Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (59 page)

‘An enemy hath done this, an enemy hath done this!’ he clamoured. ‘My beautiful brown horse that never did harm except when he kicked through fulness of meat! Where shall I find a new service if I let my charge die thus?’

‘I wish I knew! I wish I knew!’ said Tarvin, puzzled, and almost despairing. ‘There’d be a bullet through one black head, if I were just a little surer. Get up, you! Fibby, old man, I forgive you all your sins. You were a good old boy, and — here’s luck.’

The blue smoke enveloped Fibby’s head for an instant, the head fell like a hammer, and the good horse was out of his pain. The groom, rising, rent the air with grief, till Tarvin kicked him out of the pickets and bade him begone. Then it was noticeable that his cries ceased suddenly, and, as he retreated into his mud-house to tie up his effects, he smiled and dug up some silver from a hole under his bedstead.

Tarvin, dismounted, looked east, west, north, south for help, as Sitabhai had looked on the dam. A wandering gang of gipsies with their lean bullocks and yelping dogs turned an angle of the city wall, and rested like a flock of unclean birds by the city gate. The sight in itself was not unusual, but city regulations forbade camping within a quarter of a mile of the walls.

‘Some of the lady’s poor relatives, I suppose. They have blocked the way through the gate pretty well. Now, if I were to make a bolt of it to the missionary’s they’d have me, wouldn’t they?’ muttered Tarvin to himself. ‘On the whole, I’ve seen prettier professions than trading with Eastern queens. They don’t seem to understand the rules of the game.’

At that moment a cloud of dust whirled through the gipsy camp, as the escort of the Maharaj Kunwar, clearing the way for the barouche, scattered the dark band to the left and right. Tarvin wondered what this might portend. The escort halted with the customary rattle of accoutrements at the rest-house door, the barouche behind them. A single trooper, two hundred yards or more in the rear, lifted his voice in a deferential shout as he pursued the carriage. He was answered by a chuckle from the escort, and two shrill screams of delight from the occupants of the barouche.

A child whom Tarvin had never before seen stood upright in the back of the carriage, and hurled a torrent of abuse in the vernacular at the outpaced trooper. Again the escort laughed.

‘Tarvin Sahib! Tarvin Sahib!’ piped the Maharaj Kunwar. ‘Come and look at us.’

For a moment Tarvin fancied this a fresh device of the enemy; but reassured by the sight of his old and trusted ally, the Maharaj, he stepped forward.

‘Prince,’ he said, as he took his hand, ‘you ought not to be out.’

‘Oh, it is all right,’ said the young man hastily, though his little pale face belied it. ‘I gave the order and we came. Miss Kate gives me orders; but she took me over to the palace, and there I give orders. This is Umr Singh — my brother, the little Prince; but I shall be King.’

The second child raised his eyes slowly and looked full at Tarvin. The eyes and the low broad forehead were those of Sitabhai, and the mouth closed firmly over the little pearl-like teeth, as his mother’s mouth had closed in the conflict on the Dungar Talao.

‘He is from the other side of the palace,’ continued the Maharaj, still in English. ‘From the other side, where I must not go. But when I was in the palace I went to him — ha, ha, Tarvin Sahib — and he was killing a goat. Look! His hands are all red now.’

Umr Singh opened a tiny palm at a word from the Maharaj in the vernacular, and flung it outward at Tarvin. It was dark with dried blood, and a bearded whisper ran among the escort. The commandant turned in his saddle, and, nodding at Tarvin, muttered, ‘Sitabhai.’ Tarvin caught the word, and it was sufficient for him. Providence had sent him help out of a clear sky. He framed a plan instantly.

‘But how did you come here, you young imps?’ he demanded.

‘Oh, there are only women in the palace yonder, and I am a Rajput and a man. He cannot speak any English at all,’ he added, pointing to his companion; but when we have played together I have told him about you, Tarvin Sahib, and about the day you picked me out of my saddle, and he wished to come too, to see all the things you show me, so I gave the order very quietly, and we came out of the little door together. And so we are here! Salaam, baba,’ he said patronisingly to the child at his side, and the child, slowly and gravely, raised his hand to his forehead, still gazing with fixed, incurious eyes on the stranger. Then he whispered something that made the Maharaj Kunwar laugh. ‘He says,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar, ‘that you are not so big as he thought. His mother told him that you were stronger than any man, but some of these troopers are bigger than you.’

