Guns of the Gods

T >> Talbot Mundy >> Guns of the Gods

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

So she did not see the dog arrive--Trotters, the Rampore-Great Dane,
cousin to half the mongrel stock of Hindustan, slobbering on a package
that his set jaws hardly could release; Yasmini, scornful of the laws
of caste and ever responsive to a true friend, pried it loose with strong
fingers. It was she, too, who saw to the dog's needs--fed him and gave
him drink--removed a thorn from his forefoot and made much of him.
She even gave Bimbu food, with her own hands, and saw that his driver
and camel had a place to rest in, before she undid the string that bound
the leather jacket of the package.

Bimbu on the camel had led the dog by the short route and, having
nothing to be robbed of, had had small trouble with policemen on the way.

The first thing Tess was really conscious of when she regained her
senses was a great dog that slumbered restlessly beside her own
finger-marked, disheveled, dusty, fifty-dollar hat on the floor near by,
awaking at intervals to sniff her hand and reassure himself--then returning
to the hat to sleep, and gallop in his sleep; a rangy, gray, enormous
beast with cavernous jaws that she presently recognized as Trotters.

Then came the maids again, afraid for their very lives of the dog, but
still more mindful of Yasmini's orders. They resumed their kneading
of stiff muscles, rubbing in oil that smelt of jasmine, singing incantations
while they worked. They lifted the bed away from the wall, and one
of the women danced around and around it rhythmically, surrounding
Tess with what the West translates as "influence"--the spell that all the
East knows keeps away evil interference.

Last of all by candlelight, Yasmini came, scented and fresh and smiling
as the flower from which she has her name, dressed now in the soft-hued
silken garments of a lady of the land.

"Where did you get them?" Tess asked her.

"These clothes? Oh, I have friends here. Have no fear now--there are
friends on every side of us."

She showed Tess a letter, pierced in four places by a dog's eye-teeth.

"This is from Samson sahib. Do you remember how I prayed that
Jinendra's priest might think to play me false? I think he has. Some
one has been to Samson sahib. Hear this:

"'The Princess Yasmini Omanoff Singh,
"'Your Highness,
"'Word has reached me frequently of late of pressure brought
to bear on you from certain quarters, and hints have been dropped
in my hearing that the object of the pressure is to induce you to
disclose a secret you possess. Let me assure you that my official
protection from all illegal restraint and improper treatment is at your
service. Further, that in case your secret is such as concerns vitally
the political relations, present or future, of Sialpore the proper
person to whom to confide it is myself. Should you see your way to
take that only safe course, you may rest assured that your own
interests will be cared for in every way possible.
"'I have the honor to be,
"'Your Highness' obedient servant,
"'Roland Samson, K. C. S. I.'"

"That looks fair enough," said Tess. "I dislike Samson for reasons of
my own, but--"

"Hah!" laughed Yasmini. "He makes love to you! Is it not so? He would
make love to me if I gave him opportunity! What a jest for the gods if
I should play that game with him and make him marry me! I could! I
could make of Samson a power in India! But the man would weary
me with his conceit and his 'orders from higher up' within a week. I
can have power without his help! What a royal jest, though, to marry
Samson and intrigue with all the jealous English wives who think they
pull the strings of government!"

"You'd get the worst of it," laughed Tess.

"Maybe. I shall never try it. I am more of the East than the West. But
I will answer Samson. Bimbu shall remain here lest he talk too much,
but the dog shall take a letter to Tom Tripe at dawn. Samson knew hours
ago that I have flown the nest. He will wonder how Tom Tripe holds
communication with me, and so swiftly, and will have greater respect
for him--which may serve us later."

"Let me add a letter to my husband then, to tell him I'm safe."

"Surely. But now eat. Eat and be strong. Can you stand? Can you walk?
Have the maids put new life in you?"

Tess was astonished at her swift recovery. She was a little stiff--a little
weak--a little tired; but she could walk up and down the room with her
natural gait and Yasmini clapped her hands.

