Royal Rajasthan
There is a land where no resounding street
With babel of electric-garish night
And whir of endless wheels has put to flight
The liberty of leisure. Sandaled feet
And naked soles that feel the friendly dust
Go easily along the never measured miles.
A land at which the patron tourist smiles
Because of gods in whom those people trust
(He boasting One and trusting not at all);
A land where lightning is the lover's boon,
And honey oozing from an amber moon
Illumines footing on forbidden wall;
Where, 'stead of pursy jeweler's display,
Parading peacocks brave the passer-by,
And swans like angels in an azure sky
Wing swift and silent on unchallenged way.
No land of fable! Of the Hills I sing,
Whose royal women tread with conscious grace
The peace-filled gardens of a warrior race,
Each maiden fit for wedlock with a king,
And every Rajput son so royal born
And conscious of his age-long heritage
He looks askance at Burke's becrested page
And wonders at the new-ennobled scorn.
I sing (for this is earth) of hate and guile,
Of tyranny and trick and broken pledge,
Of sudden weapons, and the thrice-keen edge
Of woman's wit, the sting in woman's smile,
But also of the heaven-fathomed glow,
The sweetness and the charm and dear delight
Of loyal woman, humorous and right,
Pure-purposed as the bosom of the snow.
No tale, then, this of motors, but of men
With camels fleeter than the desert wind,
Who come and go. So leave the West behind,
And, at the magic summons of the pen
Forgetting new contentions if you will,
Take wings, take silent wings of time untied,
And see, with Fellow-friendship for your guide,
A little how the East goes wooing still.
"Gold is where you find it."
Dawn at the commencement of hot weather in the hills if not the loveliest of India's wealth of wonders (for there is the moon by night) is fair preparation for whatever cares to follow. There is a musical silence cut of which the first voices of the day have birth; and a half-light holding in its opalescence all the colors that the day shall use; a freshness and serenity to hint what might be if the sons of men were wise enough; and beauty unbelievable. The fortunate sleep on roofs or on verandas, to be ready for the sweet cool wind that moves in advance of the rising sun, caused, as some say, by the wing-beats of departing spirits of the night.
So that in that respect the mangy jackals, the monkeys, and the chandala (who are the lowest human caste of all and quite untouchable by the other people the creator made) are most to be envied; for there is no stuffy screen, and small convention, between them and enjoyment of the blessed air.
Next in order of defilement to the sweepers—or, as some particularly righteous folk with inside reservations on the road to Heaven firmly insist, even beneath the sweepers, and possibly beneath the jackals—come the English, looking boldly on whatever their eyes desire and tasting out of curiosity the fruit of more than one forbidden tree, but obsessed by an amazing if perverted sense of duty. They rule the land, largely by what they idolize as "luck," which consists of tolerance for things they do not understand. Understanding one another rather well, they are more merciless to their own offenders than is Brahman to chandala, for they will hardly let them live. But they are a people of destiny, and India has prospered under them.
In among the English something after the fashion of grace notes in the bars of music—enlivening, if sharp at times—come occasional Americans, turning up in unexpected places for unusual reasons, and remaining—because it is no man's business to interfere with them. Unlike the English, who approach all quarters through official doors and never trespass without authority, the Americans have an embarrassing way of choosing their own time and step, taking officialdom, so to speak, in flank. It is to the credit of the English that they overlook intrusion that they would punish fiercely if committed by unauthorized folk from home.
So when the Blaines, husband and wife, came to Sialpore in Rajputana without as much as one written introduction, nobody snubbed them. And when, by dint of nothing less than nerve nor more than ability to recognize their opportunity, they acquired the lease of the only vacant covetable house nobody was very jealous, especially when the Blaines proved hospitable.
It was a sweet little nest of a house with a cool stone roof, set in a rather large garden of its own on the shoulder of the steep hill that overlooks the city. A political dependent of Yasmini's father had built it as a haven for his favorite paramour when jealousy in his seraglio had made peace at home impossible. Being connected with the Treasury in some way, and suitably dishonest, he had been able to make a luxurious pleasaunce of it; and he had taste.
But when Yasmini's father died and his nephew Gungadhura succeeded him as maharajah he made a clean sweep of the old pension and employment list in order to enrich new friends, so the little nest on the hill became deserted. Its owner went into exile in a neighboring state and died there out of reach of the incoming politician who naturally wanted to begin business by exposing the scandalous remissness of his predecessor. The house was acquired on a falling market by a money-lender, who eventually leased it to the Blaines on an eighty per cent. basis—a price that satisfied them entirely until they learned later about local proportion.
The front veranda faced due east, raised above the garden by an eight-foot wall, an ideal place for sleep because of the unfailing morning breeze. The beds were set there side by side each evening, and Mrs. Blaine—a full ten years younger than her husband—formed a habit of rising in the dark and standing in her night-dress, with bare feet on the utmost edge of the top stone step, to watch for the miracle of morning. She was fabulously pretty like that, with her hair blowing and her young figure outlined through the linen; and she was sometimes unobserved.
