In the Guardianship of God Part 15

But the pink muslin stood its ground. "What is it?" she persisted; "I want to know. He doesn't look to me as if he meant to be rude, and--and"--her face softened--"if it is anything we can do, I'd--I'd like to do it. Tell me, please."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Oh! only fooling! He wants you to give him back some of the rose-leaves he gave you, that he may put them in his new brew, to--to make it sweeter; says the luck-gift of a bride always does--"

The girl blushed and smiled all over.

"Well, why not? It is a pretty idea, anyhow." She drew out the handful of rose-leaves as she spoke, then paused with a faint wonder, for the warmth of their shelter had made their perfume almost bewildering.

"How--how sweet they are!" she murmured. Then, still smiling, but with the blush faded almost to paleness, she dropped the rose-leaves into the delicate, long-fingered hand.

"I hope it will be the sweetest essence you ever made," she said with a laugh, and Hushmut seemed to understand, for he smiled back and _salaamed_ as he, in his turn, tucked the charm into his bosom for use when the still should be ready for closing, and as he did so, he said in his high, suave voice--

"May He who knows the secret of the rose protect the bride." He said it without the least suspicion of reality; simply as a dignified piece of courtesy.

A minute afterwards the wheels of that last dogcart, as it drove out of the garden, disturbed the birds which had already begun to choose their resting-places for the night; since they too looked for the usual rest and peace in that fatal Maytime.

And for a s.p.a.ce the peace, the rest settled on the garden. Only Hushmut's voice, as he busied himself in packing the pink petals into his still, told of any life in it beyond the birds, the flowers, the bees.

One of these, belated, drifted into the vault through the open door, and hummed a background to the high, trilling voice.

"Pale, pale are the rose-lips, sweet!

Red is the heart of the rose, But red are the lips mine meet, And your heart white as the snows."

Then a faint, almost noiseless patter of bare running feet paused at the door, and some one looked in to say breathlessly--

"It hath begun, they say. But who knows? I am off to the city to see."

Hushmut looked up startled from his rose-leaves; startled, nothing more.

"Begun!--so soon--wherefore?"

"G.o.d knows!" came the breathless voice. "Mayhap it is a lie. Some thought it would not come at all. I will return and tell thee the news."

The faint, almost noiseless patter of bare feet died away, and there was peace and rest in the garden for another s.p.a.ce. Only Hushmut shuffled to the door, looked out curiously, then shuffled back to his work, for that must be finished before dark, else the roses would spoil, squandering their sweetness. There was another pile of brownish, yellow residuum ready dried for the furnace, and as he filled a basket with it, his hands among the scentless stuff, a sudden remembrance of his own impotence, his own deprivation, came to him.

Perhaps he had seen a hint of the simile in the English girl's face.

He smiled half cynically and muttered--

"Only the dust of the rose remains for the perfume-seller."

He paused almost before the bit of treasured wisdom was ended. There was a sound of wheels; of a galloping horse's feet.

Some one was coming back to the garden. The next instant, through the open door, he saw two figures running; an Englishman, an English girl in a pink dress. The man's arm was round her as he ran; he looked back fearfully, then seemed to whisper something in her ear, and she gave answer back.

"What was it?" they said to each other. Hushmut knew by instinct.

He was thinking of the roof of the palace pleasure-house, of the winding stair that led to it, down which it would at least be possible to fling a foe, before the end came; and She was thinking of the marble plinth below, where, when that end came, a woman might find safety from men's hands in death.

So they came on through the growing shadows.

Hushmut shuffled to the door and watched the figures calmly, indifferently, as they neared him; for the way to the winding stair lay up the steps which rose just beyond the low door of his distillery in the plinth.

Perhaps the dusk hid him from those two; perhaps even in broad daylight they would not, in their fierce desire to reach not safety but resistance, have seen him.

They did not, anyhow; but as they pa.s.sed the door the girl's muslin flounce caught hard on its lintel hasp, and as in frantic haste she stooped to rip it free, the scent of those rose-leaves Hushmut had given her, still lingering in the ruffles at her breast, seemed to pa.s.s straight back into those same rose-leaves in his own.

That was all, nothing more. But it brought back his last words to her: "May He who knows the secret of the rose protect the bride."

Strange!

The same instant his long-fingered brown hand was on her white one as she tugged at her dress.

"This way, _Huzoor!_" he cried in a loud voice, for the man to hear.

"There is a secret pa.s.sage here; it leads to safety."

Safety! That word, better than resistance, not to the man himself, but as sole guardian to the girl, arrested him in a second, tempted him.

He looked, hesitated, then dragged his charge on--dragged her from anything with a dark skin to it.

But her white one touching this dark one, found something in it to give confidence; or perhaps that fragrance of the flower from His still which "He sends to many blossoms," had pa.s.sed from Hushmut's breast to hers, as hers had to Hushmut's. He knows, who knows the secret of the perfume of the rose.

Anyhow she hung back, and she called pitifully, clamorously--

"No! No! Let us trust him--let us take the chance."

There was no time for remonstrance.

The next second they were in the cool, scented darkness of the vault, with those pink air-holes showing like shadowy roses among the low arches, the squat pillars.

"At the farther end," came Hushmut's voice, amid his shuffling, till the latter ceased in the rasping of a chain unhasped. "Here, _Huzoor_, it leads to the Summer Palace beyond the garden wall. So by the mango groves to the Residency. May He who knows the secret of the perfume of the rose protect the bride."

His voice sounded hollow in their ears as they ran down the vaulted pa.s.sage which opened before them, lit at intervals by those cunning air-holes hidden flowerfully in the scrollwork of one of the marble-edged aqueducts, and the closing door behind them blew a breath of the rose scent from the vault after their retreating figures.

Two years had pa.s.sed. Nine long months spent in keeping a foe at bay; three in following that spent and broken foe to the bitter end; and then a year of English skies and English faces to dull the memory of that long strain to mind and body.

And then once more a young Englishman, with a girl in a pink dress, drove into that garden of dead Kings. But the four-square wall was in ruins. It had been a rallying-point of that spent and broken foe.

The garden itself was neglected, the roses unpruned. And those two were changed also, and an _ayah_ holding a baby remained in the hired carriage which they left waiting for them under the blossoming trees, as the dogcart had waited that May evening two years before.