Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (48 page)

‘I have sent that I may see you,’ she said at last. ‘You have come here across the water to help these cattle?’

Kate nodded, every instinct in her revolting at the silver-tongued splendour at her feet.

‘You are not married?’ The Queen put her hands behind her head and looked at the painted peacocks on the ceiling.

Kate did not reply, but her heart was hot.

‘Is there any sickness here?’ she asked at last sharply. ‘I have much to do.’

‘There is none, unless it may be that you yourself are sick. There are those who sicken without knowing it.’

The eyes turned to meet Kate’s, which were blazing with indignation. This woman, lapped in idleness, had struck at the life of the Maharaj Kunwar; and the horror of it was that she was younger than herself.

‘Achcha,’ said the Queen, still more slowly, watching her face. ‘If you hate me so, why do you not say so? You white people love truth.’

Kate turned on her heel to leave the room. Sitabhai called her back for an instant, and, moved by some royal caprice, would have caressed her, but she fled indignant, and was careful never again to venture into that wing of the palace. None of the women there called for her services, and not once but several times, when she passed the mouth of the covered way that led to Sitabhai’s apartments, she saw a little naked child flourishing a jewelled knife, and shouting round the headless carcass of a goat whose blood was flooding the white marble. ‘That,’ said the women, ‘is the gipsy’s son. He learns to kill daily. A snake is a snake, and a gipsy is a gipsy, till they are dead.’

There was no slaughter of goats, singing of songs, or twangling of musical instruments in the wing of the palace that made itself specially Kate’s own. Here lived, forgotten by the Maharajah and mocked by Sitabhai’s maidens, the mother of the Maharaj Kunwar. Sitabhai had taken from her — by the dark arts of the gipsies, so the Queen’s adherents said; by her own beauty and knowledge in love, they sang in the other wing of the palace — all honour and consideration due to her as the Queen Mother. There were scores of empty rooms where once there had been scores of waiting-women, and those who remained with the fallen Queen were forlorn and ill-favoured. She herself was a middle-aged woman, by Eastern standards; that is to say, she had passed twenty-five, and had never been more than ordinarily comely.

Her eyes were dull with much weeping, and her mind was full of superstitions — fears for every hour of the night and the day, and vague terrors, bred of loneliness, that made her tremble at the sound of a footfall. In the years of her prosperity she had been accustomed to perfume herself, put on her jewels, and with braided hair await the Maharajah’s coming. She would still call for her jewels, attire herself as of old, and wait amid the respectful silence of her attendants till the long night gave way to the dawn, and the dawn showed the furrows on her cheeks. Kate had seen one such vigil, and perhaps showed in her eyes the wonder that she could not repress, for the Queen Mother fawned on her timidly after the jewels had been put away, and begged her not to laugh.

‘You do not understand, Miss Kate,’ she pleaded. ‘There is one custom in your country and another in ours; but still you are a woman, and you will know.’

‘But you know that no one will come,’ Kate said tenderly.

‘Yes, I know; but — no, you are not a woman, only a fairy that has come across the water to help me and mine.’

Here again Kate was baffled. Except in the message sent by the Maharaj Kunwar, the Queen Mother never referred to the danger that threatened her son’s life. Again and again Kate had tried to lead up to the subject — to gain some hint, at least, of the nature of the plot.

‘I know nothing,’ the Queen would reply. ‘Here behind the curtain no one knows anything. Miss Kate, if my own women lay dead out there in the sun at noon’ — she pointed downwards through the tracery of her window to the flagged path below — ’I should know nothing. Of what I said I know nothing; but surely it is allowed’ — she lowered her voice to a whisper — ’oh, surely it is allowed to a mother to bid another woman look to her son. He is so old now that he thinks himself a man, and wanders far, and so young that he thinks the world will do him no harm. Ahi! And he is so wise that he knows a thousand times more than I: he speaks English like an Englishman. How can I control him with my little learning and my very great love? I say to you, Be good to my son. That I can say aloud, and write it upon a wall, if need were. There is no harm in that. But if I said more, look you, the plaster between the stones beneath me would gape to suck it in, and the wind would blow all my words across to the villages. I am a stranger here — a Rajputni from Kulu, a thousand thousand koss away. They bore me here in a litter to be married — in the dark they bore me for a month; and except that some of my women have told me, I should not know which way the home wind blows when it goes to Kulu. What can a strange cow do in the byre? May the gods witness.’

‘Ah, but tell me what you think?’

‘I think nothing,’ the Queen would answer sullenly. ‘What have women to do with thinking? They love and they suffer. I have said all that I may say. Miss Kate, some day you will bear a little son. As you have been good to my son, so may the gods be good to yours when that time comes, and you know how the heart is full of love.’