The garden wall, a hundred feet beyond, was of rock, two-and-a-half men high, as they measure the unleapable in that distrustful land; but the Blaines, hailing from a country where a neighbor's dog and chickens have the run of twenty lawns, seldom took the trouble to lock the little, arched, iron-studded door through which the former owner had come and gone unobserved. The use of an open door is hardly trespass under the law of any land; and dawn is an excellent time for the impecunious who take thought of the lily how it grows in order to outdo Solomon.
When a house changes hands in Rajputana there pass with it, as well as the rats and cobras and the mongoose, those beggars who were wont to plague the former owner. That is a custom so based on ancient logic that the English, who appreciate conservatism, have not even tried to alter it.
So when a cracked voice broke the early stillness out of shadow where the garden wall shut off the nearer view, Theresa Blaine paid small attention to it.
"Memsahib! Protectress of the poor!"
She continued watching the mystery of coming light. The ancient city's domed and pointed roofs already glistened with pale gold, and a pearly mist wreathed the crowded quarter of the merchants. Beyond that the river, not more than fifty yards wide, flowed like molten sapphire between unseen banks. As the pale stars died, thin rays of liquid silver touched the surface of a lake to westward, seen through a rift between purple hills. The green of irrigation beyond the river to eastward shone like square-cut emeralds, and southward the desert took to itself all imaginable hues at once.
"Colorado!" she said then. "And Arizona! And Southern California!
And something added that I can't just place!"
"Sin's added by the scow-load!" growled her husband from the farther bed.
"Come back, Tess, and put some clothes on!"
She turned her head to smile, but did not move away. Hearing the man's voice, the owners of other voices piped up at once from the shadow, all together, croaking out of tune:
"Bhig mangi shahebi! Bhig mangi shahebi!" (Alms! Alms!)
"I can see wild swans," said Theresa. "Come and look—five—six—seven of them, flying northward, oh, ever so high up!"
"Put some clothes on, Tess!"
"I'm plenty warm."
"Maybe. But there's some skate looking at you from the garden. What's the matter with your kimono?"
However the dawn wind was delicious, and the night-gown more decent than some of the affairs they label frocks. Besides, the East is used to more or less nakedness and thinks no evil of it, as women learn quicker than men.
"All right—in a minute."
"I'll bet there's a speculator charging 'em admission at the gate," grumbled
Dick Blaine, coming to stand beside her in pajamas. "Sure you're right,
Tess; those are swans, and that's a dawn worth seeing."
He had the deep voice that the East attributes to manliness, and the muscular mold that never came of armchair criticism. She looked like a child beside him, though he was agile, athletic, wiry, not enormous.
"Sahib!" resumed the voices. "Sahib! Protector of the poor!" They whined out of darkness still, but the shadow was shortening.
"Better feed 'em, Tess. A man's starved down mighty near the knuckle if he'll wake up this early to beg."
"Nonsense. Those are three regular bums who look on us as their preserve. They enjoy the morning as much as we do. Begging's their way of telling people howdy."
"Somebody pays them to come," he grumbled, helping her into a pale blue kimono.
Tess laughed. "Sure! But it pays us too. They keep other bums away.
I talk to them sometimes."
"In English?"
"I don't think they know any. I'm learning their language."
It was his turn to laugh. "I knew a man once who learned the gipsy bolo on a bet. Before he'd half got it you couldn't shoo tramps off his door-step with a gun. After a time he grew to like it—flattered him, I suppose, but decent folk forgot to ask him to their corn-roasts. Careful, Tess, or Sialpore'll drop us from its dinner lists."
"Don't you believe it! They're crazy to learn American from me, and to hear your cowpuncher talk. We're social lions. I think they like us as much as we like them. Don't make that face, Dick, one maverick isn't a whole herd, and you can't afford to quarrel with the commissioner."
He chose to change the subject.
"What are your bums' names?" he asked.
"Funny names. Bimbu, Umra and Pinga. Now you can see them, look, the shadow's gone. Bimbu is the one with no front teeth, Umra has only one eye, and Pinga winks automatically. Wait till you see Pinga smile. It's diagonal instead of horizontal. Must have hurt his mouth in an accident."
"Probably he and Bimbu fought and found the biting tough. Speaking of dogs, strikes me we ought to keep a good big fierce one," be added suggestively.
"No, no, Dick; there's no danger. Besides, there's Chamu."
"The bums could make short work of that parasite."
"I'm safe enough. Tom Tripe usually looks in at least once a day when you're gone."
"Tom's a good fellow, but once a day—. A hundred things might happen.
I'd better speak to Tom Tripe about those three bums—he'll shift them!"
"Don't, Dick! I tell you they keep others away. Look, here comes Chamu with the chota hazri."
Clad in an enormous turban and clean white linen from head to foot, a stout Hindu appeared, superintending a tall meek underling who carried the customary "little breakfast" of the country—fruit, biscuits and the inevitable tea that haunts all British byways. As soon as the underling had spread a cloth and arranged the cups and plates Chamu nudged him into the background and stood to receive praise undivided. The salaams done with and his own dismissal achieved with proper dignity, Chamu drove the hamal away in front of him, and cuffed him the minute they were out of sight. There was a noise of repeated blows from around the corner.
