Dedicated
to
My Sister Minnie
on the 23rd August, 1916
A Birthday Gift
Within the Palace walls, ’twixt dark and light,
Death fights for the soul of a child to-night!
And what shall the future have to bring
If the child be saved and remain a King?
Blood, and tears! And the women who mourn
For the weight of an evil, as yet unborn!
“By the grace of the Gods! The little King lives!”
The words fell about the waiting throng. They stirred restlessly, staring up at the Palace walls showing so white against the vivid blue of the sky. It was early morning; behind the trellised parapet of the Palace, peering, as it were, through bars of marble, the rays of the sun could be seen, streaks of dazzling gold. In a short while he would sweep altogether into sight, and under his splendour the sky would harden and glow till it became almost unbearable to the eyes. For it was the hot weather, and the sun, in the plains of India during the hot weather, is a mighty giant to be feared and shunned. But as yet his radiance had hardly invaded the world; the sky was faint and blue, the soft veil of night scarce drawn away from its furthermost edges.
All night the people had stood listening and waiting outside the Palace, and it seemed to them as if, with this simply spoken message, the shadows of darkness and death simultaneously lifted from over their heads. Day was abroad, the powers of light had routed the powers of darkness.
“The sun has come,” one old man spoke their thoughts aloud; “and the King is alive. There is no more fear.”
The man who had delivered the message stood at a great window in the Palace wall: so high, so wide open to the air, that the whole of his figure was visible. He was attired in the grey loin cloth and chuddah of a mendicant priest, and the long, straight hair that hung about his face, and the face itself, were daubed and smeared with ashes of the same grim colour. Strangely repulsive he might have seemed to Western eyes, yet there was beauty and strength in his face, and a certain flaming pity in his eyes.
For a second or so he stood there, looking down at the people; then slowly he lifted his hands, raising them to his head, sweeping them out before him in a sign of farewell.
“The King lives,” he repeated; “go ye to your homes in peace.”
The crowd reiterated his news. First in whispers, for the hush of the night’s vigil was still with them, then with little shouted sounds of joy. “The King lives!” They sang the words almost, turning to go their ways in excited groups, praising, even as they went, the gods who had dealt thus mercifully towards them.
Surely, the ways of mankind are very strange! Else why do they raise on high these images of state, these Kings and Princes, of like dust with themselves, yet wrapped round with such divinity that their lives come to be more precious than those of a hundred others?
Some such thought may have lain behind the pity in the grey Fakir’s eyes as he watched the people disperse. It was certainly present in the heart of the English doctor, who sat by the throne-like divan, on which was stretched out His Most Serene Highness, the All Powerful Maharajah of Bhogmore. Looking, after all, not so much powerful as pathetic: his little, childish body overpowered by the splendour of cushions and gold embroidered silks that surrounded him, the Bhogmore necklace of emeralds—the most beautiful specimens of their kind in the world, authorities held—twisted about his scraggy little neck. Uncomfortable bedfellows, as Dr. Anstruther, the English doctor summoned so hastily to the scene of conflict the night before, had suggested. But old Dattaka, the Prime Minister, had frowned at the thought of removing them, and the baby hands themselves had clung so tenaciously. So Dr. Anstruther had let them stay; after all, the main thing was to save the patient, not necessarily to make him comfortable along lines that would frighten or annoy him.
In his task of saving, the English doctor had succeeded. The terrible sickness had ceased, the agony of pain had lifted; the small body lay lax and weak now, the eyelids close held over the most pathetic eyes Dr. Anstruther thought he had ever seen. But it was sleep, gentle, reviving sleep, and not death, that held the little All Powerful in its arms.
It is always good to fight against death and win, ten times more so is it good when the battle has also been against evil. Dr. Anstruther had very little doubt as to what had been wrong with his patient. The baby Maharajah had been poisoned. By whom and how? That remained to be found out.
“Not that they ever will,” thought Anstruther grimly; “as well try and read the riddle of the Sphinx as seek to investigate a mystery which probably has its beginning and end in the harem.” Some other mother, jealous perhaps of the right of the first-born; greedy for her own son to hold that string of shining stones, emblem of the kinghood, that lay so heavily between the small brown hands.
“Government will have to step in,” mused the doctor, “if they want to keep this small soul alive. Where the snake has failed once, it will succeed the second time.”
He put out his hand and touched with practised fingers the limp wrist. Yes, for this time the danger was past; this was a different pulse to the one that had fluttered and struggled all night, almost like a bird striving to be free.
Dr. Anstruther had been summoned very summarily to the Palace. Other brains had tumbled to the source of the King’s illness. It had been Dattaka, the Prime Minister himself, a stately personage who rarely deigned to notice the mad missionary, who had ridden up to the mission steps the night before.
“You must come at once,” he had said. “All else has been tried and it has failed. The Hope of our Hearts lies at the doors of death!”
A foolish thing to set the hopes of your hearts on, as Dr. Anstruther, at any other time, would have stopped to point out. But the urgency of the case was unmistakable; he had packed his old black bag in silence and, leaving word with the servant that the mission school would be closed for the day, he had ridden the ten miles to Arkonum at a speed which he would never have chosen for himself.
He had found the sickroom thronged with veiled, wailing forms. They had drawn their sarees close about them at his presence. One of these, too old to mind at this crisis in her life whose eyes rested on her, sat cross-legged on the divan with the baby King on her lap. Poor little baby King! So piteous in the stiff gold robe that he wore, so overweighted by the agony that gripped him! He was in the harem, Dr. Anstruther presumed, and he had a horror, an inborn distrust, of harems. They are at the root of all evil in India, he would have told you. One glance at the child’s face, however, banished the missionary and left only the doctor. Dr. Anstruther had turned quickly to his guide.
“If I am to save this child’s life,” he had said, “I must have absolute control.”
The old eyes that had met his were anguished in their pleading. “Whatever you order shall be obeyed. Only, great master, save the little King.”
“I’ll try,” promised Dr. Anstruther. He stooped quickly, and before the astonished old hag—that was his description of her—could do anything to stop him, he had picked the child up in his arms.
“Now,” he had said, turning again to Dattaka, “take us to some other room, in the new Palace, where we can be left quite alone.”
He had been firm in that. He would not have the women hanging about. It was not as if the child had a mother; the Rajah of Bhogmore was, he knew, an orphan. Only Dattaka, because of the passionate love in his eyes, had been allowed to stay. And all night the fight had waged; the tide of one small life, so amazingly important, it would seem, to that waiting crowd outside, had ebbed and flowed; had been sucked downwards by the sea of death and dragged back again by those firm, confident hands that fought for him. For besides his skill, and that was undoubted, won by long years of patient toil in a country where Death is nearly always the victor, Dr. Anstruther had abundant faith. Prayer was a simple, yet none the less strong, weapon in his heart. So he prayed while he fought, arguing with the Divine Law which was yet so human, according to Dr. Anstruther’s creed, that it could be set aside by argument.
“You see, Lord,” his prayers had run, “if this child is spared to grow up, look at the good that may come of it. He will have to be reared from now in the shadow of our faith. Government must take over control here. It will bring Christian influence about the Court and Palace, and that, dear Lord, as You well know, is sorely needed. These people stumble in the dark; grant it to me to save this child’s life, that he may grow up to lead them into the light.”
And his prayer had been granted; a little murmur of thanksgiving stirred in the good missionary’s heart as he realised this.
The voices of the people outside came to him and he rose, crossing over to the window where the grey figure stood. Dr. Anstruther had the same rooted objection to Fakirs as he had to harems. Not because of their religion: the faith that burnt in the missionary was too kindly a light for that. But he had so many times proved them to be charlatans, and he hated deceit. But this man, somehow, in his grey, austere dignity, impressed one with a sense of truth. He had crept into the room at a time when Dr. Anstruther had been too busy to notice him; then, on looking up suddenly, the missionary had been amazed by the vivid eyes that met his. The man’s words had been strange too.
“The missionary Sahib prays to his God to grant the life of the Prince,” he had said. “It is not necessary. All things are written, and the journey is as yet but begun.”
Prayer not necessary! The statement called for contradiction, but for the moment Dr. Anstruther had not been able to spare the time.
He thought of it now, though, as he stood beside this priest of another creed, looking down at the empty gardens where the people had stood.
“Prayers,” he stated in the man’s language, for he was no mean scholar, as indeed was necessary for one who would preach among the natives, “are the chains that hold the world to God. Does your creed not teach you that, brother?”
The Fakir turned to look at him. “Creeds may be different,” he said. “God is always the same. From the beginning are all things known.” He seemed to straighten himself, to grow more regal. His eyes looked out beyond the missionary. “I am The Watcher, who sees all things for the Gods,” he said; “and knowledge weighs upon my eyelids with the weariness of Fate.”
“You knew, then,” questioned Anstruther, the man was oddly impressive, “that the King would live?”
The Fakir’s eyes came slowly back to those of the white man, yet Dr. Anstruther felt that the man was not looking at him. Perhaps it would be best described by saying that the eyes remained unfocussed.
“Come,” said the Fakir, holding out his hand, and, almost against his will, the missionary allowed himself to be led back to the divan.
They stood either side of it, and between them, in a very peaceful, relaxed slumber, lay the All Powerful. So babyish in his repose; thin, fragile fingers clasped above the emeralds.
“What is it my brother sees?” asked the Fakir.
Dr. Anstruther looked up at him. What was the man’s meaning? He answered, however, since he held it to be always best to meet the vagaries of the native mind with unfailing truth.
“I see,” he said, “a little child, worn out and wearied by sickness, whom I, by the grace of God, have been able to save. And I am not ignorant,” his eyes held those others, “of what caused the Prince’s illness.”
“So!” said the Fakir. There was that sudden blaze of pity in his eyes again as he bent over the child. “And I, O white brother, see blood and tears and the evil of a woman as yet unborn. Enough,” he straightened himself abruptly and turned away. “The end of the journey is not yet in sight.”
He had gone on that, but his words remained to vex Dr. Anstruther. Blood and tears and evil! Once or twice in his life before he had seen a granted prayer end in very much that kind of disaster. Almost as if God’s first judgments were always right, and when He wavered through pity or to grant a man’s prayer, it was not necessarily productive of happiness. A disloyal thought! Dr. Anstruther banished it hastily. There was very much to be done; he did not again let his mind rest on the Fakir.
And for the rest things seemed to fall out as he had planned and prayed they should that night. For with his report before them as to how the King’s sickness had occurred, the Government had deemed it wise to interfere at Bhogmore. The little King was rescued from the harem, that was how Dr. Anstruther alluded to the change, and handed over to the care of an English nurse. The Resident took up his abode within ten minutes of the Palace. The influence of European education and ideals had begun.
Dr. Anstruther passes out of the story here. He died, good honest man, before the Prince had spent another year of life; before he had had time to see how fruitlessly these selfsame ideals expended themselves against the granite walls of harem and bazaar. But before he died it seemed that a memory of the Fakir worried him not a little. He spoke of what the man had said very often.
“Different creeds, but always the same God. That is maybe true, John.” John was the native servant whom Dr. Anstruther had rescued from darkness and christened ten years before. “We must try and remember it. It doesn’t do to push their gods aside as useless lumps of clay. Our eyes don’t see very far in this world, John, we are apt to think their narrowness—wisdom.”
“You know what he said to me?” he whispered on another occasion. “I told you at the time. ‘Tears and blood and the evil of a woman as yet unborn!’ I have prayed that it may not be true, John. I feel responsible for the boy in some strange way. I have prayed.”
He said the words with an odd hesitation. Then, straightway, a great faith shone through his doubt.
“God is good, John,” he said, sitting up straight in the servant’s arms. “Whatever He wills is for the best.”
It was a good faith to die in, he took it with him out of the world. But whether or not his prayers were answered as he would have wished, that remains to be seen.
The child is guardian for the future. Lo,
Within each soul is born
The possibilities of good and ill,
The seed of tares or corn.
The child was dirty, dressed in filthy rags, yet there was an arresting grace about the unformed little body, the shape of the small defiant head, and the dancing was graceful, with the hot-house beauty of something exotic and very rare.
Sir Henry Daring had travelled a great deal, mostly backwards and forwards to India, for his profession took him there. He had seen all the famous dancers of the world; from the superb Russian ballet to the nautch girls of Lahore and the lithe, passionate dancers of Spain, yet now he paused in his walk fascinated by the ethereal grace of this elfin being dancing amid the dust and debris of the roadside. Perhaps it was the unconscious pathos of the scene that held him. He had wandered out of his way on his afternoon stroll, and he found himself now in the slums of Reading. His own house lay up on the hills the other side of the river; from there it was possible to look down aloofly at the town lying in the hollow of the valley.
Standing in his fair, well-ordered garden it would have been difficult to imagine that such squalor lay so close at hand.
The chill sun of a January day lit up this wretched street with seeming sarcasm, showing too plainly all its poverty. The low, dirty houses, teeming with life; the filthy children—poor little devils, how was it possible for them to be anything else?—playing with the refuse from the gutters; the slovenly women, sitting hunched up on the steps of their houses gossiping with their neighbours in shrill, ugly voices. And it was all so unspeakably hideous and depressing. Wherein lay the usefulness of such lives as these? How could the Creator extract any essence of thankfulness from such hearts? Sir Henry could dimly picture their lives; being a denizen from another world he could have no conception of the reality, and the degradation, the accumulation of misery appalled him. And then, suddenly, just as he was turning away, he had caught sight of this child dancer.
She had found a small patch of sunlight to fit her steps into, and from time to time she would throw back her head as if to challenge the sun himself. Sir Henry was interested, arrested by the personality so vividly displayed through all her rags and wretchedness. For as he stood and watched her he realised how wretched her poor, small life must be. One side of her face was disfigured by an ugly bruise, and her thin body—he could see glimpses of it as the rags swung free with her movements—was lined and scarred as if with the lash of a whip.
As the truth dawned upon him, Sir Henry’s heart surged with anger. He could feel it choking him in his throat. He was a very mild-tempered man as a rule, there was only one strong force in his life, and that was his passion of protection for anything young or weak or small. He had once nearly killed a native servant because he had found him ill-treating a kitten. He loved youth, Sir Henry, not in himself but in others, and Fate had never dowered him with a child. It was the one bitter regret in his life, and he generally kept it concealed because he knew it gave Lady Daring quite as much pain as himself. That anyone should ill-treat a child roused all the fighting propensities in his nature. He was going to investigate this affair, even though it meant a longer sojourn in an extremely unsavoury and uncongenial atmosphere.
It was an open space, unused except as a dumping ground for refuse, where the child danced, and she had it to herself. The probability was that she was not very popular with her playfellows, they would resent her originality in their midst. She was quite indifferent, if not oblivious to Sir Henry’s interest, for presently the dance came to an end and as the inspiration, or whatever it was, lifted from her heart, her body fell into stiff, tired lines. She moved in pain, it was infinitely pathetic the way her vitality went from her as memory came back. Just where she was, with the sunshine still playing about her, she crouched down, head buried in her arms, and commenced to cry. Dry, difficult sobs, not like a child’s light tears, but laden with misery such as no child’s heart should have to know.
With his blood pounding a war cry in his ears, Sir Henry picked his way across the empty tin cans and scattered debris to her side. He even brought himself down on a level with her, by kneeling amid such undignified surroundings.
“You poor little thing,” he said; “who has dared to ill-treat you like this?”
The child lifted a pair of most amazing green eyes at his voice. They were unfathomable and shaded by the longest lashes Sir Henry had ever seen. Her thin, white face assumed a mask on the instant, hard and defiant with unchildlike self-control.
“They’re always beating of me, blast them,” she answered with disconcerting directness. Her mouth grew sullen. “What’s it got to do with you, anyhow? You’re a toff, ain’t you?”
“Well, I wanted to help if I could,” said Sir Henry meekly. “You say ‘they’; surely your mother and father don’t do this to you?” He touched with reverent hands the small scarred shoulders visible through the rags.
The child winced, her lips trembled; he was amazed at the fierceness with which she held back her tears.
“Ain’t got none,” she announced. “I’m a bastard.” She lowered her eyes for a second; throughout her life she was to have the capacity for seizing chances, of knowing when and where to help herself. “Are you God?” she asked. “If you are, please help me, take me away with you. I heard teacher talking about God once. If only I could make Him hear me, I thought, He’d be sure to help. Oh, please, dear God.”
She threw aside her self-restraint, her hands clung to him, the tears poured down her face. “Please, dear God,” she repeated.
Sir Henry stood up in some perplexity. “You poor little soul,” he said. “I am not God, child, but as far as a man can help you, I will. Come along now,” he stooped, lifting her into his arms. “You shall show me where these people live and I will have a talk to them.”
He forgot the incongruity of his appearance as he stalked along. She was dirtier than anything he had ever handled in his life before, but he ignored even that. Her warm, small body, shaken with sobs, was making his heart beat to some new tune. He carried his head very high, and, believe it or not as you like, he was proud of his burden.
When they passed in through the low doorway of the indicated house the child clung to him still more tenaciously, he could feel the real terror that inspired her, and there and then a sudden resolve came to him, while his being glowed with a desire to protect her at all costs.
An evil-faced woman greeted him from inside the room. “What’s she been after now? little beast. You put her down, Mister, and let me get at her. I’ll show her what’s what.”
“You will pardon me,” said Sir Henry with considerable dignity, “and you will also attend to me for a few minutes; I have several things I wish to say to you.”
The woman had taken further stock of her visitor by now. “One of them P.C.C. people.” She swore a filthy oath. “The little devil’s a liar, sir, and that’s a fact. Some of them needs more than a good hiding to make them run straight.”
“I do not happen to be what you suggest,” answered Sir Henry. “Though if the Society knew of your brutal treatment of this child they would undoubtedly take the case up. You are not her mother, I gather; may I ask if her parents are living?”
“No, you mayn’t, blast you,” retorted the woman. “It’s no business of yours. Give over the brat and clear out.”
Again those desperate arms that clung about his neck, the heart that throbbed under his hand like a fluttered bird!
“I propose to do neither the one thing nor the other,” said Sir Henry. “If I went I should come back with the police. To ill-treat a child is a crime which, thank God, is punishable by law.”
“Ill-treat is it?” stormed the woman, yet she was visibly alarmed. “Seeing as how my husband found the dratted creature, this six years past it is now, lying out on the grass in the park. Brought it home to me, he did, sort of fool’s trick he’s always up to. And haven’t I kept her ever since, fed her, clothed her, housed her, and she no relation of ours and nothing but a spawn of the devil at that?”
“It passes my comprehension,” interrupted Sir Henry, “how you could do all this and yet be incapable of showing one spark of human kindness to the little baby left in your hands. However, I do not wish to argue with you, I have made up my mind how to act. Here is seven pounds,” he searched for his pocket-book and produced the amount. “You either take this in full payment of the child or I go straight to the police, with this poor little tortured body as evidence, and on my oath as a gentleman you shall pay dearly for every brutality you have dealt out to her.”
The woman stared at him. His language for one thing puzzled her, the seven pounds dazzled her eyes. She felt herself in a dream and struggled to wake. “You’d give seven quid for that?” she gasped. “Lor’ love us, you must be balmy.”
“What I am does not concern you,” said Sir Henry grimly. “You either accept the money and I take the child, or I go back to the police.”
“Oh, take her, and ill-luck go with her!” said the woman, her hand closed on the money. “You’ll regret it ’fore you’re a day older. I ain’t had to put up with her for six years without knowing something about her.”
A great load of anxiety lifted from Sir Henry’s heart. There might have been many and easier ways of securing the child’s release from a servitude of pain; he only knew that he had combated for her and won the day.
“You understand,” he paused at the doorway to repeat, “from to-day the child is nothing to you. If I see your face, or hear from you again, the whole matter goes straight to the police.”
He marched up the street with his possession, oblivious to the excited stares and whispered remarks that followed their going. The child had ceased to cry, she sat bolt upright in his arms, one dirty arm still round his neck, fronting the sun with a look of victory on her unchildish face.
When he got near to the main street of Reading, Sir Henry hailed a taxi. He was beginning to realise that he and his charge must be presenting an incongruous picture. He set the child down on the seat beside him and for the first time since his speech with her he studied her carefully. She was not ugly as he had at first supposed; her hair required washing and brushing, it was a curious heavy black when compared with her eyes, but even in its neglected state it was possible to discern the soft glow that would lie on it when properly attended to. Her mouth, when she was neither speaking nor crying, had wonderfully pure lines of beauty, her throat and head were very delicately shaped. She was of other parentage than the slums, thought Sir Henry; then his eyes came back to the bruises, the lines of pain on the child’s arm and shoulders, and all his conjectures melted into pity.
“Well,” he said gently, “have I done right, little one, and are you glad to be with me?”
“Glad,” the child repeated, “don’t know about that.” She watched him from under her lashes. “You won’t ever beat me, I suppose?”
He shook his head. “God forbid,” he said. “And what is your name, little one?”
“They called me Ruth,” the child answered; he could see that she was very nervous, the knuckles of her hands showed white where she held them clenched the one above the other. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” said Sir Henry, “to my home and yours, little Ruth Daring.”
Lady Daring heard the taxi and hurried out into the hall to greet them. It was unlike Sir Henry to drive home, she was afraid that there might have been an accident or that he had overtired himself. Lady Daring was one of those people who live perpetually on the border line of fear. Just because her life had been singularly devoid of tragedy she had an imagination which invariably transformed molehills into mountains. She had seen just enough of life to dread its sudden cruelties, and all her being centred in Sir Henry. She gave a little cry when she saw him with the child in his arms.
“Good gracious, Harry,” she gasped, “what have you got there?”
He preceded her into the drawing-room, and setting Ruth down on her feet stood up to face his wife.
“She is ours,” he said, “I have just bought her for seven pounds. Let me introduce you to Miss Ruth Daring.”
“Harry,” whispered Lady Daring. Despite the pleasure visible on his face there was horror and dismay in her voice.
Ruth looked from one to the other and then round the beautiful soft-coloured room, radiant and pleasant with its carefully arranged flowers. Her eyes came back to Lady Daring’s face and her breath caught in a quick sob. She turned to Sir Henry, throwing herself at his feet, clinging to his legs.
“You are God,” she wailed through her tears, “and this is heaven, but don’t you let Mrs. God beat me, don’t let her, don’t let her!”
While the great gods sport with mortals,
While the sun and moon endures,
Love cannot bridge the chasm
Betwixt my life and yours.
Ruth Daring stood leaning against one of the pillars of the verandah, her white-clad figure outlined against the green leaves of the low growing shrubs and the hot blaze of sunshine. Whatever might have been thought of her as a child there was no gainsaying now the surprising beauty of her face. She was faintly but exquisitely coloured, and the hot-house air of fragility which life in the tropics lends to some Englishwomen but served to intensify the purity of her skin. Her chief claim to beauty, however, lay in her heavy lashed eyes, now black, now hazel as the light touched them, and her hair a wonder of deep-shadowed black. Ruth’s hair was the envy of every other woman; it lay so shining and smooth to the shape of her small head, and, massed up as she wore it, it formed a regal crown. Yet, despite all that nature had done for her, there was just some shade of harshness about the girl’s face that made an intelligent observer pause and glance again, and this time not altogether with admiration. There was, ridiculous as it must seem in anyone so happily placed as Ruth Daring, bitterness and an unnecessary determination about the lines of her mouth, and if she raised her eyes to look straight at anyone—a thing she very rarely troubled to do—they were amazingly cold. Perhaps some far back memory from her early days had helped to mould the girl, a memory which had left her only too ready to take every possible advantage of Sir Henry’s spoiling. Be that as it may, the fact was now accomplished. Shaping and moulding had done their work; at twenty-one Ruth stood before the world a woman with a calculating brain, just weighed in the balance against a tempestuous, self-willed heart, the strength of which she had not as yet herself fathomed.
The coldness, the hardness, these were the fundamentals against which Lady Daring, for one, had always fought unsuccessfully. She had never been able to receive or give love to the small child that had been so dramatically thrust into her life. And quite honestly—a truth that she could whisper in her prayers at night—this inability had not been altogether Lady Daring’s fault. She had so wanted to find love in her heart for the little stranger, but from the first—sometimes Lady Daring would fancy that it was almost malignantly—Ruth had turned against her.
“Don’t let her beat me!” That had been the child’s cry on the first evening, she had clung to it thereafter with an impish knowledge that it had the power to hurt. At least, so it would sometimes seem to Lady Daring. Then she would scold herself sternly; what wickedness had crept into her heart that she should thus impute evil to a child’s shyness?
The thought of jealousy would not have entered Lady Daring’s mind had Ruth but admitted her even into the outside edge of affection, but to be always the third and aloof member of the new companionship tore at the roots of a love very deeply established in Lady Daring’s life. She and Harry had been all the world to each other; the child seemed to be coming between them with a two-edged sword. Slowly, but very surely, Lady Daring grew to realise that she resented Harry’s love for Ruth. “Not ours,” her heart would whisper, “not mine, not flesh of my flesh.” The bitter thought woke the old longing and brought with it an added sting. For Harry no longer shared the burden, he was content to pour out all his hoarded-up love into those strange little hands that clung to him.
So Ruth had brought into Lady Daring’s placid life a tumultuous sorrow. It is impossible that the child herself knew anything of all this, and it says a great deal for Lady Daring’s faith in ultimate good that no one else did, Harry least of all. She had always been very quiet and self-contained; as Ruth grew from childhood to girlhood, from girlhood to young womanhood, Lady Daring retired more and more into her shell. Year by year she relinquished just a little more of her share in Harry’s companionship, year by year she recognised the ascending influence of his love for the girl. Where she found comfort for the greyness of her days it would be hard to say , but find it she did, the sweetness of her eyes never altered, nor the placidity of her face.
It had been Harry’s wish that in every sense Ruth’s early days should be forgotten, the child herself was never allowed to speak of them. She grew up to believe, it would seem, as did most of their friends, that she was in reality their daughter. She never seemed to doubt it, nor—after the first year—did she ever refer to her other life. The Darings had left Reading that summer, and though they had often been in England again they had never revisited the place. Sir Henry’s work lay in India; so long as it was possible to keep her with them Ruth lived out there; when for reasons of health they had to take her home Lady Daring settled in England near the selected school, and Sir Henry seized every opportunity to come home on leave. Those months without them, he assured Lady Daring, were like exile in a barren land to him. She had never left him before, no hot weather had ever been sufficient to keep her from his side. She was tempted to remind him of the fact that she was still ready to be with him, only something within her realised it was not her presence he hungered for. She shut down the thought in her mind and wrote him long letters, full of Ruth, her sayings, her doings, how beautiful the child was growing. There is a love that can rise triumphant over even jealousy; Lady Daring had always loved Harry like that. Then when Ruth was twenty, Sir Henry had been made Resident of Bhogmore, and the three of them had sailed once more for India, taking with them Betty, a daughter of one of Lady Daring’s sisters, to act as a companion for Ruth.
There are few places in the world more beautiful than the home in which Ruth found herself thus pleasantly installed. Bhogmore is a small native state bordered on its northernmost side by the wild country of Afghanistan. It boasts only one large town, where there is a fairly big English settlement and where the Resident has his abode, but its ancient capital, Arkonum, is a small village on the borders, three days’ journey from the city and rarely used by the Rajahs save as a summer residence.
The Resident’s Palace at Bhogmore is a large stately building of white stone, cool looking, with its deep verandahs and its countless doors and windows. It stands square planted in a park of grassy lawns and great shadowed trees. Goldmohurs, their red and yellow blossoms flaunting against a sky of brazen blue, stand out predominant amongst the green; giant banyans droop their long leaf-covered branches to the ground to take root and grow again a living tent of leaves; and English flowers, great-headed roses, heliotrope and mignonette, grow side by side against a background of wilder India blossoms, heavy scented lilies, jessamine, and the blossoms of the Mogra tree.
Ruth loved India. Sometimes the strength of her passion for its beauty, its heat and colour and the glamour of its life, amazed even herself. She would stand at night, after the lights in the great house had been lowered and the servants had disappeared, on the top of the verandah steps that ran outside her bedroom. The fascination of the night world, stars twinkling in a sky of purple, the throb, throb of native music wafted up from the bazaars, the warmth and passion of the scented air, threw a cloak of magic about her. If you could have seen her face at those moments you would have found her with its hardness thrown aside, with something primitive awake in her eyes. Once, instinctively, she had gone farther in answer to her mood, stealing down the steps on to the lawn, under the shadows of the trees; but her escapade had been detected by the night watchman, whose duty it was to parade the grounds from sunset to sunrise, and it had caused a great commotion. They had taken her for a ghost and dashing aside their lanterns had run screaming for mercy. The house had wakened to light, servants, each armed with a lamp and a stick, had swarmed into the grounds, Sir Henry’s staff, even Sir Henry himself, had emerged on to the verandah clad in the gaudiest of pyjamas. Each member of the party had seemed more alarmed than the last, and Sir Henry extracted a promise that the escapade should never be repeated.
“There are snakes about,” he had said, “you seem to have forgotten that; besides, the natives would be sure to misconstrue your actions.”
“And if you want to go exploring by moonlight, Miss Daring, you take me as a butta-walla,” Captain Pentland had added with adoring eyes fixed on her face. “You will be all right with me to look after you.”
Most of the young gentlemen who filled the posts of aides-de-camp to Sir Henry gazed on Miss Daring with adoring eyes. She was, however, as Sir Henry frequently said, quite capable of dealing with all of them, and even Lady Daring was bound to admit that Captain Pentland was the only one who looked as if he was going to suffer from any serious heart trouble on behalf of the young lady.
Lady Daring was thinking of Pentland at this moment as she sat back in her comfortable wicker chair studying Ruth’s face. Not that their discussion, an argument which had brought a soft glow of suppressed wrath to Lady Daring’s cheeks, had dealt with him, but just because during this moment’s silence the grace of the girl’s figure as she stood with rebellious eyes lowered had made Lady Daring realise something of what a young man must feel brought face to face with such beauty. Would Ruth be at all touched by the offer of love when it came to her, Lady Daring wondered, or would she take that homage, as she had taken all the other gifts of her life, as if it were hers by right? With a sigh Lady Daring took her mind off Pentland and brought it back to the unpleasant point at issue.
“My dear,” she said, her voice a little tired, “you must do as you like about it, you generally do, don’t you? I am not attempting to interfere, just as I do not attempt to understand. It only seems to me that it is perhaps rather unkind to encourage a man to like you when——”
“You don’t seem to take into account that I perhaps like him,” Ruth interrupted.
Lady Daring took her eyes away and flushed.
“That did not occur to me as possible,” she admitted, “the man is a native.”
Ruth lifted scornful eyes. “And that settles the matter for you,” she said. “I suppose it is quite impossible to like a native.”
Lady Daring did not answer for a moment, her mind had called up another vision to her eyes. She was back again ten years in the past, and in front of her, playing indeed with a younger Ruth, was a slim native boy of about fourteen years of age, dressed in native splendour, with the emerald necklace which had been famous in the Bhogmore Raj for centuries round his neck and the diamond aigrette plume in his turban. The little Rajah of Bhogmore had been a handsome child, even as he was now a handsome man, and because she had known him as a child, had charge of him more or less since in those days Sir Henry had been Private Secretary at Bhogmore, Lady Daring had always held a soft corner in her heart for Channa. It was so trite and commonplace, the quotation running in her mind now, yet how could one get away from it? “East is East and West is West; And never the twain shall meet.” On that very morning ten years ago, she remembered how gravely Channa had refused to take a sweet out of the box she held out to him.
“It is not allowable,” he had said very sweetly; and carelessly, thinking to hear some new religious law, she had asked:
“But why not, Channa? I made them myself.”
“They might be poisoned,” he had answered, swerving no whit from the courtesy of his tone.
It was as if the small brown hand had flicked her across the face, and no affection afterwards—for the boy was quite avowedly fond of her—had been able to wipe out that moment of calm distrust.
“That you know is not quite true,” she answered Ruth at last. “I am, I always have been, fond of Channa, your father has many true and very dear friends among the natives. But for you it is different. I am not arguing against friendship, but in encouraging Channa as you do you are playing with something more dangerous than fire, and it is, above all, not fair to the man himself.”
Ruth shrugged her shoulders, lowering her eyes again. “You are ridiculous, mother,” she said. “I talk about going for a ride with Channa and you jump to wild conclusions which, I presume, from the hints you have thrown out, include matrimony. Of course the idea is absurd.”
“It is not so absurd to Channa,” Lady Daring put in quietly, “that was all I was trying to point out. And Ruth,” she stood up, crossing to the girl, putting her hand for a second on Ruth’s where it lay on the verandah rails, “there are more things mixed up in this than just our likes and dislikes. Your father holds a very difficult post, there are—perhaps it is right that you should know—many dangers in the way. It all requires careful steering. In India one must trust things no further than one can see. We live on the outside edge and sometimes it seems as though the people shut their hearts to us.” She sighed a little. “Your father has had many cruel disappointments.”
Ruth lifted incredulous, slightly amused, eyes.
“I’ll remember,” she said, “and meanwhile there is no real reason why I should not ride with Channa, is there?”
She stood for a little, after Lady Daring had moved back into the house, staring out into the garden. She had successfully emerged from her argument with Lady Daring, but the truth of some of the elder woman’s assertions remained to annoy her. There are things in this life which even the wisest and strongest of us are not always able to shape to our own liking. The passion in another’s heart is apt to flame out however much we ourselves intend it shall be kept under control. We cannot even rule our own destinies, so involved and dependent are they on the lives and doings of other people. To play with something more dangerous than fire! That was the attraction that held Ruth. She had not the slightest intention of allowing the danger to encircle her, only at moments when she paused in the game to peer into her own heart she was sometimes disagreeably startled at what she found there.
Across the space of the lawn in front of her, sitting, cross-legged and impassive, under the shade of one of the giant banyan trees, she could see the holy man of Bhogmore; privileged, by order of the Government, seeing that one of his fraternity had sat there, seemingly in very much the same position, for the last two hundred years.
“It’s a drawback to the house,” Sir Henry’s immediate predecessor had admitted; “that particular specimen has got on my nerves before now, with his inscrutable face and matted hair, watching, for ever watching, our antics in here. One can fancy the calm contempt in his mind as we prance about in front of him playing tennis, or sally out under the moonlight to enact our little love scenes between the dances. But he is there and there he remains, you can take him along with the house and my blessing. I believe it would cause a mutiny in Bhogmore if you suggested having him removed.”
Ruth’s eyes rested on the man for a minute or two before she really noticed him, then she frowned quickly and looked away. She had once or twice thought that the Fakir took more than an ordinary interest in her doings; once he had even spoken, using some strange words in a harsh voice as she passed by him. She would not admit to being afraid of him, but she thought of him as unclean and unpleasant.
Her attention, anyway, was distracted, for a chuprassi stood before her on the verandah, salaaming.
“His Highness, the Rajah Sahib of Bhogmore, has called to see the Miss Sahib. He awaits her in the drawing-room.”
Ruth paused for a second undecided, then she threw back her head as if mentally challenging some unseen adviser.
“I’ll go to him,” she said quickly, and passing the man disappeared into the house.
I gave you love. Was love so poor a gift?
(Turn your head to me, let me see your eyes.)
I gave you honour; gave my very soul;
(Your eyes are pools wherein love’s image dies!)
Now turn your head away, hide, close your heart;
Honour and Love and I do well to part.
The drawing-room of the Residency was a long beautiful room reaching the width of the house across. Four doors on the one side of it opened on to the deep verandah, shaded from the glare outside by bead chics that fell together with a little tinkling sound of music like Japanese air-bells when they were disturbed. The windows on the far side looked out over the wide sweep of drive and were entirely in shadow, thanks to the trees that stood like sentinels at the front door. People said that Lady Daring was the first Lady Resident to make the place look at all homelike. It had lost some of its stiff splendour under her deft hands. The uncomfortable chairs, the ornamental tables with their abundance of glass and china horrors, had disappeared in her day; it was a room now of soft colours and cushions and comfort. English flowers were arranged in the vases, the piano stood by one of the open windows, its top littered with music, Lady Daring’s knitting bag and a book lay on the sofa. The ugly arrangements for punkahs or fans found in most Indian houses were not necessary in Bhogmore during the cold weather, and Lady Daring had had all traces of them removed. The room, even at midday, was cool and fragrant, a faint little breeze just stirring the leaves outside the window.
Channa, since the chuprassi had admitted him and gone to find the Miss Sahib, had not moved. He stood, a rather tense held figure in the centre of the room. Tall above the average and very slim, he seemed, a peculiarity common enough among very well-bred natives, to be almost boneless. The languid beauty of his face was almost startlingly emphasised by very dark, large eyes, and delicately cut nostrils that literally quivered in moments of emotion. And there was, despite its delicacy, a suggestion of strength, a great reserve of character in his face. Indeed he had a nature curiously mixed, with all forms of inherited self-indulgence held in check by training and example. For Channa had spent his childhood and boyhood under the best influence that Western civilisation could procure for him. He had had as tutor and almost guardian an Englishman of exceptionally high talents and force of character.
Mr. Smallman had given the best years of his life and all the energy of his heart to the education and training of the little native Prince who had been consigned to his care. Channa’s father had died before Channa was born, his mother in giving him birth. There had been trouble and dissension in the Palace, secret plottings, some even said an attempt to do away with the heir by murder, and great danger of the whole state being thrown into open rebellion, when the English Government had stepped in. Channa was to be the next King; until such time as he was fit to rule the Government would take complete control of him. The Resident had been obliged to leave the city and take up his residence temporarily at the ancient capital, the Palace had been purged of plotters, and Channa, taken from his maternal grandmother—an old lady of such mischievous propensities that she had forthwith to be banished—was handed over to the care of a trained nurse.
Seven years later Miss Rose gave up her charge, and Mr. Smallman was installed in the Palace. It was at his instigation that Channa escaped the fate of most native princelings. He was not sent home to England to be educated; all that was needful Mr. Smallman taught him; the result, everyone was bound to admit, was a very finished article.
“He is such a thorough gentleman,” was the white men’s verdict. Sometimes they did not trouble to hide the surprise in their voices, a fact which Smallman was very quick to resent. Was there any reason why Channa should not be a very thorough gentleman, royal descendant as he was of a race of kings that reached back a thousand years?
Yet in his training there had always been one difficulty insurmountable even to Mr. Smallman. There were the women of the harem, Channa’s aunts and cousins and step-mothers, a veiled, hidden influence that pulled at the child’s heartstrings with their women’s hands, that were always secretly, but none the less strongly, antagonistic to his English teaching. Smallman might seem to hold the strongest rein; there were many times when he knew himself weaker than their hidden force.
It was when he was dying of fever contracted during his many years’ exile, for not once in his fourteen years’ service had the tutor left his charge, that Smallman first spoke to Channa of the subject that had long burdened his heart. Smallman had grown to love the boy, and love sometimes sees very far. He had sent for Channa a day or two before the end.
“I am going out,” he said, “it means leaving you alone. Have I made you strong enough to stand on your own?”
There had seemed nothing strange to Channa in this anxiety, they had often spoken together of how he must grow strong in order that he might rule his people aright. “You know what you have made me,” he answered gravely; “are you not satisfied?”
“Satisfied!” The man on the bed, gaunt and haggard-eyed from the fever that held him, groaned. “My work had only just begun. If I could have lasted out a little longer, set you more firmly on your feet. But now—there are always the women, Channa; don’t let them set too many obstacles in your path.”
“The women,” Channa repeated; “they do not interest me.” He was quite serious in his declaration. “I shall not choose a wife from among the purdah held.”
“They’ll choose one for you though,” Smallman answered, “and she’ll tie you down to the old things with bands of flowers. They are the strongest things in the world, the chains a woman weaves. Try and remember what I have taught you; and Channa——” he put out his hand suddenly, “play the game always, whatever the cost.”
“Whatever the cost,” Channa agreed. He laid his cool, flexible hand in the other’s grasp. “I shall not forget.”
So Smallman, unwilling, fighting to the last, had perforce to hand over his trust and depart on the long journey from which there is no seeming return. And, as he had feared, the old, bad state of things engulfed Channa, drew him down into a vortex of feminine plottings, sensuous influences and lies. He was twenty-one at Smallman’s death, old enough, as even a most grandmotherly government had to admit, to come into his own. Amidst great pomp and splendour, nights and days of feasting and rejoicing, he was installed. Certain of his father’s old ministers came back into power, new ones were chosen from among the nobles round him. The Resident retired to the city, leaving the Rajah’s English private secretary more or less in charge at Arkonum, but only in the guise of a friendly adviser, not in any sense a ruler. It was unfortunate that in those early days of Channa’s reign his private secretary should have been a nonentity, a man who took but little interest in his responsibility, whose heart was set on only one thing—the day when he should draw his pension and retire to live in England.
Amidst all the enervating, hothouse atmosphere of his new life there was some strain in Channa that yet remained loyal to Smallman’s teaching. He could not truthfully have said that he was still indifferent to women; they played too large a part in his present life; he was encouraged on all sides to absorb himself in their attractions. To see, to desire, to possess; that was the rule of his life, but his mind all the time remained a little scornful of this glamour of the senses and he would not marry. Smallman’s teaching stayed triumphant there; Channa wanted something more than mere bodily attraction, he held to his European ideas of love. Then, by some odd twist of fate, Ruth Daring came into his life and his whole being swept into a passion of love for her.
He was twenty-seven by then; for six years he had lived feeding every stray impulse of his nature with generous hands. He had hardly added to his self-control during those years, it was not wonderful that he found his present mood very difficult to manage. Yet something of playing the game remained, and beyond and above everything else he loved her. He was like wax in her hands, she could have made of him anything that she pleased.
Ruth, on her way in to see him, paused in the doorway, one hand holding aside the chic, framed for a second in a vivid glow of sunshine. Then she moved into the room and the beads tinkled together as she passed. He could not quite decipher her face, for his eyes were still a little blinded from the glare, but she stood in front of him holding out her hand, a very friendly greeting in her voice.
“How good of you to come round,” she said. “Was it about the pony for to-morrow?”
“About that, yes,” he agreed, “but also to see you. I——” his voice broke curiously, he stood staring at her, still holding her hand.
Ruth laughed and drew away her hand, passing in front of him to sit down on the sofa.
“How ridiculous you are,” she said; “why, you saw me only yesterday afternoon, and to-night you are coming to the ball, aren’t you? Won’t you sit down for a little, anyway, since you are here?”
“Does it seem ridiculous?” he asked. Then remembering suddenly the ethics of the game they were playing he laughed in answer and drawing up a chair sat down opposite her. He knew enough of English customs to realise that passion must always be veiled; she had not yet shown him that she was willing to listen to the truth. “Well, perhaps it is. Yet to see anything as beautiful as you is always pleasant and worth a ride in the sun. And besides, there was another motive. This ball to-night, you have not definitely stated the dances you will give me.”
“I never make definite statements about that kind of thing,” said Ruth, “it is a question of impulse at the moment.”
“At least something to indicate that your impulse will sway in my favour.”
Ruth watched him from under half-closed eyes. Apart from Lady Daring’s warnings, she was by no means ignorant of the strength of his feeling for her. Therein lay the playing with fire which so attracted her. When in the city, away from the jealous, critical eyes of his people, Channa wore the ordinary clothes of an Englishman. He was so fair skinned that in Europe he would have been taken for an Italian or Armenian, and he was undoubtedly handsome. All this Ruth noticed before she answered.
“Perhaps we could have the supper dances,” she said, then intentionally she looked away, he could see that her eyes avoided his. “You know,” she said, her voice held a note of most unusual hesitation, what people are like, how difficult it is to just be friends. I could dance most of the evening with you, for you dance beautifully, only—” she broke off suddenly and looked up at him. “Mother has been lecturing me about you this afternoon.”
Her words threw him into a tumult, as she had intended they should. He stood up abruptly, his hands working within each other. “Lady Daring disapproves,” he said. “I am not fit, I suppose, to be friends with you because——”
“Don’t be absurd,” Ruth interrupted; he was going further than she had intended him to. “Mother is very fond of you. It is only outside people who are silly and cackle about one if one dances twice with the same person.”
He looked down at her, something a little ugly awake in his eyes. “No,” he said, “it is more than that. Why play with the truth? You and I, we know what it is.”
There was the sound of a cheery whistle outside and footsteps drawing near. The bead chic swung apart and Captain Pentland came into the room. His face, clean shaven but for a small moustache, was typical of the military Englishman with whom India is so familiar. He had very honest, rather stupid blue eyes, and a chin denoting more obstinacy than strength of will. He nodded cheerily at Channa and smiled at Ruth. For Ruth to be in a room was sufficient to transform the said apartment into heaven for Captain Pentland.
“Hulloa, Prince,” he said, “come to see Sir Henry? He is out, I am afraid.”
“I came to see Miss Daring,” Channa answered stiffly. He at any rate was conscious of antagonism towards the man, though Pentland himself was blissfully ignorant of any such necessity.
“Weighing in with a programme before any of us get a chance, I bet,” he said cheerfully, and ensconced himself on the sofa beside Ruth. “You haven’t been doing anything rash, have you, Miss Daring, before my claims are settled?”
“I don’t acknowledge your claims,” laughed Ruth, “you will have to be very humble if I am to give you a dance at all.” She stood up, holding out her hand to Channa. “Till to-night, then,” she said, “and it is agreed about supper, is it?”
Pentland accompanied Channa to the door, talking most cheerfully about a coming cricket match and quite oblivious of the other’s frigid silence. He patted Channa’s pony while the other was mounting.
“Envy you your mounts, Prince, they are such beauties. Isn’t this the one Miss Daring rode last paper-chase?”
“Yes,” Channa admitted. He resented Pentland’s hand even on the neck of the animal that had carried Ruth.
“Thought so,” the other nodded. “Well, good-bye. See you to-night, I suppose.”
