The Bronze Bell Part 33

Here, where the walls of acacia, orange, thuia and pepal shut out every breath of wind, the air was dense with the cloying sweetness of jasmine, musk and marigold....

"My lord," said the Maharana, pausing, "if thou wilt wait here for a little, permitting me to excuse myself--?"

"All right," Amber told him tolerantly. "Run along."

Salig Singh quietly effaced himself, and the American watched him go with an inward chuckle. "I presume I'll have to pay for my impudence in the end," he thought; "but it's costing Salig Singh a good deal to hold himself in." He was for the time being not ill-pleased with this phase of his adventure; he had a notion that this must be a sort of very private pleasure-ground of the rulers of Khandawar, and that very few, if any, white people had ever been permitted to inspect it. What the Maharana's next move would be he had not the least suspicion; but since he must be content and abide the developments as they came, he was minded to amuse himself. He moved away from the cistern, idling down a path in a direction opposite that taken by Salig Singh.

An abrupt turn brought him to the outer wall, and he stopped to gaze, leaning upon the low marble bal.u.s.trade.

From his feet the wall fell away sheer, precipitous, a hundred feet or more, to another hanging garden like that which lay behind him. From this there was another stupendous drop. On all sides the marble walls spread over the hillsides, descending it in great strides broken by terraces, gardens, paved courts, all white and silver and deep violet shadow, with here and there a window glowing softly yellow or a web of saffron rays peeping through the intricacies of a carved stone lattice.

Far below, on the one hand, the lake lay like a sheet of steel; on the other the city stretched, a huddle of flat roofs not unlike an armful of child's building blocks. At that great height the effect was that of peering over the upper lip of an avalanche of masonry on the point of tumbling headlong down a mountainside to crush all beneath it.

In the hush there rose to Amber a muted confusion of sounds--the blended voices of the mult.i.tude that inhabited the hidden chambers of the palace: the pawing and shrill neighing of the stallions in the lower courtyard, a shivering clash of steel against steel, somewhere the tinkle of a stringed instrument and a soft voice singing, a man's accents weighty with authority, the ripple of a woman's laugh--all relieved against an undertone like a profound sigh, waning and waxing: the breathing of the Raj Mahal ...

Amber turned away to rejoin Salig Singh by the cistern. But the Rajput was not there; and, presently, another path tempting him to unlawful exploration, he yielded and sauntered aimlessly away. A sudden corner cloaked with foliage brought him to a little open s.p.a.ce, a patch of lawn over which a canopy had been raised. Beneath this, a woman sat alone. He halted, thunderstruck.

Simultaneously, with a soft swish of draperies, a clash of jewelled bracelets, dull and musical, and a flash of coruscating colour, the woman stood before him, young, slender, graceful, garbed in indescribable splendour--and veiled.

For the s.p.a.ce of three long breaths the Virginian hesitated, unspeakably amazed. Though she were veiled, it were deep dishonour for a woman of a Rajput's household to be seen by a stranger. It seemed inexplicable that Salig Singh should have wittingly left him in any place where he might encounter an inmate of the zenana. Yet the Maharana must have known.... Amber made an irresolute movement, as if to go. But it was too late.

With a murmur, inaudible, and a swift, infinitely alluring gesture, the woman swept the veil away from her face, and looked him squarely in the eyes. She moved toward him slowly, swaying, as graceful as a fawn, more beautiful than any woman he had ever known. His breath caught in his throat, for sheer wonder at this incomparable loveliness.

Her face was oval without a flaw, and pale as newly-minted gold, with a flush of red where the blood ran warm beneath the skin. Her hair was black as ebony and finer than the finest silk, rich and l.u.s.trous; her jet-black eyebrows formed a perfect arch. Her mouth was like a pa.s.sion-flower, but small and sweet, with lips full and firm and scarlet. Her eyes were twin pools of darkness lighted with ardent inner fire. They held him speechless and motionless with the beauty of their unuttered desire, and before he could collect his wits she had made him captive--had without warning cast herself upon her knees before him and imprisoned both his hands, burying her face in their palms. He felt her lips hot upon his flesh, and then--wonder of wonders!--tears from those divine eyes streaming through his fingers.

The shock of it brought him to his senses. Pitiful, dumfounded, horrified, he glared wildly about him, seeking some avenue of escape.

There was no one watching: he thanked Heaven for that, while the cold sweat started out upon his forehead. But still at his feet the woman rocked, softly sobbing, her fair shoulders gently agitated, and still she defied his gentle efforts to free his hands, holding them in a grasp he might not break without hurting her. He found his tongue eventually.

"Don't!" he pleaded desperately. "My dear, you mustn't. For pity's sake don't sob like that! What under the sun's the trouble? Don't, please!... Good Lord! what am I to do with this lovely lunatic?" Then he remembered that he had spoken in English and thoughtfully translated the gist of his remonstrances, with as little effect as if he had spoken to the empty air.

