Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (58 page)

‘Thou canst go out in the sunshine and walk in the streets and no man turns his head,’ said the Queen bitterly. ‘Thy hands are free and thy face is uncovered. What if thou wert a slave among slaves, a stranger among stranger people, and’ — the voice dropped — ’dispossessed of the favour of thy lord?’

The woman, stooping, kissed the pale feet under her hands.

‘Then I would not wear myself with strife, but, remembering that a man-child may grow into a king, would send that child away beyond the power of the co-wife.’

‘Is it so easy to cut away the hand?’ said the Queen, sobbing.

‘Better the hand than the heart, sahiba. Who could guard such a child in this place?’

The Queen pointed to Kate. ‘She came from far off, and she has once already brought him back from death.’

‘Her drugs are good and her skill is great, but — thou knowest she is but a maiden, who has known neither gain nor loss. It may be that I am luckless, and that my eyes are evil — thus did not my man say last autumn — but it may be. Yet I know the pain at the breast and the yearning over the child new-born — as thou hast known it.’

‘As I have known it.’

‘My house is empty and I am a widow and childless, and never again shall a man call me to wed.’

‘As I am — as I am.’

‘Nay, the little one is left, whatever else may go; and the little one must be well guarded. If there is any jealousy against the child it were not well to keep him in this hotbed. Let him go out.’

‘But whither? Miss Kate, dost thou know? The world is all dark to us who sit behind the curtain.’

‘I know that the child of his own motion desires to go to the Princes’ School in Ajmir. He has told me that much,’ said Kate, who had lost no word of the conversation from her place on the cushion, bowed forward with her chin supported in her hands. ‘It will be only for a year or two.’

The Queen laughed a little through her tears. ‘Only a year or two, Miss Kate. Dost thou know how long is one night when he is not here?’

‘And he can return at call; but no cry will bring back mine own. Only a year or two. The world is dark also to those who do not sit behind the curtain, sahiba. It is no fault of hers. How should she know?’ said the woman of the desert under her breath to the Queen.

Against her will, Kate began to feel annoyed at this persistent exclusion of herself from the talk, and the assumption that she, with her own great trouble upon her, whose work was preeminently to deal with sorrow, must have no place in this double grief.

‘How should I not know?’ said Kate impetuously. ‘Do I not know pain? Is it not my life?’

‘Not yet,’ said the Queen quietly. ‘Neither pain nor joy. Miss Kate, thou art very-wise, and I am only a woman who has never stirred beyond the palace walls. But I am wiser than thou, for I know that which thou dost not know, though thou hast given back my son to me, and to this woman her husband’s speech. How shall I repay thee all I owe?’

‘Let her hear truth,’ said the woman under her breath. ‘We be all three women here, sahiba — dead leaf, flowering tree, and the blossom unopened.’

The Queen caught Kate’s hands and gently pulled her forward till her head fell on the Queen’s knees. Wearied with the emotions of the morning, unutterably tired in body and spirit, the girl had no desire to lift it. The small hands put her hair back from her forehead, and the full dark eyes, worn with much weeping, looked into her own. The woman of the desert flung an arm round her waist.

