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

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.

Chapter Two

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