Pentland strolled back to the drawing-room after the slim figure had vanished from sight. He found Ruth apparently deep in the novel she had picked up, and he fidgeted about for some time without her taking the slightest notice of him.
“Have you really given him the supper dances?” he asked presently, pausing beside her, one hand on the back of the sofa almost touching her.
Ruth nodded. “It will be more amusing than being sent in with the senior judge,” she said.
Pentland had to agree to that. “He is a very decent fellow for a black man,” he admitted after a pause.
He was amazed at the sudden anger that leapt into Ruth’s eyes. She stood up quickly, the book half closed in her hands.
“Really, Captain Pentland,” she said, “you know quite well that father hates that sort of remark, and so do I. Prince Channa is our friend, the same as you or anyone else.”
She moved to the door and Captain Pentland stood staring after her. He knew himself to be in the wrong, yet for the life of him he could not think what he had said to deserve so severe a snubbing.
My heart’s desire! Great are the gods above,
But greater still, this small, still, earnest flame
Burning within my heart. You call it love,
And deem it but a game.
Take care, my friend, in case the fire should spread,
And burn your beauty, after love is dead.
For the ball, the Residency and its grounds were transformed into a wonder world. Chinese lanterns hung in festoons from tree to tree, the paths and lawns were picked out with little coloured lamps, a form of decoration very dear to the natives, consisting of coloured glass globes placed over tiny wicks of light that float in basins of oil. Inside, the ballroom was ablaze with light, the soft colours of the ladies’ dresses blending in with the more gorgeous uniforms of the men. For the occasion was the Resident’s State Ball, and Bhogmore society at these functions is very resplendent. The native bodyguard, standing on duty up the flight of stairs that led to the reception room, added to the general effect, their magnificent physique and dark faces, the splendour of their red and gold uniforms, forming an impressive picture. They seemed like the solid embodiment of force amidst all the glitter and light and movement.
One corner of the grounds alone remained in shadowed obscurity. Long custom, to say nothing of a dislike on the part of the natives towards disturbing the meditations of their holy man, always left the Fakir’s tree out of the general scheme of decorations. Erect as ever, he sat in the shadow, cross-legged, hands folded, rapt in contemplation, so it would seem from the expressionless repose of his face; and beside him, burning very feebly in comparison with the rest of the illuminations, shone the little red glow of the lamp that adorned Kali’s shrine. Darkness and light, the murmur of music, little snatches of voices and laughter, and the Watcher sitting in the shadows. The contrast was in itself typical of India, where society floats like a butterfly on the edge of a blackness no eye can fathom!
For the first part of the evening Ruth succeeded very well in avoiding all meeting with Channa. He made several attempts to attract her attention, but she was purposely too preoccupied to notice him, and as the reigning royalty he had a great many duty dances to perform. One of these entailed sitting out with Lady Daring during the dancing of the state lancers.
“Shall we sit and watch the dancers,” she had suggested, “or shall we go out in search of a small breeze?”
“I would rather stay here,” he answered.
She made room for him on the sofa beside her. He was looking very morose and unresponsive, she thought, his face darker and older looking than usual because of the white robes of state and the heavy turban that he wore. Generally they were such good friends that conversation between them was no difficulty, but to-night he was stubbornly silent; she gained the impression that his nerves were stretched almost to breaking point, and she not unnaturally connected the fact with Ruth. Really things were coming to such a pitch that she would shortly have to open Harry’s eyes to the trend of events. It made her a little nervous to think how ruthlessly Harry would deal with the matter.
Ruth was dancing the lancers with Captain Pentland. She had indeed been very gracious to him that evening, rather openly they had danced time after time together; people, with their usual readiness to scent a romance, were already whispering that the end of the ball would probably see an engagement announced. Dressed in a gown of faint, gauzy green, held in at the waist with touches of gold, and with her smooth black hair unrelieved and dressed low over her small ears, she was a vision of ethereal grace. The faint flush which dancing had brought to her cheeks was extraordinarily becoming, softening the hardness of her face to absolute beauty. As she swayed and smiled and curtseyed through the movements of the dance Lady Daring was bound to admit that she made a very perfect picture. Then she glanced again at the young, dark face near her with its tragic eyes and sullen mouth, and almost against her will she sighed.
“How much longer are you staying with us, Prince?” she asked. “I suppose we shall all be on the move soon. You know we are going to try Darjeeling this year for the hot weather?”
He turned to look at her. “Sir Henry has promised that you shall honour my Palace with a visit on your way to the hills,” he said. “I myself go back to-morrow, so that everything will be ready for your reception.”
Had she left her warning to Harry until too late? Lady Daring was conscious of a moment’s uneasiness. “It is very kind of you to have asked us,” she said. “Harry has not told me anything about it.”
“It was only settled this evening,” Channa answered. He was staring at her rather purposely, she thought. “Does it not meet with your approval?”
“Why, of course,” she hastened to reassure him. “It will be delightful. I used to be so fond of the old place when Harry was secretary there.”
“And there are many improvements you will find.” He was looking again at the green-clad, dainty figure. “It will all be strange to Miss Ruth, she can hardly remember the place.”
The dance finished with a flutter of skirts and the dancers dispersed. Sir Henry and his partner made their way across to the couple on the sofa.
“You are a disgrace, Mary, the way you shirk the lancers,” laughed Sir Henry. “Has the Prince been telling you about our proposed jaunt?”
“Yes,” Lady Daring admitted. “We must not leave it too late though, Harry. Ruth and Betty would feel the journey back if the weather got really hot.”
When the next dance had begun and she and Harry were alone for a minute she hinted at the trouble in her mind.
“This visit, Harry, is it altogether necessary or wise?”
He hardly heard the last part of her sentence. “Expedient, more than necessary,” he acknowledged. “Truth is, Mary, though this is between ourselves, there are threatenings of unrest up there. Channa’s neighbours are a disloyal crowd, and though I don’t distrust him a quarter of an inch, he is young and his people are not exactly in hand. A visit from me will create a good impression, show them we have got an eye on them. You don’t mind coming, do you—thought you liked the boy?”
“I do,” she said quickly. Ruth, dancing again with Pentland, swung into her range of vision and out again. “Perhaps it will be all right.”
“Oh, there is not the slightest danger,” he assured her, “it is more a friendly visit of warning.”
Channa found Ruth, when the time came to claim his dances, standing in one of the wide doors that led out on to the verandah. She had a little crowd of men round her, but they dispersed as Channa joined them. There was one section of society in Bhogmore that disapproved very sternly of Miss Daring’s flirtation with the Prince. Ruth leant back against the door, fanning herself slowly, a curious smile on her face as she watched their avoidance of the Prince, then when they were alone she turned to him.
“You have been lazy this evening, haven’t you?” she said; her eyes, taking colour from her dress, showed almost green, “I haven’t seen you dancing once.”
“In these,” he answered, indicating his state regalia, “it would look absurd. I have contented myself by watching.”
She knew him to be aflame with jealousy, it amused her to play on the tightened chords of his emotion. “What a pity,” she said lightly; “then our dances are wasted, for I cannot pretend to wanting supper yet, I always like it right at the end.”
“You will come outside with me.” He drew a little closer to her, staring down at the heavy lashes lying against the pink of her cheeks, the vivid colour of her mouth, the rise and fall of her breath. “There is some magic in the stars tonight; I want them to speak for me.”
Ruth flashed a glance at him and looked away again. As he had said there was magic in the night outside, she had proved it before, and already some of its glamour was shaking her in the presence of this man. She was conscious also of a sense of danger, though she could argue that the idea was absurd, and it was not exactly caution or fear that made her hesitate. It was more a curious pleasure that she derived from this playing with the possibility of fear.
“Can’t you really dance?” She fenced with the seriousness in his voice, her eyes on the safety of the lighted ballroom. “It seems such a pity, this is one of my favourite waltzes.”
The man shook his head and unseen by the others his hand closed over her arm just where the glove ended. His touch thrilled her oddly, she was no longer quite sure of herself, though she tried to fight down the feeling. “You will come with me,” he was saying. “All evening I have waited for this. What do you think it has meant to me to watch you dancing with that other man? Hell, black hell, and the outside edge of hate. I shall go mad if it continues.”
He had no right to speak to her like this. In all their delicate flirtations together he had never before so far forgotten the game. Yet something primitive in her answered to his mood, it called a quick flush to her face and hurried her breathing.
“Don’t,” she said quickly, moving away from the touch of his hand. “If you say that kind of thing I won’t go anywhere with you. It is silly and theatrical,” she forced her eyes to meet his, “and you and I have got to be sensible, you know, otherwise it must be the end of friendship.”
She stepped out on to the verandah, from the glare and noise and movement, into the soft dusk disturbed only by little twinkling lights. Many of the decorations had burned themselves out, only here and there splashes of colour broke up the darkness of tree and shrub, and under the holy tree the red light in front of Kali’s shrine shone untouched and clear. Some attraction drew Ruth to that red glimmer, and the nearer she came to it the more oppressed was she with the sense of her companion’s presence and the curious fluttered fear it was bringing to her heart. Like most women she had recourse to quick talking to hide the nervousness.
“We’ll look up old Nicodemus, shall we?” she said, “and see if he really stays awake all night. My ayah says he never sleeps, that sleep is unnecessary to the very holy. Isn’t that an absurd idea? You know,” she broke off to laugh at herself, “it sounds ridiculous, but I am half afraid of that old man. He has such terrible eyes, they glare at one from under his tangle of hair.”
She gave a little affected shiver and paused in her walk. “I don’t think we will go, after all,” she said, “it is too dark and father says there are bound to be heaps of snakes about; holy men make a hobby of them.”
Till then Channa had not spoken. It was true what he had said to Ruth standing on the edge of the ballroom. He had been through Hell that evening. The force of his desire had shaken him out of all bounds of self-control, and, purposely, by her very disregard of him, she had fanned the flame in his heart. It would take more than her light efforts at frivolity and common sense to extinguish it.
He stopped when she stopped, and beside her in the dark, for that moment’s pause which held her silent despite herself, Ruth could hear his quick, harsh breathing. Then she turned to retrace her steps, and before she realised his intention even, his arms were round her, he was holding her, lifted almost off her feet, and pressed against him with such force as to be painful. She was frightened then, conscious of the terrifying truth of her own weakness and his strength. Customs and beliefs fell away, they were centuries behind all conventions; he was a man and she was a woman, held passive for the moment by a woman’s instinctive fear. His kisses hurt her, his hands were cruel as they held her.
Perhaps it was this very real pain that helped to break the spell. She struggled in his arms, pushing him away from her with her hands. The fan she was carrying broke, the frail flounces of her frock were being torn. Then suddenly all resistance left her and with a little sob she fell forward against him.
Her tears had more effect than all her struggles. He stood aghast at this thing he had done, bitterly ashamed of himself, contrite, and weakened by the strength of the storm that had shaken him.
“I love you,” he repeated over and over again. “I meant no harm, Ruth, I had forgotten you would not understand. I must have been worse than mad to do what I have done.”
She clung to him then, when he would have let her go. “You frightened me,” she sobbed, “you frightened me.”
The dance was finished, stray couples could be seen passing down the verandah steps and out into the grounds. Channa drew Ruth further back into the shadows until they stood under the branches of the holy tree. Inscrutable, unmoved, the holy man watched them; it was impossible to tell from his face whether he took any account of their doings, or if they passed before him like the vagaries of a dream.
“I should have waited, I should have spoken first,” Channa was saying. His hands caressed and soothed her as she lay against him, her tears finished, content for the moment to have his arms about her and to yield herself to the insidious sensation of tiredness that kept her passive under his touch. “But I have loved you for so long, it has been like a flame devouring my life. I have thought of nothing, waking or sleeping, save you, and of the joy of holding you one day in my arms, of feeling your lips under mine. You have not been ignorant of my love, I have seen that you knew of it and you have not resented it. That has given me hope. You do not hate me, I am not repulsive to you. Sometimes you forget, do you not, that I am not of the same race as yourself?”
Some magic held Ruth, she could not have told what it was but she knew that this man exercised it over her as no one else had ever done. Training and principles and a dread of what her world would say stood in armed array against her inclination, but for the moment they were powerless.
“No,” she said wearily, “I don’t hate you, I never have. But it is all so impossible, can’t you see?”
“I can see nothing but your face, your eyes,” he answered. He kissed the lashes close against her cheeks as he answered. “If you love me, nothing will be impossible. I will speak to Sir Henry to-night. They will not agree to begin with, it may take a little time, but I can wait. Love will not grow cold through waiting.”
“No,” said Ruth quickly. He brought the dream too near reality for her to ignore it any longer, and she had no intention of ever letting it be anything but a dream. “You mustn’t do that. You are not to speak to father yet; I must have time to think, you must give me that. To-night I can’t see things clearly, but because you have found out my secret you must be generous to me. You must give me a little time.” She took her hands away and stood back. “Listen,” she said, “in a fortnight we are coming to your place, father has told me about it; you must do nothing till then. You must not try to see me or write to me. I will give you my answer then, but I must be left free to make up my own mind.”
“I understand,” said Channa, “it is no small thing I am asking you to do. If you say now, ‘I love you,’ the rest shall be as you wish. I can be patient. I will—as you say—play the game.”
A memory of Smallman stirred across his mind as he said the words. He would be true to his teaching. His eyes were very loyal as they met Ruth’s, and hers were the first to look away. The emotion had died out of her face, it was very cold and quiet again. Already her brain was busy conceiving ways of escape from the awkward entanglement into which her senses had plunged her.
“I love you,” she agreed, “but that doesn’t amount to very much. There are so many other things to be considered.”
“It amounts to all the world,” he replied. He pulled her to him again and kissed her on the lips and eyes. “I kiss the soul in your eyes,” he said, “you will not be able to wipe that off.”
For a moment she clung to him responsive, then she broke away and without once looking back turned and ran to the house. Another dance was already in progress, the verandah was deserted; she could slip along into her own room without being seen.
Channa’s absorbed silence was broken by a harsh voice talking out of the shadows.
“The promises of white women are as the lives of gnats, Prince, soon forgotten. And for this one, there is no particle of truth in all her being.”
Channa turned angrily. The Fakir’s eyes, set deep in the wrinkles of his ash-stained face, met his gravely.
“No good thing can come out of such mating, Prince. Only blood and tears and much sorrow to thy people.”
“A sea of blood should not hold me from her,” Channa answered.
He swung the string of emeralds from his neck and threw them, with the sound of glass falling upon glass, at the feet of the old man.
“Do pooja to the Gods for me,” he said, “that they look favourably upon my heart’s desire.”
But had he returned next day to the shrine he would have found the emeralds still where he had thrown them, a little pile of seeming glass beads lying beside the crossed feet. Of what use to bribe the Gods, whose edicts are unchangeable!
Old hands lose nought of their cunning,
Old hearts can burn with hate.
Look to the house of your fathers
Before it be too late.
The Palace of the Rajahs of Bhogmore is very old and very beautiful. Centuries ago it was devised and built, when the State was one of the wealthiest in a very wealthy kingdom. Additions to it have been made from time to time, and in particular, Channa’s father, the late Rajah, had seen fit to add an ugly pile of masonry in the European Georgian style—a place which he had been inordinately proud of and in which he had installed the State rooms and the Rajah’s dwelling apartments.
The old buildings lie at the back of this monstrosity, thus altogether shut away from the curious eyes of the stranger; and a great tangle of badly kept grounds surround both buildings and cut them off from the huddled-up houses of the bazaar, and the English secretary’s house which stands just outside the gateways into the Palace drive.
To a lover of things beautiful it seems amazing that anyone could have built the modern Palace, so hideous in its square, solid air of comfort, with the other, centuries old marvel of white marble and delicate carving, to take as a guide. But Channa’s father had been European mad during a period of his reign, and he had aped his English neighbours in every possible way. The interior of the new house had been decorated to suit this taste. Blatant glass chandeliers from Birmingham hung in all the rooms; ornamental clocks and pricelessly hideous pieces of china stood about under glass cases. He had once been greatly impressed by an ornamental tin biscuit-box; stacks of them stood on shelves in one of the rooms. Channa had never thrown them away; he had admired them himself as a child, he let them stay for old sake’s sake.
For the rest, he, like his father, preferred to live in the new buildings. He appreciated the solid comfort, the English installed baths, the furniture, the fitted-up electric fans. He still held his court where his father had held it in the wide central room, empty save for its throne of gold and its stiff row of chairs for the more important noblemen. The old Palace Channa had given over to the women folk: he tried to keep that part of his life entirely separate. He did not want to have them obtruding upon his European days. When he needed them, when his heart cried out for relaxation and his spirit for amusement, he could cross the narrow space that divided the two buildings and let himself in again to an older civilisation, a more primitive form of life. Then the beauty of the place, the carved pillars, the long passages of marble, the jessamine-covered walls and cool tanks of lily-covered water, appealed to something sensuous in his nature. He liked the heavy scents that hung about the place, the luxurious carpets, the cushions used instead of chairs. It was a side of himself that he had been slightly ashamed of to begin with, it clashed so entirely with Smallman’s example. It rendered him, he knew, effeminate and weak. Yet there were times when he gave himself over wilfully to its pleasures. Then he would lie back against the cushions of some divan while the dancing girls moved before him, while incense swung in the air from the perfumed oil in the silver lamps and a little breeze was kept astir by the giant fans held in the eunuchs’ hands and slowly moved from side to side.
Channa’s return to his capital was celebrated by a general feast day. The whole village, quaint, sunbaked, flat-roofed huddle of houses as it was, shone gay with bunting and little coloured flags. There was no train service as yet in Bhogmore, the journey to the capital had to be done in motorcars, a form of conveyance that caused great amazement and distrust to some of the older inhabitants of the village. Surely it would have been more seemly had their Maharajah travelled, as his fathers had been content to do, on a stately pacing elephant? This inrush of European ideals and customs was grievous to the old people of Bhogmore, but they were very powerless against the force of its invasion.
Mr. Mellish, Channa’s present private secretary, came out in his own motor car to meet the Prince and travel the last ten miles back with him. He had some affairs of state that he wanted to talk over with Channa. There had been a little local rising over the frontier. It had appeared, on investigation, though the matter had been quickly hushed up, that several of Channa’s ministers had known of the trouble and done what they could to encourage it. Dissatisfaction and unrest were cankers that could not very well be ignored in a state which lay so close to the frontiers of Afghanistan.
“You have been away too long, Prince,” Mellish told him, as the motor car sped along the road enveloped in a cloud of dust. “You know I interfere as little as possible in Palace affairs, but my wife keeps in touch more or less. Your grandmother put in an appearance about a month ago and, without wishing to be impolite, I may say that we regard her as a stormy petrel.”
In his despatches to headquarters he had alluded to her as a very dangerous character, but he did not deem it diplomatic to put the matter quite so plainly to the Prince.
Channa listened in silence. He had spent the last few days, since his episode with Ruth at the ball, in a delirious dream. He was only waiting for one thing, her surrender. Nothing else in the world held any interest for him. He tried however to take an intelligent interest in Mellish’s summing-up of the situation. He had a liking for Mellish which did not amount to respect. The Englishman was the type of man whom long service in India had reduced practically to a bundle of nerves. He was very chary of responsibility, continually in dread of some event which might end his career in disaster. Channa had grown accustomed to look upon his warnings with very sceptical eyes.
“If what you tell me is true,” he said presently, “I have acted very fortunately in persuading Sir Henry to honour us with a ten days’ visit. It will show my people how my intentions lie.”
“Quite so, quite so,” Mellish assented, “but at present, with this undoubted trouble in the air, it will add a great deal to our responsibility. Where are you proposing to house the Resident?”
“In the new Palace,” Channa answered. “The whole place shall be at their disposal. I can take up my quarters elsewhere for the time.”
He was picturing to himself Ruth’s figure moving through the great rooms of his house.
“Oh well, we can only hope that it will all go off smoothly.” Mellish’s voice was pessimistic. “And touching on the subject of your grandmother, Prince, you will look into this matter, I trust. Perhaps a few words from you——”
The rest of the sentence was lost, for the motor car had swerved into the drive and drawn up at the flight of stone steps leading into the Palace and all the ceremonial of reception had to be gone through. Mellish took his departure very shortly afterwards and returned to pour out to his wife all the worry and work which a visit from the Resident would entail. Mrs. Mellish was sympathetic if unimpressed. She had a habit of attributing most of her husband’s prophecies to an impaired digestion.
“It will be very pleasant seeing them,” she remarked, finding a redeeming feature among the general gloom. “I have always wanted to meet Miss Daring; people say she is absolutely beautiful.”
“Oh, it will be pleasant enough having them,” Mellish admitted, “and I shall take this opportunity to put the whole situation very plainly before Sir Henry.”
Channa, meanwhile, having disposed as quickly as possible of the crowd assembled to meet him, was holding an audience with his head minister, an old, grey-haired warrior, who had been in the service of Channa’s father, and who had more to do with the management of affairs than had either of his masters. Straight held, despite his seventy odd years, with flowing white beard divided down the middle and brushed stiffly upwards so as to give his face a great expression of fierceness, Dattaka was a fine type of the rare old Indian aristocracy. Eyes like a hawk’s, very hard even in their honesty, looked out from a wrinkled brown face. He was a great deal darker than Channa, the blood of the Afghans flowed in his veins, and he had all their fighting, quarrelsome spirit combined with a fine generosity and a warm heart. Dattaka had been a great lover of women in his young days; it was a constant source of anxiety, if not irritation, to him that his Prince should have remained untouched by any durable outbreak of passion. A marriage for the Maharajah, the begetting of new life to carry on the traditions of the race, these were projects very dear to Dattaka’s heart, and so far whenever he had mooted them it had been to be met with instant rejection. This thought was at the back of his mind, disturbing his attention while he discussed with Channa the trouble hinted at by Mellish.
Yes, it was quite true within limits, but the Secretary Sahib, as His Highness well knew, was an old woman in these matters. Frightened by shadows, with ears that heard voices in the wind. Dattaka had warned the offenders that such doings could not be tolerated; the trouble would not occur again. As for the other matter, who save a madman paid any attention to the doings and sayings of the women folk? As well lend an ear to the chattering of monkeys. Certainly the Ranee Sujata was in the Palace, but she had not come on any mission of mischief; rather had she come intent on bringing happiness.
“It is for your Highness’ marriage,” he ended, discreet eyes fixed on the listening face. “Nay, Maharajah,” as he saw the quick frown, “the time is over ripe. Your people clamour for it. It is not seemly that you should be content to waste the life-giving years of your life on the dancing girls. We look to you for an heir.”
Channa’s anger vanished as suddenly as it had come. After all, these old people were only forestalling his secret by a week.
“I will speak to her,” he said. “Send word to the Ranee Sujata that she expect me this afternoon.”
He looked away from Dattaka, and before his eyes a vision of Ruth, set like a jewel among the surroundings of his flower held harem court, moved with a startling reality. “Doubtless what you say is true. My people shall be satisfied.”
Despite his pleasure at the announcement old Dattaka had a twinge of uneasiness. There was some meaning behind the Prince’s acquiescence which he could not quite fathom. What strong attraction had held the young man all these months away from his Palace? Was it not possible that already some woman held the reins of his desire?
Channa’s grandmother, in her first five minutes’ conversation with the Prince, suffered under no such doubt. She knew as plainly as if Channa had declared it in so many words that the man was in love. To the harem-bound woman while she is young there is only one interest in life, only one intrigue in which she can dabble, only one sphere of life where she can reign supreme. About love there is nothing you can teach her, her whole life hinges on the influences which she can wield over man through this power. The knowledge came to Sujata as a disappointment, but she was none the less set on getting her own way.
She received Channa in the small room set aside for her use in one of the oldest wings of the Palace. It opened on to a very dazzling square of white marble surrounding a shallow tank of water. Here the sun reflected himself with almost intolerable brilliancy, but the room itself, thick-shuttered and windowless stayed always very dark and wonderfully cool. You passed at one step from broad daylight into the twilight of shadows and soft colours and a perfumed air that was very enervating to breathe.
The Maharanee Sujata had seen eighty summers pass over her head. She was old and shrivelled and very frail, yet a domineering strength still shone in the shrewd eyes and enormous will power was expressed in her face. She ruled her household with a rod of iron; her daughters-in-law and grand-daughters had never dreamt of disobeying her in anything, the servants of the Palace went in terror of her anger. In the old days before the English Government had taken over charge she had schemed to get complete control of the State. Tradition said that she had not been averse to killing even her own grandson if by so doing she could attain her ends. But if she had been foiled in this she bore him no seeming ill-will; indeed, since he had grown to man’s estate she had displayed a tolerant, if slightly contemptuous affection, though for his new-fangled English ways and habits she had nothing but hate.
Sitting cross-legged on the low-cushioned couch in the dimmest corner of the room, she listened to his punctilious speech of greeting, keen old eyes on his face noting all and more than Dattaka had been able to discover that morning. The thinness of his face, the restlessness of his hands, the almost feverish light in his eyes, spoke to her mind of a passion, so far unsatisfied, yet nearing its completion; of days and nights spent in straining against some obstacle that stood in the path of his desire. She set herself warily to find out the cause, then, as delicate questionings still left her very far from the truth, she attacked the question from another side.
His welcome was very dear to her heart; would he listen now to what she had travelled so many miles to say?
Channa nodded. Best get the matter thrashed out once and for all with this old lady. He knew the forms of persuasion that she would bring to bear on him. The priests with their wonder-working oracles, their god-given commands, and deputations from the people, praying him to give them a son and heir for the kingdom. How would they all look on his idea of an English bride, a girl who should cast aside the tradition of the purdah and stand forth with him hand in hand, equal monarch and sharer of his throne? It was a direct thrust at old-world prejudices; he did not for a moment imagine that it would be an easy fight to win. But with Ruth’s kiss on his lips, the memory of her beauty in his mind, he was armed against all opposition.
Silent-footed servants laid trays of rich-looking sweetmeats and cups of wine by his side. The old woman nodded to him to eat and drink. The things, strong in their native flavourings, tasted disagreeable to him, but he was too polite to refuse. Sujata herself was smoking a hookah, the low bubble-bubble of the pipe breaking into her conversation.
“I am a very old woman,” she said, “and you are the son of my son. Who has a greater right to speak to you on this matter than I? I have held silent many years, my son, but now my days are numbered. Before I go out into the darkness I would hold within my arms one more descendant of my race. Your father lay so on my lap, you I have nursed, my arms have been hungry for your son these seven years.”
“Dattaka was speaking of the same matter to-day,” Channa answered. “My people deem it time I took a wife.”
“Aye.” The old lady nodded her head. “Full time. A young man lives for pleasure, that is but right. In the arms of your wife you shall find more lasting joy than that which is bought for so many nights by the offer of gold. The daughter of the house of my brother’s son is ripe for the bearing of children, tender in years and beautiful. I have made inquiries; there is nothing to hinder the marriage.”
Channa got up and moved to the doorway; the sun lay imprisoned between the shutters of the chic like little bars of gold. Nothing was stirring outside, the reflections in the placid water were dazzling to the eyes.
“If it is time I marry,” he said, coming back to his place, “I choose a wife for myself. Indeed, you may know the truth at once—she is already chosen.”
The withered old lips sucked at the mouthpiece of the hookah. “It is as I thought,” she answered, “some woman has you in her toils. Let us talk the matter over, my son, doubtless something can be arranged. It is not necessary to turn your back on a good match because for the moment some other fancy holds your heart. Love comes and goes, marriage is for always and the begetting of children.”
“I marry where I love,” said Channa, “the world holds only one woman that can be my wife.”
The old woman smiled grimly. “Thus youth speaks,” she said. She put aside the hookah and sat suddenly upright, her face stiffened by some memory. “Yet what truth lies in youth? Man’s love lives till attainment brings weariness. But what of the girl that you have chosen, Maharajah? Is she worthy to be your wife?”
Channa sat down again and leant forward. The eagerness of his heart to speak his love aloud shook him, his hands trembled as he fumbled with a cigarette.
“She is worthy,” he said.
“And her name?”
He looked up at her, young eyes meeting old in a direct challenge. “It will have a strange sound to thy ears,” he answered. “Ruth Daring, the daughter of the Resident Sahib.”
For a moment the woman stared at him. Something beyond surprise was expressed in her eyes. It is women all the world over who keep alive the old traditionary laws of religion and caste. Like a great many of the older women of India, Sujata was a fanatic in her faith. This thing which her grandson suggested doing, spoke of even as an accomplished fact, was to her mind unbelievable and grotesque. Yet there was real danger in it which would need all her skill to defeat.
“The thing is impossible,” she said; there was a certain finality in her tone.
“Who shall say that to me?” asked Channa fiercely. “Love knows no caste or creed. We love each other. In a week the Resident pays me a visit here, his daughter comes with him; the marriage shall be announced then.”
“The Gods would curse such a union.” She knew herself to be arguing along the wrong lines had she wished to convert him, but already her mind, agile in all intrigue, had leapt ahead of the present conversation and was busy weaving plots to serve her ends.
“I am not afraid of the Gods,” Channa announced. He might have added, “I have grown beyond a belief in them,” but he remembered suddenly the emeralds he had paid as a bribe to Kali and he knew himself uncertain of his faith.
“Those are the words of one driven to madness,” Sujata answered, “and I am overwearied and would rest. Go from me, leave me a little alone that I may pray to the great ones to grant you knowledge.”
Yet rest seemed the very last thing she meditated indulging in once Channa had taken his departure. A quick clapping of her hands summoned on the scene an elderly eunuch, and to him she issued peremptory instructions in a very wide-awake voice. Then she lay back on her cushions and resumed her hookah, waiting for the fulfilment of her commands.
Hardly ten minutes later the chics of her room were displaced to admit three clean-shaven, white-robed priests. They bowed before her and at a signal from her hand seated themselves on the ground before her. The eldest of the party was the first to speak.
“The fire spreads, Maharanee,” he said, “the Gods are on our side. Yesterday four more of the chiefs signed the vow and as yet no real suspicion has been roused. We work untiringly and in secret.”
Sujata nodded a brief acknowledgment of the report. “There is more need than ever for action,” she said, “we must strike soon. An unparalleled danger threatens our state.”
“We also have had word of that,” stated the spokesman. “The Watcher who sees all things for the Gods and who sits at the door of Kali’s shrine in the new city of Bhogmore has sent word of the infatuation of our Prince for a white girl. Is this the danger, O Maharanee?”
“Infatuation!” the Maharanee repeated. Her angry surprise worked itself to a climax as she thought of her recent interview. “It is something of far greater import than that. He talks of marriage! Marriage with one of the accursed white folk, to sully our pure blood with their baseness. Better, far better, had he died a babe in my arms.”
The head priest watched her excitement with impassive eyes. “Who knows,” he said presently, “if the Gods be not working on our side in this also? The girl will play false, if our reports are true; hurt pride and thwarted desire shall drive him to our way of thinking where all arguments or persuasions were bound to fail. There is no hate so steadfast as the hate built up on love.”
She eyed them quickly, a new thought awake in her mind. “The girl,” she repeated. “If the girl but play into our hands the game is ours. I am old and I have known the love of man. In my grandson for the moment it burns strong enough to destroy all principles. The Gods, as thou sayest, are on our side, the future lies in their hands.”
Outside, the sun, a ball of gold, dropped out of sight behind the distant mountains, the glare faded from the sky, the reflection died away in the tank, leaving its waters murky black, and over all the marble courtyard crept the swift shadows of an Indian night.
She wove a web of lies about your feet,
And lured you into bliss.
This is the end of all your heart’s desire—
The treachery of her kiss!
One other person besides the devotee of Kali’s shrine had been a witness to the scene under the banyan tree, and she had viewed it with certainly not less distrust and horror. Betty Fulton, a niece of Lady Daring’s, had accompanied the Darings to India to act as a companion for Ruth. It was not their first meeting. Betty had been at school with Ruth, and in those early days she had developed an affection, which amounted almost to worship, for the older girl. You could not shake Betty’s love once it was established; she was not otherwise a very strong character, but where she loved she gave her whole allegiance, and if you had imputed a crime to the loved one she would have laughed at you, so loyally blind did she remain to any flaws. She was a year younger than Ruth, a small, daintily-made girl, with a face which would always remain childish because of its dimples, and eyes almost violet in colour. Men fell in love with Betty by instinct, and they did not hurt themselves by so doing. Hers was not a nature like Ruth’s, she could not inspire and foster a passion to such heights that the resulting flame is bound to destroy someone. Betty was a notorious flirt, yet there was the true laughter of youth behind her adventures, and no one was ever any the worse for them. Herein lay the one thing in Ruth’s nature that Betty told herself she could not understand. There was no laughter in Ruth’s flirtations; she lured men to despair. Betty had seen one victim at least during their school days, and the result had frightened her, just as the present episode did.
She stayed in the doorway of the ballroom, after her unwitting partner had led her back and taken his departure, her eyes held by the dark patch in the garden where she knew Ruth and the Prince to be. The Prince’s attraction to Ruth had been a subject of discussion between the two girls on many occasions, Betty holding that any encouragement of the man savoured of cruelty, since Ruth herself was the first to admit that love from such a quarter was absurd and impossible.
“You see,” Betty had said very wisely after her two months’ experience of India, “natives don’t understand about flirting, Ruth. They never have anything to do with women except their wives, and marriages are always arranged for them by the stars or something. I mean,” a shade of anxiety had darkened her eyes, “he is so much more likely to mistake your meaning than one of our own men would be.”
Ruth had watched her with slightly amused eyes. “And when there is no meaning in me at all,” she asked, “what then?”
“He won’t know that,” Betty had pleaded. “Oh, Ruth, you must know what I mean. You are nice to him and you let him almost make love to you.” She flushed at the boldness of her statement. “I have seen him looking at you just as Captain Pentland does, as Charlie Stanton did.”
“As if they were cats and I was a piece of meat hung out of their reach.” Ruth laughed. “Men are strangely the same all over the world; what do you think, Betty?”
But Betty had not known what to think, though the first part of Ruth’s sentence jarred on her much as a slate pencil scratched against a slate might have done. She hated Ruth to talk in that way. There was a great deal in life that Betty did not understand, did not wish to understand, it might almost be said. She was content to play in the sunshine of make-belief. She was not frightened or disgusted by the facts of life, she simply did not think it necessary as yet to study them. It was so pleasant to stand just on the border-line of reality and keep some of the dreams of childhood. She wanted her eyes to stay behind their rose-tinted glasses, that was all. And there were times when she felt as if Ruth were drawing her to the edge of truth with relentless hands. Betty could always be trusted on these occasions to change the conversation, and Ruth would laugh and let the moment pass. She was as fond of Betty as it was possible for her to be of anyone.
But even Betty had not been able to mistake the meaning of what she had seen under the banyan tree. It had only been a moment’s glimpse, because she had had to sweep her partner round and steer him quickly in the opposite direction, but she had seen the white blur of the Prince’s clothes and Ruth’s green draperies; the white arms upraised, the two faces in such unmistakable proximity. It was impossible to deny it, even to her own very anxious-to-disbelieve mind. Ruth had been kissing the man. What did it mean? And where would the tragedy end, once started? For to Betty, as it would be to Sir Henry and Lady Daring and all the other white people, the thing promised to be a tragedy with no redeeming features.
At this stage in her thoughts, Betty caught sight of the green-clad figure on its flight down the verandah, and, drawn by an instinct to help, flavoured with a not unnatural curiosity to hear Ruth’s explanation, Betty followed.
Ruth turned to face her as she entered the room. For perhaps the first time in their companionship the older girl was shaken out of her aloof attitude of condescension. There were instincts awake in Ruth’s heart to-night stronger than her habitual self-control. She could not hide them from Betty any more than she had been able to conceal them from Channa. It was the primitive woman that shone in her eyes and showed in her flushed cheeks. And she was surprisingly, radiantly beautiful; softened, and with all her face aglow. Betty paused in the doorway with a little catch of her breath.
“Ruth!” she gasped, the trivial things of the moment held her attention. “Your frock is all torn and your hair is almost down. Oh, Ruth, what has happened?”
“I know,” admitted Ruth. She turned aside to look at her reflection in the glass. “But for the rest, why do you ask what has happened? You saw, didn’t you? or you wouldn’t be here.”
She sat down because she knew herself to be trembling and ridiculously near a storm of tears.
“I saw,” acknowledged Betty, “but only for a moment. I didn’t know what to think. I——”
“Well?” said Ruth; even that moment’s pause was giving her back her self-control. “You saw who I was with, I suppose, you know more or less what occurred, you see more or less the result. What else is there to think?”
“But Ruth,” Betty whispered, “you let him hold you like that! You let him kiss you!”
Ruth was staring at her own eyes in the glass. Perhaps they held a riddle unreadable even to herself, anyway they seemed to puzzle her. She did not answer for a minute or two, and Betty drew a little closer, kneeling on the floor beside her, soft golden hair against the black.
“Ruth, you let him,” Betty repeated. “It doesn’t mean—oh, Ruth, you couldn’t let it mean—that you love him?”
Some of the glow had faded from Ruth’s face, her laugh was a little hard. “What a ridiculous sentimentalist you are, Betty. Love! It colours the universe for you. My dear, it is only a very small pawn in the game of life.” She pushed the clinging hands away and stood up. “No, I don’t love him, as you put it, and what you saw doesn’t mean anything that you could understand. Find a needle and thread, there’s a dear, while I do my hair again. This prolonged absence from the ballroom will cause a terrible scandal.”
Betty found a needle and thread and sewed up the green flounces in silence. There was in the face of Ruth’s attitude nothing more to be said for the moment, and Betty had her own rules for playing the game. These did not include kissing a man if you did not love him. Something a little pained, since to Betty, Ruth could never be really in the wrong, stayed in her mind to criticise her cousin’s conduct, but she was too loyal to say anything about it.
It was a relief to both of them to find on their return to the ballroom that the Prince had taken his departure: Ruth because she did not wish to meet him again since he had shown her how weak in reality was her apparent strength, and Betty, because of a sentimental reason not unmixed with sympathy.
It was, however, Betty, simple-minded, pure-hearted Betty, who first put the weapon that was afterwards to work such destruction into Ruth’s hands. The idea of their projected visit to the Prince’s Palace caused Betty more active uneasiness than it had awakened even in Lady Daring. It seemed to Betty as if, all unwittingly, Sir Henry was leading his daughter into the path of destruction. For after a night’s troubled slumbers and vexed cogitations Betty had quite come to the conclusion that Ruth had been an unwilling participant in last night’s events. There were things in life, as Ruth had said, that Betty did not attempt to see or understand, but she was at least not ignorant of the something in man, the more terrifying because of its very mystery, which drives him to commit all sorts of crimes in the name of love. Girls could be kissed against their will: such a fate had never happened to Betty because her modest flirtations did not run along those lines, but that was what had overtaken Ruth, Betty was now certain. And then, in the face of the blessed lull in proceedings brought about by the Prince’s departure, Sir Henry was blandly proposing to once more thrust Ruth into danger.
Betty sought the other girl out as soon as lunch was over the next day.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, perched on the edge of Ruth’s bed, her face absurdly serious under its riot of curls. “Are you going to tell uncle you won’t go?”
Ruth, a little colourless, with dark shadows under her eyes, lay back among the cushions of the bed, a blue and orange kimono thrown about her.
“Of course not,” she answered, “that would be ridiculous. But it is going to be rather awkward, Betty.”
More awkward indeed than Betty could have any idea of, but that Ruth did not deem it necessary to confide.
“We must make some plan,” said Betty; she paused and glanced away, because the thing she was about to suggest did not quite reconcile itself to her ideas of fair play. “Why don’t you get engaged,” she asked, “to Captain Pentland?”
Ruth sat up suddenly, the kimono falling back and showing the beauty of her white shoulders and neck. How was it that she had not herself thought of this method of escape? For indeed at the moment it seemed necessary that she should look somewhere for protection. Despite her argument with Lady Daring, the thought of marriage with a native was as impossible to Ruth as it would appear to all the people of her world. She knew exactly the social ostracism which she would have to endure should her senses—she was not prepared to admit that it was her heart—gain the upper hand over her mind in this matter. With the sound of Channa’s words in her ears she was like some creature driven to bay in a corner. An engagement to Pentland, the published fact, would give her the assurance necessary when next she met the Prince. It would show him more plainly than any words, however bitter, that their moment’s passion had been only a dream.
Betty had looked back at her.
“It isn’t awfully nice,” she was saying, “planning about these sort of things beforehand; but he is so awfully fond of you, and you do like him, don’t you, Ruth? Everyone thinks that sooner or later you will say ‘yes’ to him. Of course, it is no use,” this was a sop to her own conscience, “if you feel you don’t like him enough.”
She left the matter there since Ruth would not answer, and in due course it developed.
It was the day before their start for the Palace that Ruth allowed Captain Pentland to propose to her. They had been playing tennis, Captain Pentland and Ruth against Betty and Melrose, a junior A.D.C. and one in very devoted attendance on the last-named young lady. The courts lay out on the grass lawns between the house and the sacred tree; the chairs and tables with drink and other refreshment for heated players stood just on the outskirts of Kali’s domain. The holy man had grown to be so much a part of the place that he was very rarely even noticed. No one troubled to guess at the thoughts that moved behind his eyes, or wonder as to the import of the prayers that stirred his lips.
The sun set while they were playing the last game and, so quickly do the shadows gather in the East where there is no twilight, to attempt to finish the game was an absurdity. Small, black-skinned boys, in neat uniforms, turbaned and sashed with red, ran about collecting the balls and racquets, rolling up the net, and dragging the water-hose on to the grass; stately servants came out from the house and carried away tables and refreshments. Then a great, glorious moon swung into view behind the far trees, and Betty was seized with a sudden mischievous desire to stroll across and look at the centre lake by moonlight.
“I don’t know that I trust myself,” Melrose remonstrated with mock seriousness. “A moon makes me horribly sentimental.”
“You are quite safe with me,” Betty teased him. “I promise to say ‘no.’”
They went off laughing together, and Pentland sat a little forward in his chair to stare at Ruth.
“The moon makes me very sentimental too,” he said. “I wonder if you have the slightest idea what that really means?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked; she could imbue her voice with surprising sweetness. “Do you find me so very inhuman?”
“Inhuman, good Lord, no!” he answered. “But made of finer clay than the rest of us, it seems.”
Ruth raised her eyes and looked straight at him. There was no mistaking the slow, deliberate message of her glance. It woke such a flame of feeling in the man that he scarce knew what he was doing. At least he held both her hands in his, and he was leaning so closely over her that her breath came and went on his cheek.
“Ruth,” he managed to find words at last, “I love you. I have loved you—oh, well, it seems for years. Are you just playing with me? Or is there any chance for a commonplace fellow like myself?”
Ruth left her hands in his, she veiled her eyes, they had played their part for the time being.
“Are you so very commonplace?” she whispered. “I have never thought so.”
What could the man think? He leant closer still and kissed her, his whole being on fire with half-bewildered joy.
“You’ll marry me,” he said, “me! Great heavens, what have I done to deserve such things!”
He was kissing her hands now, first one and then the other, the little pink palms which he told himself were like rose-leaves. They touched on his lips with the coolness of satin. Ruth suffered his caresses in silence with her eyes lowered. His feelings left her cold and untouched. She found him a little ridiculous thus swept out of his ordinary cheerfulness. When he stood up, drawing her to her feet, she was glad enough to think the interview over and her object accomplished.
“What sort of ring would you like?” he asked. “It has got to be the finest I can get for you. I have a fancy for emeralds; I have seen your eyes at times coloured with the same light.”
“Not emeralds,” said Ruth quickly. She looked away and suddenly she was aware of the grim silent Watcher of their doings. The moonlight clothed his figure with strange mystery. She could almost discern his eyes in the greyness of his face, and they seemed fixed on her. Half afraid she drew a little nearer to Pentland; after all, she had chosen him as a protector.
“Let us go in,” she whispered, “that man with his everlasting stare terrifies me. I feel as if he was watching me.”
“Frightens you, does he?” grumbled Pentland. “I’ll speak to Sir Henry about it. There is no reason on earth why the old devil shouldn’t be shunted. The natives are getting too educated to really mind.”
He turned, still with one arm round her, and they moved away.
Under the tree they had left the old Fakir stirred slowly as if over-stiff from long repose, and stooping forward traced with his finger patterns in the dust, whispering as he worked. When it was all completed he leant down and with his breath blew the complicated design away. Perhaps he intended his action to be symbolical of life, so shaped in odd designs, so laboured over and planned for, and yet of such frail consistency that one whisper of Death can destroy it absolutely.
The gods will have nought of thy gift, O King!
Their ears are deaf to thy prayers;
The way will be red with blood, O King!
For he who wilful fares.
Yet ere the end be quite in sight,
Hear well my message, read it aright.
Lady Daring heard the announcement of Ruth’s engagement with relief, tempered with a certain anxiety. She was not easy in mind, remembering the look in Prince Channa’s eyes the evening of the ball. She had a vague memory of a novel by Mason that she had once read which dealt more or less with the same situation. She felt unaccountably nervous about her visit to Arkonum.
“I cannot pretend to ever having suffered from second sight,” she confided to Sir Henry, “but in this case what I feel almost amounts to a presentiment. At least let us leave the girls behind, they add nothing to the official nature of the visit, and Mrs. Goring will chaperone them up to Darjeeling.”
As was but natural, Sir Henry laughed at her. “My dear, you have had too much season,” he retorted, “and your nerves are out of order. The little trip will do us all good, and Channa would be horribly disappointed if the young ladies were left out of it.”
There seemed nothing more to be said. Lady Daring had to fight against her fears as best she could.
Sir Henry was frankly delighted with the young people’s engagement, though he would hear no talk of a wedding for months to come.
