The Hosts of the Lord Part 14

His voice sank into dreamful ease.

"And it can claim solitude, anyhow," added the doctor, mournfully.

"Think of the disgust of an old established microbe, like myself, when his swept and garnished home is invaded by a party of seven strange devils."

"How rude you are!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "Besides, we aren't seven, and I believe Robinson Crusoe discovered this island before you did!"

"I think the French cook takes the cake, though," said poor Lance, who had been following up his own grievance. "Shirt sleeves must be an awful pull when you are dancing with a _burra mem_."[8]

"True for you!" a.s.sented the Commissioner, sympathetically. "That's the very reason I took to it, me dear boy, when me own merits and me advancing years doomed me to all the stout ladies in India. Besides, me paper cap rids me of two of me reports anyhow. Ye see I always have to wear two caps; one before, and one after supper. Otherwise I find the contints get mixed, and make me statements unreliable; and then me enemies say it's the champagne. I feel it coming on me now, but--" he sprang to his feet, light as a boy--"by a merciful providence there's the band at the 'Roast Beef.' Now, are ye coming in to supper with me, Mrs. Smith, or are you one of those who have to change their ident.i.ty?"

"Not I," she declared, taking his arm, "I'm quite content with myself, thank you!"

She might well be, since her costume of water-nymph could not have been improved upon. It enabled her to show off her long, rippling, pale gold hair, and the filmy green and white, the feathery weeds, the iridescent sh.e.l.ls, matched her delicate face, which seemed almost overweighted by her water-lily crown.

"Besides, Undine can always do quick-change artist, and a.s.sume a soul,"

suggested the Commissioner, as he led her off; adding, in mock alarm: "Me dear madam! I apologize profoundly. Miss Bonaventura, Captain Dering's waiting for you, I'm sure."

Laila, who had risen also, stood silent, looking taller and slimmer than usual in her guise of Beatrice. It seemed to have brought out the fact that she had some of the best blood of Italy in her veins. Vincent Dering had recognized this fact--which Father Ninian had taken care to communicate to him as soon as the latter had found out that, nominally at any rate, the former was a Roman Catholic, and therefore a possible lover--when he had gone up to apologize to the girl for having missed that second dance, owing to his duties as steward. The recognition had him vaguely sorry for the girl; sorry also for the old man who, evidently, dreamt such idle dreams. He did not mean to marry a Begum!

He crossed over to her now, offering his arm, but she refused it, saying she did not want supper.

"But you are enjoying yourself, surely?" he said.

"Oh, yes! thank you," she answered; "only it isn't real, of course. It doesn't mean anything."

Dr. Dillon, who was within hearing, looked down at her sharply.

"Perhaps, my dear young lady, it is as well it doesn't. So let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"

She looked up at him quite shocked. "Oh! I didn't mean that, of course; that is wrong. I only meant that things don't match--the place and the people, I mean. Except one or two--those for instance." She pointed out Roshan Khan who, dressed as himself, was taking advantage of the emptiness of the garden during supper time, to go round it with old Akbar Khan as guide, the latter in the wildest antics of alacrity.

"Did you ever see such a funny figure?" continued the girl, with an odd little laugh. "He is quite crazy with joy. He told me to-day this was the first time for forty years that he had been himself! That he has been bewitched."

"I believe I've been bewitched too," said Vincent, suddenly. "Let us all go back forty years."

Dr. Dillon swung his feet further over, and dropped to the ground almost between them.

"That would effectually annihilate two of the company, and reduce me to cutting my teeth; and I want the use of them at supper. Come along and have something solid, Miss Bonaventura; there is nothing so indigestible as fancy sweets."

But she was firm, and moved away to where a small staircase led from the balcony to the upper storey. She did not care for supper, she repeated, and she had to mend her dress; someone had trodden on it, and she would not be able to dance till it was mended.

"Don't forget ours--the first _extra_," called Vincent after her. She turned where the narrow stair, after climbing the outside wall, against which it clung like a swallow's nest, ended in the shadow of an archway. "I shall be back in plenty of time," she said. Vincent thought he had never seen her look so nice, so young, so fresh, so smiling.

"That's a queer girl," remarked the doctor, as he lounged off, "not half bad. That is just it, in fact; she is a clear case of atavism, and as her ancestors seem to have been either saints or sinners, there you are! For it's the same tissue absolutely; indeed, there's precious little difference between the two when you come to a.n.a.lyze."

"I never do," interrupted Vincent, shortly. The doctor's cynicism bored him, especially here, where a man might at least be allowed to escape the brutal realities. Here, where even the houses in the bazaar beyond the garden wall--those houses that were by the common light of day so squalid, so unsavoury, so full of mean, miserable detail--showed like star-palaces against the sky!

A sudden comprehension came to him. How blind of the girl to say all this meant nothing! How cra.s.sly idiotic of himself to think of going back forty years to enjoy this! This was the same yesterday, to-day, for ever! It was the love of physical pleasure, the desire to appropriate, to have and to hold, which had civilized the world, and made man out of a monkey.

"'The Cradle of the G.o.ds,' did you say, my dear lady?" said a courteous old voice from the stairs, breaking in on his solitude. "Just so--the pilgrims go there every year. It lies--let me see--I think I can point it out to you. Ah! Captain Dering!" continued Father Ninian, finding the balcony into which he had stepped _en pa.s.sant_, occupied. "We don't disturb you, I hope; but Mrs. Palmer was speaking about the 'Cradle of the G.o.ds.' It must lie--don't you think so?--over there." He pointed beyond the star-palaces.