"A big dog might serve better after all," mused Tess. "Chamu beats the servants, and takes commissions, even from the beggars."
"How do you know?"
"They told me."
"Um, Bing and Ping would better keep away. There's no obligation to camp here."
"Only, if we fired Chamu I suppose the maharajah would be offended.
He made such a great point of sending us a faithful servant."
"True. Gungadhura Singh is a suspicious rajah. He suspects me anyway.
I screwed better terms out of him than the miller got from Bob White,
and now whenever he sees me off the job he suspects me of chicanery.
If we fired Chamu he'd think I'd found the gold and was trying to hide it.
Say, if I don't find gold in his blamed hills eventually—!"
"You'll find it, Dick. You never failed at anything you really set your heart on.
With your experience—"
"Experience doesn't count for much," he answered, blowing at his tea to cool it. "It's not like coal or manganese. Gold is where you find it. There are no rules."
"Finding it's your trade. Go ahead."
"I'm not afraid of that. What eats me," he said, standing up and looking down at her, "is what I've heard about their passion for revenge. Every one has the same story. If you disappoint them, gee whiz, look out! Poisoning your wife's a sample of what they'll do. It's crossed my mind a score of times, little girl, that you ought to go back to the States and wait there till I'm through—"
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
"Isn't that just like a man!"
"All the same—"
"Go in, Dick, and get dressed, or the sun will be too high before you get the gang started."
She took his arm and they went into the house together. Twenty minutes later he rode away on his pony, looking if possible even more of an athlete than in his pajamas, for there was an added suggestion of accomplishment in the rolled-up sleeves and scarred boots laced to the knee. Their leave-taking was a purely American episode, mixed of comradeship, affection and just plain foolishness, witnessed by more wondering, patient Indian eyes than they suspected. Every move that either of them made was always watched.
As a matter of fact Chamu's attention was almost entirely taken up just then by the crows, iniquitous black humorists that took advantage of turned backs (for Tess walked beside the pony to the gate) to rifle the remains of chota hazri, one of them flying off with a spoon since the rest had all the edibles. Chamu threw a cushion at the spoon-thief and called him "Balibuk," which means eater of the temple offerings, and is an insult beyond price.
"That's the habit of crows," he explained indignantly to Tess as she returned, laughing, to the veranda, picking up the cushion on her way. "They are without shame. Garud, who is king of all the birds, should turn them into fish; then they could swim in water and be caught with hooks. But first Blaine sahib should shoot them with a shotgun."
Having offered that wise solution of the problem Chamu stood with fat hands folded on his stomach.
"The crows steal less than some people," Tess answered pointedly.
He preferred to ignore the remark.
"Or there might be poison added to some food, and the food left for them to see," he suggested, whereat she astonished him, American women being even more incomprehensible than their English cousins.
"If you talk to me about poison I'll send you back to Gungadhura in disgrace. Take away the breakfast things at once."
"That is the hamal's business," he retorted pompously. "The maharajah sahib is knowing me for most excellent butler. He himself has given me already very high recommendation. Will he permit opinions of other people to contradict him?"
The words "opinions of women" had trembled on his lips but intuition saved that day. It flashed across even his obscene mentality that he might suggest once too often contempt for Western folk who worked for Eastern potentates. It was true he regarded the difference between a contract and direct employment as merely a question of degree, and a quibble in any case, and he felt pretty sure that the Blaines would not risk the maharajah's unchancy friendship by dismissing himself; but he suspected there were limits. He could not imagine why, but he had noticed that insolence to Blaine himself was fairly safe, Blaine being super-humanly indifferent as long as Mrs. Blaine was shown respect, even exceeding the English in the absurd length to which he carried it. It was a mad world in Chamu's opinion. He went and fetched the hamal, who slunk through his task with the air of a condemned felon. Tess smiled at the man for encouragement, but Chamu's instant jealousy was so obvious that she regretted the mistake.
"Now call up the beggars and feed them," she ordered.
"Feed them? They will not eat. It is contrary to caste."
"Nonsense. They have no caste. Bring bread and feed them."
"There is no bread of the sort they will eat."
"I know exactly what you mean. If I give them bread there's no profit for you—they'll eat it all; but if I give them money you'll exact a commission from them of one pesa in five. Isn't that so? Go and bring the bread."
He decided to turn the set-back into at any rate a minor victory and went in person to the kitchen for chupatties such as the servants ate. Then, returning to the top of the steps he intimated that the earth-defilers might draw near and receive largesse, contriving the impression that it was by his sole favor the concession was obtained. Two of them came promptly and waited at the foot of the steps, smirking and changing attitudes to draw attention to their rags. Chamu tossed the bread to them with expressions of disgust. If they had cared to pretend they were holy men he would have been respectful, in degree at least, but these were professionals so hardened that they dared ignore the religious apology, which implies throughout the length and breadth of India the right to beg from place to place. These were not even true vagabonds, but rogues contented with one victim in one place as long as benevolence should last.