“Nonsense, man,” he laughed in answer to Pentland’s arguments. “Why, I have only just got Ruth back after her school years, and you are asking me quite calmly to hand her over to you. You are both young and you have got your lives in front of you; you can afford to leave her to me for a little.”
In this Ruth supported him. She was not in any hurry to marry, nor was she, Lady Daring was quite certain, in the very least in love with her fiancé. There was some other motive behind her engagement. On one or two occasions Lady Daring found herself studying Ruth’s face, trying to arrive at the secret which lay behind the girl’s play acting. For act she certainly did; a rather forced cheerfulness held her manner and she was sweetness itself to Captain Pentland, though she rarely looked at him and was clever in the way she avoided any prolonged tête-à-tête.
The party travelled to Arkonum in motor cars, escorted by a retinue of domestics, and seen off with great pomp and ceremony, which included the presentation of bouquets and garlands from the native officials. Betty was childishly pleased with herself as a member of such an important cortège.
“I shall have to marry a Lieutenant-Governor,” she confided to Melrose. “I adore having red carpets to walk on and garlands of jessamine to wear.”
“The one is quite as easily procured by marrying an A.D.C.,” suggested Melrose, “and as for the jessamine, my servant shall make you up a garland every day.”
“That is only reflected glory,” sighed Betty. “I want to be like Aunt Mary, right in the front rank.”
“‘He offered her love, and she asked for diamonds,’” chanted Melrose under his breath, “‘and he went out and hung himself.’”
“Don’t be silly,” whispered Betty, “and put your head down. That old gentleman wants to dower us with a string of marigolds and they don’t suit my complexion.”
Melrose bore the infliction with heroic calm. As he said, what was his one tiny garland of marigolds when compared with the flower garden decorating Sir Henry’s neck?
“I suppose,” he confided to Betty, “that it is our absolute self-confidence that enables us to carry off this sort of thing with dignity, otherwise we would surely have put down the custom long ago.”
Half-way to Arkonum Prince Channa was waiting to greet them. Apart from a few words and a quick pressure of her hand he had no opportunity of talking to Ruth. Etiquette demanded that he should drive in the car with Sir Henry and Lady Daring: Mellish came in the second with Ruth and Pentland, leaving Betty as supernumerary A.D.C.—a title which she had arrogated to herself—to drive in another with Melrose and Grant, Sir Henry’s private secretary.
All the way in the car, Lady Daring chatted with a light-heartedness which she was very far from feeling, but she succeeded at least in preventing Sir Henry from mentioning the engagement. She quite frankly owned herself ridiculous about this, but she did not wish to be present when Channa heard of Ruth’s intended marriage.
“Do you remember how you used to come across to our house,” she asked, reminding him of the old days when Sir Henry had been stationed at Arkonum; “such a stately small personage under your huge scarlet umbrella, and surrounded by that fierce-looking bodyguard of yours?”
What a lonely, held-in childhood he had spent, she was thinking. Ruth had been the first to show him in the very least what being a child and having a good time meant. And how he had worshipped Ruth, following her lead in all things with the blind confidence of a dumb animal. And now—with a little start Lady Daring recalled her wandering thoughts and forced herself to listen to what the other two were talking about.
“There is a festival of the moon to-morrow night,” Channa was saying. “To my people it is a great event. I thought it might interest the young ladies to see it; to you and Lady Daring it is of course no new spectacle.”
“Still, always interesting,” Sir Henry asserted. “You know, Prince, I take an enormous interest in all these old customs. And, by the way, I trust you are going to introduce me very freely to your nobles. I am anxious to meet them and set relations between us on a better footing.”
“I hold a levée to-morrow at which they will all be present,” Channa answered. “It is my wish also that your visit should be productive of some firmer understanding.”
“Quite so, quite so, my boy,” Sir Henry agreed. “We, I think, understand each other thoroughly. We are proud to count you as one of our best friends.”
It did not occur to Channa, though it must have been plain to anyone not so entirely living in a dream as he was, that Ruth was avoiding him during the day that followed their arrival at the Palace. There were a great many things for him to see to as host, and then it seemed only natural that she should be tired after the journey up, and in view of the entertainment that was to take place in the evening it was not surprising that she wished to rest. True, Lady Daring and Betty showed no such inclination, the former receiving a lengthy visit from Mrs. Mellish and the latter setting off in high glee with the Prince and Melrose for an elephant ride through the bazaar. But Channa could comfort his disappointment with the reflection that Ruth was of finer make than these others. In her own good time she would fulfil her promise—for he had grown to look on her half-uttered confession of love as a promise—and stand forth by his side. He was content to leave things till then.
The expedition to the bazaar was not in every sense a success, though Betty at least was blissfully unconscious of this. It was different for Melrose, because he had an almost uncanny knowledge of natives and an absolute command of their language. It was not for nothing that his brother officers had nicknamed him “Darkie”; he could dress up to represent any caste of native, and had often amused himself by prowling about the bazaars thus disguised. Melrose had a real love for India and an understanding which caused him to be worshipped by the men in his own regiment and led to his being selected by Sir Henry as likely to be of use in political dealings with the natives of the state. The attitude of the crowd assembled by order to greet them therefore was as plain to him as it could be to Channa. There were signs of dissatisfaction and trouble here, greater by far than anything the cautious Dattaka had hinted at in his interview with his master. And all the rancour of the crowd, Melrose realised, was directed against the white girl at his side. They were reviling her very freely, mistaking her, Melrose could only suppose, for Ruth Daring.
Betty, oblivious of it all, the whispered insults, the ugly words of greeting, laughed her way through the bazaar sitting in the golden howdah reserved for royal use, pointing out this or that curiosity to Melrose, chattering to the Prince and holding a scented handkerchief to her nose whenever the bazaar smell was too strong to ignore.
On their return journey, just as they were about to leave the bazaar an unexpected interruption occurred. It was Melrose who saw the first signs of it. He was occupying a back seat in the howdah behind Betty and Channa and pondering vaguely in his mind what would be the outcome of Ruth’s escapade with the Prince, when his attention was suddenly attracted by an outstanding figure in the crowd.
“Surely,” he said, leaning a little forward to get a better view, “that is our old gentleman from under the tree or else his twin brother.”
Betty looked in the direction indicated.
“His twin brother,” she said lightly; “it can’t be ours, because uncle says he hasn’t moved for more than twenty years.”
The people, either from reverence or fear, had cleared a little space for the Fakir. He stood alone, a grim figure in his rags and ashes. Ruth might have recognised the vitally alive eyes that blazed out of the ashen face, but Ruth was not there to see, and to Betty one Fakir was the same as any other, funny, unwashed people, who laid great claim to holiness because of their very dirt.
As the elephant came opposite to him the Fakir moved. With surprising quickness he had left his position and stood in front of them, full in their path, one hand upraised. The mahout instinctively brought his beast to a standstill, the crowd hushed its voice and listened, every eye fixed on the holy man. For a moment he stood thus and Betty was able to discern that against the squalor of his rags he wore a necklace of emeralds that caught the sunshine and shone and glittered each with their separate reflection. Then he began to speak and she was suddenly afraid. Not that she could understand a word, but there was something ominous in the grey face and flaming eyes. She leant a little away from the Prince and nearer to Melrose; she was glad that he thought of putting his hand over hers, the pressure was reassuring.
“O Prince, I have travelled far to bring my message and none know the road my feet have come. It is not yet too late to turn aside from thy purpose and stay the shedding of blood, the same colour, O Prince, whether it flow from brown skin or white. See,” with a dramatic movement the man swung the emeralds free from his neck and threw them before the elephant’s feet, “the Gods will have none of thy gift. Thy heart’s desire is as a flame which will devour thyself and these thy people, and already is it denied thee.”
The voice rang out over the listening crowd; they stirred and murmured and whispered the words back to those who stood on the outside edge. Melrose was watching the Prince’s face. What did it all mean? where would it all end? The fear, however, left Betty as the voice ceased. How silly she had been! the old man standing in their path was only very dirty and slightly mad.
“Was he blessing us or cursing us?” she asked, with a little effort at laughter.
Channa did not answer, his eyes held something very far removed from mirth. He leant forward.
“Drive on,” he ordered the mahout, “tell my people to clear this madman from my path.”
“There is no need, mighty Prince,” the man answered; he had been a favourite servant of Channa’s from his boyhood, “the holy one has already gone his way. But what of the stones that lie at our feet?”
“Drive on,” repeated Channa.
“Not fit for the Gods, fit for the dust,” the man murmured. He prodded his beast and the procession moved forwards, the people drawing aside silently to let them pass.
News travels in India quicker by mouth than by telegram. Certainly the Maharanee Sujata was aware of the bazaar incident before even the elephant party had reached the Palace gates. She listened to the recital with eyes that glistened.
“And of other news what has he brought?” she asked.
The same elderly priest who had before held converse with her was the bearer of the present tidings. He stood opposite her, his face unstirred by her excitement.
“The girl is following along the lines laid down for her,” he answered. “Already there is talk of a marriage between her and one of the servants of the Resident Sahib.”
“Good.” The withered face quivered. “My grandson, does he know of this?”
The priest shrugged thin shoulders. “He has made no sign. They say his face as he rode beside the other white girl to-day was heavy with dark thoughts. He would have driven his elephant over the holy one’s body had the mahout been willing. The fever burns hot in his blood.”
The Maharanee leant suddenly forward. “Draw closer,” she said, “lest the walls have ears. This is the plan. To-night there is to be a great ceremony, as thou knowest, in honour of the Gods. The white folk are to be present, they will have seats apart on the Palace roof. When my grandson comes to me this evening, if he know it not already, I will tell him the truth about this girl. Bitter with anger he will listen readily to my words. It rests with me to persuade him that the girl is still his if he be but strong enough in his love. And I shall not fail. I shall arrange with him that the girl shall be admitted to my presence. It will be a visit of courtesy and one scarce likely to be denied. Once in our hands the rest is easy, and what is more,” she leant a little nearer to him still, “a step will have been taken which no man can undo. All the world over men are the same: touch their women and they cannot forgive. The Resident Sahib will declare red war against my grandson, and for that we are prepared.”
An answering glow leapt to the man’s face. “Aye, we are ready,” he said, “the Gods will give us strength.”
That afternoon during tea, which was served English fashion in the drawing-room of the Palace, Channa succeeded in catching Ruth alone for a few minutes. The drawing-room was an ornamental apartment decorated, by the furniture expert that the late Maharajah had had out from England for this purpose, in the style of Louis Quinze. At least, that was what the furniture expert had called it. Everything in the room was gilded, from the legs of the chairs and tables to the moulding that ran round the walls and the decoration of the ceiling.
The effect was dazzling and it was not in any way softened by the glare of sunlight outside.
Lady Daring was dispensing tea from a gold teapot into gilt-edged cups set out on a gold inlaid tray, and in this task the habitually silent Mr. Grant was assisting her. Betty was carrying on her usual flirtation with Melrose on one of the wide window seats, and Pentland was absent with Sir Henry on an official visit to Mr. Mellish. Ruth therefore, coming in a little late, found herself, unintentionally as it were, for both Betty and Lady Daring would have done their utmost to prevent it had they known of it, paired off with their host. He paused beside her after he had carried across her tea and handed her a choice of bread and butter or cakes, and in speaking to her he dropped his voice almost to a whisper.
“At last,” he said. “I have waited so long and I have been patient, you cannot deny that, but now it is my moment.”
Ruth looked up at him. If she had been anyone else the glance might have been described as fluttered, it was certainly a little nervous.
He pulled a low chair forward and sat down beside her. He was between her and Lady Daring’s sofa, and the turn of the window hid them from Betty.
“My answer,” he said, staring at her intently, “did you forget I was waiting for that?”
It was the moment that she had dreaded, and her planned defence had failed her. She fell back on a rather mean subterfuge.
“No, I had not forgotten,” she said quickly, “but just now, this afternoon, isn’t quite the time. Let us leave it till to-night. I—I am so tired, and yesterday’s journey somehow has made me feel overwrought and silly.”
“Very well,” he agreed, “till to-night. But don’t drive my patience too far, it strains something that is like a wild beast in my nature. I hardly trust myself.”
Ruth’s eyes were fixed on Pentland’s pearl ring, each stone beautiful in its purity and colour. Betty had been rather upset at its being pearls, they were unlucky for an engagement, she said, and meant tears. At which Pentland had been all eagerness to have it changed. But Ruth had refused. Tears! Was it at all likely that she should be driven to shed them over Captain Pentland? The ring would have helped her with an English lover, for he would have suspected its import on the third finger of her left hand, but to Channa it conveyed nothing. Would it not be quicker and easier to tell him the truth at once? Ruth mused. The words indeed were on her lips when Lady Daring, uneasily aware of a whispered conversation, interrupted.
“Ruth,” she called, “come over here and see these wonderful flowers. Perhaps the Prince will be able to tell us what they are called. I have never seen anything like them before.”
The minute passed and with it the opportunity; yet much might have been averted had Ruth met him even then with some semblance of truth.
Later, on his way across to his new quarters to dress for the festival, Channa was stopped by a low-salaaming eunuch.
“The Maharanee Sujata sends greeting, Lord of the Harem; she would speak to you on a matter that cannot be deferred.”
“Tell her to-morrow,” said Channa and would have passed on. But the man was stubborn in his mission and at last, wrathfully, since he deemed it but another effort on the old lady’s part to interfere, Channa turned aside and followed his guide, passing in under the harem gateway.
What of our love? Red blood shall flow between.
What of our trust? The sword cuts sharp and keen.
There is no love that lasts, no trust that stays,
And hate has come to darken all my ways.
The Maharanee received Channa in her usual apartment. She was not alone; seated in the far corner of the room was the Watcher, cross-legged, in his attitude of contemplation, his eyes seemingly fixed on far-off things and heedless of what passed before them. The sun having set, the chic at the doors had been rolled up. The moon was just creeping into view over the neighbouring white wall and the cluster of trees in the garden, while the air was noisy with the sounds of life from the bazaar. The people were making ready for their festival with music and the loud beating of tom-toms.
The room was dimly lit by two lamps, burning wicks, that is to say, floating in low basins of oil, their combined illumination being very indifferent. Channa paused in the doorway, his eyes unable at first to pierce the gloom, and the eunuch salaamed obsequiously and slid away.
“Enter, my son,” the Maharanee spoke with persuasive softness. “I would speak with thee on a matter of no little importance.”
Channa came in and sat down brusquely. Once accustomed to the light his eyes could discern the other waiting figure, and he was angry at having been tricked into this interview. He had heard enough of the holy man’s views that morning; joined to his grandmother’s croakings and cursings they were going to produce a result which he felt very little inclined to bear.
“The time is not convenient to me,” he said, “and I will have no meddler, be he holy or otherwise, in my affairs. Was it at thy instigation, mother, that this man stood forth in our path to-day?”
Sujata shook her head. “Nay,” she said, “I knew not of the event until after it had occurred. And touching the matter upon which you spoke to me the other day, I have had time to see the foolishness of my wrath. Truly, what force is stronger than Love? Love, the begetter of life! It is useless for caste or creed to stand against it. My son, I bowed before the knowledge. But even as I learnt so much wisdom some other news came to my ears that made my heart bleed for thee. It is of this that I would speak.”
To say that Channa was surprised would hardly describe his feelings, and mixed with them there was a pleasant sense of victory. If he had gained his will with this old lady the rest would be easy. The bad impression which his ride through the bazaar had wakened faded from his mind.
“Thou hast no ill news that can frighten me now, mother,” he laughed.
“Alas,” sighed the Maharanee; she stooped towards him. “Has the girl spoken aught to you?” she asked.
“A few words,” answered Channa, “there has been no time for more. But to-night I speak to the Resident and all will be arranged.”
“To-night.” Sujata’s withered hand closed over his arm. “To-night, thou sayest, and the laughter of love is on thy lips. My son, the woman is false to thee. That is my message.” She flung aside his arm and sat upright with dramatic vigour. “She has already, in these few days since your departure, given herself by promise to another man.”
“That is a lie,” said Channa; he sprang to his feet, “a weak, stupid lie to turn me from my purpose.”
“If there were not truth behind my knowledge why should I tell it thee?” queried the old woman; “it is not difficult for thee to prove me wrong. Speak, holy one,” she turned to the Fakir, “say what thou hast seen.”
“I will not listen,” said Channa harshly; “have I not had enough of the man’s madness for one day? What devil’s work is this? What wouldst thou drive me to? I go straight now to the Resident Sahib, the truth shall be spoken out between us.”
He turned to the door, but with surprising agility the old woman had risen and was beside him, clutching at him with her hands.
“I sought but to help,” she pleaded; “lend me thy ear but a minute longer, son of my son. All is not yet lost, the girl can still be thine. Art thou not strong enough to take by force what thy heart craves for? Thou, and all thy realm behind thee? Give but the word, all is in readiness. Thou shalt win thy bride as did thy fathers before thee, by the strength of the sword.”
Channa shook her off; yet some of her words penetrated to his brain and added fuel to the fire there. Ruth! If Ruth were to be denied to him, if they were to put a barrier between him and this woman that his whole being hungered for, was there any madness of which he would not be capable? He closed his eyes to common sense and laws of right and wrong, rocking perilously on the tempest of his desire.
“Enough,” he said; the words came from between his teeth, she knew that her torch had caught fire. “I go now to see the Resident Sahib. I will not listen to any more.”
He swung himself out of the room, and Sujata, old age telling on her with the excitement past, hobbled back to her cushions.
“My plans work out well,” she groaned; “would that I were but younger and stronger. To-night, if what thou hast said is true, he will be as wax in our hands.”
The grim figure in the corner stirred, stood up, and moved to the door, standing for a second outlined against the moonlight.
“Aye, thy plans work, Maharanee,” he agreed, “but to what end? I tell thee the Palace and the streets will run with blood and all to no purpose, for the end will be the same as the beginning; and to the Gods, the death of a man, the murder of a people, count as naught.”
Grey robed, grey faced, a part of the moonlight, he seemed to melt away before her eyes, but the echo of his voice remained in the room weighted with the inexorableness of fate.
Channa’s message asking for a private audience found Sir Henry not altogether unprepared. Prepared, that is to say, along entirely different lines to the reality. He had been looking into matters with Mellish that afternoon and it was evident, even when one set aside Mellish’s hysterical outlook, that matters would have to be dealt with in a firm manner if a good deal of mischief were not to accrue. The minds of the people were like tow, the connecting-link lay in the hands of the priests, and the fire was just over the border. He and Mellish had spoken of the thing pretty plainly, and though their interview had been in private Sir Henry had no doubt that by this time a greater part of it had been transmitted to the Maharajah. The very air carries this kind of thing in India. Channa was therefore seeking him in so peremptory a fashion to wipe the trouble off his mind before the evening’s amusement and avow again his loyalty and friendship to the English rule. A loyalty which, be it noted, Sir Henry had never for an instant doubted.
Finishing his dressing then with a certain amount of speed, Sir Henry hurried to the writing-room which had been placed at his special disposal and found Channa. The man was standing with his back to the room, staring out of the window. His thoughts were chaotic, his heart and mind in a tumult. Instinct fought against instinct; ingrained passion struggled under a superficial self-control. Such complex material was dangerous to handle, as Sir Henry would have realised, had not his own temper been thrown into disorder by almost the first remark Channa made.
“You wish to speak with me, Prince,” Sir Henry began. “I gathered from your message that the matter was important and I almost fancy I can guess its import.”
Channa turned round abruptly. His face during that short time had changed beyond recognition. It was older, and sharpened by some tense anxiety. His eyes literally blazed, his hands, Sir Henry noticed, were restless, they tore all the time at something the man held between his fingers.
“You have guessed,” he said; “then you will be able to tell me that there is no truth in what I have heard. You know that I love your daughter, that she loves me.”
For a paralysed second Sir Henry stared. He was a man who very rarely lost his temper, but, like most self-contained people, he had one which was a very strong force once moved. Channa’s words so angered him amidst his amazement that he lost sight of any necessity for tact.
“How dare you refer to my daughter in that way!” he said; “have you forgotten to whom you are speaking?”
The insult flicked at Channa but he pushed it aside. “I have not forgotten the difference in our race,” he answered; for the moment he was the more dignified of the two, “but love, after all, is greater than such things, and we love each other.”
“That,” Sir Henry spoke without pausing to pick his words, “is a damned lie. My daughter is engaged to be married to Captain Pentland. Your language, Prince, is preposterous, you have entirely lost your bearings. There has been friendship between your house and mine, that I admit. If you have misused your position to such an extent as to permit of your thinking the thing you have spoken, then I can only say that I shall always be sorry that you were admitted to our friendship. Your statement, apart from the ridiculous side of it, is an insult to my daughter.”
“An insult,” repeated Channa. The flame swept over his body and burnt down the last remnant of Smallman’s influence. “You will not then ask your daughter as to the truth of what I have said?”
“I will not.” Sir Henry came a little nearer, the two men were almost touching, each figure tense and stiffly held. “We do not keep our women as you keep yours, Prince, but let me tell you they are quite as sacred. I would rather she were dead than that there were any truth in what you have claimed, and as it is I would not even soil her mind with the thought.”
His anger spent itself, diplomacy and a sense of duty to his position came to his aid. He drew himself away, taking out his case and lighting a cigarette.
“This thing is between ourselves,” he went on more calmly. “I regret, more than words can say, that it should ever have occurred. There shall be no change in to-night’s programme and to-morrow the ladies shall leave for Darjeeling at the earliest moment. We are your guests for to-night, I trust you will remember that as far as my daughter is concerned.”
“So be it,” said Channa; just for one second his eyes met Sir Henry’s. “As you have dealt with me, so shall God deal with you.”
He turned and went swiftly from the room, leaving a disturbed Sir Henry to ponder on the meaning of the last remark and regret bitterly, from the diplomatic point of view, his outburst of very honest temper. But a native, much as he had always liked Channa, and Ruth! The idea trod on prejudices old as his thirty years’ service. And then the man’s choice of words. “We love each other.” Attributing to Ruth his own feelings! Such a presumption was unforgivable. In England a man does not take the woman’s love for granted because of his own insane desires.
“I shan’t say a word about it to anyone,” decided Sir Henry finally, his nerves a little calmed by the cigarette. “Mary would fuss and think it was her fault. Pack them all off to-morrow and follow myself as soon as possible. Afraid I was rude to the boy,” this was an afterthought, “but by Jove! he overstepped the limit.”
Lady Daring met his announcement as to their early departure for Darjeeling with prompt suspicion.
“You are expecting trouble, Harry,” she said. “I have always been afraid of this trip. Let me stay with you and send the girls with Mr. Melrose.”
“Nonsense, my dear.” Despite his intentions of not telling her he found himself in the act. “It is not that sort of worry. To tell you the truth, Mary,” he paused before her where she sat at her dressing-table, “the Prince has got some bee in his bonnet about Ruth.”
Lady Daring looked up quickly. “He has heard,” she said, “of Ruth’s engagement.”
The smouldering anger in Sir Henry’s heart burst out again. “What in heaven’s name has it got to do with him?” he asked. “The infernal young puppy! I——”
Lady Daring rose, slipping a cool hand into her husband’s. “My dear,” she argued softly, “he is a man; did you really think the colour of his skin altered that? We have all been in the wrong, and Ruth perhaps more than any of us.”
“Ruth,” snorted Sir Henry, the more angrily since he felt a twinge of conscience. “You are never quite fair to the girl, Mary. It is not likely that she would imagine that he would presume so far.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed Lady Daring, words were a waste of breath now that the thing had been done. “Poor Channa, I am sorry for him.”
“I thought you would be the last person to fight his cause, Mary, you are always bitter enough on the question of mixed marriages.” Sir Henry felt slightly aggrieved. Channa’s last sentence—“As you have dealt with me”—remained to vex him, and now here was Mary siding against his judgment.
“Of course, dear,” she answered gently, “the whole thing was absolutely impossible, but does that make the tragedy any less bitter for Channa? I have been so fond of him, it worries me that we should be the ones to hurt him.”
“Oh, well,” Sir Henry summed up his feelings, “when a thing is as absolutely impossible as this was it can’t be too sharply nipped in the bud. I don’t think Channa can have mistaken my feelings, and he is not at all likely to re-open the subject. Let us get through this evening as best we can, and off you go to-morrow. Not a word to Ruth, mind.” He paused to look back from the door. “I won’t have her pretty head worried over such matters.”
Not that Ruth would be likely to worry, thought Lady Daring bitterly, as she went back to her dressing. It was Channa’s face that haunted her thoughts.
“He so trusted us,” she whispered, “we were his friends. There was no one else who could have hurt him quite in the same way.”
A shadow rests upon my thoughts,
I seem to see
The darkness that lies just beyond
The brilliancy.
The pitiless, sharp gloom of hate;
The stern remorselessness of hate.
A hastily summoned council was being held in one of the courts of the old Palace. A curiously mixed assembly, the nobles in their robes of state ready for the evening’s ceremony, the white-clad priests, and the leaders of the bazaar folk, with here and there the fiercer, darker faces of the warrior tribe from over the frontier.
Behind a trellised window in the inner wall of the courtyard the Maharanee Sujata sat, her eyes fixed on the proceedings. She had so planned and schemed, so plotted and worked to bring about the result slowly unfolding before her eyes; and now her share was done, she must sit behind these foolish bars and watch the men-folk carry her dream to fulfilment or break it to pieces from sheer lack of courage. She chafed against the enfolding wall of the harem, the chain of her sex, as she had never chafed before in all her long life of scheming and plotting, and her eyes—eager for all their age—looked here and there among the assembly for one face in whom she could recognise the required powers of leadership. She could put no real confidence in Channa, flesh of her seed though she knew him to be. For the moment, swept from sanity by the force of his passion, he might be trusted to do desperate deeds, but reaction would follow as passion waned. Even as a boy he had shown where his inclination lay. He was loyal and peace-loving: the wild blood that leapt in her heart found small place in his veins. And those others, sheep without a leader, full of hot thoughts and words, but incapable of deeds, unless some strong hand could be found to lead them. Unity is strength; how could there be unity while each man eyed the other and strove to set aside his claims to leadership? Yet the thing must go forward now that the ball had started. If only she could have been a man for one brief week. Carrying her age lightly, she would have shown them the way, such fires of hate and loyalty to past glory burnt in her heart!
The voices of the men arguing, clamouring against each other, came to her through the chinks of her spy-hole. As yet Channa had said very little. He sat in moody indifference, staring straight out in front of him. In the space of those few minutes, while he had stood before Sir Henry and felt the older man’s scorn and anger sting about his heart, Channa had thrown aside all the old landmarks of his beliefs and faith. He had done with them all, there was no spark of feeling in his heart now save that of hate. Amid the wreckage of his dreams hate reigned triumphant, it had swamped even love. His thoughts of Ruth were swayed by cruelty. It would have satisfied the something awake within him if he could have seen her lying before him dead, with red lines of pain showing out across the beauty of her white body. They had given him scorn, these white people; well, his hate would rise to answer that! They had taken his loyalty, a loyalty built on love, and trampled it under foot; hate should repay them. The sneer on their lips should be turned to a cry of fear.
To Dattaka’s worried councils he turned a studiously deaf ear. What could the old man know of the reason for his hate? Indeed, not knowing, Dattaka found himself thoroughly bewildered by his master’s attitude. He stood himself, aghast, in the full stream of the flood, not knowing the source but guessing at its destination with a heavy heart.
“Were our strength an hundred times what it is, Maharajah,” he argued, “the end would be the same. I have lived many years and I have never seen the English Raj defeated. When all India rose against them in a mighty flood their power wavered for a hand’s-breadth only. The blood of thy people will run in vain, the home of thy fathers, the glory of thy race, will be as nought. My king, what madness has come upon thee that thou shouldst dream of such a thing?”
Channa turned eyes heavy with their bitterness upon him. “No madness, Dattaka, only a great hate. Let the thing go on, it is my will.”
The others resented the old man’s attitude. “Already he is a traitor,” they clamoured. “His heart has grown soft. These many years he has drawn money and so-called honour from the English Raj. He is no longer one of us.”
“No longer one of you!” Fierce contempt shone in the old eyes, he swept round to his master. “Maharajah, have I ever wavered from my trust or turned aside in my service to thee and thine? Is not my loyalty as my love?”
Listlessly Channa turned his head to look from the impassioned face of his old servant to those others in the crowd. Love and loyalty; was there any meaning in such words? Hate was the only real thing in the world.
“He stays with us,” he said, dismissing the veiled grumbling of the crowd as a thing of no moment.
So Dattaka stayed, but because of the sting which this disbelief in his loyalty had given him he offered no further advice during the rapid consultation that followed; silent, bemused by the trend of events, seeing his most treasured convictions swept aside by these madmen who planned to throw their puny strength against the force of the British Government in answer to some strange whim of the priesthood.
“Aye, we may kill a few,” he pleaded in one last desperate attempt to save the state that he had watched over and guarded for so many years, “but white men die hard, Maharajah; for each one killed there will be vengeance taken as of twenty to one.”
“Let it be vengeance against vengeance,” one of the priests, who had arrogated to himself a certain leadership, answered; “does not the blood of our myriads killed cry aloud for vengeance? Let the white blood flow, that the Gods may be satisfied.”
His speech was received with acclamations of satisfaction, and Dattaka turned away. Reason was of no avail, he realised, there remained only dumb, loyal service.
It was time, anyway, for the meeting to break up. In half an hour the ceremony of worshipping the moon would commence; it would last until well beyond midnight. A certain law, unbreakable in a land where all things are governed by religion, forbade the idea of killing the white folk while they were still guests in the Maharajah’s house. The plan, therefore, was that they should be separated if possible and conveyed one by one to Mr. Mellish’s house. It would be unnecessary to give any reason for this, it would be the Maharajah’s pleasure, that was all. As soon as the whole party had been safely conveyed the house was to be surrounded. The telegraph lines to Bhogmore had already been destroyed; they could not with their own strength defend the house for long. It was just possible that Mr. Mellish’s servants would stand true to him, in that case they would have to be killed too; but the probability was that when they saw the strength arrayed against them and realised how widespread was to be the war, they would throw in their lot with their race brothers rather than with the white men.
That fact once accomplished and the capital strongly held against all attempt at invasion, the ringleaders should rest, awaiting a concerted movement from the neighbouring states, to whom word had already been circulated of the great rising at hand. Each state as it joined would form a stronger buttress, and together they should drive the oppressors step by step back to the sea. So the leaders of this fantastic conspiracy argued. In theory the plan worked excellently; it remained only to set flowing the blood of men to bring it to its fulfilment.
Dattaka carried his Prince’s message, to the effect that the Maharajah was suddenly indisposed and could not attend the ceremonies, to the white folk with a heavy heart. Death and disaster seemed painted black against the sky and he had no inclination to worship the Gods when they could so ruthlessly let madness loose among men. He was old, as his opponents had claimed, and perhaps his heart had softened with the years, he had but little liking anyway for the work before him. To smile and meet the eyes of a man with one hand behind your back holding the knife with which you mean to slay him, was a deed that accorded but ill with Dattaka’s nature, though it had been done often enough in the past history of his race.
Nothing of all this, however, was visible in his manner while he made the Maharajah’s excuses and prepared to escort the party to the seats provided for them on the flat roofs of the Palace. To-night was the festival of the moon, and in her honour the old Palace had been decorated with sheets of shimmering silver cloth. No other light save her own was necessary, there was something ethereal about the beauty which her flood of silver lent to everything.
“Channa has done the right thing in staying away,” Sir Henry confided to Lady Daring, as they followed their guide, “it would have been very awkward otherwise.”
Lady Daring sighed; despite Harry’s relief she felt nervous and depressed to-night. This new pallid earth, the moonlight glinting on the silver hangings, the figures of the priests, touched on her nerves with a sense of fear. She felt as one feels sometimes when caught in the meshes of a dream which one instinctively knows will end in nightmare but from which one is powerless to wake.
Her fears were individual, however, and were not manifested in the rest of the party. Ruth was intensely relieved at the knowledge of Channa’s absence and inclined therefore to show an added graciousness to Captain Pentland; Betty and Melrose were as radiantly pleased with life as two young people can be when on the border-line of a love story which will admit no possibility of sorrow. Melrose, perhaps, had his own conclusions as to the Prince’s absence, but apart from a momentary sympathy he did not allow the matter to worry him until Betty re-opened the subject of their morning’s ride.
“I wonder if Prince Channa is really ill,” she said; she was looking at Ruth as she spoke. “I believe that old holy man worried him by something he said. You know,” she added reflectively, “he strikes me as being very sad sometimes, as if he was fated, or something.”
“It must be horrid to be fated,” agreed Melrose; he too glanced at Ruth, wondering if a small twinge of conscience might not quite rightly be disturbing her apparent enjoyment. “I am always sorry for him anyway; he has left his people for us, as it were, and yet he doesn’t quite belong to us.”
Ruth showed, at least, no outward sign of contrition. She was looking surprisingly beautiful in a gown of silver tissue over shining silk. Round her head, quite against her usual custom, she wore a close set crown of jessamine flowers, they showed like little stars against the blackness of her hair. She came across even as they were both thinking of her to where Betty and Melrose stood.
“Jack and I are going over there to watch the dancing,” she said; “aren’t you two coming?”
A space had been cleared at the far end of the flat roof for the dancing girls from the bazaar. They stood in the centre of the onlookers, about twelve of them, flower crowned and garlanded, the long plaits of their hair braided with silver, their lithe young bodies poised for the dance. From somewhere among the crowd of watchers, though the musician remained unseen, skilled fingers could be heard beating out a weird rhythm on the little native drums and slowly the girls began to dance. First listening, with head upraised, as if hearing the call of the player, and then moving in slow sensuous time; swaying and posturing, unlike any dance that ever was, as Betty said, yet strangely beautiful in all their movements.
They seemed to hold some strange fascination for Ruth. She leant forward in her place, lips just parted, eyes aglow. Her heart answered to the music as theirs did; her senses were stirred by the glamour of the night and the call of those strong, steady fingers on the drum. When the dance finished and, with the sound of tinkling anklets, the girls moved away, she stirred stiffly as if waking from a trance and sat erect, her hands tight clenched. Pentland’s commonplace, good-natured voice jarred across her thoughts, crystallising the present into stern reality.
“Funny methods of dancing, haven’t they?” he said; “move from the hips and sway yourself about as much as possible. Strikes us as ugly, though some of those girls were nice enough to look at.”
“Were they?” she heard herself answering. “I didn’t notice them.”
Pentland glanced at her uneasily. Despite his great happiness he was never quite sure of himself where Ruth was concerned. He was nervous of failing to please, the feeling almost amounted to fear and rendered him ridiculously ill at ease at times.
“Oh, well, of course you wouldn’t,” he agreed. He leant forward and touched just the outside film of her dress where it lay against his chair. “You are absolutely beautiful to-night, Ruth,” he said, “it takes my breath away to look at you.”
Trays of refreshments, curious-looking native sweets and cool iced drinks, together with specially provided cakes and sandwiches for the sahibs, were being taken round by an army of domestics. One of these, a huge, dark-faced man, paused with his tray before Ruth.
“The Maharanee Sujata sends greeting,” he said. “Will the Miss Sahib honour the house with the presence of her beauty?”
“What does he say?” Ruth asked, turning to Pentland. Melrose and Betty joined the group to share in the translation, because Pentland’s method of understanding the native was always a source of great amusement to Melrose.
“Something about a Maharanee and a house,” Pentland essayed.
“The matter is easily explained,” a suave, polished voice in almost perfect English intervened; one of the priests stood beside Ruth, grave eyes on her face. “The Maharanee, who sits yonder,” he indicated with a wave of his hand a screened-off portion of the roof, “with the womenfolk of the Palace, has heard of thy beauty, lady, and would refresh her old eyes with the sight of it.”
“She wants me—us, I mean,” said Ruth, including Betty on a sudden instinct, “to go in and see her behind those screens?”
“It would be a gracious act,” the man admitted; “the Maharanee is old, she much covets the honour.”
“Shall I see what Lady Daring thinks?” suggested Pentland. “They ought to have sent the invitation in a more formal way and have included her.”
“Doubtless had the Prince been present such would have been the case,” the priest acknowledged. “As it is,” he shrugged his shoulders, his eyes held Ruth’s with some sort of challenge in them, “’tis but a small matter and hardly worthy of your notice.”
“We’ll go,” said Ruth, standing up. “Come on, Betty,” she held out her hand, “you will have to support me, and as we can neither of us say more than a few words the visit won’t last long. Will you wait here for us?” she spoke to the two men; “we won’t be more than a minute or two.”
Then she turned and the large, dark-faced man with his tray of sweetmeats led the way, threading a passage through the other guests towards the far corner of the roof.
The end of the festivities was drawing near. “At least the time has arrived,” as Sir Henry said to Lady Daring, “when we can make our bow and depart. Where are the girls?”
“They went with Captain Pentland and Mr. Melrose to see something on the other side,” Lady Daring explained; she gathered her fan and gloves together and stood up, looking round her.
“Melrose was here a minute ago,” put in Mr. Grant, “he said something about Pentland and went off in the direction of that light over there.”
A native, clad in the white of the priests, had stepped on to the dais and was talking earnestly to Dattaka. The old man listened in silence, then he turned to Sir Henry just as the latter was about to despatch Grant in search of the two girls.
“It is of the Miss Sahibs that your Honour questions?” he asked. “But ten minutes ago they were seen retiring in the direction of their rooms. Doubtless they were weary and your Excellencies will find them there.”
“Queer of them to go off on their own like that,” Sir Henry commented. “Thank you; my wife and myself will follow. The evening has been most enjoyable, except for the regrettable absence of the Maharajah. Convey our best wishes to him for his speedy recovery.”
“He himself will be deeply grieved at having been deprived of the pleasure of your Excellencies’ company,” Dattaka answered. He touched Sir Henry’s extended hand, bowed deeply and drew back a step or two to let them pass.
“Shall I find Melrose and Pentland?” asked Grant.
“Let them follow at their own sweet will,” laughed Sir Henry, “I shan’t require them again to-night.”
He gave his arm to Lady Daring and escorted her past the lined-up assemblage of salaaming natives towards the steps that led from the roof.
Ten minutes later, making in all twenty minutes since Ruth had turned to Betty saying, “Come along, Betty, you must support me,” the impassive faced priest stood before the two young men again.
“The Miss Sahibs send word,” he said, the man had singularly repulsive eyes, Melrose thought, “they have returned to the Resident Sahib by another path. There is no further need to wait. And already the Resident Sahib has withdrawn his presence from among us.”
“By Jove!” said Pentland, “we had better hurry, Melrose. We ought to have been there to escort them.”
“If you will follow this man,” their informant indicated a native servant standing beside them, “he will show you a short way back to the new Palace.”
“Thanks,” said Pentland. He turned to follow, but Melrose, for some reason quite unknown to himself, hesitated, his eyes on the place where he had last seen Betty. He was thinking regretfully that after all he had let another day slip by without telling her in earnest how much he loved her. The little tantalizing smile that she had given him as she turned away with Ruth remained to tease him.
“Come on, Melrose,” Pentland called from a step or two away, and with a start he came out of his dream. It was as he turned to follow that his eyes were caught by a figure for the second time in that day. The holy man of the tree stood outlined against the sky on one of the little parapets of the roof. He posed, it almost seemed, as a symbolical figure of Fate, arms folded, head lowered, staring—Melrose could imagine—with haggard, scornful eyes at the gathering of moon worshippers.
“He is an uncanny devil,” Melrose thought to himself, his mood of regret suddenly tinged with a presentiment of evil.
A cloud had crept out of the North a little earlier in the evening, it floated now across the face of the moon. Its shadow lay over the festival, dimming the silver trappings, calling blackness to life amid all the splendour. And already the Palace roofs were oddly deserted, it had only taken the throng a quarter of an hour to disperse. High up on his pinnacle the Watcher stood alone in grim contemplation of the scene.
For love men kill. For little things like these,
Your lips, your eyes, the treachery of your soul.
For little things! See, how my passion strikes,
And other lives than yours must pay the toll.
As has before been mentioned, Melrose was one of those rare young officers in the Indian army who can speak the language with almost the same fluency as the natives. He had been born and brought up in India, and being the only child of a selfish woman he had remained out with his parents long after the usual age-limit for boys. As is the way with white children above a certain age in India his sole playfellows and companions had been the servants, and he had spoken their language in those days with far greater ease than his own. The advantage thus gained had never been lost; during his school-days and the brief time at Sandhurst that followed he had remained passionately loyal to the early influences of his life.
In his regiment it was said that Melrose held an almost uncanny power over his men and he was always sent for to settle any little disputes or grievances. Of medium height, and very slim, he had something of a native’s grace and suppleness of body. The Indian sun had tanned a fair skin almost brown, and he had very light hazel eyes, matching in colour the close-trimmed hair and moustache. No one could have called him good-looking, yet he had a singularly attractive face with more of the dreamer in it than is usually discernible on the face of the English subaltern. Imagination was a strong force in his nature, which perhaps accounted for his sympathies, for he could understand the native through this faculty of seeing with a poet’s eyes, and although he had the ordinary Englishman’s fear of appearing ridiculous he knew himself to be more easily moved from common sense, more prone to excitement and depression, than his fellows.
The presentiment of evil which his brief glimpse of the Fakir’s figure outlined against the sky had given him grew stronger with every step Melrose took away from the place where he had last seen Betty, till at last it became so persistent that he was forced to put it into words.
“I don’t like the look of things,” he said abruptly, drawing level with Pentland; “where is this man taking us? It seems a long way round.”
They had reached a part of the grounds by then, and their guide, walking very fast, had already turned into the broad white path of the central drive.
Pentland came to a pause and surveyed the surroundings. “It is certainly not a short cut,” he admitted, “but perhaps the passage between the old Palace and the new is closed after a certain time and this beggar is taking us round to the front door.”
Melrose had stopped too, his eyes searching the shadows round them, for down here the branches of the trees cut off the light of the moon and threw great pools of blackness about their feet. Every nerve in his body seemed peculiarly sensitive tonight, his hearing was sharpened to almost painful acuteness.
“Don’t show any sort of surprise,” he said quickly, to Pentland’s amazement, “and go on walking. Something is afoot to-night, Pentland. God knows what, but the shadows are alive with men, and we are being very closely followed.”
Pentland gave a sort of suppressed guffaw, yet the tenseness in the other man’s voice had made him move forward in obedience.
“If I didn’t know you were a singularly sober chap, Melrose,” he chaffed, “I would say you had got them again. My eyes aren’t bad and they don’t see anything.”
“Perhaps not,” Melrose retorted sharply. “I have merely told you a fact, Pentland. Call out to the man in front if you like and ask him where he is taking us.”
Pentland’s command of the native language was not of the best, and was therefore always delivered in a very loud tone of voice as if to force its meaning on to the hearer’s mind.
“Hi, you,” he shouted, “this is not the right road. Where are you going?”
The man turned a brief glance over his shoulder. Melrose caught the impression of the whites of his eyes in a dark face and a flash of teeth as he spoke. “To the Secretary Sahib’s house,” he answered.
“Son of an owl!” thundered Pentland before Melrose could stop him, “that is not where we live. The Resident Sahib—Palace—” his efforts at the language became more incomprehensible as his temper rose.
“It is by order of the Maharajah,” the man spoke briefly and from every side came, as if in confirmation of Melrose’s statement, the shuffling of bare feet on dust, the mutter of men’s voices.
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Pentland; he came to a dead stop. “What is the meaning of it, Melrose? You are right about our being followed, there is a circle round us.”
“I know no more than you,” admitted Melrose, “but I wish to God we hadn’t let Miss Daring and Miss Fulton go in to see that old Maharanee. I was a fool not to have prevented it.”
“You don’t suggest——” began Pentland. The voice of their guide interrupted.
“It were well for the Sahib logue to hurry,” he said; the insolence in his voice did not escape Melrose, “they have but little time to waste.”
“What’s the beggar saying?” asked Pentland. Melrose had moved forward and instinctively he followed. “Can you make head or tail of it, Melrose? The girls will be all right if they are with Sir Henry.”
“Yes, if?” answered Melrose. “Come on,” he put a restraining hand on Pentland as the other would have turned back, “if there is trouble on foot, and I am beginning to be pretty certain that there is, we can do no good kicking up a fuss on our own. The man says he is taking us to Mellish’s house, and I suppose it is true, for if I am not mistaken that is the wall of the compound just in front of us. We may find the others there.”
“If I thought,” said Pentland suddenly and fiercely, “that anything was happening to her, I’d go back now. A thousand natives shouldn’t stop me.”
Melrose had a quick thought of Betty and clenched his hands. “No, but common sense would. Just take a look behind you, Pentland, and realise, for Heaven’s sake, that we are up against something that isn’t going to be pulled down by words.”
The path along which they had advanced opened out at this point from under the shadow of the trees on to a clear, moon-swept space. As the figures of the two white men crossed over it their unseen attendants followed and so came into view: a gathering of men, twenty or thirty in number, with the red uniform of the Maharajah’s guard showing up distinctively among the rest. All were armed and they formed, as Pentland had said, an enveloping circle, making a formidable barrier between the white men and the Palace. Yet for a second it seemed to Melrose that even such an array was not going to deter Pentland. It appeared as if he meditated an attack, single-handed and unarmed as he was.
“I am going back,” he stated, set stubbornness in the words. “It looks, as you say, like mischief. We can’t leave the girls.”
“Pentland, for Heaven’s sake!” argued Melrose. “If they are in need of help, that won’t bring it them. What could you do? The only possible course is to join up forces with Mellish, find out what it all means and act together.”
The gates of the house, he noticed, were guarded by a further detachment of the Maharajah’s soldiers, and at distances all round the garden wall were seeming sentinels, some in uniform, some barely clothed in rags, but all armed. Their guide had entered into a brief parley with the soldiers at the gate.