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ asked Tarvin.

‘Show him your gun, and how you shoot rupees, and what you do that makes horses quiet when they kick, and all those things.’

‘All right,’ said Tarvin. ‘But I can’t show them here, Come over to Mr. Estes with me.’

‘I do not like to go there. My monkey is dead. And I do not think Kate would like to see us. She is always crying now. She took me up to the palace yesterday, and this morning I went to her again; but she would not see me.’

Tarvin could have hugged the child for the blessed assurance that Kate at least still lived. ‘Isn’t she at the hospital, then?’ he asked thickly.

‘Oh, the hospital has all gone phut. There are no women now. They all ran away.’

‘No!’ cried Tarvin. ‘Say that again, little man. What for?’

‘Devils,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar briefly. ‘What do I know? It was some women’s talk. Show him how you ride, Tarvin Sahib.’

Again Umr Singh whispered to his companion, and put one leg over the side of the barouche. ‘He says he will ride in front of you, as I told him I did,’ interpreted the Prince. ‘Gurdit Singh, dismount!’

A trooper flung himself out of the saddle on the word, and stood to attention at the horse’s head. Tarvin, smiling to himself at the perfection of his opportunity, said nothing, but leapt into the saddle, picked Umr Singh out of his barouche, and placed him carefully before him.

‘Sitabhai would be rather restless if she could see me,’ he murmured to himself, as he tucked his arm round the lithe little figure. ‘I don’t think there will be any Juggutting while I carry this young man in front of me.’

As the escort opened to allow Tarvin to take his place at their head, a wandering priest, who had been watching the episode from a little distance, turned and shouted with all the strength of his lungs across the plain, in the direction of the city. The cry was taken up by unseen voices, passed on to the city walls, and died away on the sands beyond.

Umr Singh smiled, as the horse began to trot, and urged Tarvin to go faster. This the Maharaj forbade. He wished to see the sight comfortably from his seat in the barouche. As he passed the gipsy camp, men and women threw themselves down on the sands, crying, ‘Jai! Jungle da Badshah jai!’ and the faces of the troopers darkened.

‘That means,’ cried the Maharaj Kunwar, ‘Victory to the King of the Desert. I have no money to give them. Have you, Tarvin Sahib.’

In his joy at being now safely on his way to Kate, Tarvin could have flung everything he possessed to the crowd — almost the Naulahka itself. He emptied a handful of copper and small silver among them, and the cry rose again, but bitter laughter was, mingled with it, and the gipsy folk called to each other, mocking.. The Maharaj Kunwar’s face turned scarlet. He leaned forward listening for an instant, and then shouted, ‘By Indur, it is for him! Scatter their tents!’ At a wave of his hand the escort, wheeling, plunged through the camp in line, driving the light ash of the fires up in clouds, slashing the donkeys with the flat of their swords until they stampeded, and carrying away the frail brown tents on the butts of their reversed lances.

Tarvin looked on contentedly at the dispersal of the group, which he knew would have stopped him if he had been alone.

Umr Singh bit his lip. Then, turning to the Maharaj Kunwar, he smiled, and put forward from his belt the hilt of his sword in sign of fealty.

‘It is just, my brother,’ he said in the vernacular. ‘But I’ — here he raised his voice a little — ’would not drive the gipsy folk too far. They always return.’

‘Ay,’ cried a voice from the huddled crowd, watching the wreck of the camp, significantly, ‘gipsies always return, my King.’

‘So does a dog,’ said the Maharaj, between his teeth. ‘Both are kicked. Drive on.’

And a pillar of dust came to Estes’s house, Tarvin riding in safety in the midst of it.

Telling the boys to play until he came out, he swept into the house, taking the steps two at a time, and discovered Kate in a dark corner of the, parlour with a bit of sewing in her hand. As she looked up he saw that she was crying.

‘Nick!’ she exclaimed voicelessly. ‘Nick!’ He had stopped, hesitating on the threshold; she dropped her work, and rose breathless. ‘You have come back! It is you! You are alive!’

Tarvin smiled, and held out his arms. ‘Come and see!’ She took a step forward.

‘Oh, I was afraid —  — ’

‘Come!’

She went doubtfully toward him. He caught her fast, and held her in his arms.

For a long minute she let her head lie on his breast. Then she looked up. ‘This isn’t what I meant,’ she protested.

