Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (41 page)

The Maharajah was an excellent friend, and no bad hand at pachisi; but as Tarvin sat opposite him, half an hour later, he reflected that he should not recommend the Maharajah’s life for insurance if anything happened to his love while she remained in those mysterious chambers from which the only sign that came to the outer world was a ceaseless whispering and rustling. When Kate came out, the little Maharaj Kunwar clinging to her hand, her face was white and drawn, and her eyes full of indignant tears. She had seen.

Tarvin hastened to her side, but she put him from her with the imperious gesture that women know in deep moments, and fled to Mrs. Estes.

Tarvin felt himself for the moment rudely thrust out of her life. The Maharaj Kunwar found him that evening pacing up and down the verandah of the rest-house, almost sorry that he had not shot the Maharajah for bringing that look into Kate’s eyes. With deep-drawn breath he thanked his God that he was there to watch and defend, and, if need were, to carry off, at the last, by force. With a shudder he fancied her here alone, save for the distant care of Mrs. Estes.

‘I have brought this for Kate,’ said the child, descending from his carriage cautiously, with a parcel that filled both his arms. ‘Come with me there.’

Nothing loth, Tarvin came, and they drove over to the house of the missionary.

‘All the people in my palace,’ said the child as they went, ‘say that she’s your Kate.’

‘I’m glad they know that much,’ muttered Tarvin to himself savagely. ‘What’s this you have got for her?’ he asked the Maharaj aloud, laying his hand on the parcel.

‘It is from my mother, the Queen — the real Queen, you know, because I am the Prince. There is a message, too, that I must not tell.’ He began to whisper, childlike, to himself, to keep the message in mind. Kate was in the verandah when they arrived, and her face brightened a little at sight of the child.

‘Tell my guard to stand back out of the garden. Go, and wait in the road.’

The carriage and troopers withdrew. The child, still holding Tarvin’s hand, held out the parcel to Kate.

‘It is from my mother,’ he said. ‘You have seen her. This man need not go. He is’ — he hesitated a little — ’of your heart, is he not? Your speech is his speech.’

Kate flushed, but did not attempt to set the child right. What could she say?

‘And I am to tell this,’ he continued, ‘first before everything, till you quite understand.’ He spoke hesitatingly, translating out of his own vernacular as he went on, and drawing himself to his full height, as he cleared the cluster of emeralds from his brow. ‘My mother, the Queen — the real Queen — says, “I was three months at this work. It is for you, because I have seen your face. That which has been made may be unravelled against our will, and a gipsy’s hands are always picking. For the love of the gods look to it that a gipsy unravels nothing that I have made, for it is my life and soul to me. Protect this work of mine that comes from me — a cloth nine years upon the loom.” I know more English than my mother,’ said the child, dropping into his ordinary speech.

Kate opened the parcel, and unrolled a crude yellow and black comforter, with a violent crimson fringe, clumsily knitted. With such labours the queens of Gokral Seetarun were wont to beguile their leisure.

‘That is all,’ said the child. But he seemed unwilling to go. There was a lump in Kate’s throat, as she handled the pitiful gift. Without warning the child, never loosening for a moment his grip on Tarvin’s hand, began to repeat message word by word, his little fingers tightening on Tarvin’s fist as he went on.

‘Say I am very grateful indeed,’ said Kate, a little puzzled, and not too sure of her voice.

‘That was not the answer,’ said the child; and he looked appealingly at his tall friend, the new Englishman.

The idle talk of the commercial travellers in the verandah of the rest-house flashed through Tarvin’s mind. He took a quick pace forward, and laid his hand on Kate’s shoulder, whispering huskily.

‘Can’t you see what it means? It’s the boy — the cloth nine years on the loom.’

‘But what can I do?’ cried Kate, bewildered.

‘Look after him. Keep on looking after him. You are quick enough in most things. Sitabhai wants his life. See that she doesn’t get it.’

Kate began to understand a little. Everything was possible in that awful palace, even child-murder. She had already guessed the hate that lives between childless and mother queens. The Maharaj Kunwar stood motionless in the twilight, twinkling in his jewelled robes.

‘Shall I say it again?’ he asked.

‘No, no, no, child! No!’ she cried, flinging herself on her knees before him, and snatching his little figure to her breast, with a sudden access of tenderness and pity. ‘O Nick! what shall we do in this horrible country?’ She began to cry.