“Go forward, Sahib logue,” he called out, turning to look at them, “and the curse of the Gods go with you. The road to the house is straight; if you turn to the right or the left, or look back, the soldiers shoot. That is their order.”
Melrose laid his hand on Pentland’s arm. “Come on, Pentland,” he said, “we are quite powerless. The man says they have orders to shoot, and from their expressions they will certainly enjoy the deed.”
“Then why the hell haven’t they done it?” asked Pentland. “What is the meaning of this farce?”
“That I don’t quite understand myself,” admitted Melrose; he turned for a second to the soldier nearest.
“Why have you held your hands?” he asked. The man was amazed at the fluency with which he spoke. “Is it your desire that we should live?”
The man spat on the ground before answering. “You have eaten the salt of our King,” he explained, “pass now from out his domain untouched.”
“That’s their idea,” mused Melrose; “I half hoped it might be the Prince’s influence that was protecting us. Are you coming, Pentland? We have got to walk straight up that drive to the house, and if we look to the right or the left we are to be shot. The matter is quite concisely explained by this gentleman.”
Before Pentland could make any reply, obstinate or otherwise, the air was suddenly shaken by the quick report of firing, sound following sound with a crescendo of noise, till across the tumult a man’s voice rose, half a shout of anger, half a scream of pain, and the whole outbreak ended as suddenly as it had begun, in an unpleasant silence. Melrose and Pentland stared at each other, the soldiers shifted uneasily, peering into the shadows, scenting the air—it seemed to Melrose—as dogs do before they are unleashed for hunting. Gunfire can stimulate the most sluggish nerves to action, but its effect on men already strung up to the thought of killing is sufficient at times to lead to frenzy. Was that brief fusillade with its attendant death-cry to be the signal for their general slaughter? Melrose wondered. He tightened his hand on Pentland’s arm and moved forward.
“It is our only chance,” he whispered, “don’t mess it up, Pentland.”
The other followed mutely, and the soldiers, still listening intently, drew aside to let them pass. Some event was stirring in the shadows outside the circle, but Melrose did not dare either to draw Pentland’s attention to it or to look back himself. He could only hurry forward.
They had only advanced a few paces when their own names shouted in English brought them to a standstill, though remembering their guide’s warning Melrose did not even then look round. Quick feet could be heard on the path behind them; quick feet and the sound of someone panting as he ran. Grant drew level with them, his breath was coming in great gasps, his face had turned a curious blue pallor. He did not stop beside them, and mechanically they moved forward, the three of them abreast.
“Sir Henry and Lady Daring—murdered”—his words seemed to be choking him, he struggled for breath. “Back there, in the grounds. Sir Henry had a revolver—he fired first—it was all over in two minutes. It was ghastly to see them.”
“What about Miss Daring and Miss Fulton?” Melrose asked. Pentland seemed too dazed to speak.
Grant staggered as he walked, a little patch of red showed on his coat. “Sir Henry asked that,” he said, “before he fired. I don’t know what the answer was, I didn’t hear it.”
He lurched forward and Melrose and Pentland had to catch him or he would have fallen. They carried him forward the rest of the way and up the steps of the house.
It was a square, stone building, lacking the usual verandahs so necessary in a country where every scrap of air is welcome. But it had been built under the same supervision as had the new Palace, and it was very English and solid in appearance. Shallow stone steps led up to a door which, when open, showed the way into a big hall with stairs ascending to the second storey on either side. The windows of the dining-room and drawing-room, situated on either side of the hall, opened on to the drive, but they were set high up in the walls and protected from the sun by very stoutly built green shutters. These were shut, though a flicker of light between the slats showed that the people of the house were still astir.
Their approach had been seen, for as they supported Grant up the steps Melrose could hear the shifting of bars and the pushing aside of some heavy obstacle. Mellish’s face, devoid of any colour, greeted them in the first opening of the door. It was evident from his agitation and the various signs of siege about the house that news of the rising had reached his ears. Mellish and Mrs. Mellish had left the entertainment earlier than the others, because the latter was not feeling very well. She stood behind her husband in the hall, and beyond her again were grouped the native servants.
“What has happened?” Mrs. Mellish was the first to speak. “Has Mr. Grant been hurt? Where are Sir Henry and Lady Daring and the two girls? Oh, what does it all mean?”
Mellish had been attending to the re-fastening of the door. He turned at her question. “It means what I have been afraid of for months,” he said. “Everyone laughed at me, even Sir Henry yesterday, in this very house. You know, of course”—he spoke to the two men; Mrs. Mellish was looking after Grant, who lay on the floor propped up against some cushions dragged from a chair—“what has happened. We are completely surrounded. The lines have been cut, there is no visible means of getting news through to Bhogmore. This place, I suppose, we can hold for three days, that is depending on these men”—he glanced across at the group of servants—“certainly not for longer.” Grant stirred and muttered with dry lips, “Don’t shoot, Sir Henry. My God, they mean murder! Get behind me, Lady Daring!”
Mrs. Mellish stood up; her agitation had died away as soon as there was anyone dependent on her care, she was suddenly very calm.
“Dick,” she said, “he must mean that Lady Daring and Sir Henry have been killed. But what can have happened to the girls?”
Mellish looked sharply from Pentland to Melrose. The latter nodded.
“It seems,” he explained, “from what Grant told us, that Sir Henry asked some question as to Miss Daring and the reply so angered him that he raised his revolver and fired. They were shot down instantly and Grant escaped. I fancy the order was that we were none of us to be killed while we were still the guests of the Prince. That is why they let him pass, the other shooting was a mistake. He found us at the gates; we had been brought another way.”
“Then the girls——” Mrs. Mellish whispered. She drew a little nearer to her husband.
Melrose looked at Mellish. “Will you let me question your head man?” he asked. “He probably knows what the plans of the plotters are, he is certain to have been approached by them. I have my own ideas as to what it all means, but I should like to try and verify them.”
“Find out what you can, by all means,” Mellish agreed. “It can hardly alter our position. Alice, I will get the servants to carry Grant upstairs; you must do what you can for him, dear, and it will keep you from fretting.”
Pentland had sat down on the nearest chair. He leant forward, his head buried in his hands. He would much rather have been shot like Sir Henry, he was thinking, than be alive to think of Ruth as he could not now avoid thinking of her. Melrose paused beside him on his way across the hall to speak to the servants.
“Pentland,” he said briefly, “I cannot of course be certain, but I fancy that she is safe. They will not hurt her so long as the Prince is in power.”
But even as he spoke he was thinking of Betty, and remembering the faces of the bazaar folk, cruel with hatred.
Like a soft, white, beautiful snake you crept
Into the heart of the King.
But snakes have poisonous teeth that slay,
And where you have come we have blocked the way.
You must answer to us for the wrong you bring,
To our lord, the King!
Had she been perfectly frank with herself, Betty would have realised that she had been afraid from the moment that the soft curtains of the purdah enclosure fell to place behind them as they entered. The place seemed full of unseen watchers, the deft movements of people wishing to keep themselves concealed, the whisper of voices held in check. Not that that in itself could be described as terrifying; Betty had experienced it once or twice before when she had accompanied her aunt on a visit of state to some veiled purdah lady. But to-night her nerves were in an extra sensitive state, played on by the ceremonies of the evening and the moonlight. She drew a little nearer to Ruth as their escort, standing aside to let them pass, held open a further curtain and signed to them to enter.
“That is two thicknesses between us and the outside world,” she thought half humorously. “I do wish we hadn’t come.”
Then Ruth had moved forward and she, perforce, had had to follow. They stood in a fair-sized canopied tent, illuminated by curious-shaped lamps that diffused a faint bluish light. A thick carpet was spread under foot and in the centre of this, raised a little from the ground, stood a wide, long divan heaped with cushions. On this, it might have been described as a throne, sat a very old, very thin, lady, so thin that the bones seemed to be almost protruding through her cheeks and the skin of her claw-like hands; and so old, this was how she appeared to Betty, that her eyes could scarcely be seen for their surrounding wrinkles. The odd thing was that when she looked straight at you—she favoured each of the girls in turn with this clear, abrupt stare—the youth in her eyes was amazing. They were lit up by a spark of inextinguishable vitality.
Sharing her throne were several other native women not particularly interesting to look at, imbued with the vacant air of too much food and too little exercise, and a life given up entirely to the adornment of self. They were all of them very richly garbed, the most amazing jewels, strings of huge pearls and blazing emeralds hung round their necks and tinkled together in the anklets and bracelets that adorned their limbs. Their sarees were stiff with gold and silver tissue. A heavy scent of attar of roses mixed with oil of jessamine pervaded the atmosphere, and in addition to this a waiting attendant would slip forward from time to time and swing a censer.
The air was unbearable, so the two white girls thought, standing in the midst of all this splendour with a blend of curiosity and disapproval in their glance. Even Ruth looked back regretfully at the way they had come, but already their guide had disappeared and the flap of the tent had dropped; it was almost impossible to discern where they had entered.
“Salaam, Light of our Lord’s eyes!” The Maharanee Sujata spoke half derisively in the knowledge that she would not be understood.
Her eyes had passed over Betty in a brief survey and fixed instinctively on Ruth.
“Wilt thou not be seated?”
Salaam was the only word understood by either of the girls. They repeated it politely.
The Maharanee held out a withered claw and laid it for a second on the shimmering tissue of Ruth’s dress.
“Of a truth,” she confided to her companions, “the girl is beautiful even though her face be white.”
Then she sat back and clapped her hands abruptly. The curtains at the far end of the tent opened and a woman came in. Far more simply dressed than the others she yet carried herself with a certain arrogant pride. Nadina, half-sister to Channa, and five years older, had fought very strenuously during the years of the Maharanee’s absence to win for herself the benefits of a European education. English she had learnt from Channa’s first nurse, Miss Rose, and the latter, in leaving, had interested Mr. Smallman as much as possible on behalf of the girl. The veil of the purdah had by that time closed down on Nadina, she was already a widow, having been married at the age of four. Smallman could give no personal instruction, but he lent her books, and through Channa he helped the girl in her studies. Pride of race and pride of intellect ran high in Nadina, her learning had given her only a resentment against the subordinate position conferred on her people by the victorious invader. On that one point she and the old Maharanee could think in common, but for the rest a very strong wall of hatred stood between Nadina and her sisters of the harem. She was a widow, an object of rather contemptuous pity in their eyes, and her strong will and clear brain loathed the placid, uneventful life in which they lived content.
She came forward now and in answer to a quick look from the old grandmother she bowed stiffly, ignoring the customary native greeting, to the two girls.
“My grandmother asks you to be seated,” she said in stilted English, using a strange sing-song intonation. “She would talk with you.”
It was a relief to Betty to hear someone talking in English; her smile directed at Nadina was very friendly.
“Thank you,” Ruth answered haughtily; she was quick to resent the lack of courtesy in the native girl’s greeting; “but we cannot stay. I am pleased to have seen the Maharanee, but now we must go.”
“That is not possible,” said Nadina—she was just not choosing her words well, Betty thought—her face appeared singularly hard and composed. “There are several things that must be said between you.”
Here Betty thought it well to intervene; Ruth, she could see, was losing her temper, and that amidst their present surroundings would never do. Betty had a large share of inherited tact. “You see,” she explained very sweetly to Nadina, “Sir Henry and Lady Daring do not really know that we are here. Ruth wanted to come at once when she heard the Maharanee would like to see her. We didn’t wait to ask Lady Daring. That is why we cannot stay now, but we could come back, perhaps to-morrow.”
Nadina looked straight out over Betty’s fair head. “To-morrow will not be as to-day,” she said, “and to-day even for you is changed. You are not guests here so much as prisoners.”
Betty stared at the woman; but because the situation was by now quite beyond her polite control she did not attempt to speak. Anyway, Ruth’s hand, closed like a vice on her fingers, would have stopped her.
“What does this mean?” asked Ruth. “Perhaps you do not yourself quite understand the words you are using. You seem to forget you are talking to a guest of the Maharajah. Come, Betty.” She turned towards where she thought the door must be, and Betty moved with her.
“A guest of the Maharajah and a daughter of the all-powerful English Resident.” The stilted voice held scorn in it. “Even with all that remembered, the thing is as I say. Look for yourselves and judge.”
Soundlessly, at no given signal, as far as the girls could see, the walls of the tent showed, lined by a circle of native servants, swarthy of face, huge of limb and height, like the guide who had conducted them to the place. Betty caught her breath on a note of fear and clung to Ruth; the other girl made no sound, only she drew herself a little more erect and Betty could feel her stiffen, as it were, all over. Then she turned back again and this time she did not look at Nadina but straight at the withered old queen on the divan.
“Very well,” she said, “it is as you say. These are strange customs and may afterwards need some explanation. Meanwhile what is there that has to be said between us?”
“You will sit down.” Nadina indicated two low cushioned seats set in front of the divan. “As my grandmother cannot speak English I will interpret.”
“Don’t show you are afraid,” Ruth whispered to Betty as they took their seats, “and leave everything to me. They daren’t really hurt us, however much they would like to.”
“Now,” began Nadina; she stood between Ruth and the old woman, “this is the Maharanee’s message. The Prince has told her of his love for you, of yours for him.” Betty stole a terrified glance at Ruth’s rigid face. “She cannot pretend that the news was pleasant, there are many things in our creed which forbid such a marriage. But to the inevitable everyone must bow, and a King’s desires are not lightly set aside. Therefore the Maharanee is prepared to welcome you into the house.”
She paused for a minute and her eyes in their survey of Ruth were very merciless.
“It was not wise of you,” she went on, “to deem yourself so secure in your power that you could play with the passion in my brother the King’s heart. I have read much of the doings of the white people; it is not in such fashion that our men love. There is short shrift given to the woman who deals falsely with a man as you have dealt with my brother, and death can bring the same balm to desire as achievement.”
Not a quiver showed on the long lashes that guarded Ruth’s eyes. “The Prince may have loved me,” she answered; “everything else that you have said is, on the face of it, ridiculous. How should I love him? He is a native, I am an Englishwoman.”
Betty pulled at her nervously. “Don’t make them angry, Ruth,” she begged.
Nadina turned and spoke quickly to the Maharanee, who had sat back among her cushions during the conversation.
“The girl is very proud,” Sujata answered the angry outburst. “But in that there is no great harm. Pride can be broken and I like a haughty spirit. Speak softly to her, Nadina, tell her our pleasure.”
Nadina turned again to Ruth. “I have told the Maharanee your answer in all its insolence. Were I in her place I would deal differently with you, but it is her pleasure to be gentle because of the love my brother bears you. Listen then, you who are so arrogant in your pride that any thought of love between us is a defilement to your mind, this is the truth of your position. My brother has risen against your people, his hand is against the hand of the English from now onwards. To-night he takes his place at the head of a great army,” her eyes flashed sudden fire, “that shall wipe you and yours from off the face of our great Mother, India. To-night the secretary’s house, whither the rest of your party has been conducted, will be surrounded. Not one of them shall come out alive. With hands still red from the blood of your people my brother shall return and claim you his. Like a bride shall you be decked out to receive him, and in your arms shall he take that pleasure you have so haughtily withheld. Aye,” the passion of her hatred shook her, she leant forward till her face almost touched Ruth’s. “Before now the men of our house have taken to their hearts unwilling brides and known joy while the girl’s body stiffened in their arms.”
Betty gave a sudden little sob and buried her face in her hands. Ruth stood up abruptly.
“You cannot frighten me,” she said, “by these wild ravings. It is my wish to see the Maharajah at once.”
Nadina smiled, a cold smile devoid of all mirth. “The bridegroom sees not the bride until the night of the consummation of the marriage,” she answered; “such is the law of our creed.”
“But it is absurd,” said Ruth. “What is the outcome of all this? What does she propose to do with us?”
“For the moment,” said Nadina, “the audience is at an end. You will be conducted to the room set apart for your reception. It was not intended that the other girl should have been with you, yet since she has come and since she is young the Maharanee is graciously pleased to extend protection to her as well. You shall even be left together. My task is finished. I have no love for your people and I hold out no hand of friendship to you. But one thing I would warn you of: to resist is hopeless and will merely add to your discomfort.”
She had turned and gone almost upon the heels of the words back through the recess from which she had emerged.
Ruth stood looking down at Betty. A curious, excited light shone in her eyes. It was true what she had said, she was not afraid. The woman’s fierce words had set vibrating a far different chord in her nature. The excitement of the adventure held her, and for the rest it was impossible for her to believe in the greater part of Nadina’s recital. What could a small principality like the Bhogmore State do against the Government? Already troops would have been wired for, if there was any truth in the statement Nadina had made, in five hours sufficient men could be brought up from Bhogmore to wipe the Maharajah and his whole State out of existence.
“It is a sort of nightmare we are living in,” she said to Betty. “But all nightmares have an end. Do buck up, Betty, it is terrible to let them see they have managed to frighten you.”
Betty lifted a white, tear-stained face. “If what she said was true,” she whispered. “Oh Ruth, what does it mean? What can be happening outside?”
“Nothing, my dear”—Ruth spoke with calm confidence—“but in about twenty minutes something very drastic will happen when father finds out about me.”
The old withered form on the divan stirred stiffly and stood up, the other women rising also and grouping themselves round. Across the little space between the two groups old eyes met young with a certain understanding—there was much in common between the two natures of Ruth and Sujata—then with her escort round her and without wasting any further words on her two captives, Sujata turned and made her slow way to the same exit as Nadina had used. The girls were left alone in the silent tent; alone, yet vaguely aware of eyes that watched, of forms that waited to bar the way.
For a moment or two neither of them spoke. Ruth had sat down again, she held herself very erect, her hands clenched in her lap. A curious jumble of thoughts and memories were rushing through her brain. The evening of the ball when Channa had kissed her, the tumult it had wakened in her being; her engagement to Pentland, the motives that had prompted it. Betty, looking at her, was struck by the expression on her face to a new fear. She left her place and knelt at Ruth’s side.
“Ruth,” she asked, “what are you thinking about? It makes your face so strange. Ruth,” she shook the other with nervous hands, “that woman, she talked about your love for the Prince. It wasn’t true, was it? You never let him believe that you loved him, did you, and then—and then came up here engaged to Captain Pentland?”
“It was your idea, remember,” said Ruth, “that I should become engaged to Jack.”
“But I never thought, I didn’t dream,” gasped Betty. “Oh, Ruth, what have you done? It was wicked, wicked.”
“Anyone but you, Betty, would have seen the truth long ago,” said Ruth. She moved a little, pushing the other girl from her, leaning forward, her chin on her hands. “I was frightened for myself, because—oh, well, because the Prince had kissed me—terrible thought to you, isn’t it?—and I hadn’t disliked it. But I wasn’t idiot enough for a single second to contemplate marrying him. Jack seemed a good way out of the difficulty, that was all. You didn’t imagine that I was in love with him, did you? Anyway, what is the use of arguing about my motives?” she asked; “it won’t get us out of here.”
The purdah at the end of the tent stirred and the servant who had been their guide in the first instance stood before them, deferential, yet with a certain contemptuous insolence in his eyes.
“The Miss Sahibs will follow me,” he said in the patois Hindustani, used by servants to their English masters.
“Where?” asked Ruth. “It is our wish to go back to the Lat Sahib.”
The man grinned, showing white, even teeth.
“The Maharanee’s orders are otherwise; will the Miss Sahibs be so good as to follow?”
Betty stood up. “The Lat Sahib will give much backsheesh,” she said in her halting effort at his language.
The man made no answer; still with the smile on his face he crossed the tent and held aside a purdah.
“Come,” he said, unmistakable command in his voice.
Betty glanced at Ruth and Ruth shrugged her shoulders, rising to her feet.
“We shall have to go, I suppose,” she said; “how ridiculous it all is!”
Following their guide brought them out on to the flat open roof of the Palace again, deserted now, save for the figure of the Watcher who sat aloof and stern by the edge of one of the parapets. Here the same thought crossed both their minds: should they take the matter in all seriousness and made a dash for liberty? “But where should we run to?” Betty whispered, and “We should only look extraordinarily foolish,” Ruth agreed. The same desire to preserve their pride kept them from screaming, and indeed it is difficult to raise a sound loud enough to carry when for the moment you are neither being frightened or hurt.
Steep stone stairs led them down to a paved court round which ran a verandah with doors at frequent intervals, giving it the appearance of the dormitory of a monastery. The man led them across this, through a door on the further side and along a marble paved passage to another and smaller court. Here too the floor was of marble, open to the sky and flooded with moonlight. The one entrance to the court was approached by a short flight of steps, the four walls were high and smooth, topped with pleasant green from the trees that stood just outside.
Unlike the wider court through which they had passed, this marble enclosure boasted of only one door, and from the room within a glimmer of light was visible and the sound of voices.
Their guide strode across the courtyard and paused near the door.
“Enter,” he said, addressing them again for the first time since their journey had started.
There was nothing to do but obey, yet Betty paused on the threshold. She hated to leave the open air, the moonlight, cold and unsympathetic as it might be. It was hardly an hour since this same moon had shone down with such seeming encouragement on herself and Melrose. She felt him near her for a moment and knew how her heart hungered for the real consolation of his presence. Then she became aware of the dark face and watchful eyes of her guide, his rather hateful smile. The nightmare was still holding her then; would it ever end?
The room, with its soft-shaded lamps—the flames burned in carved bronze holders with jade-coloured shades—struck on her senses as close and hot. The air was burdened with the same scent as had made the Maharanee’s tent so unpleasant. There was apparently no window, and though the door was wide open and the chic up, very little breeze could blow in across the high walls of the court. The only article of furniture in the room was a long European mirror propped up against one of the walls, but a heaped-up pile of cushions in the far corner might be supposed to represent a bed. Two native women, servants evidently, to judge by their clothes, rose to their feet as the girls entered and salaamed to each in turn. There was no animosity in their scrutiny, only a delighted curiosity, and they whispered quite freely to each other in a language like nothing Betty or Ruth had heard before.
At a quick command from the man outside, Betty having entered, one of these women stepped forward and let down the chic with a little clatter.
“Why?” asked Ruth quickly; “it is too hot in here.”
The women evidently did not understand, but from outside the man answered.
“It is necessary, Lady,” he said, “the guard is not of the harem.”
His meaning was evident in a moment, for following some shouted order a company of native soldiers, about twelve in number, trooped in and took up their position in the middle of the small court. They were armed with rifles, Betty noticed, and had it not been for the anxiety of her position, the effect produced by this armed band of gaudily attired soldiers set to guard two perfectly defenceless women would have appealed to her sense of humour. But Betty at that moment felt far nearer tears.
The hot air of the place tingled across her cheeks, the scented atmosphere was smothering her. When one of the native women laid hands on her to unfasten her dress she started away with an undisguised scream of terror. As she crouched against the wall, as far away as she could get from their touch, another sound which added terror upon terror broke across her hearing. It was the quick report of rifles, firing not very far away, followed by the harsh, strained shout of a man; a cry wrung from him by sudden agony or the sharp approach of death.
The weight of a woman’s scheming,
The dreams of a woman’s mind.
Search to the back of the trouble
And this is all you will find.
There was one hopeful thing to Melrose among the crowd of gloomy passing events, and that was that Chandra, his own faithful old body-servant, was waiting to greet him among the other native servants gathered together in Mellish’s hall. Chandra had nursed Melrose as a baby, and he had returned to almost full control of his master’s affairs as soon as the latter landed in Bombay as a full-blown subaltern. You could trust Chandra to make you comfortable in the most unpromising surroundings; to look after your personal well-being and see that you had a hot bath, for instance, when any such luxury was absolutely denied to your fellow officers, on the march or when the regiment was under canvas. But beyond and above these little details Chandra had often proved himself invaluable in the aiding of Melrose on his little jaunts into the native world. That was the outstanding fact of his present value; for all this time a plan by which he could get in touch with Betty, help Betty by some means or other, had been forming in Melrose’s mind. It crystallised into certainty as his eyes lit on Chandra, for it would have been difficult to have brought it to accomplishment without Chandra’s help.
He called the old man out from among the others. “In a quarter of an hour’s time,” he said, “when I have spoken to the Secretary Sahib’s head man, I shall want you, Chandra, to help me on a matter at which you may be able to guess. See that a room is prepared for me and have everything ready, including”—he looked straight at the man—“a suit of clothes that will do for my purpose. Go now, and make haste with your preparations.”
Chandra understood him, that was evident. He wrinkled up his face and held out his hands as if to show their emptiness. “Huzoor, how can thy servant——” he began.
Melrose interrupted. “He must,” he said, “that is enough, Chandra; do your best and I will be content.”
Then he dismissed his own servant and turned to the others. They were willing enough to be questioned. The senior among them, a grave-faced, elderly peon with very meditative eyes, was eager to give all the information he could. He deplored the doings of the night with a far-seeing commiseration for his own people. They would pay a heavy penalty in the long run, he knew, and his son was in the service of the Maharajah. Questioned as to the reason for the outburst and the probable strength that lay behind it, he shrugged his shoulders.
“It is the work of women,” he said, “it has only their strength behind it.”
Had he heard aught of the fate mapped out for the Miss Sahib logue? Melrose asked.
The man looked at him curiously, it almost seemed as if his old face twisted in a smile.
“The talk of the bazaar,” he acknowledged. “They say the Maharajah desires a white woman for his bride. Doubtless they have been taken to the harem.”
Melrose frowned. “Knowledge is with you,” he said in the man’s dialect, “if you so will, it can also be mine. Have the mad doings of the night anything to do with the Prince’s desire?”
“For less things has war been let loose,” the man answered evasively. “How is it possible that I should know the mind of the Prince?”
Melrose had to leave the matter there and return to his companions. He found Pentland and Mellish in the dining-room, the one sitting moodily silent and the other immersed in the study of various maps and plans.
Mellish looked up as Melrose entered. “Well,” he asked, “did you find out much?”
“Not as much as I hoped to,” Melrose answered. He glanced at Pentland and turned abruptly to Mellish. “Can you spare me ten minutes, sir?” he asked. “I have something I should like to talk over with you.”
Alone with Mellish, in the latter’s study, Melrose unfolded some of his plan. “It appears to me,” he said, “that the rising must be purely local. Of course the Prince is being assisted by our friends from over the border, that goes without saying, but as far as Bhogmore itself is concerned the infection will not have spread.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Mellish answered; “for years the old Maharanee has been plotting against us, she will have cast her nets everywhere.”
Melrose shook his head. “You won’t find it so. These plots and plannings fall on barren ground as far as the bulk of the people are concerned. No, the Maharanee, as you say, and probably a small following, have been playing with this idea for years, then something—an unfortunate twist of fate, let us say—put a lighted torch in her hand. But the flame which she has blown into being won’t last long.”
“And this torch,” said Mellish a little sarcastically, “happens to be an opportunity to murder the Resident while he was a guest in her grandson’s house? It seems to me the flame has already worked considerable and dreadful damage.”
“Yes,” Melrose admitted; “but her plans would have had to smoulder for the rest of her life had it not been for the Maharajah’s unfortunate desire to marry Miss Daring.” He leant a little forward. “Now do you understand the flame?” he asked.
Mellish stared at him. “Is that what you have found out from my man?” he asked.
“I had it more or less confirmed. Listen, and I will tell you the rest. We knew, that is to say that everyone in Bhogmore knew with the exception perhaps of Sir Henry and Lady Daring, that the Prince was making a fool of himself over Miss Daring. How far she led him on it is not very much use cogitating, but that she did to a certain extent anyone could see. Then we came up here, and the day before we started her engagement to Pentland was announced. We did a tour of the bazaar yesterday morning, I and Miss Fulton with the Prince. I am a fairly good linguist, I could not help understanding our uncomplimentary reception. Great anger was evinced against Miss Fulton as the white girl who had bewitched their Prince. It ended finally in a holy man holding up our procession while he solemnly cursed the Prince’s projected marriage with a white woman. It seems quite clear to me that the Prince intended to propose to Miss Daring. He may or he may not have spoken to Sir Henry; anyway he must have heard of Miss Daring’s engagement. It was the old grandmother’s chance, don’t you see? She could tempt him with the idea of taking by force what would certainly be denied him otherwise.”
“I see to a certain extent,” Mellish admitted; “but how does it affect or help our case?”
“Merely in this,” said Melrose. “We can hold out here, you say, for three days. Before that news of the affair will have filtered through to headquarters, there are bound to be many loyal natives about who will see to that. In half a day they can send you sufficient men to have the whole matter settled in a few hours.”
Mellish rose and walked to one of the windows, stooping to peer through the shutters. “It is almost day,” he said, “and there is no sign of anyone stirring.” He came back to the table. “I can only hope that what you have said will turn out to be true, though, heaven alone knows, enough damage has been done already.”
Melrose stood up too. “You will not say anything of all this to Pentland,” he suggested, “he is worried enough as it is. The thing for us to do when relief comes is to work quickly.” He paused and glanced at the other man as if weighing in his mind whether he should confide or not. “I cannot get Miss Daring and her companion out of my mind,” he said suddenly. “If they are just content to keep them in the harem of the Palace it will be easy enough to rescue them when relief comes here. I do not suppose for a minute that the Prince will allow any harm to come to them; I trust him—despite this outburst—enough for that. But when the tide turns against him, if he should happen to be killed or anything, the Maharanee might decide to take the girls with her when she retreats. She might think to revenge herself in that way.” He paused and Mellish could see how nervously his hands gripped the edge of the table. “I am going to ask you to allow me to do something that may sound to you very mad. I am going to leave you, I am going back again to the Palace—or as near it as I can get—I am going to play the spy and watch events. If there is any sign of a flight I will follow, I won’t let them out of my sight, and as soon as I can I will get word back to you, and then you must act at once, there won’t be any time to waste.”
“Why, it is impossible,” said Mellish. “Oh, don’t think I don’t see your point. The thought of those two girls is enough to make one mad. But what you propose to do,” he put his hand on Melrose’s shoulder, “will only add another murder to the list.”
Melrose shook his head. “You don’t know me,” he said. “I have done it before, I know their ways and habits and talk inside out. I shall be safe enough, and I have very little doubt but that in three days all will be plain sailing for us. Only, if when the relief people are here and you have the run of the Palace without finding Miss Daring or Miss Fulton, then sit tight and wait for my message. That is important, you must have the men ready at hand when I call.”
“You know,” said Mellish wearily, “it seems absurd that I should be standing here listening to you quite calmly while you talk these absurdities. But one night has turned the world upside down. You must do as you like; things for the present are outside my control, but I will remember your words when the time comes.”
“Thanks,” said Melrose. He moved to the door. “Tell the others,” he said, “and especially Pentland, that I have gone to get help from Bhogmore. It would be as well if the natives also were to think that.”
Upstairs he found a solemn-faced Chandra sitting mournfully beside a little pile of native clothes on the floor. He looked up as his master came in.
“Have I leave to speak?” he asked.
“Yes,” Melrose answered, “but you will have to be quick about it, for I have very little time to waste. What of the stain, Chandra; have you thought of that?”
“I have thought of all things, master,” said Chandra ponderously, “but I am not a worker of magic, it is not possible for me to make a stain out of the air.”
“Well, then, I shall have to go without,” said Melrose cheerfully. “A lot of these Afghan beggars are no fairer than I am. Hand me over some of those clothes, Chandra, and let’s see what you have got.”
“Of the face it may be true,” argued Chandra, “but what of the fair skin that lies below where the sun has not touched thee, O my master?”
“I must arrange to keep that covered, I suppose,” Melrose laughed. “There is no use being gloomy about it. I must and will go. You have just got to do your best.”
Chandra rose very slowly and came across to him, bending, so that he could give his news in a discreet whisper. “There is no need to go, master,” he said, “already news has gone forth to Bhogmore of the murder of the Resident Sahib; ere nightfall the troops will be with us.”
For a moment Melrose looked straight into the old eyes, then he smiled, shaking his head. “The news is good, Chandra, and yet it will not deter me from my purpose. Know then that it is not to bring help that I would go forth. I knew there was small need for that. I would learn where the Miss Sahibs are and what the people of the Palace will do to them when they learn that the soldiers are on the way.”
Chandra drew back. “The Miss Sahib with hair the colour of the sun?” he asked sharply.
“Yes,” Melrose admitted; “how did you guess, you funny old devil?”
“I have known it these many months,” Chandra answered. He turned away sadly and gathered up the clothes. “If the heart of my master is set on the woman,” he said, “nothing will stop him. But my heart is heavy, for there is danger in this work, my master, more danger than perhaps you dream of.”
He helped Melrose for the rest in silence, and under his deft fingers the young man emerged from the process, having shed every vestige of the English sahib, a shy-faced timid-looking specimen of the better class bazaar-folk of the North. His moustache had been sacrificed, his head had been shaved, his face, arms and legs darkened with some preparation of Chandra’s which the old man produced despite his vehement protests that he had none. There was not enough of this to do more than just those portions of his body exposed, which caused Chandra no little anxiety, but as Melrose pointed out, it only required a little extra care and he was not at all likely—with the thought of Betty’s need before him—to forget this precaution.
When everything was accomplished, Chandra drew back and surveyed his handiwork with anxious eyes. “It will pass,” he muttered, “but see to it, my master, that you keep very much to yourself; and look, if there should be trouble, if you should find yourself afraid for any reason, there is one man in the bazaar whom you may trust. He works on the side of the English. The holy man from Bhogmore, but yesterday I saw him.”
It was strange that Chandra should have mentioned that man above all others and in such a connection. Melrose thought to himself that even with his servant’s advice in his mind he would be hardly likely to seek the Fakir’s assistance, so repelled had he been by the man’s appearance and the presentiment that it had brought him. He reassured Chandra’s mind, however, and sent him downstairs to find out if the road was clear. Then he crossed over to the window and pushed aside the shutter. It was quite morning by now, though the sun had not yet topped the Palace walls. There was, as Mellish had said, not a soul in sight; even the guards seemed to have been removed from round the garden walls, yet quite distinctly, not so very far away, he could hear the sound of men’s voices, quick orders being sharply given, and a thin haze of smoke was rising from the direction of the bazaar.
Well, forward, then. Betty was waiting for him somewhere. That was incentive enough for any man, whatever peril there might be to face.
The people talk together in the streets:
“For this or that our King goes forth to fight,
And we know nothing of the needs that drive;
Nor which is wrong, which right.
We only know that ’neath the battle’s sky
Our King may win or lose—but we shall die.”
One brief night and Channa’s world lay in ruins round him. He realised the truth of that even with the acclamations of his followers sounding in his ears. He could not have committed suicide more irrevocably; the death he had chosen would take a little longer than the ordinary methods, that was all. Down the red vista of the days that were to come he could see Death waiting for him; death, and disgrace, and contempt. The reality, in the face of his grandmother’s highly tinted dreams and the plaudits of the people round him, seemed ridiculous. He was conscious of a bitter contempt for their plans and hopes and ambitions, knowing the futility of them all. That was the tragedy of his position, for he stood so entirely alone. His people had ceased to be his people, he had no thought in common with them. Across the years the only voice that called to him was the voice of Smallman, the man of a different race and creed. He had built his life on Smallman’s teaching, and in throwing that aside he had thrown away the groundwork of his soul. He had nothing to fall back on. Victory, if victory were possible—and the very blindness of that vision made him smile bitterly—would be less welcome to him than defeat. The taste of the one was more bitter than the other.
Yet keeping pace with this bitterness, making all things possible if not necessary, ran his passion for Ruth. It was in no way altered by the thought of her treachery to him. For one brief hour hate had submerged love, he had wanted to hurt her, to deal with her world as she had dealt with his; but his anger spent itself quickly, leaving only physical desire. And in so much as she had ruthlessly killed what was best in him, the love he gave her now was dignified by no ideal and raised only from baseness by its very strength. It was not so much for her sake that he would brave the degradation of his soul, but so that he might—if only for one sharp hour—possess her body. For love a man can do great things, but the love that so inspires must have its being in the soul. He had loved her like that; the irony of the thought cut into his mind like the knife of deceit with which she had stabbed such love to death. It was passion now that governed the pulse of his life and steered his course straight into the waters of destruction. The good, she had torn down; the evil, she had not bothered to reckon with. So be it! Evil should reign, and all the tumult of his being should snatch triumph from the paths it had to take before his desire could be fulfilled.
The grey light of early morning found him still awake and pacing the narrow path in front of the old Palace entrance. All night his feet had echoed up and down the path; he had not paused to rest or feed or sleep. From time to time they would bring him news from the outside world. Dattaka, grim of face, bowed as if old age had leapt suddenly on him from the night, came to report the murder of Sir Henry and Lady Daring. To Dattaka the deed spelt absolute ruin for the principality which all his life he had served; death for himself would have been infinitely easier to bear. But he had been powerless to prevent the incident, though present at the time. The Maharanee’s plottings, her propaganda spread through the priests, had let loose a flood no man could stay. It would need Death, Death armed with all the panoply of justice and might, before the people could be brought to their senses. They had tasted blood, the red of it ran across the land, the scent of it drove them forward like beasts maddened with the lust to kill. Dattaka had known war, once before, long ago in his youth. He had known what it was like to feel the fever of destruction surging through his veins, and the joy of the sword which ran red with blood. For a few minutes after Sir Henry’s revolver had rung out, he had stood between the people and their prey. He had thought to extract obedience by the weight of his influence, to avert for a little the calamity that threatened. But he had seen in that brief pause all the madness of killing in the faces opposed to him. Of what use to argue? Such a flame once kindled must burn to its end, yet for the honour of his race he would have saved the white people with his own life if necessary.
But he was old and his strength had failed him. Two of the Palace servants had pulled him aside, the sudden blaze of firearms had cut his arguments short; and life, so difficult to bring to being, so full of power for good or evil, is soon ended. With the words still on his lips, Dattaka had realised their uselessness. Sir Henry and Lady Daring were dead. Grant alone had staggered again to his feet and stood as if waiting for the next shot.
Dattaka had been able at least to rescue Grant, he had detailed one of his own sons to lead the man to safety.
“Go, Sahib,” he had said; “such deeds will stand between us for all times, yet it has been no wish of mine, to that the Gods shall bear witness.”
Channa heard the account in silence. If he felt any regret, remembering the old days and his affection for the woman who had shown him so much real love, he did not allow it to appear. And Dattaka uttered none of the protestations with which his soul was laden. The die had been cast, his loyalty demanded silence as well as service.
“For the others, they are safe,” he ended the recital, “and the house is in a state of siege. They have had fair warning, Maharajah. Shortly after dawn the attack will begin, but they are not ill-armed, and the servants to a man have stayed with them. It is not a question of a day’s work, and we have but little time to waste. Your presence to lead the soldiers will give great confidence. You must be there, Maharajah.”
Channa nodded; his eyes, bloodshot and restless, looked at the older man and away again quickly. “To-day I cannot,” he said, “to-night is the night of my marriage. Has word been given to the people of that?”
“We have deemed it well to keep the matter from them, Maharajah,” Dattaka answered. He drew himself a little more erect, lifting his head to look straight at his young master. “It is not well done,” he said, “afterwards I will be silent, but this once I must speak. It is not time for marriages and mirth-making; the people look to you to lead.”
“Well done or ill done,” Channa spoke with sudden intense bitterness, “it shall be carried through to the end. The people look to me to lead,” he laughed, strange scorn in the sound. “Where shall my leading end, Dattaka? Against the red doors of death. Think you that I see with the dream-held eyes of the priests? But before I die one thing I shall have accomplished, and as you say, there is no time to waste.”
On Dattaka’s shoulders then fell the full burden of arranging for the day’s attack, a burden made none the lighter by the news which came in from all quarters. It became more and more evident as the day wore on that the Maharanee, despite her carefully arranged plan, had overshot the mark. The sister States to Bhogmore were neither ready nor willing for the adventure. The messengers carried words of caution, which, with those two tragically silent figures in the gardens of the Palace, came too late to be of much use to the people of Arkonum. They stood alone, and evidently they were to be left to fall alone.
The knowledge stiffened old Dattaka’s resources, the people, and since it was to death he had to lead them it should be done with as much glory as possible. Where others grew afraid and would have been content to cry truce, offering as scapegoats so many of their party to pay the penalty for all, he grew strong. It should be war now to the finish, the time for regret or caution had swept past.
The fighting round the besieged house was very desultory, each side being powerless to work much harm. It was not from there that the danger would come, as Dattaka was quick to recognise. The defenders of the house could be smoked out like rats in a hole when the need arose. For the moment every ounce of strength had to be so organised that the village and the Palace should be transformed into a stronghold. Trenches had to be dug, fortifications had to be hastily put together. Every available man, except the few needed to act as guards to the house, was employed on the task. Instead of sweeping on a triumphal progress to the sea, they were building for themselves an entrenched position which would at least make a corner where they could die fighting. The greatness of the dream and the reality which remained caused a certain discontent, yet even the most rebellious spirits were bound to admit the wisdom of Dattaka’s course.
“They will bring men and they will bring guns,” he argued, at one very fierce war council, hastily summoned as the last messenger came in with his tidings of failure. “If we advance to meet them we shall be caught in the open. Does the tiger stand at bay in the open when the cover of the jungle is at hand? Let us strengthen our forces here and lure them on with the thought of our weakness. It is their custom always to underrate the strength of those whom they oppose.”
It was this futile dissatisfaction and a restless spirit of uncertainty pervading the men left to guard the house that brought Melrose’s task of slipping through the lines within the bounds of possibility. It was indeed easier than he had planned for, and from within the safe concealment of the Palace garden he could look back with some amusement upon the ease with which his object had been attained. It did not look like any severe work against the invaded household for the day at least, and the preparations going forward all round him betokened some knowledge on the part of the invaders that help was at hand. All of which was good news, and lightened his heart considerably for the task he had undertaken.
The sun, blazingly hot by now, shone down on the dust at his feet, and danced in little shimmering waves of heat wherever he looked. Even under the shadows of the trees it was difficult to find any relief from the glare, and the heavy white pugree that Melrose wore, more as a protection from this same sun than as any disguise, seemed to add to his general discomfort.
He found the bazaar, on his arrival there a little later, in an uproar, and slipping in and out among the excited groups he listened to the wild rumours everywhere afloat. Millions of soldiers from the English Raj were already on their way. Guns, dragged by elephants, and so monstrous in size that two of their shots would be sufficient to wipe the whole bazaar out of existence, were among the many horrors against which the defences were being erected. A grim spirit of pessimism seemed to hold the older men, though the young ones still talked of victory and the righteousness of their cause. The Prince’s name was being bandied from mouth to mouth, not always accompanied by complimentary language. It was beginning to be felt that his rashness alone was responsible for the present situation; but of the two white girls and their present position Melrose could get no hint. The bazaar was evidently ignorant as to that part of the proceedings, they imagined the white women to be at the Englishman’s house, and part of their keenness to wreck that building was attributable to the idea of dealing out vengeance to the witch who had cast such spells about their King.
Such gossip, the uneasy mutterings of a people already feeling themselves trapped and betrayed, could not help Melrose on his mission. He must look elsewhere for the news he sought. He had worked his way by this time to the outside edge of the bazaar nearest the Palace gates. The strip of road here was packed with soldiers, hired warriors from over the border he judged them to be from their clothes and fair colouring. There seemed to be little friendship between them and the civilians of Arkonum; indeed as Melrose approached he could see that some sort of quarrel which might at any moment end in fighting was already in progress.
A recollection came to Melrose as he stood half hesitating in his plans. It was just here, where the white road shook itself free from the bazaar and ran level into the greenness of the Palace gardens, that they had been held up the day before by the holy man whom Chandra had mentioned. Almost simultaneously with the memory Melrose saw the man again. He was standing, a strangely impressive figure, on the little open space of ground that divided the people from the soldiers. It was evident that he himself was the kernel of the brewing trouble. Chandra’s hint apart, it occurred to Melrose that here at least was someone to whom the inner doings of the Palace could be no secret, and it was this idea which prompted him to wedge his way through the crowd and even stand out alone, the nearest man on that strip of ground to the central vital figure.
As he reached this position the Fakir started to speak again, facing with indifference the angry grumblings and threats of the soldiers.
“The ways of my life are written in the book of the Gods,” he said. “I have come out to speak the truth to the people; think you that any poor threats of death shall hold me silent?” Just for a second he stood so, taunting their strength with his absolute confidence. Then he swept round to his other hearers, the group of bazaar folk; the old men, the women with their children, here and there soldiers and servants from the Palace. A mixed gathering, all mouth agape, drinking in his words.
“Ye are my people,” he said, “listen then, to my words. They have told ye that ye wage a holy war, that the Gods are with ye, that triumph shall be thine. In so much they lie and their own hearts know the falseness of their faith. For fifty years have I served the Gods. The shrine stays untended now, the lamp is unlit. And for this end, that, ere it be too late, ye shall know the truth. For the sake of the lust of the flesh has this war come upon ye; because your King would wed one of the white race—a wanton, an eater of the hearts of men. With her spells has she enthralled him and madness has come down upon his soul. For this cause, that he may lie in her arms to-night, shall your young men redden the ground with their blood, shall your children die in the flames and your houses perish. What quarrel have ye with the white folk? Have they not ruled with justice, is not the land fat with increase? For fifty years have I sat in the shadow of their house, waiting for the writing of the Gods to be fulfilled. Do I not speak of what I know?” Behind the Fakir’s back Melrose could see the soldiers getting ready to fire. He could understand their arguments, and the holiness of a strange priest could have no great weight with them. Undoubtedly the man was endeavouring to incite the people to rebellion. What Chandra had said was true, then, and since the old man was evidently working on behalf of the Government it would be a pity if he were destroyed. Ducking his head, therefore, as the bullets whizzed through the air, Melrose made a dash at the holy one and with both arms round the other’s waist swirled him on to the ground and for a moment into comparative safety.