‘Oh, don’t try to improve on it!’ Tarvin said hastily.

‘She tried to poison me. I was sure when I heard nothing that she must have killed you. I fancied horrible things.’

‘Poor child! And your hospital has gone wrong! You have been having a hard time. But we will change all that. We must leave as soon as you can get ready. I’ve nipped her claws for a moment; I’m holding a hostage. But we can’t keep that up for ever. We must get away.’

‘We!’ she repeated feebly.

‘Well, do you want to go alone?’

She smiled as she released herself. ‘I want you to.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m not worth thinking of. I have failed. Everything I meant to do has fallen about me in a heap. I feel burnt out, Nick — burnt out!’

‘All right! We’ll put in new works and launch you on a fresh system. That’s what I want. There shall be nothing to remind you that you ever saw Rhatore, dear.’

‘It was a mistake,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Everything. My coming. My thinking I could do it. It’s not a girl’s work. It’s my work, perhaps; but it’s not for me. I have given it up, Nick. Take me home.’

Tarvin gave an unbecoming shout of joy, and folded her in his arms again. He told her that they must be married at once, and start that night, if she could manage it; and Kate, dreading what might befall him, assented doubtfully. She spoke of preparations; but Tarvin said that they would prepare after they had done it. They could buy things at Bombay — stacks of things. He was sweeping her forward with the onrush of his extempore plans, when she said suddenly, ‘But what of the dam, Nick? You can’t leave that.’

‘Shucks!’ exclaimed Tarvin heartily. ‘You don’t suppose there’s any gold in the old river, do you?’

She recoiled quickly from his arms, staring at him in accusation and reproach.

‘Do you mean that you have always known that there was no gold there?’she asked.

Tarvin pulled himself together quickly; but not so quickly that she did not catch the confession in his eye.

‘I see you have,’ she said coldly.

Tarvin measured the crisis which had suddenly descended on him out of the clouds; he achieved an instantaneous change of front, and met her smiling.

‘Certainly,’ he said; ‘I have been working it as a blind.’

‘A blind?’ she repeated. ‘To cover what?’

‘You.’

‘What do you mean?’ she inquired, with a look in her eyes which made him uncomfortable.

‘The Indian Government allows no one to remain in the State without a definite purpose. I couldn’t tell Colonel Nolan that I had come courting you, could I?’

‘I don’t know. But you could have avoided taking the Maharajah’s money to carry out this — this plan. An honest man would have avoided that.’

‘Oh, look here!’ exclaimed Tarvin.

‘How could you cheat the King into thinking that there was a reason for your work, how could you let him give you the labour of a thousand men, how could you take his money? O Nick!’

He gazed at her for a vacant and hopeless minute. ‘Why, Kate,’ he exclaimed, ‘do you know you are talking of the most stupendous joke the Indian empire has witnessed since the birth of time?’

This was pretty good, but it was not good enough. He plunged for a stronger hold as she answered, with a perilous little note of breakdown in her voice, ‘You make it worse.’

‘Well, your sense of humour never was your strongest point, you know, Kate.’ He took the seat next her, leaned over and took her hand, as he went on. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as rather amusing, though, after all, to rip up half a state to be near a very small little girl — a very sweet, very extra lovely little girl, but still a rather tiny little girl in proportion to the size of the Amet valley? Come — doesn’t it?’

‘Is that all you have to say?’ asked she. Tarvin turned pale. He knew the tone off finality he heard in her voice; it went with a certain look of scorn when she spoke of any form of moral baseness that moved her. He recognised his condemnation in it and shuddered. In the moment that passed, while he still kept silence, he recognised this for the crisis of his life. Then he took strong hold of himself, and said quietly, easily, unscrupulously —

‘Why, you don’t suppose that I’m not going to ask the Maharajah for his bills do you?’

She gasped a little. Her acquaintance with Tarvin did not help her to follow his dizzying changes of front. His bird’s skill to make his level flight, his reeling dips and circling returns upon himself, all seem part of a single impulse, must ever remain confusing to her. But she rightly believed in his central intention to do the square thing, if he could find out what it was; and her belief in his general strength helped her not to see at this moment that he was deriving his sense of the square thing from herself. She could not know, and probably could not have imagined, how little his own sense of the square thing had to do with any system of morality, and how entirely he must always define morality as what pleased Kate. Other women liked confections; she preferred morality, and he meant she should have it, if he had to turn pirate to get it for her.