Voices in the Night Part 27

'Where'er you walk, Cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees where you sit Shall crowd into a shade; Where'er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.'

The most pa.s.sionate, yet the purest, praise a woman ever won from man, perfect in its self-forgetfulness, in its delight in the admiration of the whole world for what is praised, fell from John Ellison's lips in almost perfect style; for he had been taught the song in those early days of surpliced choirs.

And Chris Davenant, as he listened, staring out over the river, clinched his hands on the iron rail in a sudden pa.s.sion of self-pity.

This is what he had found in the poets of the West! This was what he had sought in the prose of life! It was for this he had forsaken so much--this white-robed woman with the breezes cooling the hot blood, and the trees crowding to shade her from the fierce heat of noon!

And he had found--what?

Something worse?--yes!--for one brief second he admitted the truth that it _was_ worse; that Naraini, despite her ignorance, would have given him something nearer to that ideal of all men who were worth calling men, than Viva with her cigarettes, her pink ruffles, her strange mixture of refinement and coa.r.s.eness, of absolute contempt for pa.s.sion and constant appeal to it. Why had he ever forsaken his people? Why had he ever forsaken her--Naraini?

'I am Brahmin, my hand is pure.'

The memory of her voice, her face, as she spoke the words returned to him, and, with an irresistible rush, all that had swept him from his moorings, swept him from the common current of the lives around him, all the sentimentality, all the intuitive bias towards things spiritual, swept him back again to that life--and to Naraini!

'It's a rippin' song, ain't it, sir?' remarked Jan-Ali-shan, who had been warbling away at the runs and trills like any blackbird, as he watched Chris Davenant's listening face. 'Wraps itself round a feller somehow. Kep' me from a lot o' tommy rot, that song 'as in my time, an'

sent me to the flowing bowl instead.'

As he walked over to see if the tank was full, he whistled,

'Let the toast pa.s.s, here's to the la.s.s, I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a gla.s.s,'

with jaunty unconcern. He returned in a moment, the coolies behind him carrying the iron ladder back to its hooks on the pier.

'All right, sir,' he reported. 'Give 'er two men an' she'll 'old her own against a thousand.'

Chris, absorbed in his thoughts, made an effort to wrench himself from them by a.s.senting.

'Yes. They'd find it difficult without guns, unless they could manage it by the river.'

Jan-Ali-shan shook his head. 'Not if we'd a rifle or two aboard, sir, to nick 'em off in the boats.'

'Couldn't they get along the spit,' suggested Chris, absolutely at random.

'Might be done, mayhap,' admitted the other, after a reflective pause.

'Leastways, if you was a "_Ram Rammer_" an' 'ad a right o' way through the 'ouse o' r.i.m.m.i.n.g--beg pardin, sir, though you _'ave_ chucked old 'Oneyman an' 'is lot--I mean, if you was a Hindoo an' they'd let you through the temple. But even then we could nick 'em in the water afore they could get ropes slung.'

'There's the ladder, suggested Chris once more. He was not thinking of what he said. He was asking himself _what_ he had not 'chucked' away recklessly? 'It is only about six feet up; they could easily----'

'They could easily do a lot if they was let, sir,' interrupted Jan-Ali-shan, as he turned to go, with a pitying look. 'But we don't let 'em. That's how it is. An we ain't such bally fools as to leave 'em ladders. No, sir? Two men--if they _was_ men-'u'd keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time.'

As the trolly buzzed back stationwards, the group of yellow faces above the faded brocades gave up watching the man[oe]uvres of the drawbridge, and returned to their kite-flying; and on the bathing-steps the men and women returned to the day's work. On the bastion there was a shade more listless doubt and dislike, on the steps a shade more uneasy wonder as to the signs of the times. That was all.

Only Burkut Ali, as he weighted his kite's tail with an extra grain or two of rice, nodded his head, and said with a sinister look--

'Two could play that game, and the first come would be master. "_He who sits on the throne is king_."'

'And he who sits not is none,' added Jehan's antagonist with a wink. He had quarrelled two days before with the Rightful Heir's pretensions to authority in the matter of a dancing-girl, and so, for the time being, headed the dissentient party which, with ever-shifting numbers and combinations, made the royal house--to the great satisfaction of the authorities--one divided against itself. 'If the Sun of the Universe is ready,' he went on, with mock ceremony, 'his slave waits to begin the match.'

