Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Novels and Stories

‘Well?’ said the Prince, who could not see his dead pet. ‘I want my sherbet.’

‘The fruit is not quite good, I’m afraid, Lalji,’ she said, with an effort. As she spoke she tossed into the garden, through the open window, the uneaten fragment of the banana that Mod had clasped so closely to his wicked little breast.

A parrot swooped down. on the morsel instantly from the trees, and took it back to his perch in the branches. It was done before Kate, still unsteadied, could make a motion to stop it, and a moment later a little ball of green feathers fell from the covert of leaves, and the parrot also lay dead on the. ground.

‘No, the fruit is not good,’ she said mechanically, her eyes wide with terror, and her face blanched. Her thoughts leaped to Tarvin. Ah, the warnings and the entreaties that she had put from her! He had said she was not safe. Was he not right? The awful subtlety of the danger in which she stood was a thing to shake a stronger woman than she. From where would it come next? Out of what covert might it not leap The very air might be poisoned. She scarcely dared to breathe.

The audacity of the attack daunted her as much as its design. If this might be done in open day, under cover of friendship, immediately after the visit of the King, what might not the gipsy in the palace dare next? She and the Maharaj Kunwar were under the same roof; if Tarvin was right in supposing that Sitabhai could wish her harm, the fruit was evidently intended for them both. She shuddered to think how she herself might have given the fruit to the Maharaj innocently.

The Prince turned in his bed and regarded Kate. ‘You are not well?’ he asked, with grave politeness. ‘Then do not trouble about the sherbet. Give me Moti to play with.’

‘O Lalji! Lalji!’ cried Kate, tottering to the bed. She dropped beside the boy, cast her arms defendingly about him, and burst into tears.

‘You have cried twice,’ said the Prince, watching her heaving shoulders curiously. ‘I shall tell Tarvin Sahib.’

The word smote Kate’s heart, and filled her with a bitter and fruitless longing. Oh, for a moment of the sure and saving strength she had just rejected! Where was he? she asked herself reproachfully. What had happened to the man she had sent from her to take the chances of life and death in this awful land?

At that hour Tarvin was sitting in his room at the rest-house, with both doors open to the stifling wind of the desert, that he might command all approaches clearly, his revolver on the table in front of him, and the Naulahka in his pocket, yearning to be gone, and loathing this conquest that did not include Kate.

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We be the Gods of the East—

Older than all—

Masters of mourning and feast,

How shall we fall?

Will they gape to the husks that ye proffer,

Or yearn to your song?

And we, have we nothing to offer

Who ruled them so long

In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of the conch and the gong?

Over the strife of the schools,

Low the day burns—

Back with the kine from the pools,

Each one returns,

To the life that he knows where the altar-flame glows

And the tulsi is trimmed in the urns.

—In Seeonee.

The evening and the long night gave Kate ample time for self-examination after she had locked up the treacherous fruit, and consoled the Maharaj, through her tears, for the mysterious death of Moti. One thing only seemed absolutely clear to her, when she rose red-eyed and unrefreshed the next morning: her work was with the women so long as life remained, and the sole refuge for her present trouble was in the portion of that work which lay nearest to her hand. Meanwhile the man who loved her remained in Gokral Seetarun, in deadly peril of his life, that he might be within call of her; and she could not call him, for to summon him was to yield, and she dared not.

She took her way to the hospital. The dread for him that had assailed her yesterday had become a horror that would not let her think.

The woman of the desert was waiting as usual at the foot of the steps, her hands clasped over her knee, and her face veiled. Behind her was Dhunpat Rai, who should have been among the wards; and she could see that the courtyard was filled with people—strangers and visitors, who, by, her new regulations, were allowed to come only once a week. This was not their visiting day, and Kate, strained and worn by all that she had passed through since the day before, felt an angry impulse in her heart go out against them, and spoke wrathfully.

‘What is the meaning of this, Dhunpat Rai?’ she demanded, alighting.

‘There is commotion of popular bigotry within,’ said Dhunpat Rai. ‘It is nothing. I have seen it before. Only do not go in.’

She put him aside without a word, and was about to enter when she met one of her patients, a man in the last stage of typhoid fever, being borne out by half a dozen clamouring friends, who shouted at her menacingly. The woman of the desert was at her side in an instant, raising her hand, in the brown hollow of which lay a long, broad-bladed knife.

‘Be still, dogs!’ she shouted, in their own tongue. ‘Dare not to lay hands on this peri , who has done all for you!’

‘She is killing our people,’ shouted a villager.

‘Maybe,’ said the woman, with a flashing smile; ‘but I know who will be lying here dead if you do not suffer her to pass. Are you Rajputs, or Bhils from the hills, hunters of fish, and diggers after grubs, that you run like cattle because a lying priest from nowhere troubles your heads of mud? Is she killing your people? How long can you keep that man alive with your charms and your mantras? ’ she demanded, pointing to the stricken form on the stretcher. ‘Out—go out! Is this hospital your own village to defile? Have you paid one penny for the roof above you or the drugs in your bellies? Get hence before I spit upon you!’ She brushed them aside with a regal gesture.

‘ It is best not to go in,’ said Dhunpat Rai in Kate’s, ear. ‘There is local holy man in the courtyard, and he is agitating their minds. Also, I myself feel much indisposed.’

‘But what does all this mean?’ demanded Kate again.

For the hospital was in the hands of a hurrying crowd, who were strapping up bedding and cooking-pots, lamps and linen, calling to one another up and down the staircases in subdued voices, and bringing the sick from the upper wards as ants bring eggs out of a broken hill, six or eight to each man—some holding bunches of marigold flowers in their hands, and pausing to mutter prayers at each step, others peering fearfully into the dispensary, and yet others drawing water from the well and pouring it out around the beds.

In the centre of the courtyard, as naked as the lunatic who had once lived there, sat an ash-smeared, long-haired, eagle-taloned, half-mad, wandering native priest, and waved above his head his buckhorn staff, sharp as a lance at one end, while he chanted in a loud monotonous voice some song that drove the men and women to work more quickly.

As Kate faced him, white with wrath, her eyes blazing, the song turned to a yelp of fierce hatred.

She dashed among the women swiftly—her own women, who she thought had grown to love her. But their relatives were about them, and Kate was thrust back by a bare-shouldered, loud-voiced dweller of the out-villages in the heart of the desert.

The man had no intention of doing her harm, but the woman of the desert slashed him across the face with her knife, and he withdrew howling.

‘Let me speak to them,’ said Kate, and the woman beside her quelled the clamour of the crowd with uplifted hands. Only the priest continued his song. Kate strode toward him, her little figure erect and quivering, crying in the vernacular, ‘Be silent, thou, or I will find means to close thy mouth!’