‘Listen, my sister,’ began the Queen, with an infinite tenderness. ‘There is a proverb among my own people, in the mountains of the north, that a rat found a piece of turmeric, and opened a druggist’s shop. Even so with the pain that thou dost know and heal, beloved. Thou art not angry? Nay, thou must not take offence. Forget that thou art white, and I black, and remember only that we three be sisters. Little sister, with us women ‘tis thus, and no other way. From all, except such as have borne a child, the world is hid. I make my prayers trembling to such and such a god, who thou sayest is black stone, and I tremble at the gusts of the night because I believe that the devils ride by my windows at such hours; and I sit here in the dark knitting wool and preparing sweetmeats that come back untasted from my lord’s table. And thou coming from ten thousand leagues away, very wise and fearing nothing, hast taught me, oh, ten thousand things. Yet thou art the child, and I am still the mother, and what I know thou canst not know, and the wells of my happiness thou canst not fathom, nor the bitter waters of my sorrow till thou hast tasted happiness and grief alike. I have told thee of the child — all and more than all, thou sayest? Little sister, I have told thee less than the beginning of my love for him, because I knew that thou couldst not understand. I have told thee my sorrows — all and more than all, thou sayest, when I laid my head against thy breast? How could I tell thee all? Thou art a maiden, and the heart in thy bosom, beneath my heart, betrayed in its very beat that it did not understand. Nay, that woman there, coming from without, knows more of me than thou? And they taught thee in a school, thou hast told me, all manner of healing, and there is no disease in life that thou dost not understand? Little sister, how couldst thou understand life that hast never given it? Hast thou ever felt the tug of the child at the breast? Nay, what need to blush? Hast thou? I know thou hast not. Though I heard thy speech for the first time, and looking from the window saw thee walking, I should know. And the others — my sisters in the world — know also. But they do not all speak to thee as I do. When the life quickens under the breast, they, waking in the night, hear all the earth walking to that measure. Why should they tell thee? To-day the hospital has broken from under thee. Is it not so? And the women went out one by one? And what didst thou say to them?’

The woman of the desert, answering for her, spoke. ‘She said, “Come back, and I will make ye well.”‘

‘And by what oath did she affirm her words?’

‘There was no oath,’ said the woman of the desert; ‘she stood in the gate and called.’

‘And upon what should a maiden call to bring wavering women back again? The toil that she has borne for their sake? They cannot see it. But of the pains that a woman has shared with them, a woman knows. There was no child in thy arms. The mother look was not in thy eyes. By what magic, then, wouldst thou speak to women? There was a charm among the drugs, they said, and their children would be misshapen. What didst thou know of the springs of life and death to teach them otherwise? It is written in the books of thy school, I know, that such things cannot be. But we women do not read books. It is not from them that we learn of life. How should such an one prevail, unless the gods help her — and the gods are very far away. Thou hast given thy life to the helping of women. Little sister, when wilt thou also be a woman?’

The voice ceased. Kate’s head was buried deep in the Queen’s lap. She let it lie there without stirring.

‘Ay!’ said the woman of the desert. ‘The mark of coverture has been taken from my head, my glass bangles, are broken on my arm, and I am unlucky to meet when a man sets forth on a journey. Till I die I must be alone, earning my bread alone, and thinking of the dead. But though I knew that it was to come again, at the end of one year instead of ten, I would still thank the gods that have given me love and a child. Will the miss sahib take this in payment for all she did for my man? “A wandering priest, a childless woman, and a stone in the water are of one blood.” So says the talk of our people. What will the miss sahib do now? The Queen has spoken the truth. The gods and thy own wisdom, which is past the wisdom of a maid, have helped thee so far, as I, who was with thee always, have seen.. The gods have warned thee that their help is at an end. What remains? Is this work for such as thou? Is it not as the Queen says? She, sitting here alone, and seeing nothing, has seen that which I, moving with thee among the sick day by day, have seen and known. Little sister, is it not so?’

Kate lifted her head slowly from the Queen’s knee, and rose.

‘Take the child, and let us go,’ she said hoarsely.

The merciful darkness of the room hid her face.

‘Nay,’ said the Queen, ‘this woman shall take him. Go thou back alone.’

Kate vanished.

XXI

The Law whereby my lady moves
Was never Law to me,
But ‘tis enough that she approves
Whatever Law it be.

For in that Law, and by that Law,
My constant course I’ll steer;
Not that I heed or deem it dread,
But that she holds it dear.

Tho’ Asia sent for my content
Her richest argosies,
Those would I spurn, and bid return,
If that should give her ease.

With equal heart I’d watch depart
Each spiced sail from sight,
Sans bitterness, desiring less
Great gear than her delight.

Yet such am I, yea such am I —
Sore bond and freest free, —
The Law that sways my lady’s ways
Is mystery to me!

To sit still, and to keep sitting still, is the first lesson that the young jockey must learn. Tarvin was learning it in bitterness of spirit. For the sake of his town, for the sake of his love, and, above all, for the sake of his love’s life, he must go. The town was waiting, his horse was saddled at the door, but his love would not come. He must sit still.