"I will order food brought. Listen! Tonight I am Abhisharika. Do you
know what that is--Abhisharika?"

Tess shook her head.

"I go to my lover of my own accord!"

"That sounds more like West than East!"

"You think so? You shall come with me and see! You shall play the
part of cheti (the indispensable hand-maiden)--you and Hasamurti.
You must dress like her. Simply be still and watch, and you shall see!"

Chapter Thirteen

Of what use were the gift of gods,
The buoyant sweetness of a virgin state,
The blossomy delight of youth
Ablow with promise of fruit consummate;
What use the affluence of song
And marvel of delicious motion meet
To grace the very revelings of Fawn,
Could she not lay them at another's feet?

"I am a king's daughter!"

That was a night when the full-moon rose in a sea of silver, and changed
into amber as it mounted in the sky. The light shone like liquid honey,
and the shadowed earth was luminous and still. The very deepest of
the shadows glowed with undertones of half-suggested color. Hardly
a zephyr moved.

"You see?" said Yasmini. "The gods are our servants! They have
set the stage!"

Hand in hand--Yasmini in the midst in spotless silken white; Tess and
Hasamurti draped in black from head to foot--they left the house by a
high teak door in the garden wall and started down a road half hidden
by lacy shadows. All three wore sandals on bare feet, and Tess was
afraid at first of insects.

"Have no fear of anything tonight," Yasmini whispered. "The gods are
all about us! Wasuki, who is king of all the snakes, is on our side!"

One could not speak aloud, for the spell of mystery overlay everything.
They walked into the very heart of silent beauty. Overhead, enormous
trees, in which the sacred monkeys slept, dropped tendrils like long
arms yearning with the love of mother earth. Here and there the embers
of a dying fire glowed crimson, and the only occasional sound was of
sleepy cattle that chewed the cud contentedly--or when a monkey moved
above them to change his roost. Once, a man's voice singing by a
fireside conjured back for a moment the world's hard illusion; but the
stillness and the mystery overcame him too, and all was true again,
and wonderful.

Hand in hand they followed the road to its end and turned into a lane
between thorn hedges. Now the moon shone straight toward them and
there was no shadow, so that the earth was bright golden underfoot--
a lane of mellow light on which they trod between fantastic woven walls.
At the end of the lane they came into a clearing at a forested-edge,
where an ancient ruined temple nestled in the shadow of great trees,
its stone front and the seated image of a long-neglected god restored
to more than earthly sanctity and peace by the cool, caressing moonlight.

"Jinendra again!" Yasmini whispered. "Always Jinendra! His priests
are rascals, but the god himself is kind! When I am maharanee, that
temple shall stand whole again!"

In front of the temple, between them and the trees, was a pond edged
with carved stone. Lotus leaves floated on the water, and one blue
flower was open wide to welcome whoever loved serenity.

Still hand in hand, they crossed the clearing mid-way to the pond, and
there Yasmini bade them stand.

"Draw no nearer. Only stand and watch."

She had a great blue flower in her bosom that heaved and fell for proof
of her own emotion. Hasamurti's hand was trembling as she nestled
closer, and Tess felt her own pulsing to quick heart-beats as she
clasped the girl's.

Yasmini left them, and walked alone to the very edge of the pond, where
she stood still for several minutes, apparently gazing at her own reflection
in the moonlit water--or perhaps listening. There was no sign of any
one else, nor sound of footfall. Then, as if the reflection satisfied, or
she had heard some whisper meant for her and none else, she began
to dance, moving very slowly in the first few rhythmic steps, resembling
a water-goddess, the clinging silk displaying her young outline as she
bent and swayed.