"Where is the third one?" Tess demanded. "Where is Pinga?"
They professed not to know, but she had seen all three squatting together close to the little gate five minutes before. She ordered Chamu to go and find the missing man and he waddled off, grumbling. At the end of five minutes he returned without him.
"One comes on horseback," he announced, "who gave the third beggar money, so that he now waits outside."
"What for?"
"Who knows? Perhaps to keep watch."
"To watch for what?"
"Who knows?"
"Who is it on horseback? A caller? Some one coming for breakfast?
You'd better hurry."
The call at breakfast-time is one of the pleasantest informalities of life in India. It might even be the commissioner. Tess ran to make one of those swift changes of costume with which some women have the gift of gracing every opportunity. Chamu waddled down the steps to await with due formality, the individual, in no way resembling a British commissioner, who was leisurely dismounting at the wide gate fifty yards to the southward of that little one the beggars used.
He was a Rajput of Rajputs, thin-wristed, thin-ankled, lean, astonishingly handsome in a high-bred Northern way, and possessed of that air of utter self-assuredness devoid of arrogance which people seem able to learn only by being born to it. His fine features were set off by a turban of rose-pink silk, and the only fault discoverable as he strode up the path between the shrubs was that his riding-boots seemed too tight across the instep. There was not a vestige of hair on his face. He was certainly less than twenty, perhaps seventeen years old, or even younger. Ages are hard to guess in that land.
Tess was back on the veranda in time to receive him, with different shoes and stockings, and another ribbon in her hair; few men would have noticed the change at all, although agreeably conscious of the daintiness. The Rajput seemed unable to look away from her but ignoring Chamu, as he came up the steps, appraised her inch by inch from the white shoes upward until as he reached the top their eyes met. Chamu followed him fussily.
Tess could not remember ever having seen such eyes. They were baffling by their quality of brilliance, unlike the usual slumbrous Eastern orbs that puzzle chiefly by refusal to express emotion. The Rajput bowed and said nothing, so Tess offered him a chair, which Chamu drew up more fussily than ever.
"Have you had breakfast?" she asked, taking the conscious risk. Strangers of alien race are not invariably good guests, however good-looking, especially when one's husband is somewhere out of call. She looked and felt nearly as young as this man, and had already experienced overtures from more than one young prince who supposed he was doing her an honor. Used to closely guarded women's quarters, the East wastes little time on wooing when the barriers are passed or down. But she felt irresistibly curious, and after all there was Chamu.
"Thanks, I took breakfast before dawn."
The Rajput accepted the proffered chair without acknowledging the butler's existence. Tess passed him the big silver cigarette box.
"Then let me offer you a drink."
He declined both drink and cigarette and there was a minute's silence during which she began to grow uncomfortable.
"I was riding after breakfast—up there on the hill where you see that overhanging rock, when I caught sight of you here on the veranda. You, too, were watching the dawn—beautiful! I love the dawn. So I thought I would come and get to know you. People who love the same thing, you know, are not exactly strangers."
Almost, if not quite for the first time Tess grew very grateful for Chamu, who was still hovering at hand.
"If my husband had known, he would have stayed to receive you."
"Oh, no! I took good care for that! I continued my ride until after I knew he had gone for the day."
Things dawn on your understanding in the East one by one, as the stars come out at night, until in the end there is such a bewildering number of points of light that people talk about the "incomprehensible East." Tess saw light suddenly.
"Do you mean that those three beggars are your spies?"
The Rajput nodded. Then his bright eyes detected the instant resolution that Tess formed.
"But you must not be afraid of them. They will be very useful—often."
"How?"
The visitor made a gesture that drew attention to Chamu.
"Your butler knows English. Do you know Russian?"
"Not a word."
"French?"
"Very little."
"If we were alone—"
Tess decided to face the situation boldly. She came from a free land, and part of her heritage was to dare meet any man face to face; but intuition combined with curiosity to give her confidence.
"Chamu, you may go."
The butler waddled out of sight, but the Rajput waited until the sound of his retreating footsteps died away somewhere near the kitchen. Then:
"You feel afraid of me?" he asked.
"Not at all. Why should I? Why do you wish to see me alone?"
"I have decided you are to be my friend. Are you not pleased?"
"But I don't know anything about you. Suppose you tell me who you are and tell me why you use beggars to spy on my husband."
"Those who have great plans make powerful enemies, and fight against odds. I make friends where I can, and instruments even of my enemies. You are to be my friend."
"You look very young to—"
Suddenly Tess saw light again, and the discovery caused her pupils to contract a little and then dilate. The Rajput noticed it, and laughed. Then, leaning forward:
"How did vou know I am a woman? Tell me. I must know. I shall study to act better."
Tess leaned back entirely at her ease at last and looked up at the sky, rather reveling in relief and in the fun of turning the tables.