‘If I am to protect him, I must know. You leave me in the dark.’

‘And I also am in the dark — and the darkness is full of danger.’

Tarvin himself was much about the palace, not only because he perceived that it was there he might most hopefully keep his ear to the ground for news of the Naulahka, but because it enabled him to observe Kate’s comings and goings, and with his hand ready for a rapid movement to his pistol-pocket.

His gaze followed her at these times, as at others, with the longing look of the lover; but he said nothing, and Kate was grateful to him. It was a time, as it seemed to him, to play the part of the Tarvin who had carried water for her long ago at the end of the section; it was a time to stand back, to watch, to guard, but not to trouble her.

The Maharaj Kunwar came often under his eye, and he was constantly inventing amusing things for him to do remote from Sitabhai’s courtyard; but the boy would occasionally break away, and then it was Tarvin’s task to go after him and make sure that he came to no harm. One afternoon when he had spent some time in coaxing the child away, and had finally resorted to force, much to the child’s disgust, a twelve-foot baulk of teakwood, as he was passing out under an arch in process of repair, crashed down from the scaffolding just in front of Fibby’s nose. The horse retired into the courtyard on his hind legs, and Tarvin heard the rustle of the women behind the shutters.

He reflected on the incurable slackness of these people, stopped to swear at the workmen crouched on the scaffolding in the hollow of the arch, and went on. They were no less careless about the dam — it was in the blood, he supposed — for the headman of a coolie gang who must have crossed the Amet twenty times, showed him a new ford across a particularly inviting channel, which ended in a quicksand; and when Tarvin had flung himself clear, the gang spent half the day in hauling Fibby out with ropes. They could not even build a temporary bridge without leaving the boards loose, so that a horse’s hoof found its way between; and the gangs seemed to make a point of letting bullock-carts run down the steep embankments into the small of Tarvin’s back, when, at infrequent intervals, that happened to be turned.

Tarvin was filled with great respect for the British Government, which worked on these materials, and began to understand the mild-faced melancholy and decisive views of Lucien Estes about the native population, as well as to sympathise more keenly than ever with Kate.

This curious people were now, he learned with horror, to fill the cup of their follies by marrying the young Maharaj Kunwar to a three-year-old babe, brought from the Kulu hills, at vast expense, to be his bride. He sought out Kate at the missionary’s, and found her quivering with indignation. She had just heard.

‘It’s like them to waste a wedding where it isn’t wanted,’ said Tarvin soothingly. Since he saw Kate excited, it became his part to be calm. ‘Don’t worry your overworked head about it, Kate. You are trying to do too much, and you are feeling too much. You will break down before you know it, from sheer exhaustion of the chord of sympathy.’

‘Oh no!’ said Kate. ‘I feel quite strong enough for anything that may come. I mustn’t break down. Think of this marriage coming on. The Maharaj will need me more than ever. He has just told me that he won’t get any sleep for three days and three nights while their priests are praying over him.’

‘Crazy! Why, it’s a quicker way of killing him than Sitabhai’s. Heavens! I daren’t think of it. Let’s talk of something else. Any papers from your father lately? This kind of thing makes Topaz taste sort of good.’

She gave him a package received by the last post, and he fell silent as he ran his eye hastily over a copy of the Telegram six weeks old; but he seemed to find little comfort in it. His brows knitted.

‘Pshaw!’ he exclaimed with irritation, ‘this won’t do!’

‘What is it?’

‘Heckler bluffing about the Three C.’s, and not doing it well. That isn’t like Jim. He talks about it as a sure thing as hard as if he didn’t believe in it, and had a private tip from somewhere that it wasn’t coming after all. I’ve no doubt he has. But he needn’t give it away to Rustler like that. Let’s look at the real estate transfers. Ah! that tells the story,’ he exclaimed excitedly, as his eye rested on the record of the sale of a parcel of lots on G Street. ‘Prices are going down — away, ‘way down. The boys are caving. They’re giving up the fight.’ He leaped up and marched about the room nervously. ‘Heavens! if I could only get word to them!’

‘Why — what, Nick? What word do you want to send them?’

He pulled himself up instantly.

‘To let them know that I believe in it,’ he said. ‘To get them to hold on.’

‘But suppose the road doesn’t come to Topaz after all. How can you know, away off here in India?’

‘Come to Topaz, little girl!’ he shouted. ‘Come to Topaz! It’s coming if I have to lay the rails!’