She might have been watching her reflection still, so close she danced
to the water's edge with her back turned to the moon. But presently
the dance grew quicker, and extended arms that glistened in the light
like ivory increased the sinuous perfection of each pose. Still there
was nothing wild in it--nothing but the very spirit of the moonlight, beautiful
and kind and full of peace. She moved now around the water, in a
measured cadence that by some unfathomable witchery of her devising
conveyed a thought of maidenhood and modesty. It dawned on Tess,
who watched her spell-bound, that there was not one immodest thought
in all Yasmini's throng of moods, but only a scorn of all immodesty
and its pretensions. And whether that was art, or sheer expression of
the truth within her rather than a recognition of the truth without, Tess
never quite determined; for it is easier to judge spoken word and
unexpected deed than to see the thought behind it. That night Yasmini's
mood was simpler and less unseemly than the very virgin dress she wore.

Presently she danced more swiftly, making no sound, so phantom-light
and graceful that the rhythm of her movement carried her with scarce
a touch to earth. That was strength as well as art, but the art made strength
seem spiritual power to float on air. Gaiety grew now into her cadences--
the utter joy of being young. She seemed to revel in a sense of buoyancy
that could lift her above all the grim deceptions of the world of wrath
and iron, and make her, like the moonlight, all-kind, all-conquering.
Three times round the pond she leapt and gamboled in an ecstasy of
youth undisillusioned.

Then the dance changed, though there was yet in it the heart of gaiety.
There moved now in the steps a sense of mystery--a consciousness
of close infinity unfolding, far more subtly signified than by the clumsy
shift of words. And she welcomed all the mystery--greeted it with
outstretched arms--was glad of it, and eager-impetuous to know the
new worlds and the ways undreamed of. Minute after minute, rhapsody
on rhapsody, she wooed the near, untouchable delights that, like the
moonbeams, seem but empty nothing when the drudges seize them
for their palaces of mud.

Nor did she woo in vain. There were stanzas in her dance of simple
gratitude, as if the spirit of the mystery had found her mood acceptable
and dowered her with new ability to see, and know, and understand.
Even the two watchers, hand in hand a hundred paces off, felt something
of the power of vision she had gained, and thrilled at its wonder.

Borne on new wings of fancy now her dance became a very image of
those infinite ideas she had seen and felt. She herself, Yasmini, was
a part of all she saw--mistress of all she knew--own sister of the beauty
in the moonlight and the peace that filled the glade. The night itself--
moon, sky and lotus-dappled water--trees -growth and grace and stillness,
were part of her and she of them. Verily that minute she, Yasmini,
danced with the gods and knew them for what in truth they are--ideas
a little lower, a little less essential than the sons of men.

Then, as if that knowledge were the climax of attainment, and its ownership
a spell that could command the very lips of night, there came a man's
voice calling from the temple in the ancient Rajasthani tongue.

"Oh, moon of my desire! Oh, dear delight! Oh, spirit of all gladness! Come!"

Instantly the dance ceased. Instantly the air of triumph left her. As a
flower's petals shut at evening, fragrant with promise of a dawn to come,
she stood and let a new mood clothe her with humility; for all that grace
of high attainment given her were nothing, unless she, too, made of it
a gift. That night her purpose was to give the whole of what she knew
herself to be.

So, with arms to her sides and head erect, she walked straight toward
the temple; and a man came out to meet her, tall and strong, who strode
like a scion of a stock of warriors. They met mid-way and neither spoke,
but each looked in the other's eyes, then took each other's hands, and
stood still minute after minute. Hasamurti, gripping Tess's fingers,
caught her breath in something like a sob, while Tess could think of
nothing else than Brynhild's oath:

"O Sigurd, Sigurd,
Now hearken while I swear!
The day shall die forever
And the sun to darkness wear
Ere I forget thee, Sigurd...."

Her lips repeated it over and over, like a prayer, until the man put his
arm about Yasmini and they turned and walked together to the temple.
Then Hasamurti tugged at Tess, and they followed, keeping their distance,
until Yasmini and her lover sat on one stone in the moonlight on the
temple porch, their faces clearly lighted by the mellow beams. Then
Tess and Hasamurti took their stand again, hand in each other's hand,
and watched once more.

