THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard KiplingЧитать онлайн книгу.
terrible jumble. What would the King say to Sitabhai when he discovered that she had lost the Luck of the State? In what manner would she veil that loss; and, above all, into what sort of royal rage would she fall? Tarvin shook his head meditatively. 'It's quite bad enough for me,' he said, 'just about as bad as it can possibly be made; but I have a wandering suspicion that it may be unwholesome for Juggut. Yes! I can spare time to be very sorry for Juggut. My fat friend, you should have held straight that first time, outside the city walls!'
He rose and looked out into the sunlight, wondering which of the scattered vagrants by the roadside might be an emissary from the palace. A man lay apparently asleep by the side of his camel near the road that ran to the city. Tarvin stepped out casually from the verandah, and saw, as soon as he was fairly in the open, that the sleeper rolled round to the other side of his beast. He strolled forward a few paces. The sunlight glinted above the back of the camel on something that shone like silver. Tarvin marched straight toward the glitter, his pistol in his hand. The man, when he came up to him, was buried in innocent slumber. Under the fold of his garment peered the muzzle of a new and very clean rifle.
'Looks as if Sitabhai was calling out the militia, and supplying them with outfits from her private armoury. Juggut's gun was new, too,' said Tarvin, standing over the sleeper. 'But this man knows more about guns than Juggut. Hi!' He stooped down and stirred the man up with the muzzle of his revolver. 'I'm afraid I must trouble you for that gun. And tell the lady to drop it, will you? It won't pay.'
The man understood the unspoken eloquence of the pistol, and nothing more. He gave up his gun sullenly enough, and moved away, lashing his camel spitefully.
'Now, I wonder how many more of her army I shall have to disarm,' said Tarvin, retracing his steps, the captured gun over his shoulder. 'I wonder--no, I won't believe that she would dare to do anything to Kate! She knows enough of me to be sure that I'd blow her and her old palace into to-morrow. If she's half the woman she pretends to be, she'll reckon with me before she goes much further.'
In vain he attempted to force himself into this belief. Sitabhai had shown him what sort of thing her mercy might be, and Kate might have tasted it ere this. To go to her now--to be maimed or crippled at the least if he went to her now--was impossible. Yet, he decided that he would go. He returned hastily to Fibby, whom he had left not three minutes before flicking flies off in the sunshine at the back of the rest-house. But Fibby lay on his side groaning piteously, hamstrung and dying.
Tarvin could hear his groom industriously polishing a bit round the corner, and when the man came up in response to his call he flung himself down by the side of the horse, howling with grief.
'An enemy hath done this, an enemy hath done this!' he clamoured. 'My beautiful brown horse that never did harm except when he kicked through fulness of meat! Where shall I find a new service if I let my charge die thus?'
'I wish I knew! I wish I knew!' said Tarvin, puzzled, and almost despairing. 'There'd be a bullet through one black head, if I were just a little surer. Get up, you! Fibby, old man, I forgive you all your sins. You were a good old boy, and--here's luck.'
The blue smoke enveloped Fibby's head for an instant, the head fell like a hammer, and the good horse was out of his pain. The groom, rising, rent the air with grief, till Tarvin kicked him out of the pickets and bade him begone. Then it was noticeable that his cries ceased suddenly, and, as he retreated into his mud-house to tie up his effects, he smiled and dug up some silver from a hole under his bedstead.
Tarvin, dismounted, looked east, west, north, south for help, as Sitabhai had looked on the dam. A wandering gang of gipsies with their lean bullocks and yelping dogs turned an angle of the city wall, and rested like a flock of unclean birds by the city gate. The sight in itself was not unusual, but city regulations forbade camping within a quarter of a mile of the walls.
'Some of the lady's poor relatives, I suppose. They have blocked the way through the gate pretty well. Now, if I were to make a bolt of it to the missionary's they'd have me, wouldn't they?' muttered Tarvin to himself. 'On the whole, I've seen prettier professions than trading with Eastern queens. They don't seem to understand the rules of the game.'
At that moment a cloud of dust whirled through the gipsy camp, as the escort of the Maharaj Kunwar, clearing the way for the barouche, scattered the dark band to the left and right. Tarvin wondered what this might portend. The escort halted with the customary rattle of accoutrements at the rest-house door, the barouche behind them. A single trooper, two hundred yards or more in the rear, lifted his voice in a deferential shout as he pursued the carriage. He was answered by a chuckle from the escort, and two shrill screams of delight from the occupants of the barouche.
A child whom Tarvin had never before seen stood upright in the back of the carriage, and hurled a torrent of abuse in the vernacular at the outpaced trooper. Again the escort laughed.
'Tarvin Sahib! Tarvin Sahib!' piped the Maharaj Kunwar. 'Come and look at us.'
For a moment Tarvin fancied this a fresh device of the enemy; but reassured by the sight of his old and trusted ally, the Maharaj, he stepped forward.
'Prince,' he said, as he took his hand, 'you ought not to be out.'
'Oh, it is all right,' said the young man hastily, though his little pale face belied it. 'I gave the order and we came. Miss Kate gives me orders; but she took me over to the palace, and there I give orders. This is Umr Singh--my brother, the little Prince; but I shall be King.'
The second child raised his eyes slowly and looked full at Tarvin. The eyes and the low broad forehead were those of Sitabhai, and the mouth closed firmly over the little pearl-like teeth, as his mother's mouth had closed in the conflict on the Dungar Talao.
'He is from the other side of the palace,' continued the Maharaj, still in English. 'From the other side, where I must not go. But when I was in the palace I went to him--ha, ha, Tarvin Sahib--and he was killing a goat. Look! His hands are all red now.'
Umr Singh opened a tiny palm at a word from the Maharaj in the vernacular, and flung it outward at Tarvin. It was dark with dried blood, and a bearded whisper ran among the escort. The commandant turned in his saddle, and, nodding at Tarvin, muttered, 'Sitabhai.' Tarvin caught the word, and it was sufficient for him. Providence had sent him help out of a clear sky. He framed a plan instantly.
'But how did you come here, you young imps?' he demanded.
'Oh, there are only women in the palace yonder, and I am a Rajput and a man. He cannot speak any English at all,' he added, pointing to his companion; but when we have played together I have told him about you, Tarvin Sahib, and about the day you picked me out of my saddle, and he wished to come too, to see all the things you show me, so I gave the order very quietly, and we came out of the little door together. And so we are here! Salaam, baba,' he said patronisingly to the child at his side, and the child, slowly and gravely, raised his hand to his forehead, still gazing with fixed, incurious eyes on the stranger. Then he whispered something that made the Maharaj Kunwar laugh. 'He says,' said the Maharaj Kunwar, 'that you are not so big as he thought. His mother told him that you were stronger than any man, but some of these troopers are bigger than you.'
'Well, what do you want me to do?' asked Tarvin.
'Show him your gun, and how you shoot rupees, and what you do that makes horses quiet when they kick, and all those things.'
'All right,' said Tarvin. 'But I can't show them here, Come over to Mr. Estes with me.'
'I do not like to go there. My monkey is dead. And I do not think Kate would like to see us. She is always crying now. She took me up to the palace yesterday, and this morning I went to her again; but she would not see me.'
Tarvin could have hugged the child for the blessed assurance that Kate at least still lived. 'Isn't she at the hospital, then?' he asked thickly.
'Oh, the hospital has all gone phut. There are no women now. They all ran away.'
'No!' cried Tarvin. 'Say that again, little man. What for?'
'Devils,' said the Maharaj Kunwar briefly. 'What do I know?