by Talbot Mundy
She said all that in a low sweet voice, and with a smile that would have made a much less passionate man lose something of his self-command. Jinendra’s priest began to move uneasily.
“Peace, woman!”
“There is no peace where priests are,” she retorted in the same sweet- humored voice. “I am engaged in war, not honey-gathering. I have lied sufficient times today to Mukhum Dass to need ten priests, if I believed in them or were afraid to lie! The shroff will come to ask about his title-deed. Tell him you are told a certain person has it, but that if he dares breathe a word the paper will go straight to Dhulap Singh, who will destroy it and so safely bring his lawsuit. Then let Dhulap Singh be told also that the title-deed is in certain hands, so he will put off the lawsuit week after week, and one who is my friend will suffer no annoyance.”
“Who is this friend?”
“Another one who builds no bridges on thy sanctity.”
“Not one of the English? Beware of them, I say; beware of them!”
“No, not one of the English. Next, let Gungadhura be told that Tom
Tripe has ever an open-handed welcome at Blaine sahib’s—”
“Ah!” he objected, shaking his fat face until the cheeks wabbled. “Women are all fools sooner or later. Why let a drunken English soldier be included in the long list of people to be reckoned with?”
“Because Gungadhura will then show much favor to Tom Tripe, who is my friend, and it amuses me to see my friends prosper. Also I have a plan.”
“Plans — plans — plans! And whither does the tangle lead us?”
“To the treasure, fool!”
“But if you know so surely where the treasure is, woman, why not tell me and—”
Again the single note of mocking golden laughter cut him off short.
“I would trust thee with the secret, Brahman, just as far as the herdsman trusts a tiger with his sheep.”
“But I could insure that Gungadhura should divide it into three parts, and—”
“When the time comes,” she answered, “the priest of Jinendra shall come to me for his proportion, not I to the priest. Nor will there be three portions, but one — with a little percentage taken from it for the sake of thy fat belly. Gungadhura shall get nothing!”
“I wash my hands of it all!” the priest retorted indignantly. “The half for me, or I wash my hands of it and tell Gungadhura that you know the secret! I will trust him to find a way to draw thy cobra from its hole!”
“Maybe he might,” she nodded, smiling, “after the English had finished hanging thee for that matter of the strangling of Rum Dass. Thy fat belly would look laughable indeed banging by a stretched neck from a noose. They would need a thick rope. They might even make the knot slippery with cow-grease for thy special benefit.”
The priest winced.
“None can prove that matter,” he said, recovering his composure with an effort.
“Except I,” she retorted, “who have the very letter that was written to Rum Dass that brought him into thy clutches — and five other proofs beside! Two long years I waited to have a hold on thee, priest, before I came to blossom in the odor of thy sanctity; now I am willing to take the small chance of thy temper getting the better of discretion!”
“You are a devil,” he said simply, profoundly convinced of the truth of his remark; and she laughed like a mischievous child, clapping her hands together.
“So now,” she said, “there is little else to discuss. If Gungadhura should be superstitious fool enough to come to thee again for auguries and godly counsel—”
“He comes always. He shows proper devotion to Jinendra.”
“Repeat the former story that a clue to the treasure must be found in
Blaine sahib’s house—”
“In what form? He will ask me again in what form the clue will be, that he may recognize it?”
“Tell him there is a map. And be sure to tell him that Tom Tripe is welcome at the house. Have you understood? Then one other matter: when it is known that I am back in my palace Gungadhura will set extra spies on me, and will double the guard at all the doors to keep me from getting out again. He will not trust Tom Tripe this time, but will give the charge to one of the Rajput officers. But he will have been told that I was at the commissioner sahib’s house this morning, and therefore he will not dare to have me strangled, because the commissioner sahib might make inquiries. I have also made other precautions — and a friend. But tell Gungadhura, lest he make altogether too much trouble for me, that I applied to the commissioner sahib for assistance to go to Europe, saying I am weary of India. And add that the commissioner sahib counseled me not to go, but promised to send English memsahibs to see me.” (She very nearly used the word American, but thought better of it on the instant.)
