,within an hour."
And so, confident and eager, he was gone, and the first moments of thehour sped when, perhaps, a strong man in control at Meerut might havesaved India.
