Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Novels and Stories

A trooper whispered to the young Prince.

‘This man says that he is there,’ said the Maharaj Kunwar. ‘He has been there since two days. I also have wished to see him.’

‘Very good. Drive home, Kate. I’ll wait here.’

He re-entered the archway, and reined up. Again the whisper behind the shutter rose; and a man from a doorway demanded his business.

‘I must see the Maharajah,’ said Tarvin.

‘Wait,’ said the man. And Tarvin waited for a full five minutes, using his time for concentrated thought.

Then the Maharajah emerged, and amiability sat on every hair of his newly-oiled moustache.

For some mysterious reason Sitabhai had withdrawn the light of her countenance from him for two days, and had sat raging in her own apartments. Now the mood had passed, and the gipsy would see him again. Therefore the Maharajah’s heart was glad within him; and wisely, as befitted the husband of many wives, he did not inquire too closely into the reasons that had led to the change.

‘Ah, Tarvin Sahib,’ said he, ‘I have not seen you for long. What is the news from the dam? Is there anything to see?’

‘Maharajah Sahib, that’s what I’ve come to talk about. There is nothing to see, and I think that there is no gold to be got at.’

‘That is bad,’ said the King lightly.

‘But there is a good deal to be seen, if you care to come along. I. don’t want to waste your money any more, now I’m sure of the fact; but, I don’t see the use of saving all the powder on the dam. There must be five hundred pounds of it.’

‘I do not understand,’ said the Maharajah, whose mind was occupied with other things.

‘Do you want to see the biggest explosion that you’ve ever seen in your life? Do you want to hear the earth shake, and see the rocks fly?’

The Maharajah’s face brightened.

‘Will it be seen from the palace?’ he said; ‘from the top of the palace?’

‘Oh yes. But the best place to watch it will be from the side of the river. I shall put the river back at five o’clock. It’s three o’clock now. Will you be there, Maharajah Sahib?’

‘I will be there. It will be a big tamasha . Five hundred pounds of powder! The earth will be rent in two.’

‘I should remark. And after that, Maharajah Sahib, I am going to be married; and then I am going away. Will you come to the wedding?’

The Maharajah shaded his eyes from the sunglare, and peered up at Tarvin under his turban.

‘By God, Tarvin Sahib,’ said he, ‘you are a quick man. So you will marry the doctor-lady, and then you will go away? I will come to the wedding. I and Pertab Singh.’

The next two hours in the life of Nicholas Tarvin will never be adequately chronicled. There was a fierce need upon him to move mountains and shift the poles of the earth; there was a strong horse beneath him, and in his heart the knowledge that he had lost the Naulahka and gained Kate. When he appeared, a meteor amid the coolies on the dam, they understood, and a word was spoken that great things were toward. The gang foreman turned to his shouts, and learned that the order of the day was destruction—the one thing that the Oriental fully comprehends.

They dismantled the powder-shed with outcries and fierce yells, hauled the bullock-carts from the crown of the dam, and dropped the derrick after them, and tore down the mat and grass coolie-lines. Then, Tarvin urging them always, they buried the powder-casks in the crown of the halfbuilt dam, piled the wrapped charges upon them, and shovelled fresh sand atop of all.

It was a hasty onslaught, but the powder was at least all in one place; and it should be none of Tarvin’s fault if the noise and smoke at least did not delight the Maharajah.

A little before five he came with his escort, and Tarvin, touching fire to a many-times-lengthened fuse, bade all men run back. The fire ate slowly the crown of the dam. Then with a dull roar the dam opened out its heart in a sheet of white flame, and the masses of flying earth darkened the smoke above.

The ruin closed on itself for an instant ere the waters of the Amet plunged forward into the gap, made a boiling rapid, and then spread themselves lazily along their accustomed levels.

The rain of things descending pitted the earth of the banks and threw the water in sheets and spurts. Then only the smoke and the blackened flanks of the dam, crumbling each minute as the river sucked them down, remained to tell of the work that had been.

‘And now, Maharajah Sahib, what do I owe you?’ said Tarvin, after he had satisfied himself that none of the more reckless coolies had been killed.

‘That was very fine,’ said the Maharajah. ‘I never saw that before. It is a pity that it cannot come again.’

‘What do I owe you?’ repeated Tarvin.

‘For that? Oh, they were my people. They ate a little grain, and many were from my jails. The powder was from the arsenal. What is the use to talk of paying? Am I a bunnia that I can tell what there is to pay? It was a fine tamasha . By God, there is no dam left at all.’

‘You might let me put it right.’

‘Tarvin Sahib, if you waited one year, or perhaps two years, you would get a bill and besides, if anything was paid, the men who pay the convicts would take it all, and I should not be richer. They were my people, and the grain was cheap, and they have seen the tamasha . Enough. It is not good to talk of payment. Let us return to the city. By God, Tarvin Sahib, you are a quick man. Now there will be no one to play pachisi with me or to make me laugh. And the Maharaj Kunwar will be sorry also. But it is good that a man should marry. Yes, it is good. Why do you go, Tarvin Sahib? Is it an order of the Government?’

‘Yes; the American Government. I am wanted there to help govern my State.’

‘No telegram has come for you,’ said the King simply. ‘But you are so quick.’

Tarvin laughed lightly, wheeled his horse, and was gone, leaving the King interested but unmoved. He had finally learned to accept Tarvin and his ways as a natural phenomenon beyond control. As he drew rein instinctively opposite the missionary’s door and looked for an instant at the city, the sense of the otherness of things daily seen that heralds swift coming change smote the mind of the American, and he shivered. ‘It was a bad dream—a very bad dream,’ he muttered, ‘and the worst of it is not one of the boys in Topaz would ever believe half of it.’ Then the eyes that swept the arid landscape twinkled with many reminiscences. ‘Tarvin, my boy, you’ve played with a kingdom, and for results it lays over monkeying with the buzz-saw. You were left when you sized this State up for a played-out hole in the ground; badly left. If you have been romping around six months after something you hadn’t the sabe to hold when you’d got it you’ve learned that much…. Topaz! Poor old Topaz!’ Again his eyes ran round the tawny horizon, and he laughed aloud. The little town under the shadow of Big Chief, ten thousand miles away and all ignorant of the mighty machinery that had moved on its behalf, would have resented that laugh; for Tarvin, fresh from events that had shaken Rhatore to its heart, was almost patronising the child of his ambition.

He brought his hand down on his thigh with a smack, and turned his horse toward the telegraph-office. ‘How in the name of all that’s good and holy,’ said he, ‘am I to clear up this business with the Mutrie? Even a copy of the Naulahka in glass would make her mouth water.’ The horse cantered on steadily, and Tarvin dismissed the matter with a generous sweep of his free hand. ‘If I can stand it she can. But I’ll prepare her by electricity.’

The dove-coloured telegraph-operator and Postmaster-General of the State remembers even to-day how the Englishman who was not an Englishman, and, therefore, doubly incomprehensible, climbed for the last time up the narrow stairs, sat down in the broken chair, and demanded absolute silence; how, at the end of fifteen minutes’ portentous meditation and fingering of a thin moustache, he sighed heavily as is the custom of Englishmen when they have eaten that which disagrees with them, waved the operator aside, called up the next office, and clicked off a message with a haughty and high-stepping action of the hands. How he lingered long and lovingly over the last click, applied his ear to the instrument as though it could answer, and turning with a large sweet smile said,— ‘Finis, Babu. Make a note of that,’ and swept forth chanting the war-cry of his State