The Hosts of the Lord Part 15

"Do you like it?" she asked, suddenly pausing a pace or two from him to stand still, heaped round by those shimmer-crested billows, and so, with one hand, gather the straight folds of her veil to curves over her arm. As she did so, he saw, with a curious throb at his heart, that her wrists were fettered to each other by long trailing chains of scented jasmine flowers.

A dainty prisoning indeed! The suggestion of it set his head whirling.

Like it!--His very admiration kept him silent.

"It makes it feel more real," she went on, "don't you think it does?"

Real, or a dream? He did not know which. He felt a fool to stand so silent; yet no words--as she would phrase it--came to match. None, at least, that he dare use to her unconscious dignity.

"Only I can't dance, you see," she continued, bending to look at the billows about her feet. "Besides,"--she looked up suddenly, her whole expression changed, she flung her fettered hands forward almost into his face. The strings on strings of scented flowers looping themselves in ever widening curves, hung like a screen between him and her laughter.

"I'm a prisoner--yours, I suppose." He fell back for half a second, then caught the hand in his.

And then, in an instant, it came back to him--the measureless glad content of that mistake in the dark! He had told himself ever since that it had come, then, by mistake--incomprehensible, it is true, horrible to a certain extent, but still in error. But this was no mistake!

"Yes!--my prisoner," he said. "Come, and sit down, and let us talk." He wanted time to think.

She shook her head. "Not here, please! No one is to see me but you, only you. That is why I waited till I saw you were alone. I only put it on for you to see."

A sudden remembrance of something she had said to him--"When it is real, and you give yourself--everything, and ask nothing." The certainty that she was doing this now made him say quickly:--

"Don't be afraid--they shall not see. Come, let us go into the garden--those balconies by the river--"

She shook her head again.

"They are not safe, and my guardian would be so angry. Though it isn't really wrong"--she added, with her odd vein of piety; "but when somebody sent me the dress, I thought it would be fun, and I wanted you to see."

"Sent you the dress?" he echoed hotly. "Who?"

She looked at him vastly amused. "Are you jealous? But I'm not going to tell you. That is just like the novels, isn't it; but what is the use of making people angry?"

"How do you know I should be angry," he asked coldly.

She smiled like a Sphinx might smile. "I'm certain. Come! Perhaps I'll tell you when we get to a safe place. There's one close by. My guardian wouldn't have it lit up because--he always has the same reason for everything, you know, and it _is_ so dull--because something happened there long ago. As if it mattered!"

As she spoke, they had been pa.s.sing down the marble steps, her silver anklets chiming; and now, as they paused an instant on the edge of the water-maze, they chimed still. But to a new, curiously provocative measure, and her face, her figure, her very voice, changed as if to keep time with it.

"I used to run all over it, in and out, when I was little," she chattered mischievously, "and old Akbar used to run after me and tumble in! I could do it now, and you could chase me, if I hadn't all this-" she gave a little mutinous kick at her sweeping skirt. Then suddenly she laughed. "Poor old Akbar! I'd like him to see me, but I don't see how it could be managed. And n.o.body else must--but you. So come--come quick!"

She drew him after her by one hand, like a child at play. Across the marble plinth, right to the wide arched pa.s.sage in the lower storey; and when, having gained in the race, he would from habit have gone straight on towards the courtyard, she pulled him back with a peal of laughter.

"Not that way, stupid! Here--it's a dear little balcony all by itself with steps down to the river and a boat."

"Perfect!" he exclaimed with an answering laugh, as he disappeared after her.

But in that instant's pause two figures had pa.s.sed into the other end of the long pa.s.sage from the chapel. Two figures, one of which, half-disdainfully, half-regretfully, had been going round the beauties of the palace; the other, gambolling sideways by reason of its curbing deference its urging servility, engaged in garrulous tales of past glory.

"Yea! _Ger-eeb-pun-waz_," it was saying, "Bun-avatar used to meet Anari Begum here. She liked him best in uniform, and she wore--"

It was then that, framed in the distant archway, seen clear against the radiance of the garden, that vision of a laughing girl, a flashing uniform appeared.