“He will ask me how I know this,” said the Brahman, turning it all over slowly in his mind and trying to make head or tail of it.
“Tell him I came here like himself for priestly counsel and made a clean breast of everything to thee! He will suspect thee of lying to him; but what is one lie more or less?”
With that final shaft she gathered up her skirts, covered her face, nudged the giggling maid and left him, turning the key in the lock herself and flitting out through gloom into the sunlight as fast as she had come. The carriage was still waiting at the edge of the outer court, and once again the driver started off without instructions, but tooling his team this time at a faster pace, with a great deal of whip-cracking and shouts to pedestrians to clear the way. And this time the carriage had an escort of indubitable maharajah’s men, who closed in on it from all sides, their numbers increasing, mounted and unmounted, until by the time Yasmini’s own palace gate was reached there was as good as a state procession, made up for the most part of men who tried to look as if they had made a capture by sheer derring-do and skill.
And down the street, helter-skelter on a sweating thoroughbred, came Maharajah Gungadhura Singh just in time to see the back of the carriage as it rumbled in through the gateway and the iron doors clanged behind it. Scowling — altogether too round-shouldered for the martial stock he sprang from — puffy-eyed, and not so regal as overbearing in appearance, he sat for a few minutes stroking his scented beard upward and muttering to himself.
Then some one ventured to tell him where the carriage had been seen waiting, and with what abundant skill it had been watched and tracked from Jinendra’s temple to that gate. At that he gave an order about the posting of the guard, and, beckoning only one mounted attendant to follow him, clattered away down-street, taking a turn or two to throw the curious off the scent, and then headed straight for the temple on his own account.
Chapter Five
An Audit by the Gods
(I)
Thus spoke the gods from their place above the firmament
Turning from the feasting and the music and the mirth:
“There is time and tide to burn;
Let us stack the plates a turn
And study at our leisure what the trouble is with earth.”
Down, down they looked through the azure of the Infinite
Scanning each the meadows where he went with men of yore,
Each his elbows on a cloud,
Making reckoning aloud -
Till the murmur of God wonder was a titan thunder-roar.
“War rocks the world! Look, the arquebus and culverin
Vanish in new sciences that presage T. N. T!
Lo, a dark, discolored swath
Where they drive new tools of wrath!
Do they justify invention? Will they scrap the Laws that Be?
“Look! Mark ye well: where we left a people flourishing
Singing in the sunshine for the fun of being free,
Now they burden man and maid
With a law the priests have laid,
And the bourgeois blow their noses by a communal decree!
“Where, where away are the liberties we left to them -
Gift of being merry and the privilege of fun?
Is delight no longer praise?
Will they famish all their days
For a future built of fury in a present scarce begun?”
“Most Precious friend … please visit me!”
The one thing in India that never happens is the expected. If the actual thing itself does occur, then the manner of it sets up so many unforeseen contingencies that only the subtlest mind, and the sanest and the least hidebound by opinion, can hope to read the signs fast enough to understand them as they happen. Naturally, there are always plenty of people who can read backward after the event; and the few of those who keep the lesson to themselves, digesting rather than discussing it, are to be found eventually filling the senior secretaryships, albeit bitterly criticized by the other men, who unraveled everything afterward very cleverly and are always unanimous on just one point — that the fellow who said nothing certainly knew nothing, and is therefore of no account and should wield no influence, Q. E. D.