Jehan's face sharpened with anger. He had come there in an evil temper, because, after having virtuously denied himself an over-night orgy for the sake of steadying his hand for the match, Lateefa--on whom he had relied for a superexcellent new kite--had neither turned up nor sent an excuse; consequently the chances of victory were small. And now this ill-conditioned hound was palpably insolent. The fact roused Jehan's pretensions, and made him a.s.sert them.

'I fly no kite to-day,' he said haughtily, 'the match will be to-morrow.'

His opponent smiled. 'As my lord chooses!' he replied coolly, 'his slave is ready to give revenge at any time.'

'Revenge!' echoed Jehan sharply, 'wherefore revenge? There is no defeat.'

'His Highness forgets,' said the other, with a pretence of humility scarcely hiding his malice, 'the Most Learned, being member of race-clubs, must know that "scratch" is victory to the antagonist.

This day's match therefore is mine. Is not that the rule, _meean_?'

He appealed to the most sporting member of the court, but Jehan, without waiting for his verdict, broke into fierce invective, and had pa.s.sed from the rules to the rulers, when Burkut--who had been listening with that sinister look of his--touched him peremptorily on the arm, and said--

'Have a care, Nawab-_sahib_, some one comes.'

Jehan turned quickly, and saw behind him a sergeant of police.

He came with a summons for the Nawab-_sahib_ Jehan Aziz to attend at once at the cantonment police-station.

Still confused by his anger, and scarcely master of himself, Jehan stood looking at the paper put in his hand, and trying to disentangle from the smudge of the lithographed form the few written words which would give him a key to the rest.

The first he saw was '_Sobrai Begum_,' the next '_Lateefa_.'

They pulled his pride and his cunning together in quick self-defence.

Though a fierce longing to have the jade's throat within the grip of his thin fingers surged up in him, the desire to put her away privily was stronger. He folded up the paper with a shrug of his shoulders, and turned on the curious faces around him.

''Tis only Lateefa in trouble with a woman,' he began.

'And they need his master's virtue to get him out of it!' sneered his opponent. ''Tis too bad; were I the Nawab, I would keep mine for my own use----'

The Rightful Heir glared at the giber, and a vast resentment at his own impotence came to the descendant of kings. Why was he not able, as his fathers had been, to sweep such vermin from his path? Why had he to obey the orders of every jack-in-office? Then for Sobrai herself. Why could he not settle her in the good old fashion without any one's help?

As he drove over to cantonments in the ramshackle wagonette this desire overbore the others, and his cunning centred round the possibility of getting the baggage back to the ruined old house, where screams could be so easily stifled.

The first step, of course, was to see Lateefa in private and hear his version of the story. That meant ten rupees to the constable in charge of the lock-up, but it was better to pay that, at first, than hundreds of rupees of hush-money afterwards if the police went against you.

So the silver key slipped into the sergeant's pocket, and the iron one came out which opened the barred door behind which Lateefa sat like a wild beast in a cage--Sobrai, meanwhile, being accommodated with free lodgings under the charge of an old hag in a discreetly private cell round the corner!

Jehan's face grew more and more savage as he listened to what the kite-maker had to tell; and that was a good deal, for he had gossiped half the night with the sentry on duty!

Miss Leezie--Sobrai singing in the public bazaar to the soldiers--all this was so much gall and wormwood to the Nawab's pride. It almost made him forget the theft of the pearls; the more so because the idea of the latter was not quite new to him. Mr. Lucanaster's a.s.sertion that there were five amissing, joined to the fact that poor Aunt Khojee, hoping thereby to smooth over the quarrel between him and Noormahal, had brought him one pearl which had been found in a rent in a cushion, had made him suspicious that Sobrai had the rest; that this, indeed, had been at the bottom of her flight. It was only, therefore, when Lateefa pointed out that it would be necessary to prove that these pearls of Sobrai's were not the Lady-_sahib's_ pearls, before the girl--free from the suspicion of theft--could be handed over to her lawful guardians, that he realised it would not be enough to say that they were his, that he had given them to the girl, who--despite her evil doings--he was willing to receive back again into his virtuous house. For the possibility of denying her a.s.sertion that she belonged to it, had, he felt, vanished with her unfortunate recognition of Lateefa.

But now there must be proof, and the proof lay in Mr. Lucanaster's hands.

Jehan felt hemmed in, harried on all sides, and he was the poorer by fifty rupees before he bribed his way to an informal interview with the cantonment magistrate, and was able to lay before that official a carefully-concocted admixture of truth and falsehood which should help to secure what he chiefly needed, secrecy and delay.