Guns of the Gods: A Story of Yasmini's Youth, Talbot Mundy [book club books .TXT] 📗

together to the temple. Then Hasamurti tugged at Tess, and they followed, keeping their distance, until Yasmini and her lover sat on one stone in the moonlight on the temple porch, their faces clearly lighted by the mellow beams. Then Tess and Hasamurti took their stand again, hand in each other's hand, and watched once more.

It was love-making such as Tess had never dreamed of,—and Tess was no familiar of hoydenish amours; gentle—poetic—dignified on his part—manly as the plighting of the troth of warriors' sons should be. Yasmini's was the attitude of simple self-surrender, stripped of all pretense, devoid of any other spirit than the will to give herself and all she had, and knowledge that her gift was more than gold and rubles.

For an hour they sat together murmuring questions and reply, heart answering to heart, eyes reading eyes, and hand enfolding hand; until at last Yasmini rose to leave him and he stood like a lord of squadroned lances to watch her go.

"Moon of my existence!" was his farewell speech to her.

"Dear lord!" she answered. Then she turned and went, not looking back at him, walking erect, as one whose lover is the son of twenty kings. Without a word she took Tess and Hasamurti by the hand, and, looking straight before her with blue eyes glowing at the welling joy of thoughts too marvelous for speech, led them to the lane—the village street—and the door in the wall again. The man was still gazing after her, erect and motionless, when Tess turned her head at the beginning of the lane; but Yasmini never looked back once.

"Why did you never tell me his name?" Tess asked; but if Yasmini heard the question she saw fit not to answer it. Not a word passed her lips until they reached the house, crossed the wide garden between pomegranate shrubs, and entered the dark door across the body of a sleeping watchman—or a watchman who could make believe he slept. Then:

"Good night!" she said simply. "Sleep well! Sweet dreams! Come,
Hasamurti—your hands are cleverer than the other women's."

Daughter of a king, and promised wife of a son of twenty kings, she took the best of the maids to undress her, without any formal mockery of excuse. Two of the other women were awake to see Tess into bed— no mean allowance for a royal lady's guest.

Very late indeed that night Tess was awakened by Yasmini's hand stroking the hair back from her forehead. Again there was no explanation, no excuse. A woman who was privileged to see and hear what Tess had seen and heard, needed no apology for a visit in the very early hours.

"What do you think of him?" she asked. "How do you like him? Tell me!"

"Splendid!" Tess answered, sitting up to give the one word emphasis.
"But why did you never tell me his name?"

"Did you recognize him?"

"Surely! At once—first thing!"

"No true-born Rajputni ever names her lover or her husband."

"But you knew that I know Prince Utirupa Singh. He came to my garden party!"

"Nevertheless, no Rajputni names her lover to another man or woman— calling him by his own name only in retirement, to his face."

"Why—he—isn't he the one who Sir Roland Samson told me ought to have been maharajah instead of Gungadhura?"

Yasmini nodded and pressed her hand.

"Tomorrow night you shall see another spectacle. Once, when Rajputana was a veritable land of kings, and not a province tricked and conquered by the English, there was a custom that each great king held a durbar, to which princes came from everywhere, in order that the king's daughter might choose her own husband from among them. The custom died, along with other fashions that were good. The priests killed it, knowing that whatever fettered women would increase their sway. But I will revive it— as much as may be, with the English listening to every murmur of their spies and the great main not yet thrown. I have no father, but I need none. I am a king's daughter! Tomorrow night I will single out my husband, and name him by the title under which I shall marry him—in the presence of such men of royal blood as can be trusted with a secret for a day or two! There are many who will gladly see the end of Gungadhura! But I must try to sleep—I have hardly slept an hour. If a maid were awake to sing to me—but they sleep like the dead after the camel-ride, and Hasamurti, who sings best, is weariest of all."

"Suppose I sing to you?" said Tess.

"No, no; you are tired too."

"Nonsense! It's nearly morning. I have slept for hours. Let me come and sing to you."

"Can you? Will you? I am full of gladness, and my brain whirls with a thousand thoughts, but I ought to sleep."

So Tess went to Yasmini's room, and sat beneath the punkah crooning Moody and Sankey hymns and darky lullabies, until Yasmini dropped into the land of dreams. Then, listening to the punkah's regular soft swing, she herself fell forward on her arms, half-resting on the bed, half on the chair, until Hasamurti crept in silently and, laughing, lifted her up beside Yasmini and left her there until the two awoke near noon, wondering, in each other's arms.

Chapter Fourteen

He who is most easily persuaded is perhaps a fool, for the world is full of fools, and it is dangerous to deal with them. But perhaps he is a man who sees his own advantage hidden in the folds of your proposal; and that is dangerous too. —Eastern Proverb

"Acting on instructions from Your Highness!"