And as we belong to the majority, in that we are uncovering the course of these events very cleverly long after they took place, we must at this point, to be logical, denounce Theresa Blaine. She was just as much puzzled as anybody. But she said much less than anybody, wasted no time at all on guesswork, pondered in her heart persistently whatever she had actually seen and heard, and in the end was almost the only non-Indian actor on the stage of Sialpore to reap advantage. If that does not prove unfitness for one of the leading parts, what does? A star should scintillate — should focus all eyes on herself and interrupt the progress of the play to let us know how wise and beautiful and wonderful she is. But Tess apparently agreed with Hamlet that “the play’s the thing,” and was much too interested in the plot to interfere with it. She attended the usual round of dinners, teas and tennis parties, that are part of the system by which the English keep alive their courage, and growing after a while a little tired of trivialty, she tried to scandalize Sialpore by inviting Tom Tripe to her own garden party, successfully overruling Tripe’s objections.
“Between you and I and the gate-post, lady, they don’t hanker for my society. If somebody — especially colonels, or a judge maybe, — wanted to borrow a horse from the maharajah’s stable, — or perhaps they’d like a file o’ men to escort a picnic in the hills, — then it’s ‘Oh, hello, good morning, Mr. Tripe. How’s the dog this morning? And oh, by the way—’ Then I know what’s coming an’ what I can do for ’em I do, for I confess, lady, that I hanker for a little bit o’ flattery and a few words o’ praise I’m not entitled to. I don’t covet any man’s money — or at least not enough to damn me into hell on that account. Finding’s keeping, and a bet’s a bet, but I don’t covet money more than that dog o’ mine covets fleas. He likes to scratch ’em when he has ’em. Me the same; I can use money with the next man, his or mine. But I wouldn’t go to hell for money any more than Trotters would for fleas, although, mind you, I’m not saying Trotters hasn’t got fleas. He has ’em, same as hell’s most folks’ destiny. But when it comes to praise that ain’t due me, lady, I’m like Trotters with another dog’s bone — I’ve simply got to have it, reason or no reason. A common ordinary bone with meat on it is just a meal. Praise I’ve earned is nothing wonderful. But praise I don’t deserve is stolen fruit, and that’s the sweetest. Now, if I was to come to your party I’d get no praise, ma’am. I’d be doing right by you, but they’d say I didn’t know my place, and by and by they’d prove it to me sharp and sneery. I’ll be a coward to stop away, but— ‘Sensible man,’ they’ll say. ‘Knows when he isn’t wanted.’ You see, ma’am, yours is the only house in Sialpore where I can walk in and know I’m welcome whether you’re at home or not.”
“All the more reason for coming to the party, Tom.”
“Ah-h-h! If only you understood!”
He wagged his head and one finger at her in his half-amused paternal manner that would often win for him when all else failed. But this time it did not work.
“I don’t care for half-friends, Tom. If you expect to be welcome at my house you must come to my parties when I ask you.”
“Lady, lady!”
“I mean it.”
“Oh, very well. I’ll come. I’ve protested. That absolves me. And my hide’s thick. It takes more than just a snub or two — or three to knock my number down! Am I to bring Trotters?”
“Certainly. Trotters is my friend too. I count on him to do his tricks and help entertain.”
“They’ll say of you, ma’am, afterward that you don’t know better than ask Tripe and his vulgar dog to meet nice people.”
“They’ll be right, Tom. I don’t know better. I hope they’ll say it to me, that’s all.”
But Tess discovered when the day came that no American can scandalize the English. They simply don’t expect an American to know bow to behave, and Tom Tripe and his marvelous performing dog were accepted and approved of as sincerely as the real American ice-cream soda — and forgotten as swiftly the morning following.
The commissioner was actually glad to meet Tripe in the circumstances. If the man should suppose that because Sir Roland Samson and a judge of appeal engaged in a three-cornered conversation with him at a garden party, therefore either of them would speak to the maharajah’s drill-master when next they should meet in public, he might guess again, that was all.
One of the things the commissioner asked Tripe was whether he was responsible for the mounting of palace guards — of course not improperly inquisitive about the maharajah’s personal affairs but anxious to seem interested in the fellow’s daily round, since just then one couldn’t avoid him.