"Please tell me! I must know!"
"Oh, one thing and another. It isn't easy to explain. For one thing, your insteps."
"I will get other boots. What else? I make no lap. I hold my hands as a man does. Is my voice too high—too excitable?"
"No. There are men with voices like yours. There's a long golden hair on your shoulder that might, of course, belong to some one else, but your ears are pierced—"
"So are many men's."
"And you have blue eyes, and long fair lashes. I've seen occasional
Rajput men with blue eyes, too, but your teeth—much too perfect for a man."
"For a young man?"
"Perhaps not. But add one thing to another—"
"There is something else. Tell me!"
"You remember when you called attention to the butler before I dismissed him? No man could do that. You're a woman and you can dance."
"So it is my shoulders? I will study again before the mirror. Yes, I can dance. Soon you shall see me. You shall see all the most wonderful things in Rajputana."
"But tell me about yourself," Tess insisted, offering the cigarettes again.
And this time her guest accepted one.
"My mother was the Russian wife of Bubru Singh, who had no son. I am the rightful maharanee of Sialpore, only those fools of English put my father's nephew on the throne, saying a woman can not reign. They are no wiser than apes! They have given Sialpore to Gungadhura who is a pig and loathes them instead of to a woman who would only laugh at them, and the brute is raising a litter of little pigs, so that even if he and his progeny were poisoned one by one, there would always be a brat left—he has so many!"
"And you?"
"First you must promise silence."
"Very well."
"Woman to woman!"
"Yes."
"Womb to womb—heart to heart—?"
"On my word of honor. But I promise nothing else, remember!"
"So speaks one whose promises are given truly! We are already friends.
I will tell you all that is in my heart now."
"Tell me your name first."
She was about to answer when interruption came from the direction of the gate. There was a restless horse there, and a rider using resonant strong language.
"Tom Tripe!" said Tess. "He's earlier than usual."
The Rajputni smiled. Chamu appeared through the door behind them with suspicious suddenness and waddled to the gate, watched by a pair of blue eyes that should have burned holes in his back and would certainly have robbed him of all comfort had he been aware of them.
Thaw on Olympus
Bright spurs that add their roweled row
To clanking saber's pride;
Fierce eyes beneath a beetling brow;
More license than the rules allow;
A military stride;
Years' use of arbitrary will
And right to make or break;
Obedience of men who drill
And willy nilly foot the bill
For authorized mistake;
The comfort of the self-esteem
Deputed power brings—
Are fickler than the shadows seem
Less fruitful than the lotus-dream,
And all of them have wings
When blue eyes, laughing in your own,
Make mockery of rules!
And when those fustian shams have flown
The wise their new allegiance own,
Leaving dead form to fools!
"Friendship's friendship and respect's respect, but duty's what I'm paid to do!"
The man at the gate dallied to look at his horse's fetlocks. Tess's strange guest seemed in no hurry either, but her movements were as swift as knitting-needles. She produced a fountain pen, and of all unexpected things, a Bank of India note for one thousand rupees—a new one, crisp and clean. Tess did not see the signature she scrawled across its back in Persian characters, and the pen was returned to an inner pocket and the note, folded four times, was palmed in the subtle hand long before Tom Tripe came striding up the path with jingling spurs.
"Morning, ma'am—morning! Don't let me intrude. I'd a little accident, and took a liberty. My horse cut his fetlock—nothing serious—and I set your two saises (grooms) to work on it with a sponge and water. Twenty minutes—will see it right as a trivet. Then I'm off again—I've a job of work."
He stood with back to the sun and hands on his hips, looking up at Tess—a man of fifty—a soldier of another generation, in a white uniform something like a British sergeant-major's of the days before the Mutiny. His mutton-chop whiskers, dyed dark-brown, were military mid-Victorian, as were the huge brass spurs that jingled on black riding-boots. A great-chested, heavy-weight athletic man, a few years past his prime.
"Come up, Tom. You're always welcome."
"Ah!" His spurs rang on the stone steps, and, since Tess was standing close to the veranda rail, he turned to face her at the top. Saluting with martinet precision before removing his helmet, he did not get a clear view of the Rajputni. "As I've said many times, ma'am, the one house in the world where Tom Tripe may sit down with princes and commissioners."
"Have you had breakfast?"
He made a wry face.
"The old story, Tom?"
"The old story, ma'am. A hair of the dog that bit me is all the breakfast
I could swallow."
"I suppose if I don't give you one now you'll have two later?"
He nodded. "I must. One now would put me just to rights and I'd eat at noon. Times when I'm savage with myself, and wait, I have to have two or three before I can stomach lunch."
She offered him a basket chair and beckoned Chamu.
"Brandy and soda for the sahib."
"Thank you, ma'am!" said the soldier piously.
"Where's your dog, Tom?"
"Behaving himself, I hope, ma'am, out there in the sun by the gate."
"Call him. He shall have a bone on the veranda. I want him to feel as friendly here as you do."
