THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard KiplingЧитать онлайн книгу.
Then it shouldered up into its place again without a sound, and Tarvin wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. If he had found the Naulahka at that instant he would have smashed it in pure rage. He went out into the sunlight once more, devoting the country where such things were possible to its own gods; he could think of nothing worse.
A priest, sprung from an unguessable retreat, came out of the temple immediately afterward, and smiled upon him.
Tarvin, willing to renew his hold on the wholesome world in which there were homes and women, betook himself to the missionary's cottage, where he invited himself to breakfast. Mr. and Mrs. Estes had kept themselves strictly aloof from the marriage ceremony, but they could enjoy Tarvin's account of it, delivered from the Topaz point of view. Kate was unfeignedly glad to see him. She was full of the discreditable desertion of Dhunpat Rai and the hospital staff from their posts. They had all gone to watch the wedding festivities, and for three days had not appeared at the hospital. The entire work of the place had devolved on herself and the wild woman of the desert who was watching her husband's cure. Kate was very tired, and her heart was troubled with misgivings for the welfare of the little Prince, which she communicated to Tarvin when he drew her out upon the verandah after breakfast.
'I'm sure he wants absolute rest now,' she said, almost tearfully. 'He came to me at the end of the dinner last night--I was in the women's wing of the palace--and cried for half an hour. Poor little baby! It's cruel.'
'Oh, well, he'll be resting to-day. Don't worry.'
'No; to-day they take his bride back to her own people again, and he has to drive out with the procession or something--in this sun, too. It's very wicked. Doesn't it ever make your head ache, Nick? I sometimes think of you sitting out on that dam of yours, and wonder how you can bear it.'
'I can bear a good deal for you, little girl,' returned Tarvin, looking down into her eyes.
'Why, how is that for me, Nick?'
'You'll see if you live long enough,' he assured her; but he was not anxious to discuss his dam, and returned to the safer subject of the Maharaj Kunwar.
Next day and the day after he rode aimlessly about in the neighbourhood of the temple, not caring to trust himself within its walls again, but determined to keep his eye upon the first and last spot where he had seen the Naulahka. There was no chance at present of getting speech with the only living person, save the King, whom he definitely knew to have touched the treasure. It was maddening to await the reappearance of the Maharaj Kunwar in his barouche, but he summoned what patience he could. He hoped much from him; but meanwhile he often looked in at the hospital to see how Kate fared. The traitor Dhunpat Rai and his helpers had returned; but the hospital was crowded with cases from the furthest portions of the State--fractures caused by the King's reckless barouches, and one or two cases, new in Kate's experience, of men drugged, under the guise of friendship, for the sake of the money they carried with them, and left helpless in the public ways.
Tarvin, as he cast his shrewd eye about the perfectly kept men's ward, humbly owned to himself that, after all, she was doing better work in Rhatore than he. She at least did not run a hospital to cover up deeper and darker designs, and she had the inestimable advantage over him of having her goal in sight. It was not snatched from her after one maddening glimpse; it was not the charge of a mysterious priesthood, or of an impalpable State; it was not hidden in treacherous temples, nor hung round the necks of vanishing infants.
One morning, before the hour at which he usually set out for the dam, Kate sent a note over to him at the rest-house asking him to call at the hospital as soon as possible. For one rapturous moment he dreamed of impossible things. But smiling bitterly at his readiness to hope, he lighted a cigar, and obeyed the order.
Kate met him on the steps, and led him into the dispensary.
She laid an eager hand on his arm. 'Do you know anything about the symptoms of hemp-poisoning?' she asked him.
He caught her by both hands quickly, and stared wildly into her face. 'Why? Why? Has any one been daring----?'
She laughed nervously. 'No, no. It isn't me. It's him.'
'Who?'
The Maharaj--the child. I'm certain of it now.' She went on to tell him how, that morning, the barouche, the escort, and a pompous native had hurried up to the missionary's door bearing the almost lifeless form of the Maharaj Kunwar; how she had at first attributed the attack, whatever it might be, to exhaustion consequent upon the wedding festivities; how the little one had roused from his stupor, blue-lipped and hollow-eyed, and had fallen from one convulsion into another, until she had begun to despair and how, at the last, he had dropped into a deep sleep of exhaustion, when she had left him in the care of Mrs. Estes. She added that Mrs. Estes had believed that the young prince was suffering from a return of his usual malady; she had seen him in paroxysms of this kind twice before Kate came.
'Now look at this,' said Kate, taking down the chart of her hospital cases, on which were recorded the symptoms and progress of two cases of hemp-poisoning that had come to her within the past week.
'These men,' she said, 'had been given sweetmeats by a gang of travelling gipsies, and all their money was taken from them before they woke up. Read for yourself.'
Tarvin read, biting his lips. At the end he looked up at her sharply.
'Yes,' he said, with an emphatic nod of his head--' yes. Sitabhai?'
'Who else would dare?' answered Kate passionately.
'I know. I know. But how to stop her going on! how to bring it home to her!'
'Tell the Maharajah,' responded Kate decidedly.
Tarvin took her hand. 'Good! I'll try it. But there's no shadow of proof, you know.'
'No matter. Remember the boy. Try. I must go back to him now.'
The two returned to the house of the missionary together, saying very little on the way. Tarvin's indignation that Kate should be mixed up in this miserable business almost turned to anger at Kate herself, as he rode beside her but his wrath was extinguished at sight of the Maharaj Kunwar. The child lay on a bed in an inner room at the missionary's, almost too weak to turn his head. As Kate and Tarvin entered, Mrs. Estes rose from giving him his medicine, said a word to Kate by way of report, and returned to her own work. The child was clothed only in a soft muslin coat; but his sword and jewelled belt lay across his feet.
'Salaam, Tarvin Sahib,' he murmured. 'I am very sorry that I was ill.'
Tarvin bent over him tenderly. 'Don't try to talk, little one.'
'Nay; I am well now,' was the answer. 'Soon we will go riding together.'
'Were you very sick, little man?'
'I cannot tell. It is all dark to me. I was in the palace laughing with some of the dance-girls. Then I fell. And after that I remember no more till I came here.'
He gulped down the cooling draught that Kate gave him, and resettled himself on the pillows, while one wax-yellow hand played with the hilt of his sword. Kate was kneeling by his side, one arm under the pillow supporting his head; and it seemed to Tarvin that he had never before done justice to the beauty latent in her good, plain, strong features. The trim little figure took softer outlines, the firm mouth quivered, the eyes were filled with a light that Tarvin had never seen before.
'Come to the other side--so,' said the child, beckoning Tarvin in the native fashion, by folding all his tiny fingers into his palms rapidly and repeatedly. Tarvin knelt obediently on the other side of the couch. 'Now I am a king, and this is my court.'
Kate laughed musically in her delight at seeing the boy recovering strength. Tarvin slid his arm under the pillow, found Kate's hand there, and held it.
The portière at, the door of the room dropped softly. Mrs. Estes had stolen in for a moment, and imagined that she saw enough to cause her to steal out again. She had been thinking a great deal since the days when Tarvin first introduced himself.
The child's eyes