LITMIR.BIZ

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Tarvin Sahib,' he murmured. 'I am very sorry that I was ill.'

      Tarvin bent over him tenderly. 'Don't try to talk, little one.'

      'Nay; I am well now,' was the answer. 'Soon we will go riding together.'

      'Were you very sick, little man?'

      'I cannot tell. It is all dark to me. I was in the palace laughing with some of the dance-girls. Then I fell. And after that I remember no more till I came here.'

      He gulped down the cooling draught that Kate gave him, and resettled himself on the pillows, while one wax-yellow hand played with the hilt of his sword. Kate was kneeling by his side, one arm under the pillow supporting his head; and it seemed to Tarvin that he had never before done justice to the beauty latent in her good, plain, strong features. The trim little figure took softer outlines, the firm mouth quivered, the eyes were filled with a light that Tarvin had never seen before.

      'Come to the other side--so,' said the child, beckoning Tarvin in the native fashion, by folding all his tiny fingers into his palms rapidly and repeatedly. Tarvin knelt obediently on the other side of the couch. 'Now I am a king, and this is my court.'

      Kate laughed musically in her delight at seeing the boy recovering strength. Tarvin slid his arm under the pillow, found Kate's hand there, and held it.

      The portière at, the door of the room dropped softly. Mrs. Estes had stolen in for a moment, and imagined that she saw enough to cause her to steal out again. She had been thinking a great deal since the days when Tarvin first introduced himself.

      The child's eyes began to grow dull and heavy, and Kate would have withdrawn her arm to give him another draught.

      'Nay; stay so,' he said imperiously; and relapsing into the vernacular, muttered thickly--'Those who serve the King shall not lack their reward. They shall have villages free of tax--three, five villages; Sujjain, Amet, and Gungra. Let it be entered as a free gift when they marry. They shall marry, and be about me always--Miss Kate and Tarvin Sahib.'

      Tarvin did not understand why Kate's hand was withdrawn swiftly. He did not know the vernacular as she did.

      'He is getting delirious again,' said Kate, under her breath. 'Poor, poor little one!'

      Tarvin ground his teeth, and cursed Sitabhai between them. Kate was wiping the damp forehead, and trying to still the head as it was thrown restlessly from side to side. Tarvin held the child's hands, which closed fiercely on his own, as the boy was racked and convulsed by the last effects of the hemp.

      For some minutes he fought and writhed, calling upon the names of many gods, striving to reach his sword, and ordering imaginary regiments to hang those white dogs to the beams of the palace gate, and to smoke them to death.

      Then the crisis passed, and he began to talk to himself and to call for his mother.

      The vision of a little grave dug in the open plain sloping to the river, where they had laid out the Topaz cemetery, rose before Tarvin's memory. They were lowering Heckler's first baby into it, in its pine coffin; and Kate, standing by the graveside, was writing the child's name on the finger's length of smoothed pine which was to be its only headstone.

      'Nay, nay, nay!' wailed the Maharaj Kunwar. 'I am speaking the truth; and oh, I was so tired at that pagal dance in the temple, and I only crossed the courtyard. . . . It was a new girl from Lucknow; she sang the song of "The Green Pulse of Mundore." . . . Yes; but only some almond curd. I was hungry, too. A little white almond curd, mother. Why should I not eat when I feel inclined? Am I a sweeper's son, or a prince? Pick me up! pick me up! It is very hot inside my head. . . . Louder. I do not understand. Will they take me over to Kate? She will make all well. What was the message?' The child began to wring his hands despairingly. 'The message! The message! I have forgotten the message. No one in the State speaks English as I speak English. But I have forgotten the message.

      'Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?

      Yes, mother; till she cries. I am to say the whole of it till she cries. I will not forget. I did not forget the first message. By the great god Har! I have forgotten this message.' And he began to cry.

      Kate, who had watched so long by bedsides of pain, was calm and strong; she soothed the child, speaking to him in a low, quieting voice, administering a sedative draught, doing the right thing, as Tarvin saw, surely and steadily, undisturbed. It was he who was shaken by the agony that he could not alleviate.

      The Maharaj Kunwar drew a long, sobbing breath, and contracted his eyebrows.

      'Mahadeo ki jai!' he shouted. 'It has come back. A gipsy has done this. A gipsy has done this. And I was to say it until she cried.'

      Kate half rose, with an awful look at Tarvin. He returned it, and, nodding, strode from the room, dashing the tears from his eyes.

      XVI

       Table of Contents

      Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise

       To warn a King of his enemies?

       We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,

       But no man knoweth the mind of the King.

       —The Ballad of the King's Jest.

      'Want to see the Maharajah.'

      'He cannot be seen.'

      'I shall wait until he comes.'

      'He will not be seen all day.'

      'Then I shall wait all day.'

      Tarvin settled himself comfortably in his saddle, and drew up in the centre of the courtyard, where he was wont to confer with the Maharajah.

      The pigeons were asleep in the sunlight, and the little fountain was talking to itself, as a pigeon coos before settling to its nest. The white marble flagging glared like hot iron, and waves of heat flooded him from the green-shaded walls. The guardian of the gate tucked himself up in his sheet again and slept. And with him slept, as it seemed, the whole world in a welter of silence as intense as the heat. Tarvin's horse champed his bit, and the echoes of the ringing iron tinkled from side to side of the courtyard. The man himself whipped a silk handkerchief round his neck as some slight protection against the peeling sunbeams, and, scorning the shade of the archway, waited in the open that the Maharajah might see there was an urgency in his visit.

      In a few minutes there crept out of the stillness a sound like the far-off rustle of wind across a wheat-field on a still autumn day. It came from behind the green shutters, and with its coming Tarvin mechanically straightened himself in the saddle. It grew, died down again, and at last remained fixed in a continuous murmur, for which the ear strained uneasily--such a murmur as heralds the advance of a loud racing tide in a nightmare, when the dreamer cannot flee nor declare his terror in any voice but a whisper. After the rustle came the smell of jasmine and musk that Tarvin knew well.

      The palace wing had wakened from its afternoon siesta, and was looking at him with a hundred eyes. He felt the glances that he could not see, and they filled him with wrath as he sat immovable, while the horse swished at the flies. Somebody behind the shutters yawned a polite little yawn. Tarvin chose to regard it as an insult, and resolved to stay where he was till he or the horse dropped. The shadow of the afternoon sun crept across the courtyard inch by inch, and wrapped him at last in stifling shade.

      There was a muffled hum--quite distinct from the rustle--of voices within the palace. A little ivory inlaid door opened, and the Maharajah rolled into the courtyard. He was in the ugliest muslin undress, and his little saffron-coloured Rajput turban was set awry on his head, so that the emerald plume tilted drunkenly. His eyes were red with opium, and he walked as a bear walks when he is overtaken by the dawn in the poppyfield, where he has gorged his fill through the night watches.

      Tarvin's

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