Tom whistled shrilly and an ash-hued creature, part Great Dane and certainly part Rampore, came up the path like a catapulted phantom, making hardly any sound. He stopped at the foot of the steps and gazed inquiringly at his master's face.
"You may come up."
He was an extraordinary animal, enormous, big-jowled, scarred, ungainly and apparently aware of it. He paused again on the top step.
"Show your manners."
The beast walked toward Tess, sniffed at her, wagged his stern exactly once and retired to the other end of the veranda, where Chamu, hurrying with brandy gave him the widest possible berth. Tess looked the other way while Tom Tripe helped himself to a lot of brandy and a little soda.
"Now get a big bone for the dog," she ordered.
"There is none," the butler answered.
"Bring the leg-of-mutton bone of yesterday."
"That is for soup today."
"Bring it!"
Chamu was standing between Tom Tripe and the Rajputni, with his back to the latter; so nobody saw the hand that slipped something into the ample folds of his sash. He departed muttering by way of the steps and the garden, and the dog growled acknowledgment of the compliment.
Tess's Rajput guest continued to say nothing; but made no move to go. Introduction was inevitable, for it was the first rule of that house that all ranks met there on equal terms, whatever their relations elsewhere. Tom Tripe had finished wiping his mustache, and Tess was still wondering just how to manage without betraying the sex of the other or the fact that she herself did not yet know her visitor's name, when Chamu returned with the bone. He threw it to the dog from a safe distance, and was sniffed at scornfully for his pains.
"Won't he take it?" asked Tess.
"Not from a black man. Bring it here, you!"
The great brute, with a sidewise growl and glare at the butler that made him sweat with fright, picked up the bone and, at a sign from his master, laid it at the feet of Tess.
"Show your manners!"
Once more he waved his stern exactly once.
"Give it to him, ma'am."
Tess touched the bone with her foot, and the dog took it away, scaring
Chamu along the veranda in front of him.
"Why don't you ever call him by name, Tom?"
"Bad for him, ma'am. When I say, 'Here, you!' or whistle, he obeys quick as lightning. But if I say, 'Trotters!' which his name is, he knows he's got to do his own thinking, and keeps his distance till he's sure what's wanted. A dog's like an enlisted man, ma'am; ought to be taught to jump at the word of command and never think for himself until you call him out of the ranks by name. Trotters understands me perfectly."
"Speaking of names," said Tess, "I'd like to introduce you to my guest,
Tom, but I'm afraid—"
"You may call me Gunga Singh," said a quiet voice full of amusement, and Tom Tripe started. He turned about in his chair and for the first time looked the third member of the party in the face.
"Hoity-toity! Well, I'm jiggered! Dash my drink and dinner, it's the princess!"
He rose and saluted cavalierly, jocularly, yet with a deference one could not doubt, showing tobacco-darkened teeth in a smile of almost paternal indulgence.
"So the Princess Yasmini is Gunga Singh this morning, eh? And here's Tom Tripe riding up-hill and down-dale, laming his horse and sweating through a clean tunic—with a threat in his ear and a reward promised that he'll never see a smell of—while the princess is smoking cigarettes—"
"In very good company!"
"In good company, aye; but not out of mischief, I'll be bound! Naughty, naughty!" he said, wagging a finger at her. "Your ladyship'll get caught one of these days, and where will Tom Tripe be then? I've got my job to keep, you know. Friendship's friendship and respect's respect, but duty's what I'm paid to do. Here's me, drill-master of the maharajah's troops and a pension coming to me consequent on good behavior, with orders to set a guard over you, miss, and prevent your going and coming without his highness' leave. And here's you giving the guard the slip! Somebody tipped his highness off, and I wish you'd heard what's going to happen to me unless I find you!"
"You can't find me, Tom Tripe! I'm not Yasmini today; I'm Gunga Singh!"
"Tut-tut, Your Ladyship; that won't do! I swore on my Bible oath to the maharajah that I left you day before yesterday closely guarded in the palace across the river. He felt easy for the first time for a week. Now, because they're afraid for their skins, the guard all swear by Krishna you were never in there, and that I've been bribed! How did you get out of the grounds, miss?"
"Climbed the wall."
"I might have remembered you're as active as a cat! Next time I'll mount a double guard on the wall, so they'll tumble off and break their necks if they fall asleep. But there are no boats, for I saw to it, and the bridge is watched. How did you cross the river?"
"Swam."
"At night?"
The blue eyes smiled assent.
"Missy—Your Ladyship, you mustn't do that. Little ladies that act that way might lose the number of their mess. There's crockadowndillies in that river—aggilators—what d'ye call the damp things?—mugger. They snap their jaws on a leg and pull you under! The sweeter and prettier you are the more they like you! Besides, missy, princesses aren't supposed to swim; it's vulgar."
He contrived to look the very incarnation of offended prudery, and she laughed at him with a voice like a golden bell.
He faced Tess again with a gesture of apology.
"You'll pardon me, ma'am, but duty's duty."
Tess was enjoying the play immensely, shrewdly suspecting Tom Tripe of more complaisance than he chose to admit to his prisoner.