In a second the flood of shouting, enraged people were upon them, had swept over them and back again with the soldiers in full pursuit, the whistles of the bullets answered every now and then by the shrill scream of the wounded and the hysterical crying of women and children.
Above the tumult Melrose was conscious of a stinging pain in his shoulder; the Fakir under him lay strangely quiet, stunned perhaps by the fall. Movement brought sharp agony and a soft rush of warm blood that dyed the front of his coat a vivid colour. It was maddening that his first action should have been one so recklessly foolish as to have involved him in this. It was necessary above everything else that before he fainted—already he could feel an insidious dizziness creeping over him—he should have managed to conceal himself in some place where he would be immune from even kindly interference. Cursing the generosity which had prompted his act, Melrose staggered to his feet, only to recognise how quickly his strength had ebbed from him in that rush of blood. Then hearing and sight failed him, and even intense anxiety faded into a blissful release from pain. He sagged forward and fell in a crumpled-up heap against the body of the gaunt Fakir.
Take my heart ’neath thy feet. I leave it so.
Take the dreams that I reared so high and brought so low.
Take honour and faith and love; then bid me go.
I, who must love thee to my latest breath,
I shall not find forgetfulness in death!
The wedding festivities were half-way over. From ever since about midday they had been in process, a succession of bewildering events that left Ruth amazed and angry, but still unable to cope with her own very mixed feelings. There was rage at the helplessness of her position, at the very small notice which was paid to her wishes; there was unbelief which jostled furiously against reality; there was fear, distinct now and active, though the night before she had known only the spirit of excitement. If regret had been possible to a nature as stubborn in its outlook as hers, she would have felt it because of Betty. Her affection for Betty was sufficient to make her wish not to besmirch herself in the other girl’s eyes, and Betty remained so obtrusively antagonistic to events, so miserably unhappy into the bargain. It was impossible to mistake the pleading in Betty’s eyes, she wanted Ruth to be true to their set-up conventions; caution, a desire to safeguard themselves, in so much as implicit obedience could safeguard them, Betty looked upon as treachery to these conventions. A fiery courage had come upon her after that first involuntary terror; in Ruth’s place she would have died rather than have submitted to the indignity of a forced marriage. Her eyes as they looked at Ruth asked for at least the same amount of strength.
Ruth’s attitude followed the lines of common sense, undoubtedly, yet it annoyed her not a little to know that she had fallen in Betty’s estimation. The other girl had said very little, perhaps she realised how useless it was to plead a cause which, under such circumstances, could need pleading. When the women had come in early in the morning, laden with the clothes and jewels and flowers Ruth was to wear, Betty had clung to her cousin.
“You can’t do this thing, Ruth,” she had said, “it would be better to let them kill us. I was a coward last night”—poor little Betty, the tears had stiffened in her heart during the night—“but I shan’t fail you again, and we are together, that must always help.”
Ruth, looking out over her head to the keen sunlight and the other waiting women, had put Betty’s hands from her gently, but quite firmly.
“To talk about being killed,” she had said, “is absurd. Don’t you understand, Betty, it is so much better to go through with the thing quietly, pretend I acquiesce? It means nothing to me, and our only chance is for me to get at the Prince.”
Betty had drawn back slowly; she had hidden her eyes because she was ashamed to look at Ruth.
“Don’t say our chance, Ruth.” Her hands suddenly clenched, she turned stiffly away. “I would not take safety, or anything else, at his hands.”
Still Betty had got to be saved, even against her will. Ruth kept that thought in her mind, it acted as a certain excuse against the judgment of Betty’s eyes. And she had let herself be bathed and rubbed with scented oil, and perfumed and dressed in the stiff, gold-tinselled wedding garment, the muslin drawers, and the little bodice wonderfully sewn with pearls. She shone with jewels when they had finished, and the jessamine blossoms, crushed by the weight of the heavier necklaces, threw out a perfume that was almost sickening in its intensity.
Through it all Betty spoke no word. She had stood with her eyes on the sunshine, and across her thoughts sounded always the noise of the firearms as she had heard them last night, the agony of that harsh, suddenly broken off, cry. They were firing again to-day, but somehow the present did not carry with it the certainty of terror that had gripped her last night. Perhaps she was too numbed to feel anything very much. Then, just for a little, before the musicians and dancers should come and fetch the bride, the women slipped out of the room leaving the two girls alone, and because Ruth had called her Betty turned to look at her again.
Ruth stood like the picture out of some old-world fairy tale. They had left her feet bare, staining the toes with henna; anklets of gold tinkled together if she moved; they had braided her hair and threaded it with gold and pearls, a soft tissue of gold lay about her head like a veil, held in place just above her forehead by a wonderful shimmering opal; they had set opals in her ears and a magnificent necklace of them hung down between her breasts. Her saree glinted like the sunlight outside and melted into shadows round her feet. And with all this the beauty of her face stayed triumphant, arresting; the very faintly coloured cheeks, the perfect curve of chin and neck, and the lashes that swept upwards from her eyes. On her face was that indescribable expression that had frightened Betty once before on the evening of the Resident’s Ball at Bhogmore—a sensuous rapture in pleasure, a fleeting glimpse of the exotic nature that in reality reigned within the cold, composed exterior.
“Betty,” Ruth had said, “don’t be unreasonable. You are looking at me as if I was a snake or something equally objectionable. We are so powerless, what would be the use of making a fuss? If only you are sensible I think I can see a way out. When they leave me alone with Channa, and I suppose they will do that sooner or later, I shall be able to do so much.” She glanced at her reflection in the glass, and a little scorn stirred her mouth. “He must be mad to do what he has done, but, after all, he is mad for me. I shall be able to make him do what I want, and I shall encourage him just enough to keep him quiet. It can only be for a day or two, you must know that. Betty, can’t you see that I am doing it for you as well as for myself?”
“I can only see the ugliness of it,” Betty had answered; she looked down at her white hands. “You seem to be making everything ugly, even love.” A little sob caught at her breath, she turned to the sunlight again. “How I wish I were dead.”
Of course it was ridiculous. Betty’s ideas of love and the real thing were such poles apart. Yet here again Ruth resented the imputation. Why should Betty accuse her of making things ugly just because she proposed to use for her own advantage the influence which her beauty wielded over the Prince? It was the one weapon left in her hand; she would be a fool indeed if she did not use it.
It was not until she had taken her place on the throne next to him that the first doubt as to her success crept into her mind. His face had so strangely altered; the boyishness had altogether left it, something animal and sullen held his eyes. And he never moved or spoke, or turned to look at her. Erect, in all his regal robes, he sat stiffly, his hands closed tightly on the carved arms of the throne. She noticed how the knuckles stood out in the tense skin, and the very rigidity of his pose frightened her, throwing all her preconceived plans into disorder, setting the wheel of terrifying possibilities whirling again in her mind.
The ceremonies seemed endless, the long, crowded room airless; once or twice she thought herself near to fainting. She sat enshrouded behind the heavy outer veil which was the last thing they had cast about her just before they led her in. The various rites, performed in all solemnity by the chanting priests, seemed ridiculous and childish in the face of her anxiety, and the tasks assigned to her she performed mechanically; walking as in a dream round the sacred fire, standing, stiff held and unresponsive, when hand touched hand as their arm threads were tied.
Then came a long pause and they sat again on their throne like graven images, while the nautch girls postured and bowed and twirled to the accompaniment of shrill music and the tapping of drums. The end of the performance was the throwing of a thick shower of rice and flower-petals over the bride and bridegroom, and then the dancing girls had gone, though the music still continued, and the women had gathered round Ruth again, drawing her to her feet, leading her away among them, singing as they went.
They were conducting her to the bridal chamber, she could only suppose. The day had finished then, it must be close upon night and the time for her initial effort; the moment which would call for all her self-control and will-power was at hand.
The room into which the women finally brought her was small and infinitely beautiful. Its walls were of marble, finely carved, and trellised at the top so that the air struck pleasantly cool on her hot face. Two high lamps with silver bowls stood on either side of the door, and in the centre of the room, occupying most of the available space, was a divan couch, the silks on it richly embroidered in colours of the rainbow, the curtains on either side looped back with chains of gold. Before the door hung a thick purdah of heavy silk, fringed and tasselled with gold. This was the inner veil of the harem, the curtain that would be held aside to admit only one man, her lord and master, and that would fall behind him, shutting her off for ever from the outer world.
With quick hands the women slipped Ruth’s finery from her, leaving her only the under-dress of gold tissue and the opal-held veil that floated about her head. It was intimated to her that she must sit on the divan, hands crossed on her breast, eyes lowered, the veil falling all about her until such time as the bridegroom should himself tear it aside. Then, as the singing of the Prince’s guides drew closer, the women vanished; Ruth could hear the little light sound of their laughter as they ran along the passages.
She got up abruptly; it was impossible for her to remain passive, every vein in her body tingled and fear beat in the quick pulse of her heart. She faced him like that when he came in, the veil floating about her neck and shoulders like a cloud of gold, hands at her heart, the colour surging to her cheeks.
Her beauty shook Channa; he stayed, staring at her. The angry passion, the quick desire to possess fell away from his soul. He only knew that he loved her. The hurt remained, but with it a dull wonder that he should ever have thought of revenge. Ruth saw his face change and soften and his weakness made her strong, absolutely self-controlled, with all her brain at war against him. She was quick to seize her opportunity.
“Channa,” she whispered, her hands a little held out to him, “why have you done this thing to me?”
His words came hoarsely. “Because I loved you,” he answered, “and you were content to mock my love.”
“You judged me,” said Ruth slowly, “without asking for my defence.”
“I spoke to your father;” a little of the past anger flamed to his eyes; “he answered that my love was an insult, that your marriage to another man had already been arranged, that you yourself had wished it.”
“My father could not answer for my heart, Channa.”
The magic of her voice broke down the last barrier of anger. His breath came in a quick sob, he ran towards her, falling at her feet, kissing the hem of her garment.
“I thought you had failed me,” he said, “the whole world reeled round me. I had lost in that thought everything that was good in life; there was something so evil left that it frightened even me. I could have killed you; I could have soiled your beauty with lines of pain; I could have held your body in my arms and been content to see you die.”
Ruth looked down at his bowed head and the scorn that Betty had seen was evident again on her face. Of what had she been afraid? The man was weaker even than she had thought. In his place how she would have swept aside argument and persuasion and gone straight forward to the goal of her desires. But his attitude at least served her purpose. She let her hand lie against his cheek as she answered.
“Listen, Channa,” she said, “you have hurt me, perhaps my pride more than anything else, for I am very proud. You say you would have been content to take by force what I was not willing to give, and I can answer quite as truthfully that I should have been content to die rather than to submit. You could not win me that way, you cannot now. It is not difficult to die, and the lines of pain that you talk of would wipe out some of the shame. So it is still for you to choose. Will you take me like that, Channa?”
The man got to his feet quickly and stood away from her. She had no conception of the battle that was waging in his soul, nor how in the end, because of the promise in her voice, love was to stand out triumphant. And even as they hesitated with this silence between them there was the sound of a commotion outside, men’s voices raised in argument, shouts that gradually made themselves distinguishable, and then Dattaka’s voice above the rest.
“My King, the people call for you. There is no time for dallying. The English soldiers are without the gates.”
The purport of the speech was lost on Ruth, to Channa it brought a certain grim triumph. He turned to look at her.
“I have been mad,” he said; “there is only one way in which to wipe out such folly, my people call for me to take it. The English soldiers are at the gates of the palace; it is better to die fighting than to be hanged.”
She might have left her conquest there. Was it deliberate cruelty or the faint, generally unheeded, promptings of her heart that led her to go further?
“I have always loved those who fight,” she said, “my thoughts will go with you.”
A sudden great joy leapt into his eyes. What dreams were not possible with that hope to lead him on!
“If I come back——” he said, moving towards her.
She stopped him quickly, one hand outstretched. “If you come back,” she whispered—the moment swept her out of herself, scorn and cleverness and common sense were forgotten, she was acting on the instincts that stirred within her, “I—I shall be proud to give.”
He took her hand quickly, raising it to his lips, and then without further words he had turned and gone. The curtains of the purdah fell to place again stiffly while the outside air was shaken into sudden thunderous life by the roar of a gun.
Ruth stood listening for a space, something primitive awake in her eyes. Then slowly her other self intervened and she smiled, a hard, cold smile, looking round her at the quaint Eastern decorations of the room.
If he came back! In triumph, she ought to have added, and what chance could there be of that? Indeed it would be better if he were to be killed fighting; she had no wish for his love, together with its disastrous consequences, and her share in it to be blazoned abroad over India.
She shall taste of fear ere the road be run;
The pale white girl, with hair like the sun.
She shall know sorrow and hate and shame,
And learn what it means to hope in vain.
Because of the weight of a broken vow.
And a hate, close hid in my heart till now.
The roar of the first shell and the accompanying consternation which it caused in the Palace woke Betty from a troubled sleep. She had been dreaming of strange, inconsequent things among her present surroundings. A tennis party, the laughter of the game, and Dick Melrose’s eyes eager in their admiration. The reality in waking was harsh and quick. She sat up and stared round. She was quite alone, as she had been ever since Ruth had been led away, but now in place of the silence that had then surrounded her the air was alive with noise. Men’s voices, shouting, arguing; the shrill screams of hysterical women; the sound of quick feet running along the paths and passages of the house. How long had she been asleep, and what exactly was the cause of all this commotion? The loud report that had wakened her was merged in her dream, yet that something very serious was afoot she could have no doubt.
As if in answer to her question the second shell came. She could hear the swishing sound in the air, the heavy, sharp explosion that followed, and the crashing downwards of trees and some part of the house. The small room shook, the walls quivered as if from an earthquake.
Betty jumped to her feet and ran to the door. She was not afraid; the shell sounded friendly to her ears, they were her people that stood behind the gun. It meant, she realised, that things were really as serious as the old Maharanee had threatened; must be indeed, since only under very urgent stress would the guns have been sent for. Ruth had ridiculed the idea as impossible, but suppose the rest of the threat was true as well? Did it mean that she and Ruth were the only English people left alive in Arkonum? That brought a sickening fear to her heart. She stood staring out at the court, the tears gathering quickly in her eyes.
She could see from where she stood, for the moon was again making everything wonderfully light, the open entrance into their court and the passage along which she and Ruth had been conducted. The guard had gone when Ruth had left, the whole place seemed deserted. Was it possible that in the general confusion that reigned they had left her to fend for herself? and what would be the best thing for her to do? Should she stay where she was or try and find some hiding-place before they again remembered her? And where was Ruth? The rather bitter thought crossed Betty’s mind that wherever Ruth was she could be trusted to keep herself in absolute safety. Betty could not feel that she was deserting the other girl if she made a bid for safety on her own account. And at any moment her captors might return; it seemed better to risk the dangers of the outside world.
Like a small, deft shadow she slipped across the open court and paused in the doorway. Which way should she turn? Did she remember enough of their last night’s journey to find her way back to the roof? She rather doubted if she did, and the path leading to the right seemed to open out into the grounds, at any rate it ended in shadows. The tumult round her had died away, though she could still hear in the distance the babble of women’s voices, and the firing had become incessant. The garden it should be then, out in the open she would feel safer, and there would surely be some shrub or patch of trees that would grant her cover.
She had barely reached the end of the passage when her progress was arrested. A white-clad figure stepped from one of the doors as she passed and caught hold of her. Betty checked the scream that rose to her lips; she had been running, and that and the agitation of her capture left her a little breathless. She stayed quiet and shaken in the man’s grasp.
“And where then would you run, Miss Sahib?” he asked in English. Betty recognised the voice of the priest who had acted as interpreter the night before and the thought was hardly reassuring. He had certainly been in no sense a friend.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I was alone and the guns frightened me.”
“So!” She could feel his eyes appraising her in a very hateful scrutiny. “Yet it is because of you that these same guns sound.”
He let her go, yet she felt just as much a prisoner as when he had been holding her. “Is it not foolish to run, you know not where?”
“Perhaps,” Betty agreed shortly. She turned to look out at the garden. The passage led, as she had hoped it might, on to one of the many paths surrounding the Palace. It was almost as light as day out there, and a little to the right she could see a great crowd of people. The priest stood beside her, his eyes followed hers.
“The Maharanee Sujata and the new Maharanee of Bhogmore make ready for flight,” he said; “the harem moves to safer ground since it seems the purpose of your people to bring this Palace to the dust. Is it the wish of the Miss Sahib to go with them?”
Betty turned a startled glance on him. Did he after all intend to help her? Perhaps he had realised that that would be the safest way of procuring exemption for himself for the night’s doings. His reference to Ruth she attempted to ignore.
“You know I don’t want to,” she said quickly; “and you know also the price that will have to be paid if anything happens to us.”
“You mean the guns, Miss Sahib,” the man replied, she could almost fancy he was smiling. “Alas, they do not alarm me.” He drew a little nearer her. “To some men revenge is so sweet that they will brave much to attain it. Come,” he put a hand on her arm, “we waste time and the guns of your friends are in a hurry.”
“But where are you going to take me?” asked Betty. She tried to draw back, though she could see only too well the uselessness of any struggle. “What are you going to do with me? It is foolishness to talk of revenge, for I at least have done nothing.”
The man did not trouble to answer her, he had moved outside and was hurrying her along in the opposite direction to the crowd she had noticed. Half-way down the length of the path her captor turned abruptly to the left into a smaller, more shadowed way, which led, she discovered, to the precincts of the Palace temple. Here a gate in the low wall let them into a wide-paved space, with a tank of lily-covered water in the far corner, and in the centre the principal shrine, a massive stone building with steps leading up to great iron doors. A small beam of light burnt within the blackness of the interior, and sitting at the foot of the steps, a statue-like figure among all the confusion round him, was the holy man from Bhogmore.
With a little start of superstitious fear, Betty recognised him as the man who had stopped them in the bazaar. She connected him in her mind with their subsequent misfortunes, as she had felt even on that first occasion half humorously afraid of him.
It was evident that flight was the intention of the priests. Preparations were already far advanced. Bullock carts, laden with the jewels and treasures of the temple, stood waiting the order to start; the movable Gods had been carried forth and were waiting balanced in their palanquins of gold and silver for the hands that would carry them to a place of safety where their dignity would be uninterfered with. One of the furthest bullock carts, covered and hung round with curtains, contained the nautch girls of the temple, and to this conveyance the priest led Betty. He paused, however, on his way across the court to hold a minute’s conversation with the Watcher. There might be, and indeed there was, no good feeling between the two, yet the holiness of the Fakir called for a certain civility on the part of the priest. He salaamed very low, touching the dust almost in front of the crossed feet.
“Does the holy one not go with us,” he asked, “back to the home of his fathers?”
Betty felt the Fakir’s eyes on her. She thought they must be talking about her, though the words were of course ununderstandable.
“Nay,” the Watcher answered; “I have still work that must be done.”
“They say thy work this afternoon prospered but badly?” There was veiled mockery behind the question. “What of the stranger, Holy One, who saved thy life?”
For a second the Watcher looked at him. There may have been something disconcerting in the glance, for the priest hid his smile with quick seriousness.
“He is in my care,” the Fakir answered. “Pass to thy work, O Gopal, and as it is good or evil so will the Gods recompense thee.”
Betty heard the priest mutter something to himself as they turned away and she could see that he was frowning. She was conscious of a curious and what seemed an absurd idea, a thought of appealing to the old man for protection. His eyes had been wholly impersonal as they had looked at her, and there was her old fear to contend with, yet she was oddly enough certain that she would rather be in his hands than in those of her present captor. Then the idea passed; after all, they were all the same. Why should she look to any of them for kindness, or gratify them by showing that she needed pity?
With very firm-set little mouth she took her place in the crowded, tightly packed cart with the other girls. She was luckily oblivious to what they were saying, their giggling and nudging and shy fingering of her clothes annoyed her more than alarmed her. She had not the slightest idea of what her present position might amount to, nor of where they could be taking her. It was all a nightmare of jumbled experiences and sensations: the chattering crowds, the quaint, solemn-faced Gods swaying shoulder high as the men carried them forth, the shouts and yells of the bullock drivers. Then they had passed through the gates of the temple and were out on the white strip of road that led to the North, skirting the bazaar, leaving the Palace behind and followed by the sound of the guns—dull, heavy reports that seemed to carry some message of regret to her mind.
The jolting of the bullock cart was infinitely fatiguing, the smell from the girls’ scented bodies, the oil in the hair, was overpowering. And clouds of white dust rose from the road, stinging Betty’s eyes and covering over and creeping into everything, for with them in their flight went a great company of people flying from the guns and the punishment so near at hand. Bullock carts and palanquins; women that ran alongside dragging their children with them; old men that hobbled and cried aloud for assistance. Over the border, was their one thought, to the great Maharanee’s country, to the ancient, walled-in fortress of Sarsuti, where their Gods could rest in safety, and where they would find refuge from the avenging white folk.
At the head of the procession, carried in the royal palanquin by swift runners, shrouded from all ignoble glances, went Ruth Daring, the new Maharanee of Bhogmore. She would have found it difficult to express the thoughts that filled her mind. Certainly she had not, amidst all her cleverness, reckoned on such a contingency as this. She had imagined the game to be altogether in her hands as she had heard the first shell whistling on its message of destruction—in which deduction she had reckoned, as she was almost immediately to realise, without taking into account the old Maharanee’s resources nor her dogged strength of will.
The torch is laid; red runs the flickering flame,
And lives have answered to the call of hate.
With Death as Umpire to the deadly game
The play speeds forward at the call of fate.
Quick to your places! Loose the dogs of war!
And hear your answer in the guns that roar.
The rising of Bhogmore and its subsequent swift collapse have been described in official documents of great length that lie stored away in the archives of the Indian Government. The home papers received the usual garbled account and published the news briefly:
“A regrettable incident has occurred in a small native State on the North-west frontier of India, involving the murder of the Resident and his wife. Sir Henry Daring’s career requires no eulogy from us, his merits are known throughout India. It appears that the rebellion, largely fostered by the priests and only partially shared by the people, was brought to a head by an unforeseen accident which occurred during a visit of the Resident to the Palace of the reigning Prince of Bhogmore. What exactly happened it is difficult, owing to a lack of witnesses, to decide, but it appears that during a religious festival at which the Resident and his party were present, a party of agitators forced themselves into Sir Henry’s presence. Shots were fired, either by some member of his staff or by Sir Henry himself, and in the immediate uproar Sir Henry and Lady Daring were killed. The rest of the party escaped, and the outbreak was soon quelled by the arrival of troops from Bhogmore. The Maharajah and a handful of followers have escaped over the border and it is proposed shortly to send a punitive force after them. The dissatisfaction which caused the rising is purely local, and none of the other States have been in the least affected.”
Neither in this report nor in the others circulated throughout India was any mention made of Ruth or her cousin. Headquarters, after an earnest consultation with Mr. Mellish, though inclined to be slightly sceptical of the reasons that he advanced for the affair, decided that it would be inexpedient for the news of the two girls’ kidnapping to be officially announced. It would create a far greater disturbance in public opinion than the murder would do, and Headquarters were not anxious to stir up bad feeling between the two races for whose welfare they were responsible. It should be announced therefore that the disturbance had been quelled, that peace reigned in the Bhogmore State, and that steps were being taken to bring the erring Maharajah to justice. For unfortunately, with the best intentions in the world, it was impossible to ignore his guilt.
The preparations for a punitive expedition were pushed forward with all possible speed, and even Pentland, mad with anxiety as he was, had to admit that further publicity would not help matters, and would merely add to the discomfort of Ruth’s position when she should return to her own world.
In so far as the rapidity of the collapse was concerned the official report was absolutely correct. With the guns in control, and with a great many of their boldest spirits already dead, the defence of the villagers was but half-hearted and short-lived. What, after all, as their holy man had said, was their real quarrel with the white folk? They were not bloodthirsty people, they had grown unused to war and the horrors which stalk abroad with war. On the second day of the siege both Palace and village had surrendered.
For those two days and nights Channa held to his trust, his soul suddenly wakened to the needs of these his people who had so trusted to his leadership. But the hope in his heart was aflame again, he could not altogether forget it. He had to go forward, piling evil on evil, if only the end should make her his. Under his leadership the small force fought stubbornly and madly, paying with their lives for Ruth’s safe convoy to the mountains. But as dusk drew in on the second day’s fighting Channa knew that the end must be defeat. To stay and pay with his life for the wrong done, that was what his conscience urged him to do, but the cruelty of Ruth’s promise held him; he could not give her up. He sent for Dattaka.
“The end is close to us,” he said, not meeting the old man’s eyes. “We must take the road to the North. Arrange for our departure quietly, I would not have the people know that I am deserting them at such a time. For you, Dattaka, it must be as you please, whether you come or stay.”
“I will come,” said Dattaka, “my duty is to you first and the people next, my King.”
His King was deserting his people for the white woman, as he had deserted his ideals and thrown away his life principles; the heart of Dattaka was heavy as he went about preparing for the journey.
With his departure all desire to carry on the conflict left the people. A deputation was sent out to surrender, and by early morning the English soldiers were camped in the Palace grounds.
Pentland and Mellish were among the first to enter the Palace. The outer courtyard had been used as a place of retreat for the wounded, but beyond that again the great building with its myriad passages, its unexpected rooms and corners, was silent and deserted. Everywhere there were traces of the violent confusion which had reigned prior to the flight, and in the little room, flanked by its courtyard, where the two girls had been imprisoned, Mellish found the silver shimmering dress that Ruth had been wearing, the faded wreath of jessamine from her hair.
There were other evidences of the hurried departure of the inhabitants that were more disturbing to Mellish, with his greater knowledge of Indian customs and rituals, than to Pentland: the wedding chamber, with the oil in its lamps burnt to the last drop, with its floor still scattered over by the rice and flower-petals that had shaken from Ruth’s clothing; the ceremonial hall with the ashes of the sacred fire and the bowls of rice water still left as they had been used. Undoubtedly a marriage, and one of some importance, had been celebrated. That, taken in conjunction with the pathetic heap of laid aside European clothes, pointed only to one conclusion. But whether Ruth had been a willing actor in the scene or not, Mellish, with Melrose’s tale fresh in his mind, was unable to judge, nor did he deem it expedient to pass on his conclusions to Pentland.
“At least they are alive,” was all he could say. “We must hope for the best, Pentland. It is a poor consolation, but all I can give you. Also, Melrose is on the watch”—for by this time he had had to tell Pentland of the other man’s plan; “in a day or two we shall hear from him.”
It took more than a little persuasion to convince Pentland that it was impossible to act further without orders from Headquarters. The Government’s relations with the Maharanee Sujata’s brother were for the moment friendly, and any force sent across the border without first negotiating for the return of Prince Channa would naturally be resented and would probably lead to great trouble.
The news of the murders brought one important personage on to the scene of action, namely Mr. Benson, the Commissioner of Police. He motored over from Bhogmore on the day after the revolt had been quelled, having travelled with all speed from Calcutta, Mr. Benson was a stern-faced little man with blue eyes that twinkled incongruously amidst the general grimness of his expression. Long years of work under the India sun had tanned his face and screwed up the corners of his eyes. He was, despite his power and position, a very popular official with the natives, and his own staff worshipped him, talking with bated breath of his wonderful wisdom and the miraculous knowledge which he could at times evince.
“Damned fine policemen,” he would say of his own force, “but considering the real trend of their natures it is amazing what thundering bad detectives they make.”
And he would humorously record how on the occasion of a certain royal visit to Calcutta he had issued instructions that a number of his men should mix among the crowd disguised yet armed so as to be able to cope immediately with any danger.
“They disguised themselves all right,” he would remember with a chuckle; “one made the best representation of a Fakir I have ever seen; but as my car came past the beggar brought his feet together and favoured me with an official salute, to the petrified amazement of the surrounders.”
But if Mr. Benson was beloved by his own staff and the natives generally, he was certainly the most hated man among the revolutionary factions of the country. Hated and feared, for it was rumoured that there was no plot, no secret, no party, however strongly entrenched behind its disguises, that Mr. Benson did not know of. In his hands he held the strings that could pull many a band of fanatics into the stern clutches of the law. That he dealt leniently with their plottings and only acted against them when compelled to, was the one complaint which his English critics could bring against his administration. Behind his shrewd exterior Mr. Benson concealed a very warm heart, and the great love of his life was for India and her people. He had grown old in their service, his heart beat with theirs; he could understand and condone much that came under the heading of sedition to less partial rulers, and he never punished where he could possibly save.
An affair like the murder of Sir Henry and Lady Daring, however, was one that called for prompt and stern justice. Mr. Benson listened in silence to Mr. Mellish’s complicated report of all that had led up to the final tragedy, brushing aside the other’s vague theories as to the spread of disloyalty and the long-planned-for revolt.
“No,” he said briefly; “the old lady may have had seditious leanings, probably had; we had trouble with her in the early days when she had to be ejected from the State after trying to poison her grandson. But with the people she can have had very little influence. The people, the chiefs, old Dattaka, for instance, would look to the Prince to lead them, and that Prince Channa should have turned traitor floors all my previous ideas of him. Unless——” a memory of gossip, that floats like dust in India, permeating everywhere, came to him. “What of the Prince’s affair with Miss Daring? Had that come to any sort of head? The two girls are missing, abducted, eh?”
Mellish hesitated. “I don’t know what to make of it,” he admitted, “yet I may as well tell you all. Young Melrose, one of the Resident’s staff”—Mr. Benson nodded, he knew of Melrose’s exploits in the bazaars—“spoke to me about it the day before he returned to the bazaar disguised as you have heard. It was his idea that the Prince had intended to formally ask for Miss Daring’s hand in marriage. Melrose hinted that the young lady had encouraged the Prince, and believed that the shock of finding that she had only been playing with him—Miss Daring’s engagement to Captain Pentland was announced the day they arrived here—threw the Prince headlong into the plot of the old Maharanee. She could tempt him, Melrose said, with the idea of carrying off Miss Daring and declaring war on the Government as the direct result.” He hesitated and glanced at Mr. Benson. The grim face was set in a frown, the eyes, vividly sharp, were scrutinizing some far-off vision. “When Pentland and I went over the Palace this morning,” Mellish continued, “it was evident to me—I naturally did not draw Pentland’s attention to the signs—that a royal wedding had been celebrated there before the Court took flight. One can only presume——”
Mr. Benson interrupted him by standing up. “I am no hater of women,” he said abruptly, “though people are apt to say I am because of my preference for a bachelor life; but there are times in my career when I am painfully convinced that all the mischief in the world can be traced to their sex. The thing is quite plain to me now, and though I do not suppose she will ever realise it, Miss Daring is more responsible than anyone else, both for the murder of Sir Henry and Lady Daring and for all the other deaths which have occurred because of it. Did you know, by the way,” he looked at Mellish, “that she was not in reality a child of theirs?”
“My wife heard something to that effect,” Mellish admitted.
“It was a craze of Sir Henry’s to keep the fact very secret. He absolutely idolized the girl. I remember when they first came out to India after they had adopted her. It was almost,” he used an odd word for a man, “pitiful to see Lady Daring. Oh well,” he shrugged his shoulders, “it is an old story and hardly bears on the case. Yet it is strange, she was no man’s child, a waif whom Sir Henry found dancing in the gutters. It rarely pays to foster such unknown quantities.”
It was at this moment that Pentland rushed excitedly into the room. In front of him he pushed, none too gently, holding his captive fiercely by the back of the neck, the holy man from Bhogmore.
“This brute!” Pentland’s face was redder than usual, either from rage or from the exertion of coping with an unwieldy prisoner. “I found him skulking in the Palace grounds. I know him a damned sight too well, and I am prepared to swear that he is largely responsible for all the mischief. Filthy beast that he is in all his dirt and ashes!”
Again the quick frown crossed Mr. Benson’s face. “Hard words prove no case,” he said shortly; “what do you accuse our friend of? And I should let go my hold of him if I were you, Pentland, he cannot run away from here; and some of the much-abused ashes are coming off on your clothes.”
Pentland let go with a push, and the Fakir stumbled forward a pace or two, pulling himself erect, strangely dignified after the rough handling he had endured.
“He used to be at Bhogmore,” Pentland explained, “squatting under a tree, ten times too holy to be moved. He had sat there for fifty years, the natives said—a damned lie, of course. Anyway he moved up here when we did, to stir up the trouble, I expect. He hated Miss Daring, she used to say that he terrified her with his eyes.”
Those same eyes were very scornful and quiet in their survey of the occupants of the room. They rested longest on Mr. Benson, and something in their glance prompted the Englishman to speak.
“You may be right, Pentland,” he agreed, “though the man does not give me the impression you suggest. Anyway the matter must be investigated. I will put him in charge of some of my men and question him later on.”
“He ought by rights to be taken out and shot,” claimed Pentland.
“We should learn very little by such a method,” Mr. Benson answered grimly, “though if the man is guilty it has a certain rough justice about it.”
He turned to one of the constables standing at the door.
“Take this man away,” he said; “you are responsible that he does not escape.”
“Huzoor,” the man spoke deferentially yet with a certain freedom, “the man is considered of great holiness by the people. It were as well to respect his caste.”
“Even so,” his chief agreed; luckily the conversation was not understood by Pentland. “See that he suffer no indignity. We wish him no ill, and this evening I myself will question him.”
Because men took my body,
And tortured it to this,
Think you that in the living
I can know nought of bliss?
I hold God in my spirit,
Upon my lips His kiss.
For two days the pain and fever of Melrose’s wound kept him unconscious, to a great extent, of his surroundings. He was only dimly aware of a grey form that moved about him, of the touch of deft hands and the slow swaying of a fan that someone kept for ever in motion over his face. Towards this last person his gratitude was great, for the heat was intense, and it seemed as if he only breathed because of that faintly stirred air. He tried once or twice to express his gratitude, but reality merged back so quickly into the dreamworld of his brain that it was Betty’s face that would be bending over him, her hands that wiped the sweat from off his eyes. He talked to her in English, and the mute figure seated at his head could make nothing of the language, though it pleased him infinitely to listen.
A curious little deformed body this was, with great wistful eyes that shone in a distorted face; for Bundoo’s head in his babyhood had been modelled to the pattern imposed on those children who are dedicated to the Gods and known to the people as Shiva’s Mice. Deformed souls, people will have it, lurk in deformed bodies, but in Bundoo the opposite could have been proved. He was all radiant soul, since the rest of him was so shrunken and misshapen. There was nothing and no one that Bundoo did not love, from the small insect and ubiquitous ant that he would carefully remove from out of his path, to the great domed sky with its myriad stars, and the earth, mysterious in all its fierceness and beauty. But above everything else Bundoo loved beauty in the human form. He could not have expressed this to you, there was very little he could express, for his brain had been stunted with his body, and he had no idea himself of the forces that moved him. He could only show that he loved by the offer of untiring service.
This he had expressed ever since the Watcher had carried in Melrose to the low mud dwelling, and, laying aside the white man’s garments, had bathed and tended his wound. Bundoo had crept out of the shadows to watch, and he had found the whiteness of Melrose’s skin, the shapeliness of the relaxed strong limbs, beautiful. Where there was beauty, Bundoo loved; that was the rule of his life.
“Let me serve, Master,” he had whispered, “I can serve well.”
In a sense the Watcher knew what prompted the desire, for he could see further than most people into Bundoo’s soul. It was this knowledge that had made him select Bundoo as his servant long ago in the days when Bundoo’s parents had brought him, a little shrivelled-up tortured scrap of humanity, to dedicate him to the Gods.
“Aye, thou shalt serve,” he agreed, “there is much to be done; and, Bundoo, note this, if our people find this man they will kill him. If aught happen to me, I leave this trust in thy hands; let not the others know that his skin is white.”
It was this order that Bundoo was remembering as he sat now on the morning of the third day by his charge; patient and untiring in his services, wielding the fan, first in one hand and then in the other, since the weight and movement brought no little pain to his weak arms. Early that morning the Master had gone forth saying he would be back almost immediately, and already the sun had moved half-way across the heavens, and shone now a path of gold straight into the opening of the tent.
Bundoo’s eyes stayed on the sunlight, fascinated by its colour to a forgetfulness of his anxiety, and behind him in the hut Melrose lay in the first dreamless sleep that had held him since his wound.
A shadow crossed the sunlight and darkened the doorway. A man stood outside, stooping and peering into the hut.
“Bad news, little brother,” he said, greeting Bundoo with some excitement. “The holy Master hath this morning fallen into the hands of the English; they have shut him up.”
Bundoo’s gentle mind had taken in but little of the tumult that reigned without, of why men fought and died, or of how it had all come about.
The purport of the man’s news even was hardly plain to him, he was only aware of one thing, fear for the sick man left in his charge, a fear which included everyone, even the white men into whose hands his Master had fallen. He dropped the fan and ran forward, with some idea of blocking the other man’s entrance into the hut.
“What of myself and the sick man here who is dearly loved of the Master?” he asked.
The other saw only a very natural fear for self.
“If he can be moved,” he suggested, “’twere well to take him away with all speed. To-day the holy men who came here to attend the festival of the moon are to be allowed to depart. Dress him as one of these and go yourself as his servant. But it must be done speedily, little brother. Without doubt the police will come to search this place.”
He did not offer any further help in the matter; the prospect of a police hunt was sufficiently alarming to make him consider that he had done his duty in delivering his warning. Bundoo watched him hurrying away to spread the news with a relieved heart. The little man recognised the need for flight, but it must be so arranged that the sick man’s identity should remain undiscovered.
Behind him in the hut Melrose stirred, missing the slow flap of the fan, muttered something in English and woke with a start, one memory crowding the other out of place in his fever-freed brain: the beleaguered house, the dread of what had happened to Betty, his adventure in the bazaar, and the careless, characteristic act which had led to his own disaster. The wound in his shoulder ached and kept that memory the most persistent. But what had happened afterwards? Who had carried him here, and how long had he been ill? It was not difficult to recognise the interior. He was in an ordinary mud-paved, straw-thatched native hut, bare and scrupulously clean, while in the further corner a small light flickered before some shrine.
Instinctively his eyes turned from the gloom to where the sun shone through the opening, and it was there that he first saw Bundoo—monkey-like in form, scarce higher than a child of five, with flattened head and long, ape-like arms. The appearance might have alarmed any foreigner, but Melrose was familiar enough with the little people known as Shiva’s Mice. It was probable, then, that for some reason or other, perhaps gratitude, the old holy man had had him carried here and was keeping him in hiding. For Melrose knew that it was customary for holy men to be accompanied and waited on by members of these pathetic little people.
Bundoo had given a cry of joy as he saw the strength with which Melrose held himself erect. Then he loosened hastily the light chic which fell in front of the door, and hobbled back to his post.
“My lord is better?” he asked. His voice, unlike those of his brethren, was soft and pleasant. “That rejoices thy servant.”
Melrose was a little surprised at the greeting, such real affection sounded in the words. He tried to study the little man’s face, but Bundoo had darkened the light of the hut and stood with his back to what little there was.
“How long have I been ill?” he contented himself by asking.
“Two suns and one moon,” Bundoo answered, “but the red gash is closing and all goes well. Does my lord feel strong enough to travel?”
“Travel?” repeated Melrose; “where would you take me?”
“’Tis like this, lord,” Bundoo explained, picking up his fan again. “Lie back on thy pillows and my words shall tell thee. There is danger here. My holy Master spoke of it ere he went forth. ‘Let not the others see that his skin is white,’ were his words. While he was here all was well, but to-day they have taken him away and Bundoo is afraid lest he fail in his trust, and thou—who art so beautiful—art destroyed. Therefore I would have thee come forth with me. I know the road, and I can lead thee to safety.”
He had not explained that it was the white men who had taken his master, because to Bundoo all men were the same and in this matter equally to be feared; and Melrose, his brain still a little dizzy, did not trouble to ask. He could understand where the need for fear lay, but he lacked the strength to take the initiative of proper precaution for himself.
“Where would you lead me?” he asked.
Bundoo’s eyes opened and glowed with the thought that held him. “On the long road, lord,” he answered, “that leads to the foot of the white mountains. There is no killing done there, for even the animals love one another.”
“You mean,” Melrose prompted, “over the border, into the old Maharanee’s country.”
“The road goes that way,” admitted Bundoo gravely; “many suns and moons away lies the path we will find.”
“Tell me,” said Melrose suddenly, there was just a chance that this quaint little man could help him in his search: “has the Maharanee gone forth along that road and know you aught of the two women of my colour that went with her?”
Bundoo nodded. “The old Maharanee and the new,” he agreed. “The beautiful white woman whom our lord has taken as his wife. And all the Palace folk and many women and children from the bazaar. These two suns I have not ventured forth, for there have been ill doings abroad and I had thee to serve, but others have told me of the dead that lie in the streets, and I have heard the great roaring of angry monsters that strive against each other.”
Melrose wondered if he could be referring to the guns; there was at any rate complete silence, holding the world this morning. He was two days late in the task which he had set himself, and a great languor lay upon him even now, but Bundoo’s information, ‘The old Maharanee and the new,’ spurred him to action.
“And the other white girl,” he asked, “what of her?”
Bundoo hesitated a moment. “Lord,” he said, “I know so little, yet I hear thy heart in the words and I would serve. There was one other white woman. I heard it said that the priests took her with them when they fled.”
Again Melrose sat up, but this time determination gave him a strength which his illness would have denied.
“We follow, then, along the road they took. Since you would serve, O little brother, know that this woman is dearer to me than life and I would be with her.”
It was strange, when he came to think of it afterwards, that he should have confided so much of his most secret feelings to this little waif; yet something about Bundoo, a radiance as it were from that gentle soul of his, inspired this confidence. Melrose was to prove in the days that followed that it had been in no sense misplaced.
Quickly and eagerly Bundoo explained the plan which had been suggested to him by the other man. Melrose was to dress himself in some garments that the holy Master had left in the hut, he was to have his head and face plentifully covered with ashes, then, carrying the begging gourd, and with Bundoo to lead him, he was to pass through the bazaar and join the refugee Fakirs returning to their various shrines. Once outside the bazaar, Bundoo would break away from the others and take the road to the North. It would be easy for Bundoo to gain news of the priestly cavalcade and its destination; and with Bundoo to guide and instruct him it would not be difficult for Melrose to join the community and be admitted even into the innermost circle.
Of Betty, Melrose could not afford to think. If she had been taken into the band of temple girls her ultimate fate was too terrible to contemplate. He could, of course, have tried to persuade Bundoo—the little man seemed willing and anxious to do anything for him—to carry word of his present position to Mellish, but Melrose could imagine to himself the delay that must ensue before the Government could move in the matter of rescuing the two girls, and delay was agonising. He must be up and doing; he must be working for her, every nerve in his body ached with this desire.
An hour later, therefore, closely following Bundoo’s teaching and arrayed in all the holy dirt necessary for the part, Melrose sallied out from the hut under the guidance of his small friend. He looked old and shrunken enough, anyway, for he was still weak, and Bundoo’s shoulder was necessary as well as a stick to help him along. So escorted he traversed the narrow way to the bazaar, and noticed on every side evidence of the English occupation. Soldiers stood on guard at the Palace gates and were picketed out in the bazaar itself; the natives were busy under supervision repairing the damage done and carting away the debris of the three days’ fight. Once on their journey, Bundoo drew his new master hastily to one side to allow a group of English sahib logue to pass, and Melrose recognised Mellish and Pentland among the others—Mellish in animated conversation with a grim-looking little man in uniform. Mr. Benson was unknown to Melrose save by reputation, but the latter heard the quick whisper that passed among the bazaar folk. “The Lord Sahib of the Police.” For a moment he hesitated: should he throw up his single-handed adventure and join forces with the others? If Mr. Benson was already on the field of action surely his influence could be brought to bear and would achieve some quick result. But the impulse passed. He would never rest satisfied, he knew, with the slow working out of justice, the investigations which would have to be made, the facts that would have to be proved. Betty seemed to stand just a little ahead of him, calling to him, only now the laughter which had held her eyes through all his dreams had gone, and fear reigned in its stead. Melrose set his teeth and limped on, turning his back on the English people, a repulsive-looking object, dirty and very old.
At the north entrance into the village a small group of similar holy men and their servants were gathered, undergoing a brief examination at the hands of an English inspector of police. It was more or less of a farce, Melrose realised, the probability being that the authorities were only too glad to rid the place of this collection of holy ones. Melrose stood before the officials in his turn and heard Bundoo explaining how his extreme holiness precluded any speech with mortals.
“He is grubby enough, anyway,” laughed the inspector, speaking in English, to Bundoo’s bewilderment. “Give him a pass, Havildar.”
The courtly looking native officer in attendance bowed over the scrap of paper as he handed it to Bundoo.
“Bid the holy one pray for me,” he said, “the Gods have favoured him with many years.”
With the dusty high road under their feet, and stretching away from them as far as eye could see, new confidence seemed to come to Bundoo. He had been very nervous during the whole of their passage through the bazaar.
“Those who are holy,” he confided to Melrose, “can see all things. Me they know, and my Master, but to them thy face will be the face of a stranger and they will wonder.”
With not quite so much faith in the holiness of their vision Melrose had also been anxious. Among the community of holy men everyone is known more or less, they are as it were a large brotherhood. But whatever doubts they had held as to his identity it was apparent that they had been content to conceal them. Bundoo’s Master had a great reputation among them, the disaster of his arrest had been spread broadcast that morning. If this were some pupil of the Master attempting to escape a like fate they were content to let him do so under the cloak of their brotherhood. That, Melrose could only suppose, was the reason for their silence.
Yet he was also glad to see the last of them and find himself alone with Bundoo and with his feet on the road which led to Betty. He would have pushed forward, pausing for neither rest nor refreshment, but already he had over-taxed his strength and they were hardly out of sight of the village when he had to give in. His begging gourd was full of rice and flour, pressed on him by the devout villagers on his way through, and from some such pious source Bundoo had extracted a bowl of milk. Propped up, with his back to a tree, Melrose watched the little man preparing a meal from these simple ingredients. The shadow wherein they sat was infested by insects of all sorts, and Bundoo seemed to spend most of his time rescuing ants and flies and small things generally from untimely deaths by burning or drowning. He would pick them up carefully in his small hands, so tenderly that he never bruised the most fragile wings, and carry them to safety.