‘Ah!’ said the Maharaj, utterly unmoved, ‘I was to go when I saw that you cried.’ He lifted up his voice for the carriage and troopers, and departed, leaving the shabby comforter on the floor.

Kate was sobbing in the half darkness. Neither Mrs. Estes nor her husband was within just then. That little ‘we’ of hers went through Tarvin with a sweet and tingling ecstasy. He stooped and took her in his arms, and for that which followed Kate did not rebuke him.

‘We’ll pull through together, little girl,’ he whispered to the shaken head on his shoulder.

X

Ye know the Hundred Danger Time when, gay with paint and flowers,
Your household gods are bribed to help the bitter, helpless hours;
Ye know the worn and rotten mat whereon your daughter lies,
Ye know the Sootak-room unclean, the cell wherein she dies;

Dies with the babble in her ear of midwife’s muttered charm,
Dies, spite young life that strains to stay, the suckling on her arm —
Dies in the four-fold heated room, parched by the Birth Fire’s breath —
Foredoomed, ye say, lest anguish lack, to haunt her home in death.

— A Song of the Women.

‘Dear friend — That was very unkind of you, and you have made my life harder. I know I was weak. The child upset me. But I must do what I came for, and I want you to strengthen me, Nick, not hinder me. Don’t come for a few days, please. I need all I am or hope to be for the work I see opening here. I think I can really do some good. Let me, please. KATE.’

Tarvin read fifty different meanings into this letter, received the following morning, and read them out again. At the end of his conjectures he could be sure only of one thing — that in spite of that moment’s weakness, Kate was fixed upon her path. He could not yet prevail against her steadfast gentleness, and perhaps it would be better not to try. Talks in the verandah, and sentinel-like prowlings about her path when she went to the palace, were pleasant enough, but he had not come to Rhatore to tell her that he loved her. Topaz, in whose future the other half of his heart was bound up, knew that secret long ago, and — Topaz was waiting for the coming of the Three C.’s, even as Nick was waiting on Kate’s comings and goings. The girl was unhappy, overstrained, and despairing, but since — he thanked God always — he was at hand to guard her from the absolute shock of evil fate, she might well be left for the moment to Mrs. Estes’ comfort and sympathy..

She had already accomplished something in the guarded courts of the women’s quarters, for the Maharaj Kunwar’s mother had entrusted her only son’s life to her care (who could help loving and trusting Kate?); but for his own part, what had he done for Topaz beyond — he looked toward the city — playing pachisi with the Maharajah? The low morning sun flung the shadow of the resthouse before him. The commercial travellers came out one by one, gazed at the walled bulk of Rhatore, and cursed it. Tarvin mounted his horse, of which much more hereafter, and ambled toward the city to pay his respects to the Maharajah. It was through him, if through any one, that he must possess himself of the Naulahka; he had been anxiously studying him, and shrewdly measuring the situation, and he now believed that he had formed a plan through which he might hope to make himself solid with the Maharajah — a plan which, whether it brought him the Naulahka or not, would at least allow him the privilege of staying at Rhatore. This privilege certain broad hints of Colonel Nolan’s had seemed to Tarvin of late plainly to threaten, and it had become clear to him that he must at once acquire a practical and publishable object for his visit, if he had to rip up the entire State to find it. To stay, he must do something in particular. What he had found to do was particular enough; it should be done forthwith, and it should bring him first the Naulahka, and then — if he was at all the man he took himself for — Kate!

As he approached the gates he saw Kate, in a brown habit, riding with Mrs. Estes out of the missionary’s garden.

‘You needn’t be afraid, dear. I shan’t bother you,’ he said to himself, smiling at the dust-cloud rising behind her, as he slackened his pace. ‘But I wonder what’s taking you out so early.’

The misery within the palace walls which had sent her half weeping to Mrs. Estes represented only a phase of the work for which Kate had come. If the wretchedness was so great under the shadow of the throne, what must the common folk endure? Kate was on her way to the hospital.

‘There is only one native doctor at the hospital,’ Mrs. Estes was saying, as they went along, ‘and, of course, he’s only a native; that is to say, he is idle.’

‘How can any one be idle here?’ her companion cried, as the stored heat from under the city gates beat across their temples.