"You must treat my house as a sanctuary, Tom. Outside the garden wall orders I suppose are orders. Inside it I insist all guests are free and equal."
The Princess Yasmini slapped her boot with a little riding-switch and laughed delightedly.
"There, Tom Tripe! Now what will you do?"
"I'll have to use persuasion, miss! Tell me how you got into your own palace unseen and out again with a horse without a soul knowing?"
"'Come into my net and get caught,' said the hunter; but the leopard is still at large. 'Teach me your tracks,' begged the hunter; but the leopard answered, 'Learn them!' '
"Hell's bells!"
Tom Tripe scratched his head and wiped sweat from his collar. The princess was gazing away into the distance, not apparently inclined to take the soldier seriously. Tess, wondering what her guest found interesting on the horizon all of a sudden, herself picked out the third beggar's shabby outline on the same high rock from which Yasmini had confessed to watching before dawn.
"Will your ladyship ride home with me?" asked Tom Tripe.
"No."
"But why not?"
"Because the commissioner is coming and there is only one road and he would see me and ask questions. He is stupid enough not to recognize me, but you are too stupid to tell wise lies, and this memsahib is so afraid of an imaginary place called hell that I must stay and do my own—"
"I left off believing in hell when I was ten years old," Tess answered.
"I hope to God you're right, ma'am!" put in Tom Tripe piously, and both women laughed.
"Then I shall trust you and we shall always understand each other," decided Yasmini. "But why will you not tell lies, if there is no hell?"
"I'm afraid I'm guilty now and then."
"But you are ashamed afterward? Why? Lies are necessary, since people are such fools!"
Tom Tripe interrupted, wiping the inside of his tunic collar again with a big bandanna handkerchief.
"How do you know the commissioner is coming, Your Ladyship? Phew! You'd better hide! I'll have to answer too many questions as it is. He'd turn you outside in!"
"There is no hurry," said Yasmini. "He will not be here for five minutes and he is a fool in any case. He is walking his horse up-hill."
Tess too had seen the beggar on the rock remove his ragged turban, rewind it, and then leisurely remove himself from sight. The system of signals was pretty obviously simple. The whole intriguing East is simple, if one only has simplicity enough to understand it.
"Can your horse be seen from the road?" Yasmini asked.
"No, miss. The saises are attending to him under the neem-trees at the rear."
"Then ask the memsahib's permission to pass through the house and leave by the back way."
Tess, more amused than ever, nodded consent and clapped her hands for Chamu to come and do the honors.
"I'll wait here," she said, "and welcome the commissioner."
"But you, Your Ladyship?" Tom Tripe scratched his head in evident confusion. "I've got to account for you, you know."
"You haven't seen me. You have only seen a man named Gunga Singh."
"That's all very fine, missy, but the butler—that man Chamu—he knows you well enough. He'll get the story to the maharajah's ears."
"Leave that to me."
"You dassen't trust him, miss!"
Again came the golden laugh, expressive of the worldly wisdom of a thousand women, and sheer delight in it.
"I shall stay here, if the memsahib permits."
Tess nodded again. "The commissioner shall sit with me on the veranda,"
Tess said. "Chamu will show you into the parlor."
(The Blaines had never made the least attempt to leave behind their home-grown names for things. Whoever wanted to in Sialpore might have a drawing-room, but whoever came to that house must sit in a parlor or do the other thing.)
"Is it possible the burra-sahib will suppose my horse is yours?" Yasmini asked, and again Tess smiled and nodded. She would know what to say to any one who asked impertinent questions.
Yasmini and Tom Tripe followed Chamu into the house just as the commissioner's horse's nose appeared past the gate-post; and once behind the curtains in the long hall that divided room from room, Tom Tripe called a halt to make a final effort at persuasion.
"Now, missy, Your Ladyship, please!"
But she had no patience to spare for him.
"Quick! Send your dog to guard that door!"
Tom Tripe snapped his fingers and made a motion with his right hand. The dog took up position full in the middle of the passage blocking the way to the kitchen and alert for anything at all, but violence preferred. Chamu, all sly smiles and effusiveness until that instant, as one who would like to be thought a confidential co-conspirator, now suddenly realized that his retreat was cut off. No explanation had been offered, but the fact was obvious and conscience made the usual coward of him. He would rather have bearded Tom Tripe than the dog.
Yasmini opened on him in his own language, because there was just a chance that otherwise Tess might overhear through the open window and put two and two together.
"Scullion! Dish-breaker! Conveyor of uncleanness! You have a son?"
"Truly, heavenborn. One son, who grows into a man—the treasure of my old heart."
"A gambler!"
"A young man, heavenborn, who feels his manhood—now and then gay—now and then foolish "
"A budmash!" (Bad rascal.)
"Nay, an honest one!"
"Who borrowed from Mukhum Dass the money-lender, making untrue promises?"
"Nay, the money was to pay a debt."
"A gambling debt, and he lied about it."
"Nay, truly, heavenborn, he but promised Mukhum Dass he would repay the sum with interest."