It tickled Gungadhura's vanity to have an Englishman in his employ; but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next reception would be. On occasion it would suit the despot's sense of humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse for it. On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable; he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah's troops that no amount of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished. Tom understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput's martial mind that caused each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but permitted him to tolerate fierce disciplining by an alien.

And Tom had his own peculiarities. Born in a Shorncliffe barrack hut, he had a feudal attitude toward people of higher birth. As for a prince— there was almost no limit to what he would not endure from one, without concerning himself whether the prince was right or wrong. Not that he did not know his rights; his limitations were not Prussian; he would stand up for his rights, and on their account would answer the maharajah back more bluntly and even offensively than Samson, for instance, would have dreamed of doing. But a prince was a prince, and that was all about it.

So, on the morning following the flight of Yasmini and Tess, Tom, sore-eyed from lack of sleep but with an eye-opener of raw brandy inside him, and a sense of irritation due to the absence of his dog, roundly cursed nine unhappy mahouts for having dared let an elephant steal his rum—drilled two companies of heavy infantry in marching order on parade until the sweat ran down into their boots and each miserable man saw two suns in the sky where one should be—dismissed them with a threat of extra parades for a month to come unless they picked their feet up cleaner—and reported, with his heart in his throat, at Gungadhura's palace.

As luck would have it, the Sikh doctor was just leaving. It always suited that doctor to be very friendly with Tom Tripe, because there were pickings, in the way of sick certificates that Tom could pass along to him, and shortcomings that Tom could overlook. He told Tom that the maharajah was in no mood to be spoken to, and in no condition to be seen.

"Then you go back and tell his highness," Tom retorted, "that I've got to speak with him! Business is business!"

The doctor used both hands to illustrate.

"But his cheek is cut with a great gash from here to here! He was testing a sword-blade in the armory, last night, and it broke and pierced him."

"Hasn't a soldier like me seen wounds before? I don't swoon away at the sight of blood! He can do his talking through a curtain if he's minded!"

"I would not dare, Mr. Tripe! He has given orders. You must ask one of the eunuchs—really."

"I thought you and I were friends?" said Tom, with whiskers bristling.

"Always! I hope always! But in this instance—"

Tom folded both arms behind his back, drill-master-on-parade fashion.

"Suit yourself," he answered. "Friendship's friendship. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I want to see his highness. I want to see him bad. You're the man that's asked to turn the trick for me."

"Well, Mr. Tripe, I will try. I will try. But what shall I tell him?"

Tom hesitated. That doctor was a more or less discreet individual, or he would not have been sent for. Besides, he had lied quite plausibly about the dagger-wound. But there are limits.

"Tell him," he said presently, "that I've found the man who left that sword in his armory o' purpose for to injure him! Say I need private and personal instructions quick!"

The doctor returned up the palace steps. Ten minutes later he came down again smiling, with the word that Tom was to be admitted. In a hurry, then, Tom's brass spurs rang on Gungadhura's marble staircase while a breathless major-domo tried to keep ahead of him. One takes no chances with a man who can change his mind as swiftly as Gungadhura habitually did. Without a glance at silver shields, boars' heads, tiger-skins, curtains and graven gold ornaments beyond price, or any of the other trappings of royal luxury, Tom followed the major-domo into a room furnished with one sole divan and a little Buhl-work table. The maharajah, sprawling on the divan in a flowered silk deshabille and with his head swathed in bandages, ignored Tom Tripe's salute, and snarled at the major-domo to take himself out of sight and hearing.

Soldier-fashion, as soon as the door had closed behind him Tom stood on no ceremony, but spoke first.

"There was a fracas last night, Your Highness, outside a certain palace gate." He pronounced the word to rhyme with jackass, but Gungadhura was not in a mood to smile. "An escaped elephant bumped into the gate and bent it. The guard took to their heels; so I've locked 'em all up, solitary, to think their conduct over."

The maharajah nodded.

"Good!" he said curtly.

"I cautioned the relieving guard that if they had a word to say to any one they'd follow the first lot into cells. It don't do to have it known that elephants break loose that easy."

"Good!"

"Subsequently, acting on instructions from Your Highness, I searched the cellar of Mr. Blaine's house on the hill, Chamu the butler holding a candle for me." "What did he see? What did that treacherous swine see?" snapped Gungadhura, pushing back the bandage irritably from the corner of his mouth.

"Nothing, Your Highness, except that he saw me lift a stone and look under it."

"What did you see under the stone?"

"A silver tube, all wrought over with Persian patterns, and sealed at both ends with a silver cap and lots o' wax."

"Why didn't you take it, you idiot?"

"Two reasons. Your Highness told me to report to you what I saw, not to take nothing. And Mr. Blaine came to the top of the cellar ladder and was damned angry. He'd have seen me if I'd pinched a cockroach. He was that angry that he locked the cellar door afterward, and nailed it down, and rolled a