It was love-making such as Tess had never dreamed of,--and Tess
was no familiar of hoydenish amours; gentle--poetic--dignified on his
part--manly as the plighting of the troth of warriors' sons should be.
Yasmini's was the attitude of simple self-surrender, stripped of all
pretense, devoid of any other spirit than the will to give herself and all
she had, and knowledge that her gift was more than gold and rubles.

For an hour they sat together murmuring questions and reply, heart
answering to heart, eyes reading eyes, and hand enfolding hand; until
at last Yasmini rose to leave him and he stood like a lord of squadroned
lances to watch her go.

"Moon of my existence!" was his farewell speech to her.

"Dear lord!" she answered. Then she turned and went, not looking
back at him, walking erect, as one whose lover is the son of twenty kings.
Without a word she took Tess and Hasamurti by the hand, and, looking
straight before her with blue eyes glowing at the welling joy of thoughts
too marvelous for speech, led them to the lane--the village street--and
the door in the wall again. The man was still gazing after her, erect
and motionless, when Tess turned her head at the beginning of the
lane; but Yasmini never looked back once.

"Why did you never tell me his name?" Tess asked; but if Yasmini
heard the question she saw fit not to answer it. Not a word passed her
lips until they reached the house, crossed the wide garden between
pomegranate shrubs, and entered the dark door across the body of a
sleeping watchman--or a watchman who could make believe he slept. Then:

"Good night!" she said simply. "Sleep well! Sweet dreams! Come,
Hasamurti--your hands are cleverer than the other women's."

Daughter of a king, and promised wife of a son of twenty kings, she
took the best of the maids to undress her, without any formal mockery
of excuse. Two of the other women were awake to see Tess into bed--
no mean allowance for a royal lady's guest.

Very late indeed that night Tess was awakened by Yasmini's hand
stroking the hair back from her forehead. Again there was no explanation,
no excuse. A woman who was privileged to see and hear what Tess
had seen and heard, needed no apology for a visit in the very early hours.

"What do you think of him?" she asked. "How do you like him? Tell me!"

"Splendid!" Tess answered, sitting up to give the one word emphasis.
"But why did you never tell me his name?"

"Did you recognize him?"

"Surely! At once--first thing!"

"No true-born Rajputni ever names her lover or her husband."

"But you knew that I know Prince Utirupa Singh. He came to my garden party!"

"Nevertheless, no Rajputni names her lover to another man or woman--
calling him by his own name only in retirement, to his face."

"Why--he--isn't he the one who Sir Roland Samson told me ought to
have been maharajah instead of Gungadhura?"

Yasmini nodded and pressed her hand.

"Tomorrow night you shall see another spectacle. Once, when Rajputana
was a veritable land of kings, and not a province tricked and conquered
by the English, there was a custom that each great king held a durbar,
to which princes came from everywhere, in order that the king's daughter
might choose her own husband from among them. The custom died,
along with other fashions that were good. The priests killed it, knowing
that whatever fettered women would increase their sway. But I will revive it--
as much as may be, with the English listening to every murmur of their
spies and the great main not yet thrown. I have no father, but I need none.
I am a king's daughter! Tomorrow night I will single out my husband,
and name him by the title under which I shall marry him--in the presence
of such men of royal blood as can be trusted with a secret for a day
or two! There are many who will gladly see the end of Gungadhura!
But I must try to sleep--I have hardly slept an hour. If a maid were awake
to sing to me--but they sleep like the dead after the camel-ride, and
Hasamurti, who sings best, is weariest of all."

"Suppose I sing to you?" said Tess.

"No, no; you are tired too."

"Nonsense! It's nearly morning. I have slept for hours. Let me come
and sing to you."

"Can you? Will you? I am full of gladness, and my brain whirls with a
thousand thoughts, but I ought to sleep."

So Tess went to Yasmini's room, and sat beneath the punkah crooning
Moody and Sankey hymns and darky lullabies, until Yasmini dropped
into the land of dreams. Then, listening to the punkah's regular soft
swing, she herself fell forward on her arms, half-resting on the bed,
half on the chair, until Hasamurti crept in silently and, laughing, lifted
her up beside Yasmini and left her there until the two awoke near noon,
wondering, in each other's arms.

