Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

'It is my order,' said the Prince, without turning his head. 'I will go.'

'Stay with us, beloved,' said Kate. She was wondering whether the hospital could be dragged together again, after three months, and whether it was possible she might have overrated the danger to Nick.

'I go,' said the Prince, breaking from his mother's arms. 'I am tired of this talk.'

'Does the Queen give leave?' asked the woman of the desert under her breath. The Queen nodded, and the Prince found himself caught between two brown arms, against whose strength it was impossible to struggle.

'Let me go, widow!'he shouted furiously.

'It is not good for a Rajput to make light of a mother of Rajputs, my king,' was the unmoved answer. 'If the young calf does not obey the cow, he learns obedience from the yoke. The heaven-born is not strong. He will fall among those passages and stairs. He will stay here. When the rage has left his body he will be weaker than before. Even now'--the large bright eyes bent themselves on the face of the child--'even now,' the calm voice continued, 'the rage is going. One moment more, heaven-born, and thou wilt be a prince no longer, but only a little, little child, such as I have borne. Ahi, such as I shall never bear again.'

With the last words the Prince's head nodded forward on her shoulder. The gust of passion had spent itself, leaving him, as she had foreseen, weak to sleep.

'Shame--oh, shame!' he muttered thickly. 'Indeed I do not wish to go. Let me sleep.'

She began to pat him on the shoulder, till the Queen put forward hungry arms, and took back her own again, and laying the child on a cushion at her side, spread the skirt of her long muslin robe over him, and looked long at her treasure. The woman crouched down on the floor. Kate sat on a cushion, and listened to the ticking of the cheap American clock in a niche in the wall. The voice of a woman singing a song came muffled and faint through many walls. The dry wind of noon sighed through the fretted screens of the window, and she could hear the horses of the escort swishing their tails and champing their bits in the courtyard a hundred feet below. She listened, thinking ever of Tarvin in growing terror. The Queen leaned over her son more closely, her eyes humid with mother love.

'He is asleep,' she said at last. 'What was the talk about his monkey, miss sahib?'

'It died,' Kate said, and spurred herself to the lie. 'I think it had eaten bad fruit in the garden.'

'In the garden?' said the Queen quickly.

'Yes, in the garden.'

The woman of the desert turned her eyes from one woman to the other. These were matters too high for her, and she began timidly to rub the Queen's feet.

'Monkeys often die,' she observed. 'I have seen as it were a pestilence among the monkey folk over there at Banswarra.'

'In what fashion did it die?' insisted the Queen.

'I--I do not know,' Kate stammered, and there was another long silence as the hot afternoon wore on.

'Miss Kate, what do you think about my son?' whispered the Queen. 'Is he well, or is he not well?'

'He is not very well. In time he will grow stronger, but it would be better if he could go away for a while.'

The Queen bowed her head quietly. 'I have thought of that also many times sitting here alone; and it was the tearing out of my own heart from my breast. Yes, it would be well if he were to go away. But'--she stretched out her hands despairingly towards the sunshine--'what do I know of the world where he will go, and how can I be sure that he will be safe? Here--even here' . . . She checked herself suddenly. 'Since you have come, Miss Kate, my heart has known a little comfort, but I do not know when you will go away again.'

'I cannot guard the child against every evil,' Kate replied, covering her face with her hands; 'but send him away from this place as swiftly as may be. In God's name let him go away.'

'Such hai! Such hai! It is the truth, the truth!' The Queen turned from Kate to the woman at her feet.

'Thou hast borne three?'she said.

'Yea, three, and one other that never drew breath. They were all men-children,' said the woman of the desert.

'And the gods took them?'

'Of smallpox one, and fever the two others.'

'Art thou certain that it was the gods?'

'I was with them always till the end.'

'Thy man, then, was all thine own?'

'We were only two, he and I. Among our villages the men are poor, and one wife suffices.'

'Arre! They are rich among the villages. Listen now. If a co-wife had sought the lives of those three of thine----'

'I would have killed her. What else?' The woman's nostrils dilated and her hand went swiftly to her bosom.

'And if in place of three there had been one only, the delight of thy eyes, and thou hadst known that thou shouldst never bear another, and the co-wife working in darkness had sought for that life? What then?'

'I would have slain her--but with no easy death. At her man's side and in his arms I would have slain her. If she died before my vengeance arrived I would seek for her in hell.'

'Thou canst go out in the sunshine and walk in the streets and no man turns his head,' said the Queen bitterly. 'Thy hands are free and thy face is uncovered. What if thou wert a slave among slaves, a stranger among stranger people, and'--the voice dropped--'dispossessed of the favour of thy lord?'

The woman, stooping, kissed the pale feet under her hands.

'Then I would not wear myself with strife, but, remembering that a man-child may grow into a king, would send that child away beyond the power of the co-wife.'

'Is it so easy to cut away the hand?' said the Queen, sobbing.

'Better the hand than the heart, sahiba. Who could guard such a child in this place?'

The Queen pointed to Kate. 'She came from far off, and she has once already brought him back from death.'

'Her drugs are good and her skill is great, but--thou knowest she is but a maiden, who has known neither gain nor loss. It may be that I am luckless, and that my eyes are evil--thus did not my man say last autumn--but it may be. Yet I know the pain at the breast and the yearning over the child new-born--as thou hast known it.'

'As I have known it.'

'My house is empty and I am a widow and childless, and never again shall a man call me to wed.'

'As I am--as I am.'

'Nay, the little one is left, whatever else may go; and the little one must be well guarded. If there is any jealousy against the child it were not well to keep him in this hotbed. Let him go out.'

'But whither? Miss Kate, dost thou know? The world is all dark to us who sit behind the curtain.'

'I know that the child of his own motion desires to go to the Princes' School in Ajmir. He has told me that much,' said Kate, who had lost no word of the conversation from her place on the cushion, bowed forward with her chin supported in her hands. 'It will be only for a year or two.'

The Queen laughed a little through her tears. 'Only a year or two, Miss Kate. Dost thou know how long is one night when he is not here?'

'And he can return at call; but no cry will bring back mine own. Only a year or two. The world is dark also to those who do not sit behind the curtain, sahiba. It is no fault of hers. How should she know?' said the woman of the desert under her breath to the Queen.

Against her will, Kate began to feel annoyed at this persistent exclusion of herself from the talk, and the assumption that she, with her own great trouble upon her, whose work was pre-eminently to deal with sorrow, must have no place in this double grief.

'How should I not know?' said Kate impetuously. 'Do I not know pain? Is it not my life?'

'Not yet,' said the Queen quietly. 'Neither pain nor joy. Miss Kate, thou art very-wise, and I am only a woman who has never stirred beyond the palace walls. But I am wiser than thou, for I know that which thou dost not know, though thou hast given back my son to me, and to this woman her husband's speech. How shall I repay thee all I owe?'