The Bronze Bell Part 27

Amber took unto himself a cigar and utilised an observation of the Political's as a lever to swing the conversation to a plane more likely to inform him. Farrell had grumbled about the exactions of his position as particularly instanced by the necessity of his attending tedious and tiresome native ceremonies in connection with the _tamasha_.

"What's, precisely, the nature of this _tamasha_, Colonel Farrell?"

"Why, my dear young man, I thought you knew. Isn't it what you came to see?"

"No," Amber admitted cautiously; "I merely heard a rumour that there was something uncommon afoot. Is it really anything worth while?"

"Rather," Raikes interjected drily; "the present ruler's abdicating in favour of his son, a child of twelve. That puts the business in a cla.s.s by itself."

"There's been one precedent, hasn't there?" said the missionary, pretending to be at ease with a cigarette. "The Holkar of Indore?"

"Yes," agreed Farrell; "a similar case, to be sure."

"But why should a prince hand over the reins of government to a child of twelve? There must be some reason for it. Isn't it known?" asked Amber.

"Who can fathom a Hindu's mind?" grunted Farrell. "I daresay there's some scandalous native intrigue at the bottom of it. Eh, Raikes?"

The Resident shook his head. "Don't come to this shop for information about what goes on in Khandawar. I doubt if there's another Resident in India who knows as little of the underhand devilment in his State as I do. His Majesty the Rana loves me as a cheetah loves his trainer. He's an intractable rascal."

"They grease the wheels of the independent native States with intrigue," Farrell explained. "I know from sore experience. And your Rajput is the deepest of the lot. I don't envy Raikes, here."

"The man who can guess what a Rajput intends to do next is ent.i.tled to give himself a deal of credit," commented the Resident, with a short laugh.

"I've travelled a bit," continued Farrell, "and have seen something of the courts of Europe, but I've yet to meet a diplomat who's peer to the Rajput. You hear a great deal about the astuteness of the Russians and the yellow races, and a Greek or Turk can lie with a fairly straight face when he sees a profit in deception, but none of them is to be cla.s.sed with these people. If we English ever decide to let India rule herself, her diplomatic corps will be recruited exclusively from the flower of Rajputana's chivalry."

"I'll back Salig Singh against the field," said Raikes grimly; "he'll be dean of the corps, when that time comes. He'd rather conspire than fight, and the Rajputs--of course you know--are a warrior caste. I've a notion"--the Resident leaned back and searched the shadows for an eavesdropper--"I've a notion," he continued, lowering his voice, "that the Rana has got himself in rather deep in some rascality or other, and wants to get out before he's put out. There's bazaar gossip.... Hmm! Do you speak French, Mr. Amber?"

"A little," said Amber in that tongue. "And I," nodded the missionary.

The talk continued in the language of diplomacy.

"Bazaar gossip----?" Farrell repeated enquiringly.

"There have been a number of deaths from cholera in the Palace lately, the grand vizier's amongst them."

"White a.r.s.enic cholera?"

"That, and the hemp poison kind."

"Refractory vizier?" questioned Farrell. "The kind that wants to retrench and inst.i.tute reforms--railways and metalled roads and so forth?"

"No; he was quite suited to his master. But the bazaar says Naraini took a dislike to him for one reason or another."

"Naraini?" queried Amber.

"The genius of the place." Raikes nodded toward the Raj Mahal, shining like a pearl through the darkness on the hill-side over against the Residency. "She's Salig's head queen. At least that's about as near to her status as one can get. She's not actually his queen, but some sort of a heritage from the Rutton dynasty--I hardly know what or why. Salig never married her, but she lives in the Palace, and for several years--ever since she first began to be talked about--she's ruled from behind the screen with a high hand and an out-stretched arm. So the bazaar says."

"I've heard she was beautiful," Farrell observed.

"As beautiful as a peri, according to rumour. You never can tell; very likely she's a withered old hag; nine out of ten native women are, by the time they're thirty." Raikes jerked the glowing end of his cigar into the shrubbery and reverted to English. "Shall we join Miss Farrell?"

They arose and left the table to the servants, the Resident with Amber following Farrell and young Clarkson.

"Old women we are, forever talking scandal," said Raikes, with a chuckle. "Oh, well! it's shop with us, you know."

"Of course.... Then I understand that the _tamasha_ is the reason for the encampment beyond the walls?"

"Yes; they've been coming in for a week. By to-morrow night, I daresay, every rajah, prince, thakur, baron, fief, and lord in Rajputana, each with his 'tail,' horse and foot, will be camped down before the walls of Kuttarpur. You've chosen an interesting time for your visit. It'll be a sight worth seeing, when they begin to make a show. My troubles begin with a State banquet to-morrow that I'd give much to miss; however, I'll have Farrell for company."