“Are you a Jain, little brother?” Melrose was moved to question, having watched this performance repeated time and again; for the Jains never destroy life, however humble.
“Nay”—the great brown eyes met his—”’tis because I love, master,” Bundoo replied.
“All things?” Melrose asked.
“All things,” Bundoo agreed gravely; “even the not so beautiful, since they are as I am and must need pity.”
“And hate,” asked the Englishman, “is there any room in your heart for that, little brother?”
“There has been no need,” Bundoo answered. He looked up and a sudden perplexity showed on his face. “Yet, who knows, master?—had they hurt thee, whom my soul loves, I might have hated.”
What had he done to deserve this very faithful service? Melrose wondered. He leant back against the tree, closing his eyes. Perhaps the spirit of his disguise had entered into his heart, for he felt suddenly very old and very wise, with the wisdom of those who claim to have known life from the beginning. Then he slept, while the shadows grew longer and the dust blew in little clouds along the white road. And in his sleep he dreamt that he and Bundoo stood together in some other far-back world, and the love in Bundoo’s eyes was plain and understood between them. And while he slept, Bundoo watched, with his eyes on the white road that was to lead them to the mountains where there is always peace.
So small a thing it is, yet now it seems
We never more shall stand, as in those days
When you were Queen of all my childish dreams.
The future holds strange fear—but most I dread
The ghost of that poor love that now lies dead.
Grim, sun-bleached and scarred, the fortress village of Sarsuti stands on a rocky eminence just at the entrance to the hills. The road, in reality hardly more than a camel track, leads from the border-line of Bhogmore, winds through mountainous passes and sandy rock-strewn wastes, till it dips down and out suddenly into the open country of a great plain. There it wanders along, with trees once more to shade its going, past little mud-thatched villages with their peaceful looking inhabitants, strangely in contrast to the caravan folk who use the high road.
More in keeping with these warrior tribes are the grey walls and fierce aloofness of Sarsuti. It stands high on a natural rock fortress, practically impregnable, its steep sides adorned by no growth of jungle or grass land. Within the walls, however, giant trees have stood for centuries, their roots creeping through the stonework and cracking the wall in many places. Only one path leads up to the fortress, and it is cut through the rock and flanked on either side by buttresses, so that it must needs fare ill with any enemy attempting an ascent. For the fortress stands just in the path of the hordes of robbers that haunt the highway, and through the centuries it has witnessed war, attack and repulse, the fierceness of those who threw themselves against its walls, the bravery of those who sallied forth to protect; and blood has flowed over every stone that goes to its upholding.
Not over large, the confines of the fortress are yet a small town in themselves. It teems with life, in the bazaar, in the Palace, in the temple courtyards. There is a market place in the centre round which are grouped the huts of the people; women sit there before the doors, grinding the corn or spinning the flax from which they make their clothes. They are fair-skinned, with russet apple colour in their cheeks, and the small babies that play in the dust at their feet are almost white. Some of the people are even blue-eyed, and most of them are singularly handsome. A race of fierce, brave warriors, quick in passion and hatred, and quite regardless of life. It is no worse to kill a man than an insect, and death is the easy and prompt settler of any little dispute.
Beyond the bazaar lie the temples, each surrounded by their courtyards and the stone dwellings of the priests. The centre and most important temple is Kali’s, the Goddess of destruction, that hideous, black image with protruding tongue, who dances on the body of her prostrate lord and who is responsible, so the people say, for all the plagues that kill mankind; whose chief pleasure is in war and the red blood of the sacrificed. Sarsuti is a religious community, priest-ridden and living in terror of their Gods. All day the worshippers come and go in the temples, paying their toll, exacting protection by the bribes of food or money, and the worship before Kali’s shrine is always the most crowded of all. On festivals, or in times of peril, the Goddess is carried forth in all her hideous splendour to sit in the sunshine, and on the flat stone at her feet the sacrifice is laid. But since blood is the thing that most delights the heart of Mother Kali there is no hasty killing performed here; carefully the chief vein is severed so that the red river runs slowly across the paved space and bathes the feet of the idol. So is Mother Kali appeased; sometimes with the life of bullock or goat, in more desperate cases with the blood of woman or child. The extent of the sacrifice necessary is decreed by the priests, and in most cases they also provide the victim.
The Palace occupies the North side of the fortress. It is hedged in from the bazaar by a wall and by the outer courtyards where the soldiers have their dwellings. In those days the Maharajah was an old man, and already the people whispered among themselves that he was kept a prisoner by the priests. But his memory as a gallant leader was fresh in the minds of the older men, and when his edict went forth announcing war against the white folk from over the border there was no lack of enthusiasm in the bazaar.
That was the day after the one that witnessed the arrival of the Maharajah’s sister, the old Maharanee of Bhogmore. On that day the watchers from the walls had called to the people to come and witness the approaching cortège and, man and woman and child, they had flocked to see the slow-moving procession advancing through the clouds of dust that accompanied it. First came the runners, young men that sped over the ground, crying aloud the greatness of the Maharanee and claiming a free path for her; and then the swinging red gold palanquins that betokened royal ladies of the harem, the bullock carts laden with treasure, the community of priests and Gods, the straggling panic-stricken crowd of common people.
“The Maharanee Sujata sends greeting to her great brother,” the runners delivered their message to the guard who advanced from the fortress to meet them; “she claims protection for herself and the Gods of her house. The white men have declared war against the people of Bhogmore.”
The news was carried up the hill by panting runners, and swept through the bazaar. War with the White Raj! That would be war indeed. Old men grew young and fierce as they listened, young men quivered with impatience to be up and proving their strength. The restlessness passed over the bazaar and invaded Palace and temples. The Maharajah himself came forth to welcome his sister. The people could note how old and frail he looked, supported on either side by attendant priests. Then the royal cortège passed within the Palace walls and the bazaar folks had to content themselves with the tales of the refugees. They heard of the giant monsters made of iron that belched forth flame and smote with death across miles of space; of the white woman who had sat in one of the royal palanquins, of her great beauty and strange powers, and how the war was all on her account. The women were specially interested in this tale, they had never seen a white woman. How did she look? Was her skin like theirs, was it white blood that ran in her veins?
Excitement was at fever height all that day, and next morning word came from the priests that the Maharajah would go to war to protect the honour of his sister and her grandson’s realm. He would not wait for the white armies to march into his realm, with no loss of time he would sally out himself, opposing force to force. Superior knowledge of the country and the mountain passes would enable him, so his advisers said, to cut across the invading army and destroy it ere it reached the plain.
From the flat roof of the Palace harem Ruth watched the army sallying out three days later. The men sang and yelled and leapt as they went, the women and children accompanying them to the foot of the fortress path. They were a fierce looking multitude of soldiers, carrying arms of all descriptions, yet Ruth smiled scornfully as she watched them. What idiotic pride must lie behind the spirit which could dream of pitting such rude strength against the trained soldiers of the West?
Ruth’s attitude towards the extraordinary adventure in which she was involved was difficult to define, but at least it was easier away from Betty’s eyes to play the part she had mapped out for herself. A certain amount of comfort, if not pleasure, could be extracted from her present position so long as she continued to arrogate to herself the dignity of the chosen bride of the Maharajah. There were obsequious servants to wait on her, luxury of a rather barbaric sort to surround her; and the jewels thrown into her lap as so many stones, the rich soft silks in which they arrayed her, the homage with which they waited on her, were all so much balm to her self-conceit. There still remained, however, her discomfort at the thought of Betty. What had happened to the other girl? Had she been carried with them on their flight? Was she somewhere amid these same strange surroundings, and if so could not Ruth use her powers to acquire a certain safety for the girl?—rebellious as Betty would probably prove to the harem environment.
It was with some such idea at the back of her mind that Ruth turned from watching the army of the Maharajah start out on its journey to bid a waiting servant fetch Nadina. The widowed girl still acted in her capacity as interpreter, and though there was no better liking between the two, even Nadina’s attitude had altered to one of pretended respect since Ruth’s marriage. She came promptly in answer to the summons.
“You sent for me,” she said in her stiff English; “what is the wish of my sister?”
“Do you know anything about my cousin,” Ruth asked, “the girl who came with me and whom the Maharanee promised to protect? Did she come with us to this place?”
“Yes,” Nadina acknowledged, “she is here.”
“Then why have I never seen her? It is my wish that she should be with me.”
Nadina allowed her eyes to rest for a minute on Ruth’s. “She is not like you, my sister,” she answered calmly; “pride runs high in her heart and enmity towards us.”
“I wish her to be brought to me at once,” Ruth ordered; “see that it is done.”
“That is not easy of accomplishment,” Nadina explained. “Since she is over-stubborn in her pride it follows that she must remain amongst us as a prisoner and no liberty is allowed her. But I will see what can be done; doubtless under your persuasion she will see the folly of her ways and act with the great wisdom which has characterised my sister.”
The girl was being insolent, despite the courtesy of her tone. Ruth flushed, there were many scores that she would one day have to pay off against Nadina. At present she must content herself by ignoring the other’s opinion.
Life had gone hard with Betty those last few days. The discomfort, the heat and jolting of the crowded bullock cart, had given place to a tiny cell in the temple courtyard, where the sun beat down fiercely all through the day and where no breeze ever seemed to come. She was completely a prisoner within the temple walls, and her inability to speak the language rendered her all the more isolated. The anxiety and confinement, her loathing for the food with which they supplied her, had told heavily on her health. Her cheeks were drained of colour and dark shadows showed under her eyes, but her spirit was unbroken. Betty had stubborn blood in her once it was aroused; she would not yield an inch in her aloof attitude of dislike to her surroundings, she would take no kindness from any of their hands. Her clothes they had taken away from her, she was obliged to dress in the full pleated skirt and tiny multi-coloured bodice of the dancing girls; but she would bow to their customs in no other way, and in terror of having her hair braided, as the other girls wore theirs, she had obtained a knife and jagged it short. The ends curled in ridiculous tendrils about her head and caused intense amusement to the lookers-on, but Betty felt as if she had at least saved something from contamination by the act.
Her captor, the English-speaking priest, Betty had only seen once since her arrival at the fortress. She had known real terror on that occasion, though he had said very little, merely standing at the door of her cell and studying her with hateful eyes. Some instinct in Betty had grown to be primitively afraid of the man. She realised that she would far rather die than allow him to touch her. She stood as far away from him as she could get and the fear expressed in her attitude caused him a grim amusement.
“The Miss Sahib is afraid,” he said, raising contemptuous eyebrows. “Of what, since the sound of the guns does not penetrate to here?”
“I am not afraid,” said Betty untruthfully.
He laughed. “They say your spirit is very stubborn,” he went on, “that you will not mix with your companions or attempt to learn their ways. That is foolish, is it not? You would be better treated were you less proud.”
“I do not wish to be well treated here,” answered Betty.
“No?” he commented. He glanced over the stiffly held little body and the quaintly shorn head. “It is in my hands to break your pride,” he said meaningly; “do you realise that?”
He did not wait for her answer, turning and striding away, the sunshine flooding the pavement where his shadow had lain. Somehow the childishness had left Betty’s heart, instinct was teaching her far more than Ruth had ever been able to instil into her mind. It was this fear, the memory of the man’s eyes and smile, that were to haunt her in the days that followed.
When Nadina came with Ruth’s message, Betty welcomed it with joy, forgetting even to be proud for the moment. She clung to the other’s arm.
“Oh, please, please take me to her at once,” she begged. “I have so wondered what has been happening to her and if she is well and safe.”
Nadina studied the pale face, the fear-haunted eyes, and smiled scornfully. “You will find her quite well,” she answered. “She has known how to buy safety.”
That phrase rang in Betty’s ears when she stood a little later beside Ruth in a softly shadowed room, luxurious with many silk hangings and laden with the perfume of attar of roses. Ruth had indeed bought her safety. The knowledge stood between them with a certain antagonism and increased the unhappiness of Betty’s mind. She could not meet Ruth’s eyes; the strings of pearls that lay against the other’s white throat, the henna-stained hands that had been stretched out in welcome, the whole appearance of magnificent self-complacency cut at Betty’s heart like the lash of a whip. She was more desperately alone now than she had been before she had realised how perfectly Ruth had bought safety. The tears stung in her eyes, but she forced them back. To be finished with this interview and get away as soon as possible, that was her one thought.
“Why, Betty,” laughed Ruth; there was more awkwardness in the sound than any mirth. “What have they done to your hair? And what a singularly inadequate bodice they have fitted you out with. You can go,” she turned quickly to Nadina, “my cousin and I wish to speak alone. At least none of these others understand English,” she explained when the girl had gone, “we can talk. Now tell me, Betty, have you been ill? You look horribly washed out. Have they been ill-treating you? I have a certain power here, I can do a lot for you, if only you will be sensible and not spoil it.”
Betty swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t think I want anything done for me,” she said, “and I haven’t been ill. I am glad—” her voice broke on the words, she could not say that she was glad that Ruth had bought safety and power.
The other looked at her quickly and frowned. “Look here, Betty,” she said, “your attitude is absurd. I know just what you are thinking of me, so we need not trouble to discuss that, but any amount of pride on your part cannot wipe out what I have done, what I am not ashamed of having done since it was so eminently sensible. You might as well profit by it, as I am profiting. Just conceal your real feelings for a time, agree to dress yourself as I do and loll about on these cushions and let them wait on you, and I can have you to live here with me. We will be together and as safe and comfortable as we can possibly be under the circumstances. After all, you are in their power, you only annoy them by being proud.”
Betty had a swift memory of the priest’s eyes and shivered a little, yet so straight was the barrier between her and Ruth that she did not attempt to put her fear into words.
“I can’t,” she said slowly, “I would rather live as a prisoner than like this.”
“You are not terribly polite”—a little touch of anger showed on Ruth’s face—“and you are also a silly little fool. I suppose you feel that my presence contaminates you?”
“Don’t, Ruth,” begged Betty; she stood up suddenly. “Let me go away. It doesn’t matter what I think, does it? and I don’t want to judge.”
“Naturally it doesn’t matter what you think,” agreed Ruth, “except that I am fond of you. I wanted to do what I could to help.”
“I know,” Betty spoke quickly, “perhaps you did it as much for me as for yourself. Only, Ruth, can’t you see, nothing is worse than losing one’s self-respect. It’s—” her voice wavered to a pause; how useless her arguments were in the face of Ruth’s attitude! “Oh, let me go away from here,” she wailed, “it hurts me far more than anything else has done.”
“You are hopeless,” Ruth said, “but don’t talk in that ridiculous way. I could make things more comfortable for you here, but they won’t let you stay if you can’t be sensible, that’s all.”
Yet after the curtain had fallen behind Betty’s figure, Ruth paced up and down the room like some wild animal caged. Betty had upset her self-content; Betty, with her faithful eyes that tried so hard to hide their contempt, with her childish face stiffened to a woman’s scorn.
And in the narrow confines of her cell Betty lay face downwards on the floor and wept her heart out because of a childish ideal that would never more stand in the sunlight of her thoughts.
Learn the lore that I would teach thee;
Lore of patience, deep and still.
How to bow and bend thy being
To another’s stringent will.
Learn the love that lives by serving;
Never tiring, never swerving.
To be a holy man, so holy that one could not be contaminated by speech with mere mortals, had its advantages, Melrose was bound to admit. He passed the various travellers that they met on their road, his new-found holiness wrapping him round in a mantle of safety. For food they relied on the inhabitants of the roadside, and the generosity with which their wants were supplied was unfailing. The villagers would come out and prostrate themselves before the holy man, laying their offerings of rice and milk at his feet, listening in reverent admiration while Bundoo held forth on the merits and wisdom of his master. How Bundoo reconciled this duping of the faithful with his own conscience, Melrose found it difficult to understand. He had to rest satisfied with the fact that Bundoo’s whole heart seemed to be filled with a desire to serve, and for the rest, was it not possible—as he had felt in his dream—that in some other world the two of them had died with a bond of love strong between their hearts? For love and hate share immortality with the soul of man; so the thinkers of Bundoo’s creed hold, hate breeding hate, love, love.
Bundoo collected evidence all along the route they followed of the procession that had preceded them by a couple of days. He heard of the palanquins bearing the royal ladies, of the runners who went before clearing the path, of the crowd that followed. From one place he came back with an outstanding piece of news. The priestly retinue had paused by the village shrine, it seemed, and someone in the crowd had noticed with astonishment the white girl sitting among the temple dancers. “Was she the new Maharanee?” he had asked, to be met with laughter. The new Maharanee travelled in one of the royal palanquins. This was but a slave woman dedicated to the service of the Gods. The curtains of the conveyance had been drawn together quickly and the cart had jolted away.
Bundoo eyed Melrose wistfully as he recounted the tale. “The desire of my lord’s heart rests on the woman, is it not so?” he asked at the end.
Melrose nodded briefly, he did not feel like discussing the subject.
“And to bring the desire of my lord’s heart to his possession, Bundoo’s life will go out on the flame of fate again,” Bundoo whispered. “It is written.”
It is doubtful if Melrose even heard him, so engrossed was he in his thoughts of Betty. They pushed on with added vigour after that. Melrose’s strength was rapidly coming back to him and under Bundoo’s skilful hands the wound had almost healed. A day’s march from the fortress of Sarsuti they passed the Maharajah’s outgoing army.
“To battle against the English Raj!” The news was being bandied about among the soldiers and shouted aloud in the weird war songs they chanted. Melrose and Bundoo had to stand aside from the road to let them pass, and the thick dust raised by the countless feet hid the two travellers behind its cloud.
“They sing of war,” said Bundoo. “What then is the great feast they go to?”
“If you ask me,” Melrose replied caustically—he was moved to the same feeling as Ruth, as he watched the ragged force stream past—“I should say they were hurrying to a feast of death, Bundoo. See if you can gather any news as to why they go.”
Bundoo came back from his inquiries with a perplexed face.
“They talk, my master, of some great insult which thy people, the men of the white skins, have dealt towards the sister of their Maharajah. An insult to be wiped out only in blood. They go forth to make war against the English Raj because of this.”
“So I imagined,” Melrose answered, “and, little brother, how fared the people of Bhogmore in their fight against the English? The fate of these men will be the same.”
The morning of the next day saw them within sight of Sarsuti. They had travelled through the night, and the sun rising behind the fortress found them, as it were, resting within the shadow of the grim old rocks. Here Melrose called a halt. Bundoo was by this time quite resigned to their destination, and had long ago given up his wistful talk of the snow-clad mountains where absolute peace was to be found. Of his faithfulness and desire to assist, Melrose had no doubt; it was Bundoo’s innocence, his trusting confidence in good, that left some loopholes for alarm. He had been afraid for Melrose’s safety while the warnings of his old master had stayed in his mind, but as Arkonum and the events of Arkonum faded behind him, so his fear evaporated. Melrose felt it was necessary to reawaken this idea for caution in the faithful heart before they ventured into the stronghold of Sarsuti.
“There must be many among the priests who fled from Arkonum who know your Master,” he said. “Tell me, little brother, how will they look on me, who am after all but an impostor, someone who plays at holy things?”
Bundoo looked troubled. It was quite true, though the thought had not occurred to him. There were many among the priests who would resent this assumption of dignity and holiness on the part of a stranger. Infinitely more so would they resent it if they realised he was white. All creeds were alike to Bundoo; the irreverence of Melrose’s position did not offend him, only he recollected suddenly his old master’s warnings and his early fear.
“If they learn of the colour of thy skin they will kill thee,” he said. “Lord, it is not well that thou shouldst venture further.”
“Quite so,” admitted Melrose. “None the less I am going. We must think of some way in which they shall learn nothing, even though I go amongst them.”
The sun had swung free from behind the walled hill and blazed down on the dust at their feet. A very little breeze moved in the leaves of the tree they rested under. For a second Melrose pictured the scene to himself, the hot, dust-flecked sunshine, the haze-covered landscape, that quaint, grim village on the hill, and the two typically Eastern figures of the holy man and his attendant squatting under the trees. A fortnight ago he had been playing tennis with Betty on the green courts at Bhogmore, and slim, red-turbaned boys had run about to pick up the balls for them, and there had been laughter and a certain glad sense of happiness in the air. A fortnight ago! And now he was here, one of the figures in this grotesque picture, plotting and planning how to save Betty’s life, and faced—he realised that better than Bundoo did—with certain death if his plans miscarried. How strangely, absurdly dramatic it all seemed, but it was at the same time tiresomely real. One could not get away from the sun and the dust and Bundoo’s faithful, worried eyes.
“There are times, my master,” Bundoo was speaking slowly, “when the holy man must hide his face from all, while he holds converse with the Gods. Once we are within the temple walls it would be easy enough for me to announce that a trance had fallen upon thee from which it were impious to arouse thee. But when they hear of thy coming the priests will come forth to meet thee and there will be many there who will know at once that thou art not my Master.”
“Thy Master holds great authority over them?” Melrose asked.
“Surely,” Bundoo answered. “This is his temple within these walls. My Master is the Watcher, there is none as holy as he. All things are visible to his eyes, the past worlds through which our beings moved, the future worlds to which our souls are bound. He watches all things for the Gods.”
“If he is watching us,” Melrose suggested, “will he not be angry at the part we play, little brother? Are you not afraid?”
Bundoo shook his head. “Nay,” he answered. “Thy life was precious to him. He carried thee himself to his own place and he sent me to tend thee. ‘Let them not know his skin is white,’ were his words, ‘else will they seek to destroy him, and this is not the will of the Gods.’”
“I see,” said Melrose. “Well, that was very nice of him and perhaps it makes for safety, Bundoo. Since, if it is not in the will of the Gods that I am to die, it is quite safe to risk things, isn’t it?”
The flippancy, though for that matter there was a certain belief behind the white man’s irreverence, passed over Bundoo’s head.
“All things are written,” he agreed, “and of a truth it is not thee, O my master, who shall taste death under this sky. Yet ’tis well to be careful.”
He stood up and faced towards the fortress. “I will go forth alone,” he said, “and carry word that my Master, the Watcher, has been overcome by a trance outside the fortress walls. They will send to fetch thee, and thou must await their coming, sitting in the stiffness of death with thy head-cloth covering thy face. They will not dare to disturb thy holiness save to lift thee into the litter, and they will carry thee thus into the holy room of the temple. There we shall be left in peace for three days while thy soul holds converse with the Gods, but at the end of that time the people will look to thee for some message, and concealment will be no longer possible. It will be well for us if we have found some road for escape before then.”
“Three days are always three days,” Melrose answered, “and for the rest, little brother, there must be nothing to hold you, once we are within the walls. I would not have you court danger for my sake, and this road runs, as you have often told me, to the great mountains where your heart would be.”
“Nay.” Bundoo’s eyes came back to his for a second. “My fate is written, Lord, have no fear that I shall fail thee.”
That could be argued out afterwards, Melrose thought. He had developed a very real affection for the little man, and he saw no reason why Bundoo should stay to wilfully risk his life once their initial object had been attained. Much could be done in three days; it ought not to be difficult to find Betty, once within the walls, and when it came to escaping the three of them could make a bolt together. Or, if the worst came to the worst, he would have to entrust Betty to Bundoo and stay and face the music out by himself. He and Bundoo had been three days on the road; surely things would have shaped themselves to some definite action by now. He had not been able to get his message back to Mr. Mellish, but the girls’ fate must have been realised; it was impossible not to believe that already help must be on the way. In three days! He turned to look at the road they had travelled. It stretched out, a white strip, and lost itself amongst the hills of the pass. There was nothing and no one in sight, only from the walled-in village came the sound of temple bells ringing out across the dawn.
Melrose turned again to Bundoo. “Let it be as you plan, little brother,” he said. “I will await your coming here.”
But Bundoo was not content to leave until he had arranged Melrose in the correct position for the supposed trance, sitting rigidly, his legs crossed under him, his hands folded between his knees, the cloth over his head and face.
“Stiffen thyself like one dead,” Bundoo implored him, “as they lift thee, and show no sign of life as they carry thee along. Who knows what eyes may not be watching? and there is much jealousy among the priests towards my Master, the Watcher, since he is so favoured of the Gods.”
It was good advice, but very difficult to follow. Every nerve in Melrose’s body seemed maliciously awake. He had a frantic desire to blow his nose, to sneeze, to move his hands just ever so slightly. And the cloth about his face was stiflingly hot; he wondered if they would notice the perspiration which trickled down his cheek and ran in little streams over his chest and back.
Everything worked out as Bundoo had planned. Melrose had sat watching the little figure clambering up the path; he had seen Bundoo challenged by the soldiers at the gate, how they had gathered round him and how he had evidently explained his mission, turning to point to the tree under which Melrose sat. Then they had all disappeared inside, leaving just one soldier on guard. And this man had stood staring in Melrose’s direction, causing the latter to stiffen himself into the position Bundoo had decreed, absurdly alarmed at the man’s scrutiny, though when he came to think of it he knew that the soldier could see nothing but the merest blur. Then Bundoo had reappeared, accompanied by some men bearing a litter and followed by a crowd of people.
Melrose watched them wending their way towards him. He could see faintly through the threads of the cloth covering his face, and not till they were quite close about him did he shut his eyes and set his teeth, fighting to keep all his various nerves under control. There was one moment when he thought the whole effort was bound to end in ghastly failure. They were lifting him from the ground to place him in the litter. Bundoo was supervising the operation, his voice lowered to a shrill whisper but talking incessantly, with some idea, Melrose realised, to prevent any slight lapse on his part being noticed. His feet in their cramped position had grown numb, and as the men lifted him the touch of their hands was agony. He winced unavoidably; the thing was done before he had had time to think, and for a second it seemed as if every eye was staring at him, piercing through his thin disguise. But the movement passed unnoticed, except by Bundoo. Melrose felt the small nervous hand close on his shoulder with a sharp grip, and his own self-control returned. He sat like a graven image, even when the curtains of the litter had been pulled about him. Who was to know, as Bundoo had said, what eyes might not be watching?
So the procession made its way back, the litter slung between the men’s shoulders. Peering with his half-closed eyes through a chink in the curtains, Melrose could see Bundoo walking a little ahead in company with a man robed in the white of the priests. Where had he seen that face before, curious because of the mixed refinement and brutality of its expression: the vindictive mouth, the fine chiselled nose and heavy eyes? The man turned towards him, even as he wondered, and Melrose had an electric sensation of eye meeting eye. Melrose sat back quickly, puzzled and a little alarmed. He never forgot a face once seen, and quite recently he had met that man under circumstances very far from pleasant. And then suddenly he knew. The man’s face was connected in some way with Betty. One memory jostled the other: Betty’s smile as she turned away to follow Ruth, and this man’s face. This was the man who had spoken to them in English, acting as interpreter for the Maharanee’s servant. Melrose had vaguely distrusted the man at the time, this last glimpse of him was scarcely reassuring. He would be no easy foe to hoodwink, no mean opponent in a game of cleverness.
Melrose did not care after that to display any undue curiosity as to his surroundings. He knew when they turned from the streets into the temple courtyard, for a quick shadow fell across the litter and a sense of coldness, as if they had come into a place which the sun rarely warmed. Then he could feel the men setting the litter down, and the curtains were drawn.
“The trance still holds,” he heard a somewhat scornful voice. “I had a fear that movement might disturb the holy one.”
“Not so,” Bundoo replied quickly. “When the holy ones hold speech with the Gods it is the soul that governs. Lift him carefully,” he directed the bearers; “woe will be upon the people if the vision breaks.”
“If the vision breaks,” the other voice commented. “That surely is not possible in one so holy. When will it lift, O Bundoo, servant of the Watcher?”
“Not these three days,” said Bundoo firmly. “Gently now there, my brothers.” He superintended the lifting of Melrose as if he were a bale of precious goods, propping him up against the wall, replacing a hand that had fallen out of position.
Melrose heard the bearers step softly away and felt the added darkness of a let-down chic fall across his eyelids, but it was not yet time to move: Bundoo was still talking to that other unfriendly questioner in the doorway.
“We have travelled speedily behind thee,” Melrose heard him say, “and then this morning ere the first rays of the sun touched on the hills, my Master called to me. ‘The spirit wakes within me, O Bundoo,’ he said, ‘and I must sleep. Take word to the people, that they come forth and carry me within the walls.’”
Melrose could fancy the half-sceptical smile on the man’s face. Educated as he evidently was, it was not likely that he placed much faith in the Watcher’s trances and prophecies.
“So be it then,” the cynical voice answered. “In three days. Word shall be sent forth summoning the people to the temple on that day.”
“There must be absolute peace and quietness until then,” Bundoo put in quickly. “No one must enter here, save only I.”
“That shall be,” the other agreed. “We must not, as thou sayest, break the vision.”
He turned to go. Melrose heard the footsteps dying away, but for a minute or two longer he sat stiffly, afraid almost to move because of the pain waiting to seize on his cramped limbs. When he opened his eyes they rested on Bundoo standing by the door, his queer face puckered in anxious thought.
“Is it well, little brother?” Melrose asked softly.
Bundoo turned quickly. “It is ill,” he answered, “for already we have met distrust, and that man’s presence spells no good for us.”
He pushed aside the gloomy thought and crossed over to Melrose.
“For the moment we have succeeded,” he said, “so many steps nearer thy heart’s desire, lord. Stretch out thy limbs that I may rub them back to life, and then we must talk together of what is to come next.”
I am as sentinel at the doors of Fate,
Watcher of all things for the Gods above! The secret workings of men’s hearts I read,
Their thoughts of hate or love.
Man of the Western race! with earth-bound sight,
How should you gauge the measure of my might?
Mr. Benson sat back in his chair and studied the face of the man in front of him. Gaunt and austere it was, with eyes that flamed in an otherwise lifeless countenance. Mr. Benson was trying to place the man among the crowd of neatly assorted types that he kept stored away in his mind, but for once he knew himself at a loss. The man was neither a fanatic nor a charlatan. Yet he claimed powers and a knowledge of the supernatural which Mr. Benson for one found it very difficult to credit. It was not that the astute Englishman scoffed with his countrymen’s usual indifference at all things beyond his ken; he had seen enough of India and her priesthood to acknowledge that these men are gifted with very strange knowledge. Mr. Benson had watched their wonder-working for himself, and it had taught him to keep a very open mind on such matters. But this old man, with his compelling eyes, his harsh voice, claimed for himself such super-human powers. What was it he had called himself? “The Watcher.” A quaint title that somehow lingered in Mr. Benson’s mind. “The holy one, who watched all things for the Gods!” Ridiculous, and yet the old man had certainly used his eyes to good purpose if his very precise information in regard to Miss Daring’s dealings with the Prince was true.
He and the old man were alone in the big room that Mr. Mellish had placed at the disposal of Mr. Benson. The guard had been told to wait outside. Mr. Benson had wanted to question Pentland’s prisoner for himself, and see if his noted tact with natives would not stand him in good stead here, and perhaps help him to find the true clue to the cause of the whole trouble. The matter, according to the Watcher—how absurdly one slipped into the habit of thinking of him as that—was very simple, and bore out Mr. Mellish’s vague report of Melrose’s views. The Prince had loved the white girl. Many years ago, ere he had come to his birth, this had been foreseen, and with his love, the state of Bhogmore, the kingdom of his fathers, even his own life, had blazed out in a flame of destruction and death. All this had the Watcher foreknown, and, through the years that had followed the birth of the Prince, he had sat on the doorway of the white folk, waiting and watching for the white girl who was to come, bringing such devastation in her wake.
“Not of the blood of those who reared her.” That had been one of the old man’s extraordinary utterances. How had he come to know that Miss Daring was only an adopted daughter of the late Resident? Very few people in India were supposed to know that, certainly none of the natives.
And with the white girl’s coming the Watcher’s task in Bhogmore was finished. He had made his way back to Arkonum.
“I thought to pit myself against fate and turn aside the decree of the Gods, Huzoor. His life I knew I could not save, but theirs, the poor foolish folk of the bazaar, it was for them I spoke my warnings.”
Mr. Benson pushed the hesitating doubts as to the man’s reliability to the back of his mind and took up his project again, sitting a little straighter as he spoke.
“You tell of marvellous things,” he said, “and since to you nothing is hid, I would ask still further. I see which way the flame was fed, but who laid the torch?”
There was something a trifle scornful in the eyes that met his. “You do not believe my words,” the Watcher said, “and yet you would know more, so you desire to hide your disbelief from mine eyes. Huzoor, the veil is very thin. But what matter?” he passed his hand slowly across his eyes. “I am old and weary, and the evil that mine eyes have feared this many moons has come to pass. You search, is it not so, for those whom you may punish for this work? Each one has paid, or shall yet pay, before the rains break on the hills. I have no more to say, save this. There is a white man, one servant to the Lat Sahib, who saved my life these seven days past.” He paused a minute, and his eyes looking out over Mr. Benson’s head grew very intent, as if he studied some far-off picture. When he spoke again his voice had completely changed, it was high and shrill as if he spoke through some instrument.
“I see the sun on the walls and rocks of Sarsuti,” he said. “I see within the walls. There is a temple there, square and white it stands, with its courtyards round. There are many doors, opening into many cells. I see into one of these, my servant Bundoo crouches by the door. He is waiting and watching, as if afraid. Behind him again, in the shadows, I see a man. He is dressed as I am dressed, yet he is not one of us, for his skin, where the neckcloth ends, shows white. He is thinking, I can see his thoughts. They stand out like writing against the dark. He is in danger and he knows it, yet it is not fear for himself that holds his heart. There is the white girl in his thoughts. He has come to find her, he would save her, but death stands close all round them, every hour it draws a little nearer. These are his thoughts.”
His voice broke off, his eyes came back to Mr. Benson. “These things I have seen,” he said. “Huzoor, there is other work for your armies save that of punishing those who have already paid the price.”
How much to believe? The Englishman’s brain wavered in the balance. Instinct gave him faith; there had been something very realistic in the Watcher’s recital. But against instinct one had to pit caution and a knowledge of how easily faith can be deluded. Had Mr. Benson been able to act entirely on his own thoughts he would have ordered the immediate release of his prisoner. To his mind it was evident that the holy one had been concerned only in an effort to stay the calamity; but there were other things besides his own thoughts to consider. There was Pentland’s angry claim for vengeance; and then this old man’s knowledge, spread broadcast, would hardly rebound to the credit of the white girl, nor to the prestige of the ruling race as a whole. As to the vision foretelling the danger which surrounded Melrose and the two girls, that might be true, but it would be tinted by the Watcher’s belief in the power of his own people. Mr. Benson did not think that any real harm would come to the prisoners. The Maharanee must realise by this time that the game was up; she would not be likely to run the risk of incurring any further vengeance.
Mr. Benson could not bring forward a half-believed-in vision as an incentive for speedy action, but it certainly woke in him a desire to see a prompt advance. It was plain, he said, from the evidence he had been able to gather on all sides, that Miss Daring had been forced into a marriage with the Prince. She had perhaps even acquiesced, since it was known that she had left the Palace travelling as a lady of the Royal harem. Miss Fulton had apparently been taken as her companion. It was doubtful if either of the girls’ lives were in danger, but, at the same time, it behoved their countrymen to effect their rescue as speedily as possible. The Maharanee’s brother was a notoriously quarrelsome chieftain, but peace had reigned for a good many years between his people and the English. If things were worked tactfully, and a force large enough to exact respect was despatched immediately, Mr. Benson thought that trouble would probably be avoided. Finally, he put forward a proposition with some diffidence, as he admitted. They must know that the police had in custody a certain holy man held in very high esteem by the people of Sarsuti.
“He is called,” Mr. Benson explained, referring to some paper in his hand—he did not wish his audience to think that he had himself devoted too much attention to the matter—“the Watcher, because of a belief in his powers of seeing both into the future and into the past. This man holds the most undoubted influence over the people, and I am convinced, on personal investigation, that he is on the side of law and order. He was shot at by the soldiers of the old Maharanee for inciting the people of the bazaar to surrender to the English. This I have from outside witnesses. I suggest that you take this man with you. He may be of great assistance to you, and his presence in your camp will seem very significant to the people.”
The Watcher received the news of his probable destination calmly. He spoke of it indeed as of something of his own planning.
“It is well, Huzoor,” he said. “I have still some work that needs to be done. There is war on the way; tell your people to go not unprepared.”
You could not shake aside his warnings as so much trash. Mr. Benson found himself confiding to Major Alston, who was to go in command of the expedition, that, on thinking the matter over, he was afraid that perhaps the old Maharajah would seize on this opportunity to show his teeth again.
“We shall keep our eyes open,” laughed Alston. “I am not by any means a stranger to this frontier game.”
So the relief force started, taking with them the holy man as part hostage, part guide; and Mr. Benson, his share in the proceedings for the time finished, packed up his papers and took the train back to Calcutta, and the multitude of duties that had cropped up during his absence. Bhogmore and its troubles, together with the outstanding personality of the old Fakir, had to be relegated to the background of his mind, yet more than once in the days that followed Mr. Benson found himself thinking of the Watcher and his mission—“Watching all things for the Gods.”
The train that carried him southwards bore also the bodies of Sir Henry and Lady Daring. They were to be buried in Calcutta, it had been decided; Government was anxious to pay this last respect to a valued servant. But already the tragedy, the scandal—for Ruth’s share in the proceedings had lost nothing in the telling—had become a tale of yesterday. Some other Resident would rule in Sir Henry’s stead, the welcome to the new man was prepared side by side with the farewell to the old. For in India death throws a sudden mantle of forgetfulness about its victims; memory cannot be long-lived in a land where the living stand always waiting to press onwards in the dead man’s shoes.
And at Arkonum Mr. Mellish was left alone—his wife had been swept off to the hills by sympathetic friends—to wait, with what patience he could, for news of the expeditionary force. The Palace and temples stood empty and silenced, otherwise the village had become normal again. The mourners had laid away their dead; there was room for laughter in the streets once more, and the voices of those who bought and sold. Only at night time, when the smoke curled upwards from the little fires, the men would gather in groups and talk in whispers of the three days’ fight, of those who had died, of how the Prince had been bewitched. Then the tale would turn to the coming of the white soldiers and the thunderous guns.
“Of a truth, brothers,” the old men would say, “the Gods must have been angered with us. It is better not to listen to the word of Kings.”
Alston, meanwhile, with his four thousand men, pushed forward into the wilderness that lies beyond the frontiers of Bhogmore. They followed the road for the most part, though here and there small detachments would break away and scour the countryside, returning always with the same report. There was no sign of any disorder, their appearance was greeted by the inhabitants with amazement.
On the afternoon of the second day the advance party, a company of the Homeshire Rangers, entered the defile of the mountain pass. Here the road winds for a day’s journey through wild-looking country. Fierce rocks rise either side of the road, showing how it has been cut through the sides of the mountain; it dips sometimes to a wooded gully, level with a stream, and then with a strenuous effort it rises again till it breasts the peak, and the traveller can see on either side the lower hills and the glint of the water he has left. If they were to meet danger anywhere, it would be here, where every rock and scrubby tree offered shelter to an enemy, and where the surrounding country made it impossible for the advance party to be protected by scouts on the flanks. But Alston counted on the fact that they were in all probability unexpected, and it was his plan to move forward as speedily as possible and reach before nightfall the open space that lay beyond the pass.
The order was given, therefore, to push on, and the 1st Company of Rangers advanced cheerfully, whistling and singing, the men glad of the shade afforded by the rocks after the blazing heat of the road they had travelled that day.
What followed fell about them with the unexpected swiftness of an Indian thunderstorm. The last platoon of the advance body had swung into its place along the road where it widened out and turned downwards to the river, when suddenly the rocks on the mountain side seemed to leap to life. They rolled and bounded, gathering impetus as they came, followed and aided in their work of destruction by a rapid fusillade of fire. A momentary pause of dire confusion reigned, and during that period the men of the Rangers paid a heavy toll in deaths. The bodies rolled from the roadway and splashed into the stream, dyeing its waters a quick red; orders were shouted and passed unheeded; men called to each other and yelled as the stones fell among them. Then, as quickly as it had come, the confusion passed, and order emerged out of chaos. The marvel of discipline and military training showed true to its laws. Before the enemy had had time to realise their purpose the soldiers had formed up, had advanced at the double along the road, and with unbelievable gallantry had stormed up the steep sides of the hill. Many had to fall in that venture, but a remnant cleared the summit, and an altogether surprised and discomfited enemy took to its heels and fled. The soldiers could see them, nimble as wild goats, scrambling and skipping from boulder to boulder across the shoulder of the neighbouring hill.
It was useless to think of following them. The officer in charge could only gather his men together, ascertain the number of dead and wounded, and send word back to the main body. The enemy had been encountered and defeated after a sharp engagement; the defile was now safe for a further advance. Safe, at the cost of those bodies that rolled and tumbled with the moving stream, or lay stretched out and stiff on the slopes of the mountain side.
Major Alston heard the announcement with a sense of dismay and anger. But the advance party had fulfilled its task of acting, as it were, as a feeler to discover the presence or absence of the enemy. It remained only to avenge them; to wipe out their misadventure in a swift and sure defeat of the enemy.
During the ensuing pause, while the force rested on the further side of the pass before advancing down into the open country, word was brought to Major Alston that the old Fakir, the Watcher, as the natives called him, had disappeared. Exactly when, it was difficult to say. The detachment of native infantry, in whose charge he had travelled, stated that he had been amongst them at one moment and gone the next. They hinted at something supernatural in his disappearance. Pentland, who was present with Alston when the information was delivered, flamed with sudden anger. There was nothing supernatural about it, he stormed. The old man was a traitor, a damned spy, and his presence among them had been carefully planned. Mr. Benson had been nicely hoodwinked. The Watcher must have been responsible for the onslaught from the hills, and he had made good his escape during the excitement.
“And lucky for him that he has,” affirmed Pentland, “because I should not have waited to hand him over to justice again. The next time I catch sight of him I shall shoot him as I would a rabbit.”
Major Alston signed to the native orderly, who had brought the news, to withdraw.
“No use standing on their corns, Pentland,” he reminded the other. “Shoot him by all means, but don’t talk about it in front of the men.”
The last fortnight had changed Pentland completely. He seemed actuated by only one force, and that was intense hatred for the native. His resentment was understandable, when you took into consideration the position of Miss Daring, his affianced bride, but it made him very difficult to get on with. His brother officers were of the opinion that Pentland ought not to have been sent with the expedition. He was unable to judge fairly, or to act with any discrimination, and seeing that most of the soldiers under him were natives, the spirit of hate, the instinct of distrust which filled him, was very unfortunate. The old Fakir might have been a spy; but their own soldiers—the officers were prepared to swear to this—were absolutely loyal. There could be no working together in Indian regiments without this splendid trust; Pentland, with his whole outlook twisted and darkened by one ugly incident, jarred on the Englishmen’s nerves with his continual doubt.
Major Alston held a council with his native officers that evening, and learnt from them that the Watcher had undoubtedly known of the presence of the enemy. He had even issued warnings to this effect. He had also told them of his departure, stating that some very urgent work called him, and that they should see him again on the day when they entered in triumph into Sarsuti. The Colonel Sahib need have no fear of any discontent among the troops; their holy man had spoken to them always of the justice of the task on which they were engaged, and the ultimate success of the British arms.
With this assurance Colonel Ashton dismissed Pentland’s fierce arguments from his mind. Outposts were stationed, and the main force camped for the night where it stood. In the morning they would advance on the plain, in the open it would be an easier fight with the odds in their favour. Colonel Ashton had very little doubt as to the result.
Old hands that cling to the bridle rein!
Old piteous voice that pleads in vain.
Red rises the thunder-cloud of fire;
I ride over death to my heart’s desire.
And who shall stay me? And who shall hold?
Old hands are weak and old love is cold.
From a safe standpoint on one of the neighbouring hills, Prince Channa watched the brief battle on the slopes. He stayed on alone, after his companions had hurried away to give news of the defeat, his slim, drab-coloured figure scarce distinguishable from the rocks and undergrowth of shrubs that grew around. He had been there when the small company of English soldiers had marched over the bend of the road, their officers riding a little ahead. The lilt of the tune they whistled had come to his ears very faintly across the space between. And he had known of the hidden death that lay so cleverly concealed to entrap them.
A great wave of horror had surged up in Channa’s mind as he had watched. They had been his friends, those men on horseback down there; he had ridden with them, he had played with them, on the polo ground, at cricket; he had held their hands and looked into their eyes, meeting perfect friendship and confidence in return for his own trust. Out of the mists that swayed before his poor tortured brain Lady Daring’s face rose, calm, slightly smiling, the eyes very compassionate, and his memory sickened at the thought of her death. And Smallman, the man whom he had so loved as a boy. The blood of these others seemed to sweep between them; in Smallman’s eyes there would be no forgiveness for such treachery as this.
And then, side by side with this fierce regret, rose the summons of Ruth’s enchantment again. She had loved him, and Sir Henry and Lady Daring—all the white folk, in fact, since in them was typified the prejudice which would shut a native out of a white girl’s life—had tried to stand between them. They would have cheated him, content to break her heart, if, by so doing, they could retain their pride of race. There was a thought to feed hate on; he caught at it eagerly, striving with its aid to ease some of the anguish of his soul.
