THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard KiplingЧитать онлайн книгу.
back her head, and clasping her hands behind her neck. Tarvin watched her curiously in the starlight. All his senses were alert; he was keenly on his guard, and he cast a wary eye about and behind him from time to time. But he could see nothing but the dull glimmer of the water that lapped at the foot of the marble steps, and hear nothing save the cry of the night-owls.
'O Tarvin Sahib,' she said. 'You know! After the first time I was sorry.'
'Which time was that?' inquired Tarvin vaguely.
'Of course it was when the saddle turned. And then when the timber fell from the archway I thought at least that I had maimed your horse. Was he hurt?'
'No,' said Tarvin, stupefied by her engaging frankness.
'Surely you knew,' she said almost reproachfully.
He shook his head. 'No, Sitabhai, my dear,' he said slowly and impressively. 'I wasn't on to you, and it's my eternal shame. But I'm beginning to sabe. You worked the little business at the dam, too, I suppose, and the bridge and the bullock-carts. And I thought it was their infernal clumsiness? Well, I'll be----' He whistled melodiously, and the sound was answered by the hoarse croak of a crane across the reeds.
The Queen leaped to her feet, thrusting her hand into her bosom. 'A signal!' Then sinking back upon the slab of the tomb, 'But you have brought no one with you. I know you are not afraid to go alone.'
'Oh, I'm not trying to do you up, young lady,' he answered. 'I'm too busy admiring your picturesque and systematic deviltry. So you're at the bottom of all my troubles? That quicksand trick was a pretty one. Do you often work it?'
'Oh, on the dam!' exclaimed the Queen, waving her hands lightly. 'I only gave them orders to do what they could. But they are very clumsy people--only coolie people. They told me what they had done, and I was angry.'
'Kill any one?'
'No; why should I?'
'Well, if it comes to that, why should you be so hot on killing me?' inquired Tarvin dryly.
'I do not like any white men to stay here, and I knew that you had come to stay.' Tarvin smiled at the unconscious Americanism. 'Besides,' she went on, 'the Maharajah was fond of you, and I had never killed a white man. Then, too, I like you.'
'Oh!' responded Tarvin expressively.
'By Malang Shah, and you never knew!' She was swearing by the god of her own clan--the god of the gipsies.
'Well, don't rub it in,' said Tarvin.
'And you killed my big pet ape,' she went on. 'He used to salaam to me in the mornings like Luchman Rao, the prime minister. Tarvin Sahib, I have known many Englishmen. I have danced on the slack-rope before the mess-tents of the officers on the line of march, and taken my little begging gourd up to the big bearded colonel when I was no higher than his knee.' She lowered her hand to within a foot of the ground. 'And when I grew older,' she continued, 'I thought that I knew the hearts of all men. But, by Malang Shah, Tarvin Sahib, I never saw a man like unto you! Nay,' she went on almost beseechingly, 'do not say that you did not know. There is a love song in my tongue, "I have not slept between moon and moon because of you"; and indeed for me that song is quite true. Sometimes I think that I did not quite wish to see you die. But it would be better that you were dead. I, and I alone, command this State. And now, after that which you have told the King----'
'Yes? You heard, then?'
She nodded. 'After that I cannot see that there is any other way--unless you go away.'
'I'm not going,' said Tarvin.
'That is good,' said the Queen, with a little laugh. 'And so I shall not miss seeing you in the courtyard day by day. I thought the sun would have killed you when you waited for the Maharajah. Be grateful to me, Tarvin Sahib, for I made the Maharajah come out. And you did me an ill turn.'
'My dear young lady,' said Tarvin earnestly, 'if you'd pull in your wicked little fangs, no one wants to hurt you. But I can't let you beat me about the Maharaj Kunwar. I'm here to see that the young man stays with us. Keep off the grass, and I'll drop it.'
'Again I do not understand,' said the Queen, bewildered. 'But what is the life of a little child to you who are a stranger here?'
'What is it to me? Why, it's fair-play; it's the life of a little child. What more do you want? Is nothing sacred to you?'
'I also have a son,' returned the Queen, 'and he is not weak. Nay, Tarvin Sahib, the child always was sickly from his birth. How can he govern men? My son will be a Rajput; and in the time to come---- But that is no concern of the white men. Let this little one go back to the gods!'
'Not if I know it,' responded Tarvin decisively.
'Otherwise,' swept on the Queen, 'he will live infirm and miserable for ninety years. I know the bastard Kulu stock that he comes from. Yes; I have sung at the gate of his mother's palace when she and I were children--I in the dust, and she in her marriage-litter. To-day she is in the dust. Tarvin Sahib'--her voice melted appealingly--'I shall never bear another son; but I may at least mould the State from behind the curtain, as many queens have done. I am not a palace-bred woman. Those'--she pointed scornfully toward the lights of Rhatore--'have never seen the wheat wave, or heard the wind blow, or sat in a saddle, or talked face to face with men in the streets. They call me the gipsy, and they cower under their robes like fat slugs when I choose to lift my hand to the Maharajah's beard. Their bards sing of their ancestry for twelve hundred years. They are noble, forsooth! By Indur and Allah--yea, and the God of your missionaries too--their children and the British Government shall remember me for twice twelve hundred years. Ahi, Tarvin Sahib, you do not know how wise my little son is. I do not let him go to the missionary's. All that he shall need afterward--and indeed it is no little thing to govern this State--he shall learn from me; for I have seen the world, and I know. And until you came all was going so softly, so softly, to its end! The little one would have died--yes; and there would have been no more trouble. And never man nor woman in the palace would have breathed to the King one word of what you cried aloud before the sun in the courtyard. Now, suspicion will never cease in the King's mind, and I do not know--I do not know----' She bent forward earnestly.--'Tarvin Sahib, if I have spoken one word of truth this night, tell me how much is known to you.'
Tarvin preserved absolute silence. She stole one hand pleadingly on his knee. 'And none would have suspected. When the ladies of the Viceroy came last year, I gave out of my own treasures twenty five thousand rupees to the nursing hospital, and the lady sahib kissed me on both cheeks, and I talked English, and showed them how I spent my time knitting--I who knit and unknit the hearts of men.'
This time Tarvin did not whistle; he merely smiled and murmured sympathetically. The large and masterly range of her wickedness, and the coolness with which she addressed herself to it, gave her a sort of distinction. More than this, he respected her for the personal achievement which of all feats most nearly appeals to the breast of the men of the West--she had done him up. It was true her plans had failed; but she had played them all on him without his knowledge. He almost revered her for it.
'Now you begin to understand,' said Sitabhai; 'there is something more to think of. Do you mean to go to Colonel Nolan, Sahib, with all your story about me?'
'Unless you keep your hands off the Maharaj Kunwar--yes,' said Tarvin, not allowing his feelings to interfere with business.
'That is very foolish,' said the Queen; 'because Colonel Nolan will give much trouble to the King, and the King will turn the palace into confusion, and every one of my handmaids, except a few, will give witness against me; and I perhaps shall come to be much suspected. Then you would think, Tarvin Sahib, that you had prevented me. But you cannot stay here for ever. You cannot stay here until I die. And so soon as you are gone----' She snapped her fingers.
'You won't get the chance,' said Tarvin unshakenly. 'I'll fix that. What do you take me for?'
The Queen bit the back of her forefinger irresolutely. There was no saying what this man, who strode unharmed through her machinations, might or might not be able to do. Had she been