Old Akbar Khan gave a faint mumbling pet.i.tion to be preserved, and fell back, his teeth chattering.

"Anar--Anar--herself," he muttered. "And he--G.o.d help us all! Why did they light up the garden?"

But Roshan Khan knew better. His eyes were younger. And he had the key--the key of that shimmering silver dress.

"Fool!" he said sharply. "They are no ghosts. 'Twas Dering-_sahib_ and--and--" he gave a bitter laugh--"one of his _mems_. They do such things often."

But as he walked on, his hands clenched themselves to the tune of the words which sang in his brain, "G.o.d smite his soul to h.e.l.l! G.o.d smite his soul to h.e.l.l!"

The two great stabilities, Love of G.o.d and Love of woman, had joined hands, as they always do.

A formidable combination.

CHAPTER X

THE PIVOTS OF LIFE

Lance Carlyon was not, as a rule, given either to loss of spirits or temper, yet both were at vanishing-point as he flung off the garb of his namesake of the lake; swearing as he did so that he would never wear the blessed thing again. It cramped him all over; body and soul.

And then--for he knew his Tennyson well, as one of his name could hardly fail to do--his memory raced swiftly over the love-loyal knight's career; until suddenly he laughed at a phrase which had always tickled him. "_So groaned Sir Lancelot--not knowing he should die a holy man_."

If he had?--what would have been the result? Would he simply have refrained from remorseful pain, or from the honour rooted in dishonour which caused it?

With a mighty stretch of his sound young muscles at the relief, Lance caught up his Indian clubs, and went elaborately, conscientiously, through his daily series of exercises before putting on his dust-coloured shooting-suit, and swathing himself with the necessary plent.i.tude of belts, cartridge-boxes, and gaiters. The latter--being, after Indian fashion, simply a couple of bandages neatly twined--were, as a matter of fact, much tighter than his discarded greaves; but the clip of them about his calves was familiarly reminiscent of many a day spent out in the jungle alone, or at most with some companion of Am-ma's type. A man whose only claim to be called one in these later days was his undoubted dominion over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the beasts of the field. How jolly it had been! And how the deuce could a fellow like Vincent Dering--

Lance, sorting cartridges systematically with an eye to a possible snipe, whistled a tune which Vincent was always asked to sing at the Smiths', "_Sweet is true love--and sweet is Death_."

Well, he preferred the Death. So, catching up his gun, he made his way to the crypt-like flight of steps which, half way down the straight river-edged wall of the Fort--between its northern bastion where the stream turned hillwards at a sharp angle, and the southern one beside the bathing-steps--led to a tiny landing-stage. Here the canoe, which he had hired for such excursions from Ramanund (whose last experience of boating had rather sickened him of its pleasures), lay moored.

Keeping the paddle ready for steering, he let the stream, which here clung swift and smooth to the wall, take him with it; partly because he had no wish to be seen by any revellers in the palace. But the sight of the latter made him slip the paddle-blade into the sliding water, and send the canoe swerving out for a better view.

It was wondrously beautiful, seen from the river, with every line and curve of light reflected almost as clear as the reality. The sight held his attention, so that he was abreast of the bathing-steps ere he remembered his desire for secrecy, and, in his haste, the canoe--answering to his swift stroke--almost spun round, bringing him, in an instant, within an ace of collision with the hard brick. As it was, he heard a faint grating sound.

"By Jove! that was a near shave," he muttered to himself.

Out of the darkness of the courtyard, for the unilluminated block of the palace rose between it and the white radiance, came a voice:--

"Is't thou? Hast brought the tool--we must get the job done ere dawn and--"

The rest was inaudible as the river slid him on. What were they up to?

he wondered idly; taking advantage, doubtless, of the absolute desertion of the courtyard, the entry to which had been blocked for the night, the main entrance to the palace having been prepared for the reception of the guests. Were they meddling with the padlock Dering had put on the tampion which stopped the muzzle of the old gun? Time to see to that in the morning.

He was now steering his way just on the edge of the shadow cast by the wall on the water, and in front of him jutted out a balcony smaller than the rest, and nearer the river. Those upper ones, he knew, were part of the chapel; but this--