Though in time the fiercest paroxysm of her pa.s.sion pa.s.sed and her sobs diminished in violence, she clung heavily to him and made no resistance when he lifted her in his arms. The error was fatal; he had designed to get her on her feet and then stand away. But no sooner had he raised her and succeeded in disengaging his hands, than soft round arms were clasped tightly about his neck and her face--if possible, more ravishing in tears than when first he had seen it--pillowed on his breast. And for the first time she spoke coherently.

"_Aie_!" she wailed tremulously. "_Aie_! Now is the cup of my happiness full to br.i.m.m.i.n.g, now that thou hast returned to me at last, O my lord!

Well-nigh had I ceased to hope for thee, O Beloved; well-nigh had this heart of mine grown cold within my bosom, that had no nourishment save hope, save hope! Day and night I have watched for thy coming for many years, praying that thou shouldst return to me ere this frail prettiness of mine, that made thee love me long ago, should wane and fade, so that thy heart should turn to other women, O my husband!"

"Husband! Great--Heavens! Look here, my dear, hadn't you better come to your senses and let me go before--"

"Let thee go, _Lalji_, ere what? Ere any come to disturb us? Nay, but who should come between husband and wife in the first hour of their reunion after many years of separation? Is it not known--does not all Khandawar know how I have waited for thee, almost thy widow ere thy wife, all this weary time?... Or is it that thy heart hath forgotten thy child-bride? Am I scorned, O my Lord--I, Naraini? Is there no love in thy bosom to leap in response to the love of thee that is my life?"

She released him and whirled a pace or two away, draperies swirling, jewels scintillating cold fire in hopeless emulation of the radiance of her tear-gemmed eyes.

"Naraini?" stammered Amber, recalling what he had heard of the woman.

"Naraini!"

"Aye, my lord, Naraini, thy wedded wife!" The rounded little chin went up a trifle and her eyes gleamed angrily. "Am I no longer thy Naraini, then? Or wouldst thou deny that thou art Har Dyal, my king and my beloved? Hast thou indeed forgotten the child that was given thee for wife when thy father reigned in Khandawar and thou wert but a boy--a boy of ten, the Maharaj Har Dyal? Hast thou forgotten the little maid they brought thee from the north, _Lalji_--the maiden who had grown to womanhood ere thy return from thy travels to take up thy father's crown?... _Aie_! Thou canst never forget, Beloved; though years and the mult.i.tude of faces have come between us as a veil, thou dost remember--even as thou didst remember when the message of the Bell came to thee across the great black waters, and thou didst learn that the days of thy exile were numbered, that the hour approached when again thou shouldst sit in the place of thy fathers and rule the world as once they ruled it."

A denial stuck in Amber's throat. The words would not come, nor would they, he believed, have served his purpose could he have commanded them. If he had found no argument wherewith to persuade Salig Singh, he found none wherewith to refute the claim of this golden-faced woman who recognised him for her husband. He was wholly dismayed and aghast. But while he lingered in indecision, staring in the woman's face, her look of petulance was replaced by one of divine forgiveness and compa.s.sion.

And she gave him no time to think or to avoid her; in a twinkling she had thrown herself upon him again, was in his arms and crushing her lips upon his.

"Nay," she murmured, "but I did wrong thee, Beloved! Perchance," she told him archly, "thou didst not think to see me so soon, or in this garden? Perchance surprise hath robbed thee of thy wits--and thy tongue as well, O wordless one? Or thou art overcome with joy, as I am overcome, and smitten dumb by it, as I am not? _Aho, Lalji!_ was ever a woman at loss for words to voice her happiness?" And nestling to him she laughed quietly, with a note as tender and sweet as the cooing of a wood-dove to its mate.

"Nay, but there is a mistake." He recovered the power of speech tardily, and would have put her from him; but she held tight to him. "I am not thy husband, nor yet a Rajput. I come from America, the far land where thy husband died.... Nay, it doth pain me to hurt thee so, Ranee, but the mistake is not of my making, and it hath been carried too far.

Thy husband died in my presence--"

"It is so, then!" she cut him short. And his arms were suddenly empty, to his huge relief. "Indeed they had warned me that thou wouldst tell this story and deny me--why, I know not, unless it be that thou art unworthy of thy lineage, a coward and a weakling!" Her small foot stamped angrily and on every limb of her round body bracelets and anklets clashed and shimmered. "And so thou hast returned only to forswear me and thy kingdom, O thou of little spirit!" The scarlet lips curled and the eyes grew cold and hard with contempt. "If that be so, tell me, why hast thou returned at all? To die? For that thou must surely come to, if it be in thy mind to defy the behests of the Voice, thou king without a kingdom!... Why, then, art thou here, rather than running to hide in some far place, thinking to escape with thy worthless life--worthless even to thee, who art too craven to make a man's use of it--from the Vengeance of the Body?... Dost think I am to be tricked and hoodwinked--I, in whose heart thine image hath been enshrined these many weary years?"

