The Mercy of the Lord Part 9

There was another hush, on which the girl's voice rose clear with a curious thrill in it.

"And she was very beautiful, was she not?"

"Her son is a good-looking fellow, at any rate," remarked Jim Forrester, coolly, and moving away, he took up the newspaper, conscious of a certain irritation, and began to read the latest report of wireless telegraphy with the unsuspicious and unquestioning a.s.sent which we of these latter days reserve for the marvels of matter only.

Her father having gone back to his papers also, the girl and the goatherd were left alone midway between civilisation and savagery.

Huddled in his coa.r.s.e blanketing, his bare arms crossed over his bare knees, there was nothing distinctive or unusual in Khesroo's figure, behind which the background of shadowy desert was fast fading into shadowy sky, except the haggardness of the aquiline face, the hollowness of the dark eyes. These struck her, and she stretched out her hand to feel his.

"Have you fever now? No, you are quite cool."

He shivered slightly at her touch, and his eyes, pa.s.sing hers, seemed to rest on the plaits of her hair.

"No, Huzoor," he replied, "it is a thief fever--it is hard to catch."

She smiled. "I think quinine will manage it."

He shook his head. "Nothing catches that which robs us of life at its own time. It will leave me none some day." He spoke unconcernedly, as if the fact were beyond question.

"Then why do you wear that amulet if it is of no use?" she said, pointing to the little leathern bag, such as the wild tribes use for the carrying of charms, which was tied round his arm.

Khesroo shook his head again, but smiled this time, and the flash of his white teeth must have removed any doubt of his ident.i.ty, had such doubt existed.

"The queen-lady mistakes," he said. "It does not contain a charm. It is my _photongrar_."

"Your what?" she echoed, uncomprehending.

"_Photongrar_. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother."

"You mean your photograph?"

"Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is like my mother as she was--_before they found her!_"

Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like _after_ that finding which made the English girl feel a vague oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded from a piece of red rag.

"I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much."

Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate, yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her father, with appeal in her voice.

"Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to read the other day, because we were camping through the same country.

Stay! I'll fetch it----"

She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end.

"There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!"

Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester, looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand had written:

"_The Son of a King!_"

The t.i.tle fitted the picture, and reminded the girl of something in Khesroo which had struck her yesterday and which was absent to-day. She turned over the page, but beyond it all was blank. Those words were the last in the diary.

"I think I remember something about it now, my dear," said her father, taking his hand away from the book gently; "it may have been the last she took, for I was camping round here as a.s.sistant just before--before you were born. And she was always taking children and giving pictures to the mothers; not that I remember that particular one--you see it must be fifteen years ago--at least."

"Nearer five-and-twenty, dear," she said, softly, and as she realised the impotence of what the world counts as time to touch the smallest thing that once has been, the utter irrelevance of days and weeks and years in connection with a single thought, the photographs before her grew dim to her eyes, the fine feminine writing with its verdict, "The Son of a King," became invisible.

So through her tears she saw only--blurred and indistinct--the wondering face of Khesroo the goatherd.

"Look!" she said, in sudden impulse. "The sun must have held two pictures of you."

He stared at the duplicate stupidly. "I did not steal it," he began, uneasily.

"Of course you didn't," she replied, smiling now. "It was my mother who took the picture, and gave it to yours--she was the mem-sahiba you spoke of--perhaps you remember her?"

A look almost of relief came to the goatherd's haggard, anxious face.

"Yes! Perhaps your slave remembers, and that is why he thought he recollected the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair. That will be it, and your slave did not lie to the Huzoor."

He looked apologetically towards the young Englishman; but the latter had once more an aggrieved tone in his voice as he said shortly in English:

"Whether he did or did not doesn't much matter. There isn't anything to be got out of him apparently, so perhaps you had better tell the orderly to take him back to the tent and see that he takes the quinine you send--as I suppose you will."

III

"I meant to tell him yesterday, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone, glancing with almost maternal solicitude at her father, who was writing within, his grey, somewhat bald head shining out in the light of the lamp by which he was working, against the intense shadowy darkness of the tent walls, "but that disappointment about the lost city, wasn't, so to say, propitious. And to-day there was that letter from Hausmann about the coin somebody has discovered, which has quite upset him. Poor father," she added, turning to her lover again, "it will be hard on him. Did you notice how he said it was but fifteen years ..."

She broke off and looked out into the night. The stars were showing overhead through the fine fret of the kikar trees, though the horizon still held a hint of the day that was dead. Against this paler background she fancied she could see--itself a shadow, yet half hidden by shadow--that curving dome as of a new world forcing its way through the crust of the old, or an old one through the new.

"It was odd about those photographs, wasn't it?" she said, irrelevantly. "He must be five years older than I am."

"His age is honoured by the comparison."

"My dear Jim," she interrupted, opening her eyes, "this unfortunate goatherd seems----"

"I said he was fortunate, I think. But I admit hating things I don't quite understand."

"Then you must hate me--now don't be angry," she added: "I mean no blame. I very often don't understand myself."

"I know that--and that is why I want this business settled and clear--you--you seem so far off sometimes."

There was a pa.s.sion in his voice; he stretched his hands out to her as she stood apart, her filmy dinner dress looking ghostly and elusive seen half in the dark, half by the feeble light from within the tent.

She stretched out her hands also, but there was all the world between his almost pathetic appeal and her almost amused repulse.

"You must make haste and find the ducat, Jim. I feel sure that without it--and especially in his present mood--father will never consent----"

He certainly did not seem in a consenting frame of mind as he came out to them with the offending letter from Hausmann in his hand.

"I've answered it," he said, sternly, "but as the man is an a.s.s, he will most likely miss the point, which is, of course, Kapala's description of this coin. He says distinctly that it has one profile superimposed on another with the legend beneath, and the date below the flower on the obverse. Really, child, I think I will get you to figure it for me, since Hausmann seems unable to understand words."