The burning desert wind blew through the open verandah as remorselessly as Sitabhai’s hate. Looking out, he saw nothing but the city asleep in the sunshine and the wheeling kites above it. Yet when evening fell, and a man might be able by bold riding to escape to the railway, certain shrouded figures would creep from the walls and take up their position within easy gunshot of the rest-house. One squatted at each point of the compass, and between them, all night long, came and went a man on horseback. Tarvin could hear the steady beat of the hoofs as he went his rounds, and the sound did not give him fresh hope. But for Kate — but for Kate, he repeated to himself, he would have been long since beyond reach of horse or bullet. The hours were very slow, and as he sat and watched the shadows grow and shorten it seemed to him, as it had seemed so often before, that this and no other was the moment that Topaz would choose to throw her chances from her.

He had lost already, he counted, eight-and-forty precious hours, and, so far as he could see, the remainder of the year might be spent in an equally unprofitable fashion.

Meantime Kate lay exposed to every imaginable danger. Sitabhai was sure to assume that he had wrested the necklace from her for the sake of the ‘frail white girl’; she had said as much on the dam. It was for Kate’s sake, in a measure; but Tarvin reflected bitterly that an Oriental had no sense of proportion, and, like the snake, strikes first at that which is nearest. And Kate? How in the world was he to explain the case to her? He had told her of danger about her path as well as his own, and she had decided to face that danger. For her courage and devotion he loved her; but her obstinacy made him grit his teeth. There was but one grimly comical element in the terrible jumble. What would the King say to Sitabhai when he discovered that she had lost the Luck of the State? In what manner would she veil that loss; and, above all, into what sort of royal rage would she fall? Tarvin shook his head meditatively. ‘It’s quite bad enough for me,’ he said, ‘just about as bad as it can possibly be made; but I have a wandering suspicion that it may be unwholesome for Juggut. Yes! I can spare time to be very sorry for Juggut. My fat friend, you should have held straight that first time, outside the city walls!’

He rose and looked out into the sunlight, wondering which of the scattered vagrants by the roadside might be an emissary from the palace. A man lay apparently asleep by the side of his camel near the road that ran to the city. Tarvin stepped out casually from the verandah, and saw, as soon as he was fairly in the open, that the sleeper rolled round to the other side of his beast. He strolled forward a few paces. The sunlight glinted above the back of the camel on something that shone like silver. Tarvin marched straight toward the glitter, his pistol in his hand. The man, when he came up to him, was buried in innocent slumber. Under the fold of his garment peered the muzzle of a new and very clean rifle.

‘Looks as if Sitabhai was calling out the militia, and supplying them with outfits from her private armoury. Juggut’s gun was new, too,’ said Tarvin, standing over the sleeper. ‘But this man knows more about guns than Juggut. Hi!’ He stooped down and stirred the man up with the muzzle of his revolver. ‘I’m afraid I must trouble you for that gun. And tell the lady to drop it, will you? It won’t pay.’

The man understood the unspoken eloquence of the pistol, and nothing more. He gave up his gun sullenly enough, and moved away, lashing his camel spitefully.

‘Now, I wonder how many more of her army I shall have to disarm,’ said Tarvin, retracing his steps, the captured gun over his shoulder. ‘I wonder — no, I won’t believe that she would dare to do anything to Kate! She knows enough of me to be sure that I’d blow her and her old palace into tomorrow. If she’s half the woman she pretends to be, she’ll reckon with me before she goes much further.’

In vain he attempted to force himself into this belief. Sitabhai had shown him what sort of thing her mercy might be, and Kate might have tasted it ere this. To go to her now — to be maimed or crippled at the least if he went to her now — was impossible. Yet, he decided that he would go. He returned hastily to Fibby, whom he had left not three minutes before flicking flies off in the sunshine at the back of the rest-house. But Fibby lay on his side groaning piteously, hamstrung and dying.

Tarvin could hear his groom industriously polishing a bit round the corner, and when the man came up in response to his call he flung himself down by the side of the horse, howling with grief.