Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Novels and Stories

‘Not in the least. I’m here to look after the Maharaj Kunwar, and I’m going to do it. You prefer leaving him to be killed by your women.’

‘Tarvin Sahib, do you know what you say?’

‘Shouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t. I have all the proof in my hands.’

‘But when there is a poisoning there are no proofs of any kind, least of all when a woman poisons! One does justice on suspicion, and by the English law it is a most illiberal policy to kill on suspicion. Tarvin Sahib, the English have taken away from me everything that a Rajput desires, and I and the others are rolling in idleness like horses that never go to exercise. But at least I am master there! ’

He waved a hand toward the green shutters, and spoke in a lower key, dropping back into his chair, and closing his eyes.

Tarvin looked at him despairingly.

‘No one man would dare—no man would dare,’ murmured the Maharajah more faintly. ‘And as for the other thing that you spoke of, it is not in your power. By God! I am a Rajput and a king. I do not talk of the life behind the curtain.’

Then Tarvin took his courage in both hands and spoke.

‘I don’t want you to talk,’ he said; ‘I merely want to warn you against Sitabhai. She’s poisoning the Prince.’

The Maharajah shuddered. That a European should mention the name of his queen was in itself sufficient insult, and one beyond all his experience. But that a European should cry aloud in the open courtyard a charge such as Tarvin had just made surpassed imagination. The Maharajah had just come from Sitabhai, who had lulled him to rest with songs and endearments sacred to him alone; and here was this lean outlander assailing her with vile charges. But for the drugs he would, in the extremity of his rage, have fallen upon Tarvin, who was saying, ‘I can prove it quite enough to satisfy Colonel Nolan.’

The Maharajah stared at Tarvin with shiny eyes, and Tarvin thought for a moment that he was going to fall in a fit; but it was the drink and the opium reasserting their power upon him.

He mumbled angrily. The head fell forward, the words ceased, and he sat in his chair breathing heavily, as senseless as a log.

Tarvin gathered up his reins, and watched the sodden monarch for a long time in silence, as the rustle behind the shutters rose and fell. Then he turned to go, and rode out through the arch, thinking.

Something sprang out of the darkness where the guard slept, and where the King’s fighting apes were tethered; and the horse reared as a grey ape, its chain broken at the waist-band, flung itself on the pommel of the saddle, chattering. Tarvin felt and smelt the beast. It thrust one paw into the horse’s mane, and with the other encircled his own throat. Instinctively he reached back, and before the teeth under the grimy blue gums had time to close he had fired twice, pressing the muzzle of the pistol into the hide. The creature rolled off to the ground, moaning like a human being, and the smoke of the two shots drifted back through the hollow of the arch and dissolved in the open courtyard.

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Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we;

I was the Lord of the Inca Race, and she was the Queen of the Sea.

Under the stars beyond our stars where the reinless meteors glow,

Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.

Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above—

Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove;

Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,

The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago.

She with the star I had marked for my own—I with my set desire—

Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights, ’wildered by worlds afire—

Met in a war ’twixt love and hate where the reinless meteors glow,

Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago.

—The Sack of the Gods.

In summer the nights of the desert are hotter than the days, for when the sun goes down, earth, masonry, and marble give forth their stored heat, and the low clouds, promising rain and never bringing it, allow nothing to escape.

Tarvin was lying at rest in the verandah of the rest-house, smoking a cheroot and wondering how far he had bettered the case of the Maharaj Kunwar by appealing to the Maharajah. His reflections were not disturbed; the last of the commercial travellers had gone back to Calcutta and Bombay, grumbling up to the final moment of their stay, and the rest-house was all his own. Surveying his kingdom, he meditated, between the puffs of his cheroot, on the desperate and apparently hopeless condition of things. They had got to the precise point where he liked them. When a situation looked as this one did, only Nicholas Tarvin could put it through and come out on top. Kate was obdurate; the Naulahka was damnably coy; the Maharajah was ready to turn him out of the State. Sitabhai had heard him denounce her. His life was likely to come to a sudden and mysterious end, without so much as the satisfaction of knowing that Heckler and the boys would avenge him; and if it went on, it looked as though it would have to go on without Kate, and without the gift of new life to Topaz—in other words, without being worth the trouble of living.

The moonlight, shining on the city beyond the sands, threw fantastic shadows on temple spires and the watch-towers along the walls. A dog in search of food snuffed dolefully about Tarvin’s chair, and withdrew to howl at him at a distance. It was a singularly melancholy howl. Tarvin smoked till the moon went down in the thick darkness of an Indian night. She had scarcely set when he was aware of something blacker than the night between him and the horizon.

‘Is it you, Tarvin Sahib?’ the voice inquired in broken English.

Tarvin sprang to his feet before replying. He was beginning to be a little suspicious of fresh apparitions. His hand went to his hip pocket. Any horror, he argued, might jump out at him from the darkness in a country managed on the plan of a Kiralfy trick spectacle.

‘Nay; do not be afraid,’ said the voice. ‘It is I—Juggut Singh.’

Tarvin pulled thoughtfully at his cigar. ‘The State is full of Singhs,’ he said. ‘Which?’

‘I, Juggut Singh, of the household of the Maharajah.’

‘H’m. Does the King want to see me?’

The figure advanced a pace nearer.

‘No, Sahib; the Queen.’

‘Which?’ repeated Tarvin.

The figure was in the verandah at his side, almost whispering in his ear. ‘There is only one who would dare to leave the palace. It is the Gipsy.’

Tarvin snapped his fingers blissfully and soundlessly in the dark, and made a little click of triumph with his tongue. ‘Pleasant calling hours the lady keeps,’ he said.

‘This is no place for speaking, Sahib. I was to say, “Come, unless you are afraid of the dark.”’

‘Oh, were you? Well, now, look here, Juggut; let’s talk this thing out. I’d like to see your friend Sitabhai. Where are you keeping her? Where do you want me to go?’

‘I was to say, “Come with me.” Are you afraid?’ The man spoke this time at his own prompting.

‘Oh, I’m afraid fast enough,’ said Tarvin, blowing a cloud of smoke from him. ‘It isn’t that.’

‘There are horses—very swift horses. It is the Queen’s order. Come with me.’

Tarvin smoked on, unhurrying; and when he finally picked himself out of the chair it was muscle by muscle. He drew his revolver from his pocket, turned the chambers slowly one after another to the vague light, under Juggut Singh’s watchful eye, and returned it to his pocket again, giving his companion a wink as he did so.