“In a manner, and after a fashion, yes, sir. I’m responsible that routine goes on regularly and that the men on duty know their business.”
“Ah. Nothing like responsibility. Good for a man. Some try to avoid it, but it’s good. So you look after the guard on all the palaces? The Princess Yasmini’s too, eh? Well, well; I can imagine that might be nervous work. They say that young lady is — ! Eh, Tripe?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. My duties don’t take me inside the palace.”
“Now, now, Tripe! No use trying to look innocent! They tell me she’s a handful and you encourage her!”
“Some folks don’t care what they say, sir.”
“If she should be in trouble I dare say, now, you’d be the man she’d apply to for help.”
“I’d like to think that, sir.”
“Might ask you to take a letter for instance, to me or his honor the judge here?”
The judge walked away. He did not care to be mixed up in intrigue, even hypothetically, and especially with a member of the lower orders.
“I’d do for her what I’d do for a daughter of my own, sir, neither more nor less.”
“Quite so, Tripe. If she gave you a letter to bring to me, you’d bring it, eh?”
“Excepting barratry, the ten commandments, earthquake and the act of God, sir, yes.”
“Without the maharajah knowing?”
“Without his highness knowing.”
“You’d do that with a clear conscience, eh?”
Tom Tripe screwed his face up, puffed his cheeks, and struck a very military attitude.
“A soldier’s got no business with a conscience, sir. Conscience makes a man squeamish o’ doing right for fear his wife’s second cousin might tell the neighbors.”
“Ha-ha! Very profoundly philosophic! I dare wager you’ve carried her letters at least a dozen times — now come.”
Again Tom Tripe puffed out his cheeks and struck an attitude.
“Men don’t get hanged for murder, sir.”
“For what, then?”
“Talking before and afterward!”
“Excellent! If only every one remembered that! Did it ever occur to you how the problem might be reversed ?”
“Sir?”
“There might one day be a letter for the Princess Yasmini that, as her friend, you ought to
make sure should reach her.”
“I’d take a letter from you to her, sir, if that’s your meaning.”
Sir Roland Samson, K. C. S. I., looked properly shocked.
There are few things so appalling as the abruptness with which members of the lower orders divest diplomacy’s kernel of its decorative outer shell. “What I meant is — ah—” He set his monocle, and stared as if Tripe were an insect on a pin-point. “Since you admit you’re in the business of intriguing for the princess, no doubt you carry letters to, as well as from her, and hold your tongue about that too?”
“If I should deliver letters they’d be secret or they’d have gone through the mail. I’d risk my job each time I did it. Would I risk it worse by talking? Once the maharajah heard a whisper—”
“Well — I’ll be careful not to drop a hint to his highness. As you say, it might imperil your job. And, ah—” (again the monocle,) “ — the initials r. s. — in small letters, not capitals, in the bottom left-hand corner of a small white envelope would — ah — you understand? — you’d see that she received it, eh?”
Tom Tripe bridled visibly. Neither the implied threat nor the proposal to make use of him without acknowledging the service afterward, escaped him. Samson, who believed among other things in keeping all inferiors thoroughly in their place decided on the instant to rub home the lesson while it smarted.
“You’d find it profitable. You’d be paid whatever the situation called for.
You needn’t doubt that.”
Tess, talking with a group of guests some little distance off, observed a look of battle in Tom Tripe’s eye, and smiled two seconds later as the commissioner let fall his monocle. Two things she was certain of at once: Tom Tripe would tell her at the first opportunity exactly what had happened, and Samson would lie about it glibly if provoked. She promised herself she would provoke him. As a matter of fact Tom gave her two or three versions afterward of what his words had been, their grandeur increasing as imagination flourished in the comfortable warmth of confidence. But the first account came from a fresh memory:
“No money you’ll ever touch would buy my dog’s silence, let alone mine, sir! If you’