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

'No!' cried Tarvin. 'Say that again, little man. What for?'

'Devils,' said the Maharaj Kunwar briefly. 'What do I know? It was some women's talk. Show him how you ride, Tarvin Sahib.'

Again Umr Singh whispered to his companion, and put one leg over the side of the barouche. 'He says he will ride in front of you, as I told him I did,' interpreted the Prince. 'Gurdit Singh, dismount!'

A trooper flung himself out of the saddle on the word, and stood to attention at the horse's head. Tarvin, smiling to himself at the perfection of his opportunity, said nothing, but leapt into the saddle, picked Umr Singh out of his barouche, and placed him carefully before him.

'Sitabhai would be rather restless if she could see me,' he murmured to himself, as he tucked his arm round the lithe little figure. 'I don't think there will be any Juggutting while I carry this young man in front of me.'

As the escort opened to allow Tarvin to take his place at their head, a wandering priest, who had been watching the episode from a little distance, turned and shouted with all the strength of his lungs across the plain, in the direction of the city. The cry was taken up by unseen voices, passed on to the city walls, and died away on the sands beyond.

Umr Singh smiled, as the horse began to trot, and urged Tarvin to go faster. This the Maharaj forbade. He wished to see the sight comfortably from his seat in the barouche. As he passed the gipsy camp, men and women threw themselves down on the sands, crying, 'Jai! Jungle da Badshah jai!' and the faces of the troopers darkened.

'That means,' cried the Maharaj Kunwar, 'Victory to the King of the Desert. I have no money to give them. Have you, Tarvin Sahib.'

In his joy at being now safely on his way to Kate, Tarvin could have flung everything he possessed to the crowd--almost the Naulahka itself. He emptied a handful of copper and small silver among them, and the cry rose again, but bitter laughter was, mingled with it, and the gipsy folk called to each other, mocking.. The Maharaj Kunwar's face turned scarlet. He leaned forward listening for an instant, and then shouted, 'By Indur, it is for him! Scatter their tents!' At a wave of his hand the escort, wheeling, plunged through the camp in line, driving the light ash of the fires up in clouds, slashing the donkeys with the flat of their swords until they stampeded, and carrying away the frail brown tents on the butts of their reversed lances.

Tarvin looked on contentedly at the dispersal of the group, which he knew would have stopped him if he had been alone.

Umr Singh bit his lip. Then, turning to the Maharaj Kunwar, he smiled, and put forward from his belt the hilt of his sword in sign of fealty.

'It is just, my brother,' he said in the vernacular. 'But I'--here he raised his voice a little--'would not drive the gipsy folk too far. They always return.'

'Ay,' cried a voice from the huddled crowd, watching the wreck of the camp, significantly, 'gipsies always return, my King.'

'So does a dog,' said the Maharaj, between his teeth. 'Both are kicked. Drive on.'

And a pillar of dust came to Estes's house, Tarvin riding in safety in the midst of it.

Telling the boys to play until he came out, he swept into the house, taking the steps two at a time, and discovered Kate in a dark corner of the, parlour with a bit of sewing in her hand. As she looked up he saw that she was crying.

'Nick!' she exclaimed voicelessly. 'Nick!' He had stopped, hesitating on the threshold; she dropped her work, and rose breathless. 'You have come back! It is you! You are alive!'

Tarvin smiled, and held out his arms. 'Come and see!' She took a step forward.

'Oh, I was afraid----'

'Come!'

She went doubtfully toward him. He caught her fast, and held her in his arms.

For a long minute she let her head lie on his breast. Then she looked up. 'This isn't what I meant,' she protested.

'Oh, don't try to improve on it!' Tarvin said hastily.

'She tried to poison me. I was sure when I heard nothing that she must have killed you. I fancied horrible things.'

'Poor child! And your hospital has gone wrong! You have been having a hard time. But we will change all that. We must leave as soon as you can get ready. I've nipped her claws for a moment; I'm holding a hostage. But we can't keep that up for ever. We must get away.'

'We!' she repeated feebly.

'Well, do you want to go alone?'

She smiled as she released herself. 'I want you to.'

'And you?'

'I'm not worth thinking of. I have failed. Everything I meant to do has fallen about me in a heap. I feel burnt out, Nick--burnt out!'

'All right! We'll put in new works and launch you on a fresh system. That's what I want. There shall be nothing to remind you that you ever saw Rhatore, dear.'

'It was a mistake,' she said.

'What?'

'Everything. My coming. My thinking I could do it. It's not a girl's work. It's my work, perhaps; but it's not for me. I have given it up, Nick. Take me home.'

Tarvin gave an unbecoming shout of joy, and folded her in his arms again. He told her that they must be married at once, and start that night, if she could manage it; and Kate, dreading what might befall him, assented doubtfully. She spoke of preparations; but Tarvin said that they would prepare after they had done it. They could buy things at Bombay--stacks of things. He was sweeping her forward with the onrush of his extempore plans, when she said suddenly, 'But what of the dam, Nick? You can't leave that.'

'Shucks!' exclaimed Tarvin heartily. 'You don't suppose there's any gold in the old river, do you?'

She recoiled quickly from his arms, staring at him in accusation and reproach.

'Do you mean that you have always known that there was no gold there?'she asked.

Tarvin pulled himself together quickly; but not so quickly that she did not catch the confession in his eye.

'I see you have,' she said coldly.

Tarvin measured the crisis which had suddenly descended on him out of the clouds; he achieved an instantaneous change of front, and met her smiling.

'Certainly,' he said; 'I have been working it as a blind.'

'A blind?' she repeated. 'To cover what?'

'You.'

'What do you mean?' she inquired, with a look in her eyes which made him uncomfortable.

'The Indian Government allows no one to remain in the State without a definite purpose. I couldn't tell Colonel Nolan that I had come courting you, could I?'

'I don't know. But you could have avoided taking the Maharajah's money to carry out this--this plan. An honest man would have avoided that.'

'Oh, look here!' exclaimed Tarvin.

'How could you cheat the King into thinking that there was a reason for your work, how could you let him give you the labour of a thousand men, how could you take his money? O Nick!'

He gazed at her for a vacant and hopeless minute. 'Why, Kate,' he exclaimed, 'do you know you are talking of the most stupendous joke the Indian empire has witnessed since the birth of time?'

This was pretty good, but it was not good enough. He plunged for a stronger hold as she answered, with a perilous little note of breakdown in her voice, 'You make it worse.'

'Well, your sense of humour never was your strongest point, you know, Kate.' He took the seat next her, leaned over and took her hand, as he went on. 'Doesn't it strike you as rather amusing, though, after all, to rip up half a state to be near a very small little girl--a very sweet, very extra lovely little girl, but still a rather tiny little girl in proportion to the size of the Amet valley? Come--doesn't it?'

'Is that all you have to say?' asked she. Tarvin turned pale. He knew the tone off finality he heard in her voice; it went with a certain look of scorn when she spoke of any form of moral baseness that moved her. He recognised his condemnation in it and shuddered. In the moment that passed, while he still kept silence, he recognised this for the crisis of his life. Then he took strong hold of himself, and said quietly, easily, unscrupulously--