Chapter Fourteen

He who is most easily persuaded is perhaps a fool, for the world is
full of fools, and it is dangerous to deal with them. But perhaps he
is a man who sees his own advantage hidden in the folds of your
proposal; and that is dangerous too. --Eastern Proverb

"Acting on instructions from Your Highness!"

It tickled Gungadhura's vanity to have an Englishman in his employ;
but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next
reception would be. On occasion it would suit the despot's sense of
humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior
race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse
for it. On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable;
he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah's troops that no amount
of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished. Tom
understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput's martial mind that caused
each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but
permitted him to tolerate fierce disciplining by an alien.

And Tom had his own peculiarities. Born in a Shorncliffe barrack hut,
he had a feudal attitude toward people of higher birth. As for a prince--
there was almost no limit to what he would not endure from one, without
concerning himself whether the prince was right or wrong. Not that he
did not know his rights; his limitations were not Prussian; he would
stand up for his rights, and on their account would answer the maharajah
back more bluntly and even offensively than Samson, for instance,
would have dreamed of doing. But a prince was a prince, and that
was all about it.

So, on the morning following the flight of Yasmini and Tess, Tom,
sore-eyed from lack of sleep but with an eye-opener of raw brandy
inside him, and a sense of irritation due to the absence of his dog,
roundly cursed nine unhappy mahouts for having dared let an elephant
steal his rum--drilled two companies of heavy infantry in marching order
on parade until the sweat ran down into their boots and each miserable
man saw two suns in the sky where one should be--dismissed them
with a threat of extra parades for a month to come unless they picked
their feet up cleaner--and reported, with his heart in his throat, at
Gungadhura's palace.

As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited
that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were
pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pass along to
him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the
maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.

"Then you go back and tell his highness," Tom retorted, "that I've got
to speak with him! Business is business!"

The doctor used both hands to illustrate.

"But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing
a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him."

"Hasn't a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don't swoon away
at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he's minded!"

"I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one
of the eunuchs--really."

"I thought you and I were friends?" said Tom, with whiskers bristling.

"Always! I hope always! But in this instance--"

Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fashion.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "Friendship's friendship. Scratch my
back and I'll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see
him bad. You're the man that's asked to turn the trick for me."

"Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?"

Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual,
or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly
about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.

"Tell him," he said presently, "that I've found the man who left that
sword in his armory o' purpose for to injure him! Say I need private
and personal instructions quick!"

The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came
down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a
hurry, then, Tom's brass spurs rang on Gungadhura's marble staircase
while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes
no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura
habitually did. Without a glance at silver shields, boars' heads, tiger-skins,
curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other
trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room
furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah,
sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head
swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe's salute, and snarled at the
major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.

Soldier-fashion, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood
on no ceremony, but spoke first.

"There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace
gate." He pronounced the word to rhyme with jackass, but Gungadhura
was not in a mood to smile. "An escaped elephant bumped into the
gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I've locked 'em all up,
solitary, to think their conduct over."

The maharajah nodded.

"Good!" he said curtly.

"I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one
they'd follow the first lot into cells. It don't do to have it known that
elephants break loose that easy."

"Good!"

"Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched
the cellar of Mr. Blaine's house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding
a candle for me." "What did he see? What did that treacherous swine
see?" snapped Gungadhura, pushing back the bandage irritably from
the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look
under it."

"What did you see under the stone?"

"A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both
ends with a silver cap and lots o' wax."

"Why didn't you take it, you idiot?"

"Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not
to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder
and was damned angry. He'd have seen me if I'd pinched a cockroach.
He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed
it down, and rolled a safe on top of it!"

"Did he suspect anything?"

"I don't know, Your Highness."

"What did you tell him?"

"Said I was looking for rum."

"Doubtless he believed that; you have a reputation! You are an idiot!
If you had brought away what you saw under that stone, you might have
drawn your pension today and left India for good!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20