But the news about the temper of the town vexed and disconcerted him notwithstanding, and after he left Kate that night he sent a cable to Heckler, through Mrs. Mutrie, desiring her to forward the despatch from Denver, as if that were the originating office of the message.

‘HECKLER, TOPAZ. — Take a brace, for God’s sake. Got dead cinch on Three C.’s. Trust me, and boom like —  — TARVIN.’

XIV

Because I sought it far from men,
In deserts and alone,
I found it burning overhead,
The jewel of a throne.

Because I sought — I sought it so
And spent my days to find
It blazed one moment ere it left
The blacker night behind.

— The Crystals of Iswara.

A city of tents had grown up in three days without the walls of Rhatore — a city greened with far-brought lawns of turf, and stuck about with hastily transplanted orange-trees, wooden lamp-posts painted in gaudy colours, and a cast-iron fountain of hideous design. Many guests were expected at Rhatore to grace the marriage of the Maharaj Kunwar — barons, princes, thakurs, lords of waste fortresses and of hopeless crags of the north and the south, fiefs from the fat, poppy blazoned plains of Mewar, and brother rajahs of the King. They came accompanied by their escorts, horse and foot.

In a land where genealogies, to be respectable, must run back without a break for eight hundred years, it is a delicate matter not to offend; and all were desperately jealous of the place and precedence of their neighbours in the camp. Lest the task should be too easy, the household bards of the princes came with them, and squabbled with the court officials of Gokral Seetarun. Behind the tents stretched long lines of horse-pickets, where the fat pink-and-blue-spotted stallions neighed and squealed at one another, under their heavy velvet trappings, all day long; and the ragged militia of twenty tiny native states smoked and gambled among their saddles, or quarrelled at the daily distribution of food furnished by the generosity of the Maharajah. From hundreds of miles about, vagrant and mendicant priests of every denomination had flocked into the city, and their salmon-coloured raiment, black blankets, or ash-smeared nudity gave Tarvin many minutes of untrammelled entertainment as he watched them roaming fearlessly from tent to tent, their red eyes rolling in their heads, alternately threatening or fawning for gifts. The rest-house, as Tarvin discovered, was crammed with fresh contingents of commercial travellers. His Highness was not likely to pay at such a season, but fresh orders would be plentiful. The city itself was brilliant with coats of pink-and-white lime-wash, and the main streets were obstructed with the bamboo scaffoldings of fireworks. Every house-front was swept and newly luted with clean mud, and the doorways were hung with marigolds and strings of jasmine-buds. Through the crowds tramped the sweating sweetmeat-dealers, vendors of hawks, dealers in cheap jewellery and glass bracelets and little English mirrors, while camels, loaded with wedding gifts of far-off kings, ploughed through the crowd, or the mace-bearers of the State cleared a path with their silver staves for the passage of the Maharajah’s carriages. Forty barouches were in use, and, as long as horse-flesh held out, or harness could be patched with string, it did not beseem the dignity of the State to provide less than four horses to each. As these horses were untrained, and as the little native boys, out of sheer lightness of heart, touched off squibs and crackers at high noon, the streets were animated.

The hill on which the palace stood seemed to smoke like a volcano, for the little dignitaries came without cessation, each expecting the salute of cannon due to his rank. Between the roars of the ordnance, strains of uncouth music would break from the red walls, and presently some officer of the court would ride out of one of the gates, followed by all his retinue, each man gorgeous as a cock-pheasant in spring, his moustache fresh oiled and curled fiercely over his ears; or one of the royal elephants, swathed in red velvet and bullion from shoulder to ankle, would roll out under the weight of his silver howdah, and trumpet till the streets were cleared for his passage. Seventy elephants were fed daily by the King — no mean charge, since each beast consumed as much green fodder daily as he could carry on his back, as well as thirty or forty pounds of flour. Now and again one of the monsters, maddened by the noise and confusion, and by the presence of strange rivals, would be overtaken with paroxysms of blind fury. Then he would be hastily stripped of his trappings, bound with ropes and iron chains, hustled out of the city between two of his fellows, and tied down half a mile away by the banks of the Amet, to scream and rage till the horses in the neighbouring camps broke their pickets and stampeded wildly among the tents. Pertab Singh, commandant of his Highness’s body-guard, was in his glory. Every hour of the day gave him excuse for charging with his troop on mysterious but important errands between the palace and the tents of the princes. The formal interchange of visits alone occupied two days. Each prince with his escort would solemnly drive to the palace, and half an hour later the silver state barouche and the Maharajah himself, jewelled from head to heel, would return the visit, while the guns gave word of the event to the city of houses and to the city of tents.