"I neither think, nor know, nor greatly care, Ranee," Amber interposed wearily. "Doubtless I deserve thine anger and thy scorn, since I am not he who thou wouldst have me be. If death must be my portion for this offence, for that I resemble Har Dyal Rutton ... then it is written that I am to die. My business here in Khandawar hath concern neither with thee, nor with the State, not yet with the Gateway of Swords--of the very name of which I am weary.... Now," and his mouth settled in lines of unmistakable resolve, "I will go; nor do I think that there be any here to stop me."

He wheeled about, prepared to fight his way out of the palace, if need be. Indeed, it was in his mind that a death there were as easy as one an hour after sunrise; for he had little doubt but that he was to die if he remained obdurate, and the hospitality of the Rajput would cease to protect him the moment he set foot upon the marble bund of his bungalow.

But the woman sprang after him and caught his arm. "Of thy pity," she begged breathlessly, "hold for a s.p.a.ce until I have taken thought....

Thou knowest that if what thou hast told me be the truth, then am I widow before my time--widowed and doomed!"

"Doomed?"

"Aye!" And there was real terror in her eyes and voice. "Doomed to _sati_. For, since I am a widow--since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband--then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement--the pyre and the death by flame!"

"Good G.o.d! you don't mean that! Surely that custom has perished!"

"Thou shouldst know that it dieth not. What to us women in whose bodies runs the blood of royalty, is an edict of your English Government?

What, the Sirkar itself to us in Khandawar?" She laughed bitterly. "I am a Rohilla, a daughter of kings: my dishonour may be purged only by flame. _Arre_! that I should live to meet with such fate--I, Naraini, to perish in the flower of my beauty.... For I am beautiful, am I not?"

She dropped the veil which instinctively she had caught across her face, and met his gaze with childish coquetry, torn though she seemed to be by fear and disappointment.

"Thou art a.s.suredly most beautiful, Ranee," Amber told her, with a break in his voice, very compa.s.sionate. And he spoke simple truth. "Of thy kind there is none more lovely in the world ..."

"There was tenderness then in your tone, my lord!" she caught him up quickly. "Is there no mercy in thy heart for me?... Who is this woman across the seas who hath won thy love?... Aye, even that I know--that thou dost love this fair daughter of the English. Didst thou not lose the picture of her that was taken with the magic-box of the sahibs?...

Is it for her sake that thou dost deny me, O my husband? Is she more fair than I, are her lips more sweet?"

"I am not thy husband," he declared vehemently, appalled by her reversion to that delusion. "Till this hour I have never seen thee; nor is the sahiba of any concern to thee. Let me go, please."

But she had him fast and he could not have shaken her off but with violence. He had been a strong man indeed who had not been melted to tenderness by her beauty and her distress. She lifted her glorious face to him, pleading, insistent, and played upon him with her voice of gold. "Yet a moment gone thou didst tell me I was greatly gifted with beauty. Have I changed in thine eyes, O my king? Canst thou look upon this poor beauty and hear me tell thee of my love--and indeed I am altogether thine, _Lalji_!--and harden thy heart against me?... What though it be as thou hast said? What though thou art of a truth not of the house of Rutton, nor yet a Rajput? Let us say that this is so, however hard it be to credit: even so, am _I_ not reward enough for thy renunciation?"

"I know not thy meaning, Ranee, I--"

"Come, then, and I will show thee, my king. Come thou with me.... Nay, why shouldst thou falter? There is naught for thee to fear--save me."

She tugged at his hand and laughed low, in a voice that sang like smitten gla.s.ses. "Come, Beloved!"

Unwillingly, he humoured her. This could not last long.... The woman half led, half dragged him to the northern boundary of the garden, where they entered a little turret builded out from the walls over an abyss fully three-hundred feet in depth. And here, standing upon the verge of the parapet, with naught but a foot high coping between her and the frightful fall, utterly fearless and unutterably lovely, Naraini flung out a bare, jewelled arm in an eloquent gesture.

"See, my king!" she cried, her voice vibrant, her eyes kindling as they met his. "Look down upon thy kingdom. North, south, east, west--look!"

she commanded. "Wherever thine eyes may turn, and farther than they can see upon the clearest day, this land is all thine ... for the taking.

Look and tell me thou hast strength to renounce it ... and me, Beloved!"

A little giddy with the consciousness of their perilous height, his breath coming harshly, he looked--first down to the lake that shone like a silver dollar set in velvet, then up the misty distances of the widening valley through which ran the stream that fed the lake, and out to the hills that closed it in, miles away, and then farther yet over the silvered summits of the great, rough hills that rolled away endlessly, like a sea frozen in its fury.

"There lies thy kingdom, O my king!" The bewitching voice cooed seduction at his shoulder. "There and ... here." She sought his hand and placed it firmly upon her bosom, holding it there with gentle pressure until he felt the thumping of her heart and the warm flesh that heaved beneath a shred of half-transparent lace.

Reddening and a little shaken, he s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand away. And she laughed chidingly.

"From the railway in the north to the railway in the south, all the land is Khandawar, Beloved: thine inheritance--thine for the taking ...