Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Novels and Stories

‘Well, come on, Juggut,’ he said, and they passed behind the rest-house to a spot where two horses, their heads enveloped in cloaks to prevent them from neighing, were waiting at their pickets. The man mounted one, and Tarvin took the other silently, satisfying himself before getting into the saddle that the girths were not loose this time. They left the city road at a walking pace by a cart-track leading to the hills.

‘Now,’ said Juggut Singh, after they had gone a quarter of a mile in this fashion, and were alone under the stars, ‘we can ride.’

He bowed forward, struck his stirrups home, and began lashing his animal furiously. Nothing short of the fear of death would have made the pampered eunuch of the palace ride at this pace.

Tarvin watched him roll in the saddle, chuckled a little, and followed.

‘You wouldn’t make much of a cow-puncher, Juggut, would you?’

‘Ride!’ gasped Juggut Singh. ‘For the cleft between the two hills—ride!’

The dry sand flew behind their horses’ hoofs, and the hot winds whistled about their ears as they headed up the easy slope toward the hills, three miles from the palace. In the old days, before the introduction of telegraphs, the opium speculators of the desert were wont to telegraph the rise and fall in the price of the drug from little beacon-towers on the hills. It was toward one of these disused stations that Juggut Singh was straining. The horses fell into a walk as the slope grew steeper, and the outline of the squat-domed tower began to show clear against the sky. A few moments later Tarvin heard the hoofs of their horses ring on solid marble, and saw that he was riding near the edge of a great reservoir, full of water to the lip.

Eastward, a few twinkling lights in the open plain showed the position of Rhatore, and took him back to the night when he had said good-bye to Topaz from the rear platform of a Pullman. Night-fowl called to one another from the weeds at the far end of the tank, and a great fish leaped at the reflection of a star.

‘The watch-tower is at the further end of the am,’ said Juggut Singh, ‘The Gipsy is there.’

‘Will they never have done with that name?’ uttered an incomparably sweet voice out of the darkness. ‘It is well that I am of a gentle temper, or the fish would know more of thee, Juggut Singh.’

Tarvin checked his horse with a jerk, for almost under his bridle stood a figure enveloped from head to foot in a mist of pale yellow gauze. It had started up from behind the red tomb of a once famous Rajput cavalier who was supposed by the country-side to gallop nightly round the dam he had built. This was one of the reasons why the Dungar Talao was not visited after nightfall.

‘Come down, Tarvin Sahib,’ said the voice mockingly in English. ‘I, at least, am not a grey ape. Juggut Singh, go wait with the horses below the watchtower.’

‘Yes, Juggut; and don’t go to sleep,’ enjoined Tarvin—‘we might want you.’ He alighted, and stood before the veiled form of Sitabhai.

‘Shekand,’ she said, after a little pause, putting out a hand that was smaller even than Kate’s.

‘Ah, Sahib, I knew that you would come. I knew that you were not afraid.’

She held his hand as she spoke, and pressed it tenderly. Tarvin buried the tiny hand deep in his engulfing paw, and, pressing it in a grip that made her give an involuntary cry, shook it with a hearty motion.

‘Happy to make your acquaintance,’ he said, as she murmured under her breath, ‘By Indur, he has a hold!’

‘And I am pleased to see you, too,’ she answered aloud. Tarvin noted the music of the voice. He wondered what the face behind the veil might look like.

She sat down composedly on the slab of the tomb, motioning him to a seat beside her.

‘All white men like straight talk,’ she said, speaking slowly, and with uncertain mastery of English pronunciation. ‘Tell me, Tarvin Sahib, how much you know.’

She withdrew her veil as she spoke, and turned her face toward him. Tarvin saw that she was beautiful. The perception thrust itself insensibly between him and his other perceptions about her.

‘You don’t want me to give myself away, do you, Queen?’

‘I do not understand. But I know you do not talk like the other white men,’ she said sweetly.

‘Well, then, you don’t expect me to tell you the truth?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Else you would tell me why you are here. Why do you give me so much trouble?’

‘ Do I trouble you?’

Sitabhai laughed, throwing back her head, and clasping her hands behind her neck. Tarvin watched her curiously in the starlight. All his senses were alert; he was keenly on his guard, and he cast a wary eye about and behind him from time to time. But he could see nothing but the dull glimmer of the water that lapped at the foot of the marble steps, and hear nothing save the cry of the night-owls.

‘O Tarvin Sahib,’ she said. ‘You know! After the first time I was sorry.’

‘Which time was that?’ inquired Tarvin vaguely.

‘Of course it was when the saddle turned. And then when the timber fell from the archway I thought at least that I had maimed your horse. Was he hurt?’

‘No,’ said Tarvin, stupefied by her engaging frankness.

‘Surely you knew,’ she said almost reproachfully.

He shook his head. ‘No, Sitabhai, my dear,’ he said slowly and impressively. ‘I wasn’t on to you, and it’s my eternal shame. But I’m beginning to sabe. You worked the little business at the dam, too, I suppose, and the bridge and the bullock-carts. And I thought it was their infernal clumsiness? Well, I’ll be——’ He whistled melodiously, and the sound was answered by the hoarse croak of a crane across the reeds.

The Queen leaped to her feet, thrusting her hand into her bosom. ‘A signal!’ Then sinking back upon the slab of the tomb, ‘But you have brought no one with you. I know you are not afraid to go alone.’

‘Oh, I’m not trying to do you up, young lady,’ he answered. ‘I’m too busy admiring your picturesque and systematic deviltry. So you’re at the bottom of all my troubles? That quicksand trick was a pretty one. Do you often work it?’

‘0h, on the dam!’ exclaimed the Queen, waving her hands lightly. ‘I only gave them orders to do what they could. But they are very clumsy people—only coolie people. They told me what they had done, and I was angry.’

‘Kill any one?’

‘No; why should I?’

‘Well, if it comes to that, why should you be so hot on killing me?’ inquired Tarvin dryly.

‘I do not like any white men to stay here, and I knew that you had come to stay.’ Tarvin smiled at the unconscious Americanism. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘the Maharajah was fond of you, and I had never killed a white man. Then, too, I like you.’

‘Oh!’ responded Tarvin expressively.

‘By Malang Shah, and you never knew!’ She was swearing by the god of her own clan—the god of the gipsies.

‘Well, don’t rub it in,’ said Tarvin.

‘And you killed my big pet ape,’ she went on. ‘He used to salaam to me in the mornings like Luchman Rao, the prime minister. Tarvin Sahib, I have known many Englishmen. I have danced on the slack-rope before the mess-tents of the officers on the line of march, and taken my little begging gourd up to the big bearded colonel when I was no higher than his knee.’ She lowered her hand to within a foot of the ground. ‘And when I grew older,’ she continued, ‘I thought that I knew the hearts of all men. But, by Malang Shah, Tarvin Sahib, I never saw a man like unto you! Nay,’ she went on almost beseechingly, ‘do not say that you did not know. There is a love song in my tongue, “I have not slept between moon and moon because of you”; and indeed for me that song is quite true. Sometimes I think that I did not quite wish to see you die. But it would be better that you were dead. I, and I alone, command this State. And now, after that which you have told the King——’