‘Every one grows idle so soon in Rhatore,’ returned Mrs. Estes, with a little sigh, thinking of Lucien’s high hopes and strenuous endeavours, long since subdued to a mild apathy.

Kate sat her horse with the assured seat of a Western girl who has learned to ride and to walk at the same time. Her well-borne little figure had advantages on horseback. The glow of resolve lighting her simply framed face at the moment lent it a spiritual beauty; and she was warmed by the consciousness that she drew near her purpose and the goal of two years’ working and dreaming. As they rounded a curve in the main street of the city, a crowd was seen waiting at the foot of a flight of red sandstone steps rising to the platform of a whitewashed house three storeys in height, on which appeared the sign, ‘State Dispensary.’ The letters leaned against one another, and drooped down over each side of the door.

A sense of the unreality of it all came over Kate as she surveyed the crowd of women, clad in vermilion, dull-red, indigo, saffron, blue, pink, and turquoise garments of raw silk. Almost every woman held a child on her hip, and a low wailing cry rose up as Kate drew rein. The women clustered about her stirrup, caught at her foot, and thrust their babies into her arms. She took one little one to her breast, and hushed it tenderly; it was burnt and dry with fever.

‘Be careful,’ said Mrs. Estes; ‘there is smallpox in the hills behind us, and these people have no notion of precautions.’

Kate, listening to the cry of the women, did not answer. A portly, white-bearded native, in a brown camel’s hair dressing-gown and patent leather boots, came out of the dispensary, thrusting the women right and left, and bowing profoundly.

‘You are new lady doctor?’ he said. ‘Hospital is quite ready for inspection. Stand back from the miss sahib!’ he shouted in the vernacular, as Kate slipped to the ground, and the crowd closed about her. Mrs. Estes remained in the saddle, watching the scene.

A woman of the desert, very tall, gold-coloured, and scarlet-lipped, threw back her face-cloth, caught Kate by the wrist, and made as if she would drag her away, crying aloud fiercely in the vernacular. The trouble in her eyes was not to be denied. Kate followed unresisting, and, as the crowd parted, saw a camel kneeling in the roadway. On its back a gaunt skeleton of a man was muttering, and picking aimlessly at the nail-studded saddle. The woman drew herself up to full height, and, without a word, flung herself down upon the ground, clasping Kate’s feet. Kate stooped to raise her, her underlip quivering, and the doctor from the steps shouted cheerfully —

‘Oh, that is all right. He is confirmed lunatic, her husband. She is always bringing him here.’

‘Have you done nothing, then?’ cried Kate, turning on him angrily.

‘What can do? She will not leave him here for treatment so I may blister him.’

‘Blister him!’ murmured Kate to herself, appalled, as she caught the woman’s hands and held them firmly. ‘Tell her that I say he must be left here,’ she said aloud. The doctor conveyed the command. The woman took a deep breath, and stared at Kate under level brows for a full half-minute. Then she carried Kate’s hand to the man’s forehead, and sat down in the dust, veiling her head.

Kate, dumb under these strange expressions of the workings of the Eastern mind, stared at her for a moment, with an impulse of the compassion which knows no race, before she bent and kissed her quietly on the forehead.

‘Carry this man up,’ she said, pointing; and he was carried up the steps and into the hospital, his wife following like a dog. Once she turned and spoke to her sisters below, and there went up a little chorus of weeping and laughter.

‘She says,’ said the doctor, beaming, ‘that she will kill any one who is impolite to you. Also, she will be the nurse of your son.’

Kate paused to say a word to Mrs. Estes, who was bound on an errand further into the city; then she mounted the steps with the doctor.

‘Now, will you see the hospital?’ he asked. ‘But first let me introduce. I am Lalla Dhunpat Rai, Licentiate Medicine, from the Duff College. I was first native my province that took that degree. That was twenty years ago.’

Kate looked at him wonderingly. ‘Where have you been since?’ she asked.

‘Some time I stayed in my father’s house. Then I was clerk in medical stores in British India. But his Highness have graciously given me this appointment, which I hold now.’

Kate lifted her eyebrows. This, then, was to be her colleague. They passed into the hospital together in silence, Kate holding the skirt of her riding-habit clear of the accumulated grime of the floor.