"I should fancy so, sir," replied Vincent, "that is about due north."

"Then I am wrong," smiled the old priest; "the cave is northwest, and the pa.s.sage to it is difficult--almost incredibly difficult."

"Yet you have been there several times, haven't you?" said Mrs. Palmer.

Father Ninian shook his head. "Never to the cave itself, madam. I am not quite sure whether I ever really meant to go so far,--and bow in the House of Rimmon! It would have been interesting no doubt--but--" he glanced down almost boyishly at his black _soutane_--"my cloth, my dear lady, has to be considered. As a matter of fact, something always hindered me. I went as a medicine man, you see; and so many fall by the wayside. I wonder, indeed, how any reach it." He paused, and a wistful smile made his face look dreamy. "Some say none do. A _jogi_--Gorakh-nath, Captain Dering,--he whom you turned out of the gun--claims to be the only man who has ever seen the real cave; the rest have seen--_illusion!_" He paused again, and his smile changed.

"'Tis a claim, madam, made by more than Gorakh-nath; who, by the way, promises to defy you, Captain Dering. Padlock or no padlock, he is to get in and out of the gun as he chooses while the pilgrims are here."

Vincent laughed contemptuously. "I don't think miracles go down, even in India, nowadays, sir."

The old priest's face grew grave. "I cannot give my a.s.sent to that; I who have seen the blood of a saint turn crimson and flow. Faith, Captain Dering,--that is, the belief of man in a power beyond his own,--is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever!"

Vincent Dering bowed politely, and kept his shrug of the shoulders for the old man's back, as he followed him upstairs to the supper room.

The same yesterday, to-day, for ever! True, in a way. There were two stabilities amid the chances and changes of this mortal life. The Garden of the Palace. The Cradle of the G.o.ds. Faith and Love--for it came to that in the end.

Here the familiar sight of a ball supper in full swing ended his rare reflections, and he slipped into a place beside a lively vivandiere, who welcomed him with entreaties to join in a comic opera she was going to get up at Simla. The last new rage in London; she had written home for the rights.

He was in a new atmosphere in a moment, and straightway forgot the garden; forgot everything but that the supper was excellent, his companion gay. Even the Commissioner's high voice, as he talked nonsense, seemed far from the gravity even of conferring t.i.tles, and it seemed incredible that the small man who sat surrounded by a host of departmental heads was really representing a whole Empire.

When the band downstairs, by beginning on Strauss's "Lovelong livelong day," warned him of his engagement to Laila, he pa.s.sed to it half reluctantly. She would be sure to dance badly: that make of girl always did. So he was relieved to find the ball room, and the wide loggia into which it opened, almost empty. Only a couple or two were spinning slowly, idly, in and out of the resounding arches.

He went on, therefore, to the balcony beside the stairs. If the girl was there it would be an excuse for sitting out. If not, he could always say he had waited for her. Either way, he would have time for a cigarette.

As he went down towards it he met Lance Carlyon coming up, and called to him: "Supper's A1; so's the wine. It's going awfully well, isn't it?"

"Suppose so," replied Lance, "but I'm going to cut. These togs are awful; but if I go now I'll have time to change and have a shoot down the river. Am-ma says the ducks sit like stones before dawn. They won't miss me, as a bachelor, I suppose?"

Vincent looked at him compa.s.sionately. "A bachelor," he echoed. "It's about your last chance, I take it. However, if you want to kill something--it's a common symptom--go! I shall stop till the bitter--or sweet--end! One doesn't get into a streak like this once in a blue moon! I feel fit for anything."

As he sat down for a smoke in the corner vacated by Robinson Crusoe, this feeling was strong upon him, and sent the blood tingling to his finger-tips.

The band had by this time ceased piping to unwilling dancers, so the still, warm, scented air was left to the tinkling ripple of the water, the rippling tinkle of distant voices; for supper had almost emptied the garden also. The better for its picturesque effect. Now the imagination could people it--as Laila Bonaventura (the girl had sense) had phrased it--with figures that matched; real figures.

A chiming silvery clash above him made him turn to look upwards to the archway where Laila Bonaventura had disappeared. It would be a bore if she were returning to interrupt his cigarette; though, in truth, she had been, he remembered, almost attractive.

Almost--

He gave an exclamation, and rose to his feet. She was coming, indeed, but not as she had gone.

There is no dress in the world which is at once so dainty and so sensuous, as the court dress of a Mahomedan lady, and Laila Bonaventura was wearing one as she came slowly down the stairs towards him, a radiant white figure against the radiant white marble.

The folds of her long silver-gauze skirt--so cunningly fashioned that it trailed in rolling shimmer-crested billows behind her, yet left no beauty of her round limbs hidden--clipped her about the waist like a serpent's skin. So hiding, yet revealing, was the soft film of fine muslin over the scented, ivory-tinted corselet, which fitted close to the full curves of her figure. So was it with the silver-streaked veil, through which the jewels in her dusky hair, the bracelets on her fair arms, shone undimmed. So was it even with the chiming fringes of her silver anklets, as they slid merrily to cover and uncover the small feet, tucked so carelessly into the little silver-tipped slippers.

To hide and to reveal, that was the note of all!

As she came nearer, too, he saw that her lips were reddened, her dark eyes darkened artificially. And yet her face did not correspond to all this. It was curiously grave, dignified, almost anxious.