"I'm glad to be here," said Amber thoughtfully. Could it be possible that the proposed abdication of Salig Singh in favour of his son were merely a cloak to a conspiracy to restore to power the house of Rutton?

Or had the _tamasha_ been arranged in order to gather together all the rulers in Rajputana without exciting suspicion, that they might agree upon a concerted plan of mutiny against the Sirkar? This state affair of surpa.s.sing importance had been arranged for the last day of grace allotted the Prince of the house of Rutton. What had it to do with the Gateway of Swords, the Voice, the Mind, the Eye, the Body, the Bell?

"By the way, Mr. Raikes," said the Virginian suddenly, "what do they call the gate by which we entered the city--the southern gate?"

"The Gateway of Swords, I believe."

Farrell, on the point of entering the house, overheard and turned. "Is that so? Why, I thought _that_ gateway was in Kathiapur."

"I've heard of a Gateway of Swords in Kathiapur," Raikes admitted.

"Never been there, myself."

"Kathiapur?"

"A dead city, Mr. Amber, not far away--originally the capital of Khandawar. It's over there in the hills to the north, somewhere. Old Rao Rutton, founder of the old dynasty, got tired of the place and caused it to be depopulated, building Kuttarpur in its stead--I believe, to commemorate some victory or other. That sort of thing used to be quite the fashion in India, before we came." Raikes fell back, giving Amber precedence as they entered the Residency. "By the way, remind me, if you think of it, Colonel Farrell, to get after the telegraph-clerk to-morrow. There's a new man in charge--a Bengali babu--and I presume he's about as worthless as the run of his kind."

Amber made a careful note of this information; he was curious about that babu.

In the drawing-room Raikes and Farrell impressed Clarkson for three-handed Bridge. Sophia did not care to play and Amber was ignorant of the game--a defect in his social education which he found no cause to regret, since it left him in undisputed attendance upon the girl.

She had seated herself at a warped and discouraged piano, for which Raikes had already apologised; it was, he said, a legacy from a former Resident. For years its yellow keys had not known a woman's touch such as that to which they now responded with thin, cracked voices; the girl's fine, slender fingers wrung from them a plaintive, pathetic parody of melody. Amber stood over her with his arms folded on the top of the instrument, comfortably unconscious that his pose was copied from any number of sentimental photogravures and "art photographs." His temper was sentimental enough, for that matter; the woman was very sweet and beautiful in his eyes as she sat with her white, round arms flashing over the keyboard, her head bowed and her face a little averted, the long lashes low upon her cheeks and tremulous with a fathomless emotion. It was his thought that his time was momentarily becoming shorter, and that just now, more than ever, she was very distant from his arms, something inaccessible, too rare and delicate and fine for the rude possession of him who sighed for his own unworthiness.

Abruptly she brought both hands down upon the keys, educing a jangled, startled crash from the tortured wires, and swinging round, glanced up at Amber with quaint mirth trembling behind the veil of moisture in her misty eyes.

"India!" she cried, with a broken laugh: "India epitomised: a homesick, exiled woman trying to drag a song of Home from the broken heart of a crippled piano! That is an Englishwoman's India: it's our life, ever to strive and struggle and contrive to piece together out of makeshift odds and ends the atmosphere of Home!... It's suffocating in here.

Come." She rose with a quick shrug of impatience, and led the way back to the gardens.

The table had been removed together with the chairs and candles; nothing remained to remind them of the hour just gone. The walks were clear of servants. Their only light came from the high arch of stars smitten to its zenith with pale, quivering waves of light from the moon invisible behind the hills. Below them the city hummed like a disturbed beehive. Somewhere afar a gentle hand was sweeping the strings of a _zitar_, sounding weird, sad chords. The perfumed languor of the night weighed heavily upon the senses, like the woven witchery of some age-old enchantment....

Pensive, the girl trained her long skirts heedlessly over the dew-drenched gra.s.ses, Amber at her side, himself speechless with an intangible, ineluctable, unreasoning sense of expectancy. Never, he told himself, had a lover's hour been more auspiciously timed or staged; and this was his hour, altogether his!... If only he might find the words of wooing to which his lips were strange! He dared not delay; to-morrow it might be too late; in the womb of the morrow a world of chances stirred--contingencies that might in a breath set them a world apart.

They found seats in the shadow of a pepul.

"You must be tired, Mr. Amber," she said. "Why don't you smoke?"

"I hadn't thought of it, and hadn't asked permission."

"Please do. I like it."

He found his cigarette-case and struck a match, Sophia watching intently his face in the rosy glow of the little, flickering flame.