"Swearing he would buy with the money, two horses which Mukhum Dass might seize as forfeit after the appointed time!"
"Otherwise, heavenborn, Mukhum Dass would not have lent the money!"
"And now Mukhum Dass threatens prison?"
"Truly, heavenborn. The money-lender is without shame—without mercy—without conscience."
"And that is why you—dog of a spying butler set to betray the sahib's salt you eat—man of smiles and welcome words!—stole money from me? Was it to pay the debt of thy gambling brat-born-in-a-stable?"
"I, heavenborn? I steal from thee? I would rather be beaten!"
"Thou shalt be beaten, and worse, thou and thy son! Feel in his cummerbund, Tom Tripe! I saw where the money went!"
Promptly into the butler's sash behind went fingers used to delving into more unmilitary improprieties than any ten civilians could think of. Tripe produced the thousand-rupee note in less than half a minute and, whether or not he believed it stolen, saw through the plan and laughed.
"Is my name on the back of it?" Yasmini asked.
Tom Tripe displayed the signature, and Chamu's clammy face turned ashen-gray.
"And," said Yasmini, fixing Chamu with angry blue eyes, "the commissioner sahib is on the veranda! For the reputation of the English he would cause an example to be made of servants who steal from guests in the house of foreigners."
Chamu capitulated utterly, and wept.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" he demanded.
"In the jail," Yasmini said slowly, "you could not spy on my doings, nor report my sayings."
"Heavenborn, I am dumb! Only take back the money and I am dumb forever, never seeing or having seen or heard either you or this sahib here! Take back the money!"
But Yasmini was not so easily balked of her intention.
"Put his thumb-print on it, Tom Tripe, and see that he writes his name."
The trembling Chamu was led into a room where an ink-pot stood open on a desk, and watched narrowly while he made a thumb-mark and scratched a signature. Then:
"Take the money and pay thy puppy's debt with it. Afterward beat the boy. And see to it," Yasmini advised, "that Mukhum Dass gives a receipt, lest he claim the debt a second time!"
Speechless between relief, doubt and resentment Chamu hid the banknote in his sash and tried to feign gratitude—a quality omitted from his list of elements when a patient, caste-less mother brought him yelling into the world.
"Go!"
Tom Tripe made a sign to Trotters, who went and lay down, obviously bored, and Chamu departed backward, bowing repeatedly with both hands raised to his forehead.
"And now, Your Ladyship?"
"Take that eater-of-all-that-is-unnamable," (she meant the dog), "and return to the palace."
"Your Ladyship, it's all my life's worth!"
"Tell the maharajah that you have spoken with a certain Gunga Singh, who said that the Princess Yasmini is at the house of the commissioner sahib."
"But it's not true; they'll—"
"Let the commissioner sahib deny it then! Go!"
"But, missy—"
"Do as I say, Tom Tripe, and when I am maharanee of Sialpore you shall have double pay—and a troupe of dancing girls—and a dozen horses—and the title of bahadur—and all the brandy you can drink. The sepoys shall furthermore have modern uniforms, and you shall drill them until they fall down dead. I have promised. Go!"
With a wag of his head that admitted impotence in the face of woman's wiles Tom strode out by the back way, followed at a properly respectful distance by his "eater-of-all-that-is-unnamable."
Then the princess walked through the parlor to the deeply cushioned window-seat, outside which the commissioner sat quite alone with Mrs. Blaine, trying to pull strings whose existence is not hinted at in blue books. Yasmini from earliest infancy possessed an uncanny gift of silence, sometimes even when she laughed.
No Tresspass!
There's comfort in the purple creed
Of rosary and hood;
There's promise in the temple gong,
And hope (deferred) when evensong
Foretells a morrow's good;
There's rapture in the royal right
To lay the daily dole
In cash or kind at temple-door,
Since sacrifice must go before
The saving of a soul.
The priests who plot for power now,
Though future glory preach,
Themselves alike the victims fall
Of law that mesmerizes all -
Each subject unto each -
Though all is well if all obey
And all have humble heart,
Nor dare to hold in cursed doubt
Those gems of truth the church lets out;
But where's the apple-cart,
And where's the sacred fiction gone,
And who's to have the blame
When any upstart takes a hand
And, scorning what the priests have planned,
Plays Harry with the game?
"Give a woman the last word always; but be sure it is a question, which you leave unanswered."
He was a beau ideal commissioner. The native newspaper said so when he first came, having painfully selected the phrase from a "Dictionary Of Polite English for Public Purposes" edited by a College graduate at present in the Andamans. True, later it had called him an "overbearing and insane procrastinator"—"an apostle of absolutism"—and, plum of all literary gleanings, since it left so much to the imagination of the native reader—"laudator temporis acti." But that the was because he had withdrawn his private subscription prior to suspending the paper sine die under paragraph so-and-so of the Act for Dealing with Sedition; it could not be held to cancel the correct first judgment, any more than the unmeasured early praise had offset later indiscretion. Beau ideal must stand.