not let me be a laughing-stock to the other princes. At the wedding the Rawut of Bunnaul mocked me because my school-books were not as many as his.' And he is only the son of an ennobled lord. He is without ancestry. But he has been up and down Rajputana as far as Delhi and Agra, ay, and Abu; and he is in the upper class of the Princes' School at Ajmir. Father, all the sons of the kings go there. They do not play with the women; they ride with men. And the air and the water are good at Ajmir. And I should like to go!'
The face of the Maharajah grew troubled, for the boy was very dear to him.
'But an evil might befall thee, Lalji. Think again.'
'I have thought,' responded the Prince. 'What evil can come to me under the charge of the Englishmen there? The Rawut of Bunnaul told me that I should have my own rooms, my own servants, and my own stables, like the other princes--and that I should be much considered there.'
'Yes,' said the King soothingly. 'We be children of the sun--thou and I, my Prince.'
'Then it concerns me to be as learned and as strong and as valiant as the best of my race. Father, I am sick of running about the rooms of the women, of listening to my mother, and to the singing of the dance girls; and they are always pressing their kisses on me. Let me go to Ajmir. Let me go to the Princes' School. And in a year, even in a year--so says the Rawut of Bunnaul--I shall be fit to lead my escort, as a King should lead them. Is it a promise, my father?'
'When thou art well,' answered the Maharajah, 'we will speak of it again--not as a father to a child, but as a man to a man.'
The Maharaj Kunwar's eyes grew bright with pleasure. 'That is good,' he said--'as a man to a man.'
The Maharajah fondled him in his arms for a few minutes, and told him the small news of the palace--such things as would interest a little boy. Then he said laughing, 'Have I your leave to go?'
'Oh! my father!' The Prince buried his head in his father's beard and threw his arms around him. The Maharajah disengaged himself gently, and as gently went out into the verandah. Before Kate returned he had disappeared in a cloud of dust and a flourish of trumpets. As he was going, a messenger came to the house bearing a grasswoven basket, piled high with shaddock, banana, and pomegranate--emerald, gold, and copper, which he laid at Kate's feet, saying, 'It is a present from the Queen.'
The little Prince within heard the voice, and cried joyfully, 'Kate, my mother has sent you those. Are they big fruits? Oh, give me a pomegranate,' he begged as she came back into his room. 'I have tasted none since last winter.'
Kate set the basket on the table, and the Prince's mood changed. He wanted pomeranate sherbet, and Kate must mix the sugar and the milk and the syrup and the plump red seeds. Kate left the room for an instant to get a glass, and it occurred to Moti, who had been foiled in an attempt to appropriate the Prince's emeralds, and had hidden under the bed, to steal forth and seize upon a ripe banana. Knowing well that the Maharaj Kunwar could not move, Moti paid no attention to his voice, but settled himself deliberately on his haunches, chose his banana, stripped off the skin with his little black fingers, grinned at the Prince, and began to eat.
'Very well, Moti,' said the Maharaj Kunwar, in the vernacular; 'Kate says you are not a god, but only a little grey monkey, and I think so too. When she comes back you will be beaten, Hanuman.'
Moti had half eaten the banana when Kate returned, but he did not try to escape. She cuffed the marauder lightly, and he fell over on his side.
'Why, Lalji, what's the matter with Moti?' she asked, regarding the monkey curiously.
'He has been stealing, and now I suppose he is playing dead man. Hit him!'
Kate bent over the limp little body; but there was no need to chastise Mod. He was dead.
She turned pale, and, rising, took the basket of fruit quickly to her nostrils, and sniffed delicately at it. A faint, sweet, cloying odour rose from the brilliant pile. It was overpowering. She set the basket down, putting her hand to her head. The odour dizzied her.
'Well?' said the Prince, who could not see his dead pet. 'I want my sherbet.'
'The fruit is not quite good, I'm afraid, Lalji,' she said, with an effort. As she spoke she tossed into the garden, through the open window, the uneaten fragment of the banana that Mod had clasped so closely to his wicked little breast.
A parrot swooped down on the morsel instantly from the trees, and took it back to his perch in the branches. It was done before Kate, still unsteadied, could make a motion to stop it, and a moment later a little ball of green feathers fell from the covert of leaves, and the parrot also lay dead on the ground.
'No, the fruit is not good,' she said mechanically, her eyes wide with terror, and her face blanched. Her thoughts leaped to Tarvin. Ah, the warnings and the entreaties that she had put from her! He had said she was not safe. Was he not right? The awful subtlety of the danger in which she stood was a thing to shake a stronger woman than she. From where would it come next? Out of what covert might it not leap The very air might be poisoned. She scarcely dared to breathe.
The audacity of the attack daunted her as much as its design. If this might be done in open day, under cover of friendship, immediately after the visit of the King, what might not the gipsy in the palace dare next? She and the Maharaj Kunwar were under the same roof; if Tarvin was right in supposing that Sitabhai could wish her harm, the fruit was evidently intended for them both. She shuddered to think how she herself might have given the fruit to the Maharaj innocently.
The Prince turned in his bed and regarded Kate. 'You are not well?' he asked, with grave politeness. 'Then do not trouble about the sherbet. Give me Moti to play with.'
'O Lalji! Lalji!' cried Kate, tottering to the bed. She dropped beside the boy, cast her arms defendingly about him, and burst into tears.
'You have cried twice,' said the Prince, watching her heaving shoulders curiously. 'I shall tell Tarvin Sahib.'
The word smote Kate's heart, and filled her with a bitter and fruitless longing. Oh, for a moment of the sure and saving strength she had just rejected! Where was he? she asked herself reproachfully. What had happened to the man she had sent from her to take the chances of life and death in this awful land?
At that hour Tarvin was sitting in his room at the rest-house, with both doors open to the stifling wind of the desert, that he might command all approaches clearly, his revolver on the table in front of him, and the Naulahka in his pocket, yearning to be gone, and loathing this conquest that did not include Kate.
XIX
We be the Gods of the East--
Older than all--
Masters of mourning and feast,
How shall we fall?
Will they gape to the husks that ye proffer,
Or yearn to your song?
And we, have we nothing to offer
Who ruled them so long
In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal,
the blare