Since his flight from Arkonum, Channa had planned and thought of nothing save a reunion with Ruth. His thoughts had refused to move beyond that, held in a leash by the passionate desire of his body. But their journey had been delayed, Dattaka had broken down completely, it had been impossible to expect him to hurry on. And then with the mountain pass just behind them, he and Dattaka, with their scant following of men, had run full tilt into the army of the Maharajah of Sarsuti. To have gone forward then, to have left these others to battle in his stead, was impossible. It had hardly needed Dattaka’s bitter words, or the sharp recriminations of his uncle, to convince Channa of that. Dazed as one who scarce could account for his actions, he had lived through the days that followed. The word of his bewitchment had gathered credence, the men glanced sideways at him, speaking of him as one under the ban of the Gods; the common soldiers were afraid if his shadow fell across their food.
It was finished now, that battle down there. Channa could see the English soldiers searching out their dead, restoring prompt order after the confusion. Over the crest of the pass the main body had just come in sight, moving slowly, like some vast, many-jointed crocodile.
“They meet death like men.”
Dattaka’s voice cut across Channa’s thoughts. The old man had come back then, when he found his master was not with the others.
“Is it a sight that brings happiness to thine eyes, my Prince?” His voice rang with a rather weary sarcasm.
Channa turned to look at him. “Is it mockery that prompts thy words,” he asked, “or are thine eyes so truly blind to the misery that holds my heart?”
Dattaka put out quick hands. “Nay, little lord”—it had been his pet name for Channa in the old days—“who am I to judge? My tongue is bitter for lack of understanding. They were our friends. I did not dream that I should live to see such a day.”
“Friends in words, not in deeds.” Channa was trying to fan his hatred to strong flame again, “What love do their hearts really hold for us, and how should I—who am of so much older blood than theirs—take friendship tinged always with the shadow of contempt?”
Dattaka shook his head. “It was not of such friendship that I spoke,” he said. “It was of the love brought to being by the work they have done, by the lives they have laid down, so that we and our people might live. Have you known naught of such friendship?”
Channa’s lips twitched. “I have tasted of their contempt,” he answered. “It is enough, Dattaka; of what use to argue out the past while the present yelps at our heels like a mad dog? What counsels my uncle now?”
“They sit talking of ways and means, my Prince. I came back to fetch thee. It is not right to hold thyself aloof from their councils. Already the men whisper against thee, saying that madness holds thy brain and that in the end thou wilt betray them.”
Channa let his eyes rest once again on the slow-moving column beneath them. “The end is not far, Dattaka,” he said, “yet I think I envy those who have died to-day.”
He turned away, and preceded by the old man made his way down the hill. There might be envy in his heart for those who had been killed; one other feeling reigned still stronger. He must find some means to reach Ruth before the end came; it should be in her arms that death should find him.
They heard on their return to the camp that a plan of campaign, hastily conceived, and having as its only merit its very unexpectedness, was already on foot. The English force, it had been ascertained, was preparing to camp, where nightfall had found it, on the borders of the plain. They would not move till the morning, even now the watchmen reported that fires had been lit and were showing little specks of red against the dark purple of the sky. The English force might consist of about four battalions of infantry and a couple of mounted batteries. Of men, the Maharajah possessed a far greater number, but he had no guns. There was a commendable strategy, therefore, in the suggestion of some bold spirit that they should attack forthwith, for if only they could get to a close enough range for hand fighting the guns would prove of little use. The English outposts had of course to be reckoned with; still the plan held out the inducement of immediate action, whereas a pause at such a time, with the memory of the afternoon’s failure fresh in their minds, might prove disastrous to the spirits of the men.
Channa was not entrusted with a command. Suspicions as to his sanity were rife among his companions, and even his uncle doubted whether the boy could be trusted to fulfil the traditions of his ancestors. He rode out, therefore, at his uncle’s right hand and at the rear of the principal attacking party. With his mind intent on his own project, which was to break away at the earliest opportunity and take the road with all speed to Sarsuti and Ruth, it followed that Channa paid little attention to what was happening round him.
His being was permeated with a throbbing excitement which accorded well with the silent, swift advance, the mysterious appearance of the men moving through the darkness, and the tense feeling of anticipation which seemed to be clogging the very air.
Like so many ghosts the multitude advanced, and living in a dream Channa went with them. The first outpost was surrounded before the alarm could be given, and there the attacking parties’ work was short and fierce; then they swept onwards, the air alive now with the ping of bullets and the shrieks and shouts of men.
How it was that the rear-guard swung round into the very front of the battle, Channa was not aware. He had been riding with slack rein, when suddenly he found himself in the very midst of it all. Horses swerved and stumbled, reared and broke free in an uncheckable outburst of panic; the purple of the sky turned to a great flaming red where some portion of the camp had caught fire. Channa saw his uncle fall, one of the first, the old hands and withered knees unable to control the maddened beast that carried him. The man riding on Channa’s right was shot through the head, he disappeared into the darkness, still clinging to the saddle, hanging head downwards, his body jerking with the horse’s quick stride. All round, men stumbled and surged and fell, to lie very still under the horses’ feet.
Channa turned his own pony round. The time for flight had come. If he were to escape alive, if he were ever again to feel Ruth in his arms, her lips under his, he must go now. He had never dreamt that his uncle would be victorious; he knew, in this brief moment, while men shouted and yelled in an enthusiasm which was bound to end in panic, that defeat was sure. With their leaders killed, pushed by their own foolhardiness practically into the mouth of the guns, what other fate could there be for this rabble of untrained soldiers?
It was as he turned, leaning forward to spur his horse, that he saw Dattaka’s face, lit up by that flaming torch of fire behind them, scornful, with a great purpose showing in his eyes. The old man caught at the reins as the pony’s head shot past him, pulling the beast up in its stride. Dattaka’s horse had been shot under him, and he was not a big man, he stood scarcely level with Channa’s knee.
“It was not in this way that thy fathers faced the battle, O my Prince,” he said.
Channa laughed. There was madness in his eyes had Dattaka been able to see them plainer. “Is it fear that drives me, dost thou think?” he asked. “Loose the rein, Dattaka, I ride to a goal that none shall turn me from.”
“If it is not fear,” Dattaka answered; he showed no signs of obeying his master, “then it is the desire for a woman that draws thee. The curse of the Gods rest on her for the shame she has already wrought!”
Like steel lightning the lash of the whip he carried cut across Channa’s pony. The brute reared and plunged forward, dragging Dattaka with him, the old man’s hands resolute in their determination not to let go. For a second or two he clung, swept off his feet by the strength of the pony’s maddened leap, all the strength of his love thrown into that desperate attempt to save his master from dishonour. Then the arms failed, the gallant old life ebbed out.
“Little lord,” his voice wailed, startlingly clear to Channa’s ear amidst the other tumult, “do not this thing. For the sake of the love——”
The words ended in a choke, the hands fell away. The pony’s hoofs thudded on something soft, leapt clear of it, and dashed forward unimpeded into the night.
What direction he was taking Channa hardly knew. He laughed as he rode, throwing back his head and calling her name aloud, speaking in English, the language of the race that had denied him. Out of the shadows on every side Dattaka’s voice called to him; again and again the old face swept across his vision, the desperate hands caught at the reins. And not once, nor twice, but many times, Channa leant forward to slash with his whip and laugh as he felt his pony’s hoofs thudding on something soft. There were others flying as well as himself by now, though a remnant still fought round the British camp. Some of them ran purposely, with set faces seeking for safety; others, careless of their path, sobbing, waving their arms on high, crying on the Gods for mercy. Then, to add to the general confusion, the guns opened fire, they could get the range now that the enemy was in flight. The shells whistled overhead and fell among the scattered groups of runners, taking quick toll of punishment from those who fled.
It was one of these harsh messengers that stopped Channa in his flight. Across his madness he was suddenly conscious of the searing pain that wrapped his body in a flame of fire, the plunge forward of his pony into endless void, and then cold darkness, wiping from his brain all agony, all thoughts, all memory. He lay, thrown clear of his pony, face upturned to the sky, and over his body those who fled stumbled and scrambled and rushed on again, careless of who perished so long as they themselves were saved.
Out of immense darkness his soul struggled back to life, summoned there by the agony that wrenched his body. Someone was trying to move him. Channa’s first thoughts were of Dattaka. Purified by pain and that space of blissful nothing that had held his soul, his eyes looked out on this new world free from madness. What had passed before his wild gallop was completely obliterated.
“Gently, Dattaka, move me not roughly,” he implored, “the pain is deep seated.”
His voice was very weak, yet it reached to the ears of his rescuer. The man let go his hold and bent closer.
“It is not Dattaka, O King. Hast thou forgotten how he died, and of the work that still lies waiting for thy hands to do?”
That grey face, those cold, strange eyes! What chord of memory did they touch on? “Do pooja to the Gods, that I may have my heart’s desire.” Suddenly Channa knew; he saw again the string of emeralds where they lay in the dust at the feet of the holy man. His heart’s desire! That was what he had been riding to reach, and Dattaka— His brain could not bear the agony of the thought, he pushed it from him, putting up weak hands to ward away the Fakir’s face.
“Ruth,” he whispered, closing his eyes, reaching out to the unknown to try and find her presence near. “Ruth, Ruth.”
“Aye,” the other commented grimly. He had freed Channa’s limbs by now, he was searching for the damage done. “Thy lips call, and thy heart seeks. We must follow, O King; the end is not yet reached.”
“What would you of me?” stammered Channa. The man’s hands moving over his body seemed to be tingling with a magnetism that brought back strength to muscle and nerve. “What know you of the goal that I would reach?”
From behind them somewhere a bugle call thrilled into the air. The darkness had lifted and the grey light of early morning showed the plain and in the distance the English camp. Channa sat up eagerly, his pain forgotten, or was it possible that those strange deft hands had lulled it to sleep with magic power? Anyway, a certain satisfaction showed on the Fakir’s face at this sign of renewed strength.
“What matters my knowledge so long as I help to the goal, my King? See now, thou canst stand. A horse is at hand, and I will ride behind thee, so that if thy weakness return I shall be at hand to hold thee in the saddle. Is it to be forward?”
Swaying to his feet Channa clutched for a minute at the old man’s shoulders, dragging himself close so that eyes could stare straight into eyes.
“What is thy purpose in all this?” he asked. “My brain is weak, yet memory is not altogether lost. I know thee to be unfriendly to my will.”
“To thy will, yea, my King. But now it is the will of the Gods that reigns. Thine hand holds the blade, thine arm must strike the blow.”
The words hummed in Channa’s ears, the other’s eyes held his. Obedient to their guidance he turned and mounted the horse that stood near by. He felt the Fakir climb up behind him, he was conscious of those compelling, force-giving hands that clung about his waist. The passion for Ruth surged upon him, he had his face once more to the goal. Forward then, forward to his heart’s desire!
The earth is wracked with thunder;
The battle turns and sways;
Where shall we find some refuge
To safeguard all our ways?
Brothers! your tributes bring to Kali’s shrine,
And pray she shield us with her might divine.
The quiet and darkness of his little cell were very oppressive to Melrose. It seemed as if he had been there alone for hours, waiting, every nerve stretched to its uttermost, for Bundoo to come back with some definite news of Betty. It was night now, for Bundoo had not deemed it wise to move on his mission before dark, and all through the day Melrose had had to sit in his corner, not daring to move, prepared at the slightest notice to resume his trance-like pose. It had been very wearying, and his thoughts all the time had run backwards and forwards along such tormenting lines. Where was Betty? How was she? Would they be able to get away in safety? He did not think of Ruth; there had never been any sympathy between them, and he was inclined to think that most of the ill-doings of the past fortnight could be laid at her door. But Betty in danger, Betty in these wild surroundings, with her weak small hands and pitiful womanhood as her only defence. The thought was agony to him.
They had been left very much alone in their retreat, only once during the course of the day had a shadow fallen across the door. A temple servant with a bowl of rice and some milk for Bundoo. The man would have liked to stay, whispering to Bundoo and staring at Melrose with awestruck eyes, but Bundoo had dismissed him quickly. And after that there had been nothing to do, except watch the light slowly fading from the glint of sky visible through their door, till at last darkness had set in, darkness which was so irksome to his nerves, but which at least enabled Bundoo to start forth on his quest.
It had been decided between them that Bundoo should, if possible, deliver a note into Betty’s hands. If, as Bundoo hoped, the girl was kept in a cell by herself, this would be so much the easier.
“I am close by,” Melrose had written, “and the bearer of this message is a friend. If he shows by signs that he wants you to follow him, do so. He will bring you straight to me, only don’t show any signs of fear on the way, and give yourself over to his guidance.”
He signed his note briefly, “Dick Melrose.” There had been no love spoken between them as yet, he put nothing of all he was feeling into the written words. But somehow he thought she would understand, and she had always been so shy, so persistent in her determination to avoid any seriousness on his part. He could not be quite sure of what she felt, though he did not think it possible that her eyes could have lied to him. It was silly the way his thoughts would keep deserting the very real seriousness of their position to play with the idea of how Betty would look, what she would say, when he told her about his love. There were moments when he almost fancied himself back in the old days, the burning question of the hour being—“Shall I propose to-night?” And then, with a start, he would come out of his dream, back to the reality of his position, and he would try and follow Bundoo’s progress in his imagination.
Had he been able to see in person what his thoughts groped after, his mind would have been even more uneasy. Bundoo had not gone straight to the conclusion of his mission. There were one or two things that he wanted to find out about before he could bring the white girl and his new master together. The road of escape, for one thing, would have to be discovered. For that escape was imperative, and that right soon, Bundoo was most uneasily convinced. He had seen enmity in the priest’s eyes, and he knew that no grace would be allowed in that quarter.
Bundoo’s first journey, therefore, was to the sanctuary of the temple, the square white building, daubed with red and dedicated to the Goddess Kali, that stood in the centre of the square. Shallow steps led up to the entrances from every side, but the only door left open was the one in front of the shrine itself. The priest on duty lay across this opening, wrapped in his blanket, sound asleep, to judge by his heavy breathing. This last did not surprise Bundoo; a guard to the holiness of the inner temple would hardly be considered necessary, there would be the watchmen on duty round about the outer walls. Besides, who amongst the people would be found brave enough to violate the house of Kali?
Even Bundoo, knowing the necessity of his cause, was conscious of a little tremor of fear as he stepped over the sleeping guardian into the dimly lit precincts. The red flame, burning on the raised altar, threw a contorted, flickering light over the image’s face. More than life-size she stood, unbelievably hideous, with red-painted eyes and scarlet tongue that protruded from one side of her mouth. Bundoo put up a hasty plea to the creator of all things that he might avert the wrath of Kali, and felt his way cautiously to the back of the shrine. Here utter blackness reigned, but Bundoo was more or less at home in the surroundings. It was to this temple he had been brought as a child, and here he had passed his apprenticeship before coming into the service of his Master, the Watcher. Also, he had brought with him a small swinging lamp, and, once out of sight of the sleeper at the door, he paused to light this, setting it on the floor and straightening himself to look round.
He was standing in a small hall at the back of the shrine, the priests’ room, as it was called. The Goddess’ back was towards him now, an unwieldy mass of stone that completely blocked out the front of the shrine and any sight of the outside world or sky. Somewhere in this room, or else his childish memories were playing him false, there was a trap-door that led downwards. First into an old crypt, where it had been customary to store the ashes of the priests, and beyond that again to a disused tunnel or passage. The old tales of the bazaar had always held that this path led through the bosom of the earth, by some devious journeyings, to the far side of the fortress and thence to the mountains beyond. It had been used in the old days as a means of escape for the priests and their treasures, should the fortress be too closely pressed by any enemy. There were even, it was affirmed, caves and dwellings hidden away in the heart of the mountain, though their whereabouts were unknown to the present generation, so many moons had risen and set since last the fortress had looked down upon any formidable foe.
These old stories rang in Bundoo’s ears as he moved cautiously, feeling with his quick hands over every inch of stone that paved the place. He had almost given up the search in sharp disappointment, when suddenly his right hand hit on some slight irregularity. Eager as a dog on the scent, Bundoo crouched over the spot, digging with his nails round the edges of the stone. It moved; undoubtedly it moved! He could lift it, just enough to peer down into a void and catch the glimmer of the first step that led downwards. With a sigh of relief he sat back, letting the stone fall gently into place again. It was there, then, his memory had not betrayed him.
He was about to move the stone again and proceed with his investigations, when a slight noise behind him caused him to hastily alter his intentions. He had time just to extinguish his lamp and creep into the shelter of the idol’s shadow, before another light shone out in the darkness, coming from the direction of the central door.
There was something childish in the hasty prayer which Bundoo paused, once more, to raise to the Gods on his behalf. If they had seen his lamp and were coming to investigate the cause, he would find it very difficult to account for his presence. His fear, however, was soon silenced. It was evident that it was a council of the priests that he was to witness, summoned together thus urgently, while the rest of the world slumbered, to discuss some news of great import. Bundoo’s dreaded enemy, the English-speaking priest, was among the number, and indeed he seemed to be the leading spirit of the party.
It would appear, then, that word had come to hand, late that night, of a severe defeat of the Maharajah’s troops. They had attacked the enemy twice, and they had been routed. The messenger, himself a fugitive from the field, left no doubt of this. The Maharajah and most of the leaders had been killed, the others were in full flight. That this news, once spread abroad, would cause terror and despair, was unquestionable. Bundoo gathered that steps had already been taken to suppress it. But, since the fugitive soldiers themselves would be at the gates within the next few hours, knowledge could not be withheld for long.
“We must call the people together,” suggested one of the oldest priests present, “and make sacrifice to the Goddess. It will divert their minds and the tidings may not be so bad as is at first supposed. Our fighters are brave, they will turn again and face the enemy.”
“Bravery will not help them,” Gopal, Bundoo’s enemy, spoke sarcastically. “The English have devoted centuries to the making of instruments that deal death. Sometimes it almost seems as if even the Gods were powerless against them.”
There was a murmur of shocked dissent and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Still, let us make sacrifice, by all means,” he said. “And in so doing, let us exact some small vengeance at least. Mother Kali will need human blood at such a moment, brothers.”
The old priest was the first to answer. Gopal’s suggestion had elsewhere been greeted by an uneasy silence. “It is fifty years, O brother Gopal, since Mother Kali tasted blood. Your memory cannot touch that, but I remember. The very stones of the mountain ran red.”
“Aye, and so they may again,” Gopal answered. “If there was danger then, is there not ten times more danger now? You grow squeamish, Amita. When the people see the enemy gathered outside the walls, and hear the sound of guns, they will not rest satisfied with less. It is well to be prepared.”
“Aye, that is true,” the others murmured.
Gopal leant forward. Bundoo could see his face in the circle of light: the high forehead, the gross mouth and heavy eyes.
“And the sacrifice lies to our hands,” he was saying. “What of the white girl whom we have brought hither from Bhogmore?”
“The white Maharanee?” someone whispered.
Gopal shook his head impatiently. “She has submitted to the rights of marriage, she is one of us. I spoke of the other one. I have had it in my heart to break her pride these many days; now do the Gods seem to point a way.” He moved abruptly, as if counting the council at an end.
“That is agreed,” he said; “the people shall be called together in the morning, the sacrifice shall be laid at Kali’s feet.”
The fierceness of his decision seemed to carry the other priests with him, though it was evident they were not eager for his plan. They followed when he led the way out, whispering uneasily among themselves. The old priest was the last to leave, a shambling, bulky figure in his trailing robes, and Bundoo slipped out with him, unnoticed by the old, short-sighted eyes, and unobserved by the now awakened guardian of the shrine.
Events were narrowing down. It was not three days that were left them to make good their escape, but one short night. Outside the temple Bundoo paused to consider what had best be his next move. Should he return to Melrose and tell him of this new development in their difficulty? The sight of Gopal’s figure, separated from the others and recognisable because of a certain panther-like grace of movement, woke Bundoo’s mind to a sudden fear. Time was so short, he would have to act in this matter alone. As he followed the other across the dark courtyard a plan was maturing rapidly in Bundoo’s mind.
An uneasy dream had been holding Betty. She woke with a start of fear, conscious that something—perhaps it was only the ghost of a breeze—had stirred her chic. Silence followed the sound, but the memory of her dream was sufficient to keep her still afraid. She sat up, holding her breath, and quite distinctly the sound of someone’s measured, quiet breathing came to her ears. The sound that had awakened her had been real then: someone was already in the room, standing in one of the far corners, waiting for her to move. Or perhaps, even now, the unseen intruder was drawing close to her, with hands outstretched, feeling for her body.
The thought brought Betty’s fear to a climax. Her breath came in a half-strangled cry, she struggled to her feet, flattening herself against the wall.
The presence on the other side of the room laughed, a little sneering sound.
“The Miss Sahib knows fear again,” he said; “it seems pride cannot keep her from that.”
His voice, hateful though it was to her ears, yet reassured Betty. He was at least human and tangible. The tenseness of her attitude relaxed, she tried to press the wild beating of her heart to silence with her hands.
“What do you want?” she said. “Why have you come here at this time of night; is it on purpose to frighten me?”
The man struck a match against the wall and lit a small lamp that stood on the floor before he answered.
“It is as well to see each other while we talk,” he said. “Will you not come here and sit opposite me?”
He sat down himself as he spoke, cross-legged, in the circle of light, and his eyes mocked her with some cruelty in store for her and as yet unknown. Betty stirred stiffly, leaving her place by the wall and moving over to the door. It was then that Bundoo, following close on the track of the other man, knew that his fear was right and his search completed. For one of her hands hung down to where a glint of the light reached it, and he could see that it was white.
“What can you have to say to me?” Betty asked.
She kept the fear out of her voice marvellously well, and that fact angered the man. He half closed his eyes, studying her in the way she so much hated.
“Much or little,” he answered. “That is according to how the fancy takes me. And you will have to listen, since escape, even though you have stationed yourself so near the door, is out of the question. There is no one here who would rescue you from me, Miss Sahib. All this time I could have done with you as I chose, and I have held my hand.”
Defiance entered Betty’s heart, ousting fear. Perhaps even then she had only a very vague knowledge of the risk she ran. “You have been most generous,” she said, scorn in the words; “is it my gratitude you have come to ask for at this hour?”
“I ask for nothing,” the man replied. “What I want I shall take. It has been decided that to-morrow you shall die.”
He watched her closely for any sign of terror, but it was only Bundoo who could see how convulsively the small white hand closed on the support of the door-post. Betty’s head was high, she was facing her enemy with all the pride of her race.
“And I shall be revenged,” she said: “my people cannot be far behind me on the road.”
“Will that make death any easier?” he mocked. His eyes held hers, he rose, and came slowly towards her. Bundoo saw the girl shrink back, so that her body nearly touched his through the chic.
“You are young,” Gopal was saying, “you have not yet tasted of life. Is the sound of death pleasant to your ears? Think, Miss Sahib, for a moment. No more gladness, no more soft sleep with limbs wearied out by pleasure, no knowledge to be yours of all the joy that love can give you.”
For a moment Betty’s eyes wavered from his. She was looking beyond him, not seeing the little darkened cell, the circle of light, nor his menacing figure. It was Melrose’s voice that sounded in her ears, his eyes that laughed into hers. “I shall propose, Miss Fulton; the moon makes me sentimental.” “And I promise to say No!” How they had played at Love, knowing him so close to them that sometimes his presence would bring a hushed silence about their mockery. And now it was all finished. They might meet on the other side, for Betty was a firm believer in the faith she had learnt as a child, but there could be no laughter or gay make-believe between souls. And how the heart of her ached for the earthbound love that might have been theirs.
“I shall not be afraid to die,” she forced her lips to whisper. “It will be better than this.” Her eyes came back to his. “Are you going to kill me now?” she asked quite simply.
“No”—he put his hands on hers and laughed as she shuddered and struggled away—“that is for to-morrow. For to-night——”
Bundoo had not understood the conversation, but he could feel the girl’s terror as she pressed against him and he saw the man’s face. The time had come to act. He must put his plan to the test and leave the working out of it to the will of the Gods.
“They see all, and know there is evil in this man’s heart,” he whispered to himself.
The thought gave him courage; he moved abruptly, pulling aside the chic, stepping within the circle of light.
“I come from my Master, the Watcher, who sees all things,” he announced.
The effect of his presence was startling. Gopal knew the ancient rule of the temple, which decrees that those who are about to be sacrificed are sacred to the Gods. He let go his hold of Betty, pushing her from him, and turned to face Bundoo.
“Does the Master send you abroad in the night time, then, to spy on the doings of the humbler servants of the Gods?”
“Nay,” Bundoo answered, “that is not necessary. But ten minutes hence the trance lifted from my Master. He called to me; this is his message: ‘Go, Bundoo, servant of the Watcher, seek out Gopal, priest of the Goddess Kali; tell him the evil in his heart must not be. The Gods have spoken. Does the girl not belong to Mother Kali?’”
To say that Gopal was surprised only half expressed the tumult in his mind. He had long been sceptical as to the Watcher’s powers, deeming them but one of the many tricks by which it is possible for the priests to delude the people. This startling announcement of Bundoo’s was disconcerting. How was it possible that not only his own plans, but those so lately discussed by the priests in the temple, should be known to the Watcher, unless indeed he was gifted by some peculiar power? “The Gods see all,” was a very unpleasant thought. Then the clever brain swung into ascendancy again.
“Take back a message to thy Master,” he answered. “There is no evil in my heart, and as for the girl, I but spoke to her to prepare her for her fate. Or better still,” he moved to the door, “let us both go with all speed to thy Master that I may speak to him myself.”
Bundoo blocked his path. “Nay,” he said. “To-morrow morning, when the people are gathered together, my Master will speak to all, but till then he can hold speech with no man, for the mantle of the Gods is still about him. Because of the inner knowledge that the Gods have given him, he does not trust thy heart, O Gopal, and me has he sent to guard the girl.”
Betty still crouched where the priest had thrown her. They were arguing about her, she guessed, but the end in any case would be the same. Bundoo’s figure, seen in the dim light, his hunched body, his long, unwieldy arms, could scarcely reassure her fear.
“He has great knowledge, the Master,” Gopal spoke vindictively, “and great insolence. One of these days he shall answer to me for this message. Meanwhile, take you the girl to him, and afterwards, when he has told his message to the people, this thing shall be spoken out between us.”
He turned to Betty. “You are to accompany this man,” he said, “to the house of the head priest. It would seem, Miss Sahib, that your beauty has attracted other eyes than mine. I wish you a pleasant journey, even though the end of it is death.”
With that he brushed past Bundoo out of the door.
Bundoo satisfied himself as to the reality of the other’s retreat before he made any attempt to reassure Betty. The early light of dawn was in the sky outside, Gopal’s figure was easily discernible striding across the temple square. He skirted the Watcher’s cell without even as much as glancing aside. Good! Bundoo withdrew his head, he had held the chic a little aside to peer out, and glanced at Betty. The girl had crouched still lower down, her face hidden in her arms, but otherwise she was very quiet, you would hardly have known she was alive.
With a little crooning sound of sympathy and affection, Bundoo crept closer, close enough to lay one soft brown hand on her arm. With the other he felt about in his clothes and produced Melrose’s note, laying it on the ground beside the lamp. Perhaps the touch of his hand, fingers that had so often shown love and pity to the poor weak things of Nature, brought some sense of safety to Betty’s mind. She raised her head, and her eyes fell on the scrap of paper with just her name scrawled across it, in a handwriting that brought all the blood of her body suddenly to her heart.
In a bygone age perhaps we stood,
Brothers in heart and brothers in blood.
Or perhaps, in the dim past hidden away,
I loved you indeed as a woman may.
The Gods are silent! And who shall tell?
But have I not proved that I loved you well?
“Betty!”
“Dick, oh, Dick!”
Pretence and convention fell away from them in that moment. They only realised that they were together again and that they loved each other. Just for a second, Betty had stood hesitating at the door, half afraid, thinking that perhaps the message in her hand was only a trap, and then he had called to her and she had run to him, straight to his arms, holding herself against him in a sudden paroxysm of tears. Melrose had not meant to speak to her of love, not yet, with danger so close to them and pressing in on every side, yet his first words had been of that, while her small hands clung to him, her hair brushed his lips.
“Betty, don’t cry, dear; you are safe now. I love you. Have you known that all the time? I love you.”
And then, somehow, his lips had found hers and they had clung together, heedless, like ordinary lovers, of their surroundings, conscious only of the joy that lay in each other’s presence.
It was Bundoo who roused them from their happiness. He had stood rather wistfully on the outskirts, watching the meeting. This, then, was the love of man for woman, of woman for man. It was something that could never touch his life, he would always have to rest content with the love that found satisfaction in service. And of that much remained to be done. He twitched at Melrose’s sleeve.
“Lord,” he urged, “day is at hand and before light breaks we must be gone, if the Miss Sahib is to be saved and we ourselves escape destruction.”
Briefly, once Melrose’s attention was attracted, he detailed the events of the night, explaining how the memory had been with him of the old passage through the priests’ crypt, and of how he had gone in search of it. Then he told of the priests’ coming, and of how he had overheard their plans.
“There was short time to think, lord, I had to act quickly. Had I come back to ask thy help, so much time would have been wasted. There is only this way open for thyself and the woman that thou lovest, and it lies on so slender a reed as my weak memory. Yet I see no other road, for I spoke to that man who is our enemy when I found him with the Miss Sahib, making pretence that I came with a message from my Master. The trance had lifted, I said, this day thou art to speak to the people. Within an hour he will have gathered the priests together to lead thee with all ceremony to the temple.”
“That man was with you?” Melrose turned to Betty; he could account now for the tumult of fear that had shaken her as she stood in his arms. “Was he trying to frighten you, Betty, did he hurt you in any way?”
Betty shook her head. “Frighten me, yes,” she admitted, “he has always done that from the first.”
“You haven’t understood, of course, what Bundoo has been saying,” Melrose went on. “Betty, it comes to this. We have got to make a fight for it, dear, or rather, we have got to run away. They would certainly slaughter me if they caught me in this rig-out. Bundoo knows a way, an old passage that leads underground from the temple. It is a risk, but we have got to take it, and now, before it gets any lighter. Betty, I haven’t any time to say all that I meant to say to you, but I would give my life for yours, dear, gladly, and I think you know it. Only I would rather save both, so that there can be an afterwards for us. You are game to take this risk, aren’t you, Betty?”
“Why, of course,” she answered. She stood with both hands in his. “But there is Ruth,” she said suddenly. “We ought to try and do something for her; we can’t leave her.”
Bundoo had moved to the door, he was peering out, distrust and anxiety on his face. How was it that he did not see the other waiting figure that crouched against the wall outside?
“We can’t, dear,” Melrose was saying. “I have got you to think of, and there is Bundoo. He has risked a lot to help us. Besides, she isn’t in any danger. Bundoo says they spoke of her yesterday as one of themselves.”
She did not try to argue any more, and Bundoo had already stepped outside, he was looking back at them anxiously. There was nothing to do but follow.
The hour favoured their going, for there was no one about to be curious as to their presence or destination. Bundoo led the way, eagerly and perhaps rather carelessly, so intent was he on reaching the goal, and Melrose and Betty followed, the former still enveloped in his white shroud, and Betty too immersed in her own thoughts to take much notice of their surroundings. Once more, therefore, the moving shadow of Gopal’s figure passed unnoticed. He slipped quickly from his hiding-place and hurried in pursuit. Not straight across the courtyard, but deviously; even if they had looked behind them they would probably have seen nothing.
Just as they reached the temple steps Melrose put out a hand and pulled Betty to him. Ahead of them Bundoo had come to a pause, giving a little impatient sound of annoyance. The danger in front of them was one that he might have foreseen had he paused to think of it. The guardian of the shrine sat hunched up on his heels at the temple door, not looking at them, luckily, but watching with idle curiosity for the first rays of the sun to break across the walls of the fortress that faced east.
For a second Bundoo hesitated and Betty heard Melrose breathing a little fast. Then the little man looked back at them, whispering something to Melrose, which made the latter tighten his grip of her hand for one second before he let her go and pushed her, almost, away from him. Bundoo had gone forward, he bent over the man in the doorway, talking to him briefly and authoritatively. Betty stole a glance at Melrose; he was standing stiffly, all hidden in the shroud that fell over his head and face.
The man on the steps rose and stared towards them, then he looked again at Bundoo and the other explained something further. The man nodded and stood aside, salaaming as Melrose passed through the door, though he straightened himself to look very scornfully at Betty as she followed.
Melrose had waited for her just within the shrine and, hand in hand, they crept after Bundoo, round the bulk of the grim-looking idol into the little recess at the back.
The following shadow paused to speak to the watchman on his way in.
“Our holy one, the Watcher, is early astir,” he remarked.
“Aye,” the other agreed, “his servant bade me say that he communed with the Gods and must not be disturbed.”
Gopal smiled. Indeed, he would see that they were not disturbed. He could have laughed aloud as he stood there, under the great hideous idol of his creed, thinking of those three whom he hated so eagerly making their way into a trap.
Inside Bundoo was already on his knees, groping at the stone in the floor, his small lamp once more in use beside him. For here, as yet, dawn had not penetrated, the shadows gathered very thick round the circle of light.
“Were you frightened?” Melrose whispered to Betty. “I could have strangled that man for tuppence. It is a gloomy sort of place, this”—he was talking to distract her thoughts—“but let’s hope it leads to safety. Is the way open, Bundoo?”
“Aye, lord.” The little man stood up, the weight of his small body against the stone. “The road is clear. Go thou first, the Miss Sahib shall follow, and I come last.”
It was just in that pause, as she took a final look round with a little shiver of distrust at the way she had to take, that Betty saw, or fancied she saw, a shadow more tangible than the rest, moving in one of the corners of the room.
“Dick,” she called quickly, bending over him as he groped his way down the steps, “someone is looking at us, watching us from the shadows. I am sure I saw eyes.”
He looked back at her, the shroud thrown from off his face, the light of the lamp he held above his head shining on hair and eyes. “Your nerves are jumpy, dear,” he said, “and no wonder. Just set your teeth and follow me; I somehow feel there is safety ahead of us.”
She still hesitated, looking at Bundoo, but he signed to her to make haste, and shivering again with some presentiment of evil she took the first step down.
It was like Alice in Wonderland, she thought, with that ridiculous disregard of seriousness which our thoughts will sometimes adopt even in the most tragic circumstances. Down, down, down; the steps were narrow and steep, the sides of the wall were unpleasantly cool and smooth to touch. The lamp Melrose carried flickered and jumped, casting strange shadows across his face when he turned to look at her.
“Are you all right?” he asked the first time; “not afraid?”
And then, “Is Bundoo behind us? How is he managing the stone?”
Betty paused to look back, but beyond her was all dark shadow, with a faint touch of vagueness where she supposed the opening must be.
“He isn’t close behind,” she answered, “at least, I can’t see him.”
“It will be too heavy for him,” Melrose said. “I ought to have thought of that. Never mind, I believe I have touched bottom. Anyway, there is room for you to stand and I’ll get past you, back, and see if I can help him.”
“You won’t leave me alone down here,” she was just about to say, when suddenly a crashing sound hurtled about their ears and set echoes vibrating from all around. There was a momentary pause, and then a slower, deeper crunch as the stone settled into its place.
They were level with each other by then, and frantically Betty clung to Melrose.
“It is all right,” he tried to reassure her. “Why, Betty, this is only the start of our adventures. I don’t suppose the thing made half so much noise outside.”
“Didn’t you hear anything else?” she whispered. “Didn’t you hear his voice calling to you? I couldn’t catch the words, but I know that he was afraid, horribly afraid.”
Melrose put her aside and holding up the lamp peered up the stairs.
“I don’t see him,” he said, “perhaps something has happened. Wait here, Betty, I’ll go back and see.”
But there was nothing for him to find. Gopal had leapt on Bundoo, swinging the little man aside just as he was about to follow the others down the steps. Bundoo’s frame could offer no resistance to the other’s strength, a hand across his mouth smothered all sound. The two of them had swayed together thus for a brief moment and then, with a sudden output of strength, Gopal had thrown Bundoo from him and with a very grim humour had set to work to wrench the stone back in position. It was then that a terrible knowledge dawned in Bundoo’s heart. There could be no way of escape from the crypt. He could account for the other man’s action by no other means. All else was forgotten; with almost superhuman agility Bundoo sprang forward and flung himself beneath the falling stone.
“Lord, lord,” he cried—it was the last piteous outpouring of his heart that reached to Betty’s ears—“I have led you to death! There is no passage there!”
The stone fell, bringing a sudden hush to his life, and Gopal leant forward to drag the mangled body aside.
That was the pause that Betty and Melrose had heard, but of all this there was nothing for Melrose to see when he had groped his way back to the top step. As he stood there, however, staring at the shut stone, something wet and still warm trickled through a crack at the side of the opening and splashed down on to his hand. It smeared red against his clothes and suddenly he knew what must have occurred. Betty had been right when she said she had seen someone watching. The spy must have waited until Bundoo was alone, and then perhaps Bundoo had caught sight of him, too late to give any warning, but not too late to swing the stone back into place. Then they had struggled, and one or both of them had been killed. But in dying Bundoo had probably accounted for the spy; otherwise, how was it that the stone remained fast, that no attempt was being made to follow them?
The more need for haste, however, Melrose decided, he must get back to Betty at once and hurry on to find the passage. There was nothing more to be done for Bundoo; it was not exactly deserting a comrade in his need. Yet Melrose paused before he turned back, to look once more at the stone with its slow, widening patch of red. He would have liked to have avenged Bundoo, the little man who had loved all things and who had given his services so willingly for those he loved.
Perhaps the soul of Bundoo the Server took comfort from such knowledge as it sped outwards into the unknown.
Out of the dark days of the past
I saw your spirit rise.
Beautiful body, and hard, cold soul,
That hid ’neath the lure of your eyes.
Yet who is to blame for this wrong you have brought?
You? Or the Gods, for the plan that they wrought?
The crowd had gathered in good time outside the temple walls. There was a spirit of uneasiness abroad; vague rumours, that came from none knew where, blowing about the bazaar, whispering of defeat, of the death of the Maharajah, of the homeward flight of the army. The women wailed with the dread certainty of disaster, and all night there had been crowds watching on the city wall, gazing out southwards along the road their men had taken.
As the old priest had foretold, the summons to the temple did to a certain extent distract strained nerves. There was much whispering and wondering among the crowd. Among other things, it was known that the Watcher had risen from his trance and would speak to the people that day; and then there was a rumour abroad that the old Maharanee and the new witch-wife of the Prince would be present at the ceremony, the latter to do homage, for the first time, to the Gods of her husband’s faith.
“Amata will have it that she is merely a woman like the rest of us,” one old crony, the proud possessor of a daughter who acted as body-servant to the new Maharanee, held forth. “There is no witchery about it, so says Amata; the woman is good to look at, with soft-rounded limbs and skin like the leaves of the lotus lily. ’Tis the ordinary magic of man’s desire for woman that holds the Prince.”
She cackled, gazing round at her attentive listeners, recalling the various scandals which even her small circle could produce on account of this same magic.
The other woman nodded. “Men always deem it magic when it leads them into sin,” one, a very young bride of hardly sixteen, volunteered.
“’Tis but a means of making us pay the piper,” assented the old lady. “How came Baghoo to lose her nose the summer before last?”
The young girls of the party tittered and she favoured them with a sharp glance.
“Is it matter for mirth, oh, shameless ones? Did she not use magic, at least so her husband held, to lure unto her the love of young Mogul, the blameless youth, who every day drove his cattle past her door? Look you well to it that no such powers come suddenly to you.”
“And is it not magic?” An old man, standing on the outskirts of the crowd of women, spoke quietly. “When it makes a man forget all things to follow the desire of his heart.”
“Aye, the magic of love,” retorted Amata’s mother; “for which the women always pay.”
The old man leant a little harder on his stick, without which it was useless for him these days to try and drag his limbs about.
“Not always, O Mother Gunda,” he answered. “Your mouth talks foolishness. Baghoo may lose her nose, as you have said, but what of Mogul, who loses his honour.”
“Men’s honour!”
The youngest lady present was about to volunteer some more of her knowledge, when her eyes were attracted by a stir in the crowd at the furthest temple gate which opened direct into the Palace. “Look, Mother Gunda! Look, Mogri and Bawan! See, where the white witch comes! Will she draw her curtains, Mother? Shall we see her?”
“Whoever heard the like of such a question,” grumbled Gunda. “The veil must cover her face as she stands before us, foolish one. Her beauty is for her husband’s eyes alone. A good custom,” she stole a sly glance at her male opponent, “else would there be still more magic worked, and still more war waged.”
War! The word brought back the night’s anxiety to the women. They shivered, glancing at each other uneasily, looking out beyond the temple walls to where the white road ran.
Meanwhile the litters of the royal ladies pushed their way through the crowd and were set down at the main entrance to the shrine. It was all so theatrical, Ruth thought to herself, and absurd into the bargain. She did not intend to take to-day’s ceremonies at all earnestly. She had agreed to be present, only because the monotony of life in the harem was beginning to bore her. As to paying homage to some ridiculous deity, as Nadina, in translating the old Maharanee’s words, had explained, that was out of the question. But since this deity merely took the form of a grotesquely painted idol, the idea had not even required to be negatived.
Ruth had been summoned to the old Maharanee’s presence early that morning, and had found Sujata in a state of intense agitation. Yet, with the obstinacy of the old, the native woman still clung to the belief that all was not yet lost. When they had whispered to her of flight to the mountains she had waved the advice aside with a firm determination to ignore any possibility of defeat.
“Said you not that the Gods were on our side?” she had asked, blinking with her feeble, yet keen, eyes on her councillors. “How then shall we fail? Perhaps Mother Kali is angered at the disbeliever who reigns as my grandson’s wife. This very day shall the matter be set right.”
So she had sent for Ruth, and the girl had come, superbly beautiful, decked out with all the famous Bhogmore jewels. It was this attitude of lazy self-confidence that caused Sujata to refrain from any mention of the rumours of defeat to Ruth. She contented herself by saying, through Nadina, that the priests of the temple held it unseemly that a wife of a Prince of their blood should remain an outcast to their religion. There was to be a big festival to Mother Kali, and Sujata had agreed that her grand-daughter-in-law should be present.
Ruth listened to the translated harangue, making no attempt to conceal her indifference. She fidgeted idly with her bracelets, great perfect pearls set in circles of gold.
“Tell her,” she said, “that I will come. The long days here bore me. There is nothing to do and no one to talk to.”
“You will make obeisance to our Gods!” flamed Nadina; there were times when even discretion could not make her hide her scorn. “Have you white women no pride?”
Ruth watched her with amused eyes. “My pride consists in doing what I please, in the manner that best pleases me. As for your Gods, and doing obeisance—what quaint long words you use!—I don’t happen to believe in them and I do not fancy they can do my soul much harm.”
“Women like you have no soul,” commented Nadina. She turned to her grandmother. “The white woman will come, O Maharanee! is she not ready to renounce all things if she but secure safety for her body?”
The old lady nodded grimly. “She shows wisdom,” she said; “a thing, Nadina, that thou hast always lacked, being both hot of heart and head.”
So Ruth had allowed herself to be decked out in the robes of state reserved for these religious festivals, and with two women to hold the end of the veil that covered her face, and a servant to go before, she stepped out of her palanquin at the gateway of the shrine.
Within the sanctum all was confusion. The knowledge of dire events was written on the priests’ faces. A message had just come through from the outer walls that a remnant of the stricken army was already at the gates. The enemy would doubtless be in close pursuit. Then there was Gopal’s disturbing news, for Gopal had taken care not to miss this opportunity of damaging his rival’s reputation. His knowledge of Melrose’s identity he had concealed. Bundoo was dead, and there was no one, therefore, to deny Gopal’s story of how he had discovered the Watcher’s shameful treachery too late to prevent the other escaping with the white girl.
How were the people to be told these facts? How was Mother Kali to be appeased for the sacrifice of which she had been cheated? No wonder the priests were grave. The crowd outside were murmuring, they were calling for their Holy Man to come out and give them the message from the Gods.
Ruth, of course, could not understand the consultation which ensued between the head priests and the Maharanee’s party, but she could see the alarm visible on every face and it amused her not a little to think that it was probably due to the news of the English advance. This absurd farce, in which she had been forced to take a hand, was nearing the end. She could congratulate herself upon having escaped so far unscathed from a dangerous and difficult position.
And even while the leaders communed together, the crowd took matters into its own hand. Someone had carried the news from the walls hot-foot into the bazaar. “Defeat, defeat!” He had cried it as he ran, the sound echoing about the deserted houses and wailing along the empty streets. “Defeat, defeat! Our Maharajah is killed, our men will never come home! Defeat, defeat!”
The words threw themselves against the outskirts of the waiting crowd and ran like a fire to its very heart. Women shrieked, and turning, fought to find their way out to the walls. Men called the news to each other with terror in their voices. And then swiftly, as is the way with a crowd, its temper changed, swinging from blind fear to sullen rage. They swarmed against the temple walls.
“Give us the white woman,” they yelled. “She who has brought all this upon us. Sacrifice her to Kali, that the anger of the Gods may be appeased.”
Nadina drew close to Ruth, where the other stood aloof and scornful, in the midst of all the tumult.
“Can you hear their words, my sister?” she asked. “They call for you, the people. ‘Give her to us,’ they say, over and over again, ‘that we may kill her.’”
Ruth looked down at her, she was taller than the native girl. “Well,” she said, “why am I not given?”
Nadina shrugged sharp shoulders. “Who knows?” she said. “Perhaps the priests are afraid. They think my brother is still alive.”
Ruth took a step or two forward. The figure of the idol had been carried to the entrance of the door; by just standing on tiptoe she could peer over the base on which the image stood. There was a flat platform on this, where the priests were supposed to stand when addressing the people. Ruth was no coward, and above all things she loved excitement and posing as the heroine of thrilling events. A quick impulse came to her. She glanced behind her, but no one was paying any attention to her movements, her waiting-maids had cowered away, their faces hidden, and Nadina had gone back to the old Maharanee. Before anyone could have guessed Ruth’s intention, she had slipped under the idol’s arms and out into the open.
There, for a second, she paused, a close-veiled figure, and the nearest people in the crowd, taken aback by this sudden apparition, pressed back upon their fellows, clearing the steps before her. A hush fell upon them; they watched, with stupefied amazement, while, with superb confidence in the power of her beauty, Ruth let the veil fall from off her shoulders and stood out before them—such a sight as surely their eyes had never seen before, the grim ugliness of the idol but adding to the wonder of her face and jewels.
“She stands in Mother Kali’s arms,” a man whispered hoarsely. “’Tis an omen, brothers. The Gods have taken her under their protection.”
Ruth might have brought the men to this belief, mesmerised by her beauty. Not so the women. For a little there was hesitation, then the cry swept forward again.
“She is Kali’s! Give her to Kali! Let blood flow that our guilt may be washed away.”
A little dismayed by the recurring clamour, which she could see augured no good for her, Ruth drew back within the circle of the Goddess’ embrace; and even as she did so, her contemptuous words of the morning came back to her mind. What then did she believe in? And if death was going to close down on her, where was the faith to which she could cling while her soul faced the darkness of eternity? She had always hated that word, eternity! Sometimes, as a child, the sound had terrified her; but since she had grown up she had been able to dismiss the fear contemptuously. But now she was afraid again, and the dark, lowering image of a creed she had been content to set aside as ridiculous seemed to add horribly to her fear. It might be as grotesque as the legends that clung round it, but it was symbolical of the eternal idea. God! One grew frightened of God, and other people’s beliefs, when one stood like this, on the edge of death!
The murmur came from behind her now as well as from in front. The priests, with Nadina to lead them on, would not let their desire to save her interfere with their own safety. Whom could she turn to? Where find one friendly face? Channa! If only Channa were here.
Her eyes, seeking for safety, caught sight of a grave, stern-faced figure, moving towards her through the crowd. The people, she noticed, fell aside to let him pass. She seemed to remember the man, his grey face, his cold, unreadable eyes! How that evening in the gardens at Bhogmore, and Channa’s warm, passionate kisses, came back to mock her memory! The Holy Man of the Tree! He had tracked her down then; he was going to exact vengeance for the unfaithfulness he had watched!
To her surprise, as he gained the plinth of the idol beside her, he turned round to face the people again. A sigh shook the crowd; they surged towards him, laying their hysterical anger and grief before him, waiting for his guidance to show them some way out of their perplexities.
Astonishment held the priests too; they crowded through the opening. What of Gopal’s story, since here was the Watcher, calm and unmoved, as if no such tale of deceit stood at his door?
With strange, pity-held eyes the Watcher, who saw all things for the Gods, looked out over the heads of the people. Had they not paid in blood, would they not still further pay in tears, for a sin not of their seeking, for a passion in which they had had no part? The Gods know naught of pity or remorse. Does it matter to them if men live or die? Is the life of an insect of very much value to a man?” Take this path, and ye live; take that, and ye perish.” So speak the Gods; indifferent as to which road man may choose; not swerving from their law one atom, though myriad lives may have to pay the cost.
So thought the Watcher; but of all this he spake nothing to the people. For how should they understand? Poor little souls that run together like sheep; that pray to the rocks for shelter, and lay their offerings on the fire that most destroys.
“The Gods have spoken,” he said; “and toll is taken of thy dead. The army of the white men is already without the city’s walls. Listen now, O ye people! There is no quarrel ’twixt thee and the white man. Get ye back to your homes, make ready the funeral pyres! O women! Go ye out into the plain and carry back your dead. These are my words. Hear! Know! And obey!”
He turned to the staring, puzzled crowd in the doorway. The Maharanee Sujata had pushed her way to the front.
“Greeting, O Maharanee!” he said. “Has the blood run red enough to please thy heart, since last we met?”
She wrinkled her fierce old face at him. “Thou teachest treason, O Holy One,” she said. “While I live there shall be no surrender to the white people. Are there not strong hands still within these walls?”
“Thou speakest of death easily, who art already old,” he answered, “yet it is the young who have died, O Maharanee!” His voice grew suddenly stern. “Thy brother has been slain; thy grandson lies at death’s door.”
She did not shrink from him. “Better death than dishonour.” He let his eyes rest on hers. “And they have died,” he said. “Get thee back to thy chamber, O queen, to-night thy ears shall be gladdened by the sound of the women who wail because of thy pride.”
He turned away from her, towards the people. “Choose ye a leader,” he said. “Let him go forth to the white man’s camp. The people are satisfied, let him say, they pray for peace.”
“Thou shalt plead for us,” the people murmured; “thou, O Watcher, beloved of the Gods!”
He turned again to look at Ruth. She had gathered her veil round her, something had made her wish to hide her splendour, even her beauty, of which she was so proud, from his eyes. Very quietly he put out his hand and laid it on hers.
“That cannot be,” he said, “for I have still other work that must be done.”
He stepped from the plinth, leading Ruth with him, and once more the crowd made way to let him pass. Straight through the courtyard he went and out by the North gateway. None spoke or murmured at their going; none even seemed to wonder. As he had come, unnoticed and unannounced, so he went, and Ruth went with him, the fear in her heart turned to a sudden knowledge.
His was the symbolical figure of vengeance; he was leading her surely to Death.
You, who had no faith to give me,
Taste the sword’s sharp breath!
You, who could not love or leave me,
Learn from me of death!
So to the darkness do I turn for grace;
And follow after where I see your face.
Before they had gone very far the terror lifted from Ruth’s heart. She possessed more than her share of the hardness in human nature that is sometimes called common sense. Symbols and ideals meant very little to her. She had known fear, and she was angry with herself for the effect she had allowed it to produce. How ridiculous to have thought of this dirty-looking beggar as of someone that typified vengeance and death! If he had meant her to be killed, common sense argued, he would have stood aside and watched the people work their will. Since he had saved her he must either be taking her as a guarantee of his good faith to the English, or leading her even to Channa. Well, there was nothing to be afraid of in that; she would be perfectly safe in either case.
Her guide led her swiftly; he did not speak, nor did he even turn to look at her again. Through her veil she could study his face, set and rigid, with eyes that looked neither to the right nor to the left, but always straight ahead. The returned soldiers were streaming into the bazaar, bearing witness, by their blood-stained rags and haggard faces, to the fierceness of the fight they had been through. The Watcher paid no attention to them, nor did they pause to wonder at his presence and the strangeness of his companion. Like one who has a mission that can brook no delay, he passed through their midst and out of the town’s gates.
Here he swerved from the direct road, taking instead a little devious path that wound its way slowly to the plain; twisting round the great boulders that blocked its way, turning now to the right, now to the left. There was not room for two to walk abreast here, and the Watcher signed to Ruth to precede him along the narrow passage. She could not mistake the direction that had to be taken, the little ribbon of flattened-out dust ran its course unmistakably, and, following it, she found that they were skirting the walls of the fortress, away from the white road, round to the other side, where they would face the mountains and the North. Now the path became only a goat track, and on one side she looked down over a precipice, and on the other straight up to the bare walls of the fortress, that seemed to sit like a crown on the summit of the hill.
Ruth was tired, and the sun, reflected on this shadowless, rough slope, was overpowering. She pushed the veil aside from her face and tried to make it into a shield for her head. Where was this tiresome old man taking her, and how much longer would he expect her to bruise her feet along this stony path? For Ruth wore the useless native women’s slippers; they were heelless and flapped as she walked, making them quite inadequate for any lengthy progress. Once she paused to look back at him, meditating some appeal to his sympathy, but he merely waved her forward and the expression on his face did not encourage any resistance.
For about a mile, it seemed to Ruth, they stumbled along, deviating very little from the level they had gained when they had turned the bend of the fortress wall, and then, abruptly, the track ended. A small open plateau of ground lay before her; so small, that it barely yielded room for the roots of a magnificent tree that stood there, growing like a giant among the stunted undergrowth that clothed the rest of the hill. Just free from the shadow cast by its great branches stood a small hut, built close in, against the side of a rock, and built between its outspreading roots was a small temple. The lowest branches that bent above the shrine were decorated with flags and streamers of coloured cloth, showing that the temple was a place of pilgrimage to the surrounding country.
There was a pony tied to one of the posts of the hut and Ruth had just time to notice its air of extreme exhaustion, and that part of its white coat seemed to be smeared with blood, when the Watcher, stepping before her, threw open the door of the hut and signed to her to enter.
Ruth had made up her mind as to whom she would find within, yet, as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light of the place, and she could make out Channa’s face, she drew back with a movement of fear. There was such agony written on the man’s face, and every breath came almost in a moan of pain.
Ruth glanced behind her, but the Watcher had not followed; he stood just outside, a sentinel, as it were, at the door. Common sense came to Ruth’s aid once more. Here was nothing that could hurt her, only a man who looked as if he might be dying and who was certainly in very great pain. She moved forward quickly, throwing aside her veil.
“Channa,” she whispered; her voice sounded as he had so often heard it in his dreams, “you are wounded, hurt? How did it happen, who brought you here?”
He struggled to sit up, clutching at her hands with feverish strength, staring at her with wild, piteous eyes.
“My Queen,” he said hoarsely; he was speaking his own language, she could not understand the words. “Hold me close; lift me into thine arms, beloved; lay me against thy heart.”
It occurred to Ruth that he was mad, delirious, perhaps, with the fever and pain. She must humour him, keep him quiet; his hands had still strength enough to hurt her.
“Don’t you know me, Channa?” she asked. “You are frightening me, with your strange, wild talk.”
The man fought to throw back the madness that was fast overpowering his brain, her presence brought with it a certain soothing power. He let go her hands and lay back, his lips formed the sound of her name.
“Ruth,” he said, “Ruth.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is Ruth. Didn’t you recognise me, Channa? It is these clothes, I expect.”
“You wear them for me,” he panted, “as my wife.”
“Of course,” Ruth answered. She moved the hair back from his face and the pearl bangles tinkled on her arm with the movement. “Where are you hurt, Channa? Let me see if I can do something to ease the pain.”
He stirred, turning his head away from her hands. Madness was creeping up again and Dattaka’s face seemed to watch him from the shadows, a mocking face, that merged and melted into a hundred others: Sir Henry, Lady Daring, the dead soldiers that rolled and tumbled in the river of the pass, the men, whom he had passed yesterday, lying in such grotesque attitudes on the edge of the battlefield.
“There is blood between us,” Ruth heard him muttering. “Does it soil the hem of your clothes, Ruth, or reach to your hands?”
It was really rather gruesome. Ruth shivered, but at the same time she could see that he was talking quite at random.
“Show me where you are hurt,” she repeated. “I am not silly, Channa, I shall not faint at the sight of blood.”
He turned to stare at her, raising himself a little from the ground.
“What matters the hurt?” he asked. “Ruth, put your face down close to mine, that I may see it and feel it. All that I have done has been for you. I do not regret one deed. For you are mine now, they have not been able to keep you from me. Do you see in the corner over there, how the faces of the dead have gathered together to upbraid me? And I—I hold you in my arms and laugh. Let them hear how I laugh.”
He drew himself close against her, and the forced mirth that shook him was horrible to hear. Ruth was terrified. Instinct prompted her to struggle free, to run from the hut; he was too weak to follow her, and the anger of the priests and people would be better than this. But the figure of the Watcher stood grimly on guard outside and again she realised that her best hope of safety lay in soothing Channa to a quiet acceptance of her presence. She turned her face towards him, pressing her lips against his.
“Hush, hush,” she whispered. “You torment yourself, Channa. What does anything matter, since we are together?”
Her face shut out those other cruel faces. With a sigh Channa layback against her shoulder, his hands picking at the covering that had been thrown across his legs.
“It has all turned out so hideously,” he said. To her relief his voice sounded quite rational again. “Where was the first false step? I have loved you, Ruth, ever since I was a child. Did you know that? And sometimes the desire for you ran like a wild beast through my blood. But if things had been different; if you—” he choked back the disloyal thought. “No, it was not you, it was your people. Those other white men and women to whom the colour of my skin meant such a barrier.”
He wrenched himself free from her, answering those other accusing faces in the corner.
“We—we only loved. But you came between us, with your accursed laws of caste and race. She was mine, could you not understand? Love was too strong a force for you to stem.”
A sudden suspicion came to him, he turned to Ruth.
“Have you ever loved me?” he asked. “That night in the garden, were you only playing some game?”
“Of course I loved you,” Ruth answered. “Have I not married you?”
He smiled a little strangely, and let himself fall back; lying, staring up at the low roof of the hut.
“I was never sure,” he said. “I thought perhaps we had frightened you into submission. But I did not care. I should have killed you that night if you had tried to fight me, if you had shown me that you did not love. But you stood before me, and your eyes were wonderful, the beauty of your face was like a dream. ‘When you come back,’ you said. Do you remember? Ruth,” he twisted himself round to look at her, “I have come back. Now listen, you shall hear the truth. I am not mad any more, you need not be afraid to meet my eyes. Last night we, my uncle’s troops and that poor scattered remnant of the army that was mine, met the English sent out to rescue you. We were defeated, there was nothing else to expect, was there? To-day your soldiers will camp in the shadow of these walls, and if I am found alive I shall be given over to be shot or hanged as a rebel. That is my fate; and yours? You will go back to your own people and you will marry Pentland.”
He put his face close to hers, his breath was hot on her lips. Ruth sat stiffly, staring at him, mesmerised by his eyes.
“If you cared enough, Ruth, if you really loved, there is another way. We could escape, you and I. There are the mountains and a country beyond, where the soldiers will not follow. Ruth, if you cared!”
He was putting her to the test, she knew. Her life might depend on the answer. One more lie then! Surely she could be strong enough for that, she had lied to him so often before. And even then there was another side to her impulse. His eyes, alight with such a poor mad hope, touched on something that was almost pity. She wanted to comfort him, to let him die believing in her good faith.
“Of course I care,” she said. “Take me with you, Channa. Let us find new life on the other side.”
The Watcher had stood for some time staring at something across the plain, his hands shading his eyes. He turned at this moment, throwing wide the door.
“The time has come, O Prince!” he cried. “The end of the journey is at hand.”
Ruth saw beyond him to the plains, and the sight that met her eyes there brought the blood suddenly to her cheeks. She stood erect, hands clasped, eyes eager in their survey. The English force had surrounded the fortress, it lay spread out on the plain. Ruth could not keep the eagerness from her feet as she moved quickly to the door.
The Watcher stood aside to let her pass. He did not move, even when Channa struggled to his feet. Only, as the Prince came level with him, he searched among his garments and held forth, handle outwards, a long, thin-bladed knife.
“The end of the journey is in sight,” he repeated.
Channa stumbled past him, out into the open. Perhaps Ruth heard him coming, perhaps it was only instinct that made her turn. Anyway, she faced him, and the gladness, the triumph, mixed with half-pitying contempt in her eyes, was unmistakable. He held himself strangely erect; she did not notice what he carried in the hand that hung at his side, for her eyes were caught by the red stain so rapidly widening on his clothes.
“Ruth,” he said hoarsely. “The road to the mountains! The world beyond! You meant what you said, you are ready to come?”
She almost laughed. Common sense was uppermost again, it had banished compassion just as it had dismissed fear. She turned from him, looking towards the moving columns of men in the plain, and her lips smiled.
It was then that the last cloud of madness swept over Channa’s brain. The knife that he held seemed a living force, or were there other hands than his to guide it—Dattaka’s old, desperate fingers, and the hands of the men who had died because of her. Just once he struck, and the blade went home. Without a sound, with her lips still faintly smiling, Ruth turned towards Channa and fell, her outstretched hands touching the stone of the shrine, as if she lay stretched out in supplication.
Over her dead body Channa stared at the faces that haunted him. Were they satisfied now, appeased? He swayed where he stood, for already the mists of death were creeping between him and reality, blotting out even his dreams.
“The mountains,” he whispered, “the world beyond! Ruth! Ruth!”
He lurched forward and fell across her, his hands found and held hers. Very slowly the blood from the little wound above her heart trickled down to blend with the great pool that surged from his.
Silent as a statue, the Watcher had stood while the tragedy was enacted; grimly he turned away. Justice had been wrought, the end of the journey had been reached.
The dead man’s soul has wandered far,
The dead man’s voice speaks clear.
What calls him back to his earthly home?
(Brothers, we shake with fear!)
Hide what we can of our evil deeds,
All must be told if the dead man needs!
That evening a terrific thunderstorm crept from behind the mountains of the north and burst over the fortress of Sarsuti. The rain fell in torrents, splashing against walls and roofs; the thunder roared, and lightning flashed like the swords of giants at war. It was the storm heralding the yearly rains, and in ordinary times the residents of Sarsuti would have welcomed it with rejoicing. For the country round was parched and dried up with the glare of continuous sunshine. But to-night the thunder spoke to the people with a different voice. It seemed to shriek aloud the wrath of Kali, cheated of her prey. For had she not been cheated, and had not defeat and punishment descended on the people? Already the English soldiers were in possession of the fortress; a few of the leaders had been brought back captive, the rest had been killed, and great wailing ran about the streets.
Sarsuti had fallen without a struggle. There had been no need to use the guns. Major Alston had found the place ready to capitulate, he had marched in and taken possession. But of the white people, whom he had been sent out to save, not one could be found. To that extent his mission appeared to have been a failure. Questions proved unavailing, threats fell on submissive ears, but produced no result; wherever he turned—except in the case of the old Maharanee, and there he met superb defiance—it was to be greeted with absolute ignorance. Then, just as Major Alston was about to give up all hope, the mysterious holy man appeared on the scene of action again and volunteered information.
He told his tale simply, without any excuse. The Prince and the white woman were dead. The justice of the Gods had been fulfilled. Not that the native officer who acted as interpreter thought it necessary to translate his news in exactly those words. The meaning of it he made as plain and polite as possible.
“I can’t make head or tale of the business,” Major Alston sighed at the end; “but it seems to me as if we had arrived too late to do very much good. Is that so?”
“It would appear so,” the man answered gravely. He spoke a few words to the Watcher and then turned again to Major Alston. “He says, sir, that of the two English girls, one is still alive, together with the Englishman who came here to rescue her, but that their present position is unknown to everyone except a priest of the temple and he refuses to divulge it. The holy man says that, with your permission, he is willing to put this man to the test and thus find out the knowledge.”
“The test,” repeated Alston. “He is not suggesting thumb-screws or other forms of light-hearted torture, is he?”
The officer smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “It is a belief among the people,” he explained, “that this man is able to see into the hearts of others. You would call it, I suppose, thought reading.”
“Well, let him do a bit of thought reading, by all means,” agreed Alston.
Of course Pentland’s advice—probably in face of the news just gleaned he would have insisted on it—would have been to take the holy man out and shoot him forthwith, as having been, in some direct way, responsible for what had occurred. But Pentland’s stormy, strenuous fight was over, he had been killed by a stray shot from an ancient Afghan rifle the night before. Alston was free, therefore, to follow his own instincts. There had been enough killing done on both sides; besides, the man’s face, with its almost regal dignity, did not fit in with Pentland’s judgment of him.
“Does he think,” he questioned through his interpreter, “that Melrose and Miss Fulton are at least alive?”
“His knowledge, inner knowledge, tells him yes,” the officer answered. “But of this he has no material proof.”
“He talks in riddles, eh?” said Alston. “It is all too deep for me.” He fixed sharp eyes on the holy man’s aloof face. “Tell him,” he said, “you can put it into stately words, Havildar, that I am not going to stand any hanky panky. He can thought-read or anything else he pleases, but those two people have got to be produced or there will be trouble. As for the rest, the bodies of the Prince and Miss Daring must be brought here and handed over to us. These are the only conditions upon which I will grant peace.”
The Watcher heard the command with unruffled calm. How much, Alston wondered, of his terse anger was being translated for the holy one’s benefit? It was very difficult to cope with natives, when you had only a slight knowledge of their language and none at all of their beliefs. He wished he could catch what the other two were saying to each other.
“He begs,” said the officer at the end, turning once more to his chief, “that you will be present at the test with some of your men. It may be necessary to take prompt action. If you will attend now, he will summon the priests to the council chamber behind Kali’s shrine. The other things in your command shall be obeyed, but already the people are making ready for the funeral of the Prince. He asks that no dishonour may be put upon their dead.”
“What does he take me for?” snorted Alston. Blue eyes met brown for a second. “You know me better than that, surely, Havildar? I only need to see the body and then they can have it back again. Heaven alone knows, I am tired enough of the whole business. I suppose we had better go to this priest affair. It will be all right, won’t it? It is not a trap or anything?”
“I think not, sir,” the other answered, “treachery would serve them but ill at this moment.”
“Very well,” agreed Alston. “Tell him we shall be there. You must come, Havildar, to act as interpreter.”
In company with one or two other Englishmen, therefore, and supported by a contingent of native officers, Alston found himself, later on in the evening, assisting at one of the weirdest ceremonies he had ever witnessed. The storm, the quick rushing rain, the sense of oppressiveness caused by the thunder, added unpleasantly to the gloom of the performance. The small room, shadowed by the bulk of the idol, was lit only by one flickering torch set in the midst of the circle of waiting priests. The light on the men’s faces was fantastic, contorting their features into the semblance of evil masks. Set among them, on a raised litter, just under the light of the torch, was the small, stiff, body of the holy man’s dead servant.
“It is the spirit of the dead man that will give evidence,” as one of the native officers explained to Alston, the latter having remonstrated at the project of spending an hour close closeted with a corpse. Alston was beginning to regret the impulse that had caused him to take part in such a grim amusement. It was better perhaps to view natives and their dealings with the aloof distrust which Pentland had advocated. Still, he followed his guide in silence across the room to the chairs that had been set apart for his party in the darkest corner.
Then suddenly, discontent was merged in interest, for through a small door facing where they sat, the Watcher came softly into the room. There was something about the man that gripped one, held one fascinated even against one’s will. Alston could hear the whispered comment that passed among his companions and the little stir of movement as they leant forward to watch.
The Fakir had moved slowly within the circle of light. He stood, a strikingly impressive figure, tall in his long garment of grey, his hair and face smeared to the same ashen colour. There was drama (he knows he is playing to an audience, Alston thought) in the way he leant forward and twitched the cloth from off the dead body, peering down to stare, as it were, into the dead eyes. Then he straightened himself to look slowly all round the room, over the onlookers’ heads as if he saw beyond them to a great distance.
“O soul of Bundoo, the Server,” he chanted; the officer at Alston’s side whispered a quick translation. “Come back to thy earth home for a little. But for a little while, that our ears may hear the truth from one who is dead and who therefore cannot lie. O soul of Bundoo, the Server!”
He leant forward again, close over the face of the dead man. His queer, ashen cheeks were distended, as if he had gathered all the breath in his body to blow it into the other man’s mouth. And, above the silence in the room, Alston thought he heard the hurried breathing of a man brought perilously near to fear.
Major Alston leant further forward; disgust was merged altogether in interest. Was the old chap mesmerising them? that was how these Fakirs worked many of their tricks, he knew; or could the Watcher really have the power which raised the dead to life? It was unbelievable, yet either Major Alston’s eyes were playing him false, or a spell had been cast about them. For the body of the dead man had moved, turning uneasily in its sleep. It was sitting up, the ghastliness of the movement intensified by the fact that the body was so evidently un-alive, crushed and flattened from all semblance to humanity, yet erect, standing, swaying before their eyes.
“Good Lord!” Alston whispered. He turned to look at his companions. Fear and blank astonishment was expressed on their faces, evidently they were seeing what he saw.
There had been a distinct movement of panic among the priests; most of them crouched away, their faces hidden, but one had stood up and turned to fly.
“He is afraid,” the man next Alston volunteered.
“He must be the one who knows.”
“They are all afraid,” answered Alston. You could not, he discovered, speak above a whisper in this atmosphere. “And for that matter, so am I. Are you used to this kind of thing, Havildar?”
“No,” said the man. “In this priest there must be great holiness. He has wonderful powers.”
Holiness! Alston was inclined to think it was the other thing. But there was no time to argue, for once again his whole attention was claimed by the scene in front of him.
“Stay, Gopal.” Was it the Watcher who called to the priest? The voice was unlike his, high and childlike and rather beautiful. Could it be that hideous, swaying form that spoke? “This thing is between you and me.” Alston’s interpreter carried on a quick translation in a shaky voice. “You sent me to my death, O Gopal! Let us speak this matter out before witnesses.”
“Aye, before witnesses,” the priest shrieked. He turned suddenly and flung himself on the ground, clutching at the Fakir’s feet. “Listen, Master! In thy name he brought this white man amongst us, he claimed for the outcast powers and holiness which belong to thee. I, Gopal, found out the truth. Could I let such shame be put upon the priesthood? For this I killed him; did I do wrong?”
“Was it for this, O Gopal?” the soft voice asked.
The Watcher stood erect, gazing down at the man. “Was it for this?” he asked.
The man staggered to his feet again. He was conquering his fear, there was defiance in his attitude, as he stood, hardly a hand’s breadth away from the ghost, vision, or whatever it might be.
“No,” he answered. “Oh, soul of the dead! what need to ask for truth, since all is plain to thee?”
It seemed as though the figure swayed nearer him, gathered height and floated in mid-air. The face of the dead man stood level with the face of the living; dead eyes stared at those that yet held life. “It must be pretty ghastly,” thought Alston. “Humbug or not, it is enough to drive a man mad at such close quarters.”
Gopal had commenced to speak in a low rambling voice, too fast for Alston’s interpreter to be able to translate much. He confined himself to a summary, adding that most of it had very little to do with the matter in hand and dealt with the priest’s secret life, his sins, his hates, the wicked thoughts of his heart. He had desired the white girl, it would seem, and Bundoo had stood in his way. For that reason he had hated Bundoo, and he had followed and spied on him with a view to killing him. That was how he had found out about the white man’s disguise and heard of their plan to escape.
“It was from somewhere here in this very room that the escape was to start.” The muttering voice was slower now, it was easier to follow. “In the old days there was a secret passage that led down from this room, through the earth to beyond the walls. Bundoo had thought this road was open, but Gopal knew that for many years it had been blocked up. It pleased him to think of the white people, shut up in the crypt from which there was no possible outlet. He followed when Bundoo led them here, he watched from that corner as the stone was lifted and saw the white man and woman go down the steps. Then, as Bundoo would have followed, he sprang on him and drew him back, stabbing him with a knife. But Bundoo had loved the white man, he had wanted to warn him, he had flung himself under the falling stone. That, then, was how he had died.”
Gopal had come to the end of his recital, his voice broke in a shriek. With wild hands he tried to clutch at that intangible form before him, as if he would shake it to death and quietness again. The man was so evidently mad with terror that Alston rose, disgusted with the scene.
“That is enough,” he ordered in bad Hindustani. “Strap up your bag of tricks,” was what he had meant to say, but in face of that mangled body, standing erect, the words stuck in his throat.
His command was not needed. As suddenly as it had come, the fierce madness left Gopal, he gave a strangled cry, threw up his arms and fell. And as he fell, the vision before him seemed to crumble away. At least that was what Alston thought. The next moment he was wondering angrily whether it was not just that the old wizard had lifted his spell and their sense had come back to the normal again. Anyway, there was the ring of priests, the light flickering on their faces, and there was the bier, with its small body stretched out stiff and still.
One of Alston’s party had stepped forward and was kneeling by the figure on the floor. He looked up after a brief examination.
“The man is quite dead,” he said. “Died from fright, I suppose. Give me our methods of justice every time.”
“Good God! yes,” said Alston. He turned to his interpreter. “Quick now,” he said, “the stone, those stairs. Let us put this rigmarole to the test. And tell the old man we don’t want any more of his truth-finding. If he did it on our side of the border he would end by getting hanged for murder.”
Gravely, and with a seeming disregard for the fate of their companion, the other priests had raised the body of Gopal and at a command from the Watcher they proceeded to carry it from the room. Their task was finished, they were leaving the white men to carry on the investigation as best they liked. Only the Watcher remained, because this Alston insisted upon.
“He has got to come along with us and look a fool if nothing turns up.”
There was no difficulty about the first part of the proceedings. The great stone was easily found and dragged aside, the torch lifted and carried to the entrance to throw its light down the steps. Alston leant forward and peered within. Where the glimmer ended was absolute blackness, and, though he shouted aloud, there was no response.
He stood erect again and motioned to the Watcher to precede him, loosening at the same time his revolver in its case.
“Go on,” he said abruptly. “We shall follow.” He turned to some of the officers who had come with him. “You stay up here,” he said, “and keep the crowd out of the room. We don’t want anyone playing with that stone while we are below.”
So they proceeded down into the darkness; the Watcher going first, the Havildar following, carrying the torch, and Alston and two more officers bringing up the rear.
At the foot of the steps the space before them opened out, disclosing a wide, low room of stone, seemingly empty, though of this Alston was not satisfied until he had had the torch carried into every corner. With the stone above shut to, the place must lie in absolute darkness, and the atmosphere, unpleasant as it was under present circumstances, would be unendurable.
“I am afraid the ghost, or whatever that unpleasant thing was,” said Alston, looking round him, “has brought us here under false pretences. There is nothing to be found.”
The native officer agreed gravely. He was evidently distressed at the failure of his holy man’s magic.
Johnson, the regimental doctor who had accompanied them, was prowling round the walls, investigating their thickness by hammering at them with the butt end of his revolver.
“I can’t make it out,” he said suddenly. “There is a draught from somewhere. You fellows watch the torch.”
“There is a gale blowing down those stairs,” Alston retorted crossly. He was angry that he had allowed himself to be hoodwinked by that tomfoolery upstairs.
The Watcher took very little interest in their doings. He had taken his stand in the centre of the room and after one brief glance round he had stayed immersed in thought, staring in front of him. Now he spoke some low, quick words to the interpreter. The latter turned to Alston.
“He says, sir, that in the old days there was a path from this place through the wall at the place where that stone stands.” He pointed at the spot where Johnstone was carrying on his investigations. “It was built up by order of the priests some three hundred years ago, and, to make their object all the more sure, the place at the spot where it opened out on to the hillside has been flattened down and a great tree planted there. It is a place of pilgrimage to the faithful and a shrine has been built there. With his hands the white man may have worked aside the stone that blocks this end. Thinking that in front of him lay safety and behind danger, he would be careful to replace it before proceeding on his journey. But from the other end there can be no possible escape, and it is possible that by this time his strength is exhausted and he is too weak to move the stone.”
“The beggar is right,” Johnston interrupted suddenly. The others crowded round him. “This stone has been moved quite recently and roughly put back. There has been no time, or no tools, to cement the crack. Look!” He snatched the torch and held it for a second to the wall, the flame blew outwards, flickered and fell back. “That is the draught,” he said triumphantly.
Alston was already working with his knife at the stone. “But why a draught?” he argued. “The thing leads to a dead end.”
The question seemed unanswerable, and for a little they worked in silence. The thing was difficult to move, but by degrees it yielded, giving inch by inch, until at last they could push it aside and peer down the passage it left disclosed. Here, once more, were darkness and silence, and no response to shouted “hulloas.” Johnstone was first into the aperture; so low and small the cutting ran through the rocks that it was impossible to stand upright. He crawled forward a pace or two, then he seemed to come to a turn, for he dropped suddenly to his knees and thrust his head forward. The others could see that he was listening intently, they held their breath in sympathy. Then Johnstone looked back.
“It’s all right,” he called. “There is something ahead. That draught is still on my face and I believe I can hear the rain. There must be an opening somewhere.”
Your hand in mine; and that makes all the rest
As if it had not been. I laugh at fear.
The darkness cannot hold much dread for me
While you are near.
If Death is waiting, hide my eyes, dear friend,
And love shall lead us to the journey’s end.
It had taken Melrose almost six hours, hours of agonising suspense and tortured uncertainty, to find, as Johnstone had found, that stone in the wall which yielded a faintly hollow sound to his tapping. Then he had had to fight with inadequate tools, breaking his nails, tearing the skin off his hands, straining every nerve and muscle to bring about some movement in the grim, solid barrier that shut them in. Betty stood close behind him through it all, helping when and how she could. She had shown, so far, no sign of knowing at all the seriousness of their position. Only, when he would stop his desperate work from time to time to reassure her that they were making fine progress, that he would have the stone pushed aside in no time, and that then the road to safety would lie clear before them, she would smile very faintly, as if she realised exactly the deception he, so manlike, practised for her benefit.
“We have three or four hours’ clear start,” he told her once. “I don’t suppose we have been here more than an hour. It seems longer, Betty, because we have no method of telling the time.”
“Yes, that is it,” she assented gravely; the light was too dim for them to see much of each other’s faces. “I don’t suppose it has been more than an hour.”
The air of the place was exhausting, it robbed him of the strength that would have been so useful, and the heat was terrible. He tried to eat some of the chuppattis Bundoo had provided them with, but there was nothing to drink, as the little man had been carrying the milk supply, and the food irritated his parched throat, making thirst ten times more acute. If he had been alone he might have been tempted to give up the struggle, but Betty’s presence spurred him on. He had got to save her, that was the only thought in his mind. He would not let himself think of it as useless.
When, finally, the stone did yield, disclosing the dark, airless passage beyond, they had both reached the limit of their endurance. Melrose had only just strength enough left to close up the opening behind them. He left Betty there, sitting with her back to the stone, while he fumbled his way forward alone. It took him a little time, for he was weak and the passage was long and full of odd twists, and then, after all his trouble, it ended, so it seemed to him, in a blank wall. Despair seized hold of Melrose, but with despair came also exhaustion and an utter inability to think. He struggled back to Betty.
“They will take some time to follow us,” he said to her. “We have got to rest before we go any further, Betty.”
She was wonderful, he thought, the way she made no complaints, asked no questions.
“Yes, you must rest,” she agreed. “You can put your head down on my lap and sleep. I shall hear if anything is happening.”
They seemed to have changed places, she was suddenly in charge, taking care of him.
“But you, Betty—don’t you want to sleep too?”
He tried to argue the matter out with her, but he was already on the ground, and her hands were about his face, soothing him to forgetfulness. He remembered kissing her fingers, holding them for a second to his dry lips and then nothing else. Heavy, dreamless sleep fell about him.
Betty sat a little straighter, her hand resting against his face. She had no hope at all. She knew, even though he had not told her, that he had found no way out in his search. It seemed to her that with every breath she drew a band of iron tightened about her heart. It must be because there was no air coming into the place. It did not occur to her to wonder how it was that the light still burned. She had heard it said that death would come to you like this if you were being suffocated. You would not fight for life, because a great drowsiness would hold your limbs and render your brain numb. That was why she could sit there so quietly and wait for the end, making no struggle, content just to have him near her, close enough for her hands to feel.
She looked down at his face, and felt vaguely regretful that the stain should rest on it; she would have liked to see him just once again as he had been in those days at Bhogmore. The little hollow that lay just beneath his throat showed white, she was conscious of a quick thrill as she touched it, and, suddenly she bent closer over him and laid her lips to the pulse that throbbed there. A strange restlessness was astir within her, it leapt to life despite the shadow of death’s wings. She wanted to wake Dick up, to feel his kisses, to hear that he loved her. They would be able to die together, since they must die, close held in each other’s arms, whispering their love.
What funny thoughts these were that chased through her brain, thoughts and feelings she had never known before! Shame prompted Betty to sudden remorse. Why had she wanted to wake Dick? Would it not be easier for him to die as he was, asleep? “He will know afterwards that I loved him,” thought Betty, “there will be time to explain then.”
Yes, but afterwards? Would afterwards bring the satisfaction of warm kisses, of close-held joy.
“All the joys that love can give you.” That was what the priest had said. The blood hummed in Betty’s ears, the light flickered and went out.
“I must be going mad,” Betty whispered. “Or is this death and will there ever be any afterwards?” Her head fell forward, her whole body relaxed, she lay above him in a curiously hunched-up position.
Her weight across his face woke Melrose. He struggled to sit up, not realising, until he had freed himself, that it was her body that lay there. Then a horrible fear seized him, she stayed so limp and still. The light had gone out, blackness enfolded them, but through the agony of his mind one sharp fact dawned on him. Very faintly, coming from straight ahead of them, sounded the drip, drip of water, and it seemed easier to breathe.
Melrose sat up straight, his back to the wall, and dragged Betty close to him.
“Betty!” he called frantically. His voice rang down the passage and echoed back to him. “Betty, for God’s sake, dear, speak to me! You aren’t dead, you can’t be! Why, we are almost out, Betty. There is air coming into the place, and I am as strong as a horse again, Betty!”
She made no answer, but his hand had found her heart. Faintly, but regularly, it beat against his fingers. She was alive, then; perhaps only heavy with sleep or faint from terror and a lack of air.
His frantic fear left Melrose and common sense came back. The trickle of water was not a fancy, it sounded plainer every moment. He must find its whereabouts, and see if he could not, there, where the ground would at least be soft, force his way out. If only he had had a match about him! but at Bundoo’s instigation he had left all such European possessions behind him before starting from Arkonum, and Bundoo himself had had far simpler and more primitive methods of lighting his fires and lamps. One’s eyes grew accustomed to the blackness after a time, though. He laid Betty back on the ground and stood up, feeling his way down the passage, trying to trace that trickle of sound.
It seemed a long time, groping about in the dark, before he found what he sought, that little trickle of water that must come, he hoped, from the outside world. The wet earth clung to his fingers as he thrust in his hand, and the loosened soil brought a little shower of water about him. Even thirst was forgotten in the eagerness of the moment. With both hands he dug and scraped at the soil, till suddenly he thought he heard Betty’s voice calling to him.
He found her standing up and in the darkness they clung to each other. Betty was shaking with terror, and crying violently.
“I thought you had left me,” she sobbed, “that I was alone. Oh, Dick, why don’t we die quickly? I can’t bear very much more.”
“We aren’t going to die at all,” Dick answered her. “Listen, Betty. I have found a place where a little stream of water is coming through the walls. The ground can’t be so very thick above us; I am going to fight a way out.”
“No, no,” she begged. “We have finished fighting. It is the end, Dick. But stay with me, I am not so afraid while you are near. If you will just hold me close, put your face against mine.”
He stooped to kiss her quickly. “I haven’t given up hope yet, dear,” he said; “life is too precious. And, as Bundoo would have said, ‘The Gods fight with us’; of that I’m sure.”
There was something in that belief, a faith from which Bundoo at least had never wavered, he thought, as he toiled away at his task. Betty had collapsed again; she had hung heavily in his arms even as he finished speaking; he had had to lay her down on the ground by his feet and he had hardly paused to try and revive her, so eagerly certain was he of ultimate success. Yet it was difficult to believe even when it was accomplished.
He stood in the opening his own hands had made, and the rain beat against his face, the wind screamed and howled about him with almost unearthly violence. Just a little ahead of where he had emerged he could see the giant outlines of a tree, and under its shelter what might have been a shrine.
The rain and the fresh violence of the wind had revived Betty; he found her struggling to sit up.
“Where are we?” she asked; “what has happened, Dick?”
“Almost a miracle,” he answered. “At least, there’s the sky above us, Betty. Things are going to be alright now.”
“Then we aren’t dead,” she whispered, “we aren’t going to die?”
He knelt down beside her, drawing her head back on his shoulder.
“No, we aren’t going to die,” he answered; “it’s life and love for you and me, Betty. God! how glad I am.”
He buried his face against her hair. Betty stirred a little uneasily. It was ridiculous, but she felt suddenly very shy, remembering the tumult of her feelings when she had stooped to kiss the white mark on his throat.
Love with its many meanings stood between them here. Love desirous of claiming her own and quite regardless of conventions and the embarrassment of civilised beings brought face to face with the primitive forces within them. This is not how Betty would have explained it. The memory of her own wild feelings of the night before was quite sufficient to embarrass her, she did not look for any further or deeper reason.
But for Melrose it was a little different. It seemed as if he suddenly realised her shyness, for he stood up abruptly. “We ought to try and push on, I think,” he said. “Can you manage it, Betty?”
There was no need for her to answer, for a sudden lull in the wind brought them the sound of voices coming from down the long passage they had so painfully traversed. Voices, and speaking in English.
It only took Melrose a second to realize that. He did not wait for any more; he gathered the Watcher’s robe of sanctity round him and bounded forward.
“You’ve come,” he gasped. Johnstone, leading the party, paused with amazed eyes on the weird-looking figure. “You must be the expeditionary force. We are all right, then, saved! Thank the Lord for that!”
Here lies the King! Pray ye, who can—
His Kingship gone—for the soul of a man!
Stiff, magnificent in his regal robes, with the emerald necklace of Bhogmore about his throat again, Channa lay on the great funeral pyre that had been built for him without the fortress wall. Even in death they had robbed him of his heart’s desire, for when the priests had gone out to bring his body in they had unclenched his hand from Ruth’s, and purified his body from the stain of where her blood had touched him. But of all this Channa looked unconscious. He had found peace, it would seem, in death. The youth and beauty had come back to his chiselled face, his eyes, behind their veil of close-shut lids, might have been radiantly happy, so calm and undisturbed he lay. And held between his hands, unguessed at by the priests, was a shred of long, soft black hair, faintly perfumed, breathing of the woman whom he had after all loved.
That was the argument which Melrose had used to gain the Watcher’s sanction for Betty’s wish. For Channa had lain in state for a few brief hours in one of the rooms of the Palace, and there Betty and Melrose had come to look at him for the last time. He had lain guarded by English soldiers, with only the Watcher, of his own people, to sit, cross-legged, by the bier.
Standing, looking down at the still face, Betty had drawn a little closer to Melrose. For them there was to be an afterwards, warm human love and companionship; but Channa had gone out over that river into the unknown that had seemed at one time so near to themselves. And Betty’s heart ached with sudden pity, remembering many things.
“I wish,” she whispered, “they could have let them stay together at the end. He loved her, Dick, and Ruth—I believe she loved him.”
“If she could love anything,” Melrose answered. Then he relented, because he remembered how Betty had cried, kneeling beside all that was left of Ruth, laying her head against the other’s cold, stiff hand, whispering that she had always loved her, even when she had least understood.
“I daresay she did,” he corrected himself hastily, “and things were always absolutely against them. Poor old Channa! he paid the price all right.”
“If he could have something that was Ruth’s to take with him.” Betty hesitated; she looked up at Melrose. “Does it seem silly to you,” she asked. “Somehow, I think it wouldn’t hurt so much to remember him like that.”
And later in the day Melrose very gravely stood before the Watcher and tried to explain what Betty had felt.
“The love of man for woman,” he said, “it is not for you to feel that, Master, but at least you can condone. She brought disaster to him, but above everything he loved her.”
“Aye,” the Watcher agreed; he was thinking, perhaps, of Arkonum in ruins, of Dattaka and the other men who lay dead. “Above everything!”
Yet in the end he relented in so much, and the shred of hair lay close to the shimmering emeralds that had failed in their attempt to bribe the Gods.
Ruth the English people had buried down in the plain at the foot of the fortress. They had made a coffin for her, and they had railed off the space of ground where she lay, raising a rock to mark the place. There was no use thinking of taking the body back to Arkonum, even Betty acquiesced in that decision. Ruth does not altogether lack companionship out there, round her are buried the soldiers who fell in the night attack, and Pentland lies at her feet. He has solved the problem of her love in the same way as Channa, and lies equally content to be at rest.
To the natives that little enclosure, the stone imported from Calcutta and inscribed with her name, will always be haunted, something to be shunned and feared. There is no danger of their ever desecrating the place where the Englishwoman lies, to them it is sanctified by death and the memory of disaster.
There was nothing more for Alston’s party to achieve. They had taken the Maharanee and some of the ring-leaders captive, they had rescued Betty and Melrose, they had restored peace and order. Alston withdrew from the Palace, camp was struck, and the order for the homeward march went forth. And in the open space before the temple walls, with strange ritual and solemn chants, the priests gathered about the pile on which Prince Channa, Maharajah of Bhogmore, last of a race of famous kings, lay waiting for the fire that would lift his soul to heaven on the tongues of its flame.
Very slowly the sticks take light, grow warm, and blaze forth in all-purifying heat. Very gradually the fire wins hold on human flesh, tearing it asunder, leaving a free passage for the soul. The prayers that the priests chant tell something of all this: how it is only through the fire of suffering and purging anguish of pain that the soul of man can win forth, throwing aside all dross of self, all human desires, and mounting, as fire mounts to the sun, to the Gods from whom all life must come.
The red forked fingers touch Channa’s face, catch at his hands, run in a flame up the thing he holds so tightly clasped between them, dance and laugh, it seems, at the havoc their coming causes. All dross of self! All human desires! Death has taken his toll of these already. The heart the flames play over is very still, passion will never more stir it, there is no room in it even for regret. The evil and the good that had reigned there stand outside, of equal weight perhaps in the balance of Fate which the Gods hold.
The flames have done their work now; they roar away merrily, a tumult of colour and heat, darting now this way and now that, over the shapeless, scarred heap that once was man. Only the emeralds they cannot harm. Those, then, are all that is left of the Maharajah of Bhogmore, a last piteous sign of all his splendour! “Unfit for the Gods, fit for the dust!” as the mahout had said. The fire has snapped the thread that carries them, they break loose and run on every side, vivid, coloured pieces of glass among the charred embers.
In the distance, along the white road, the English columns are moving slowly. That fire against the sky behind them, the thin following streams of its smoke, are like a farewell beacon to them. With a sob in her throat Betty turns her face from it. She is thinking much the same thoughts as had troubled Lady Daring.
“He trusted us,” she says, “it must have hurt him terribly to find how we really looked on his love.”
“You blame us all,” Melrose answers, “because of what Ruth did. That is hardly fair, Betty. After all, there was friendship between us, he ought to have been loyal enough to remember that.”
But loyal or disloyal, right or wrong, who shall judge?
“The Gods are satisfied,” says the Watcher. And he at least is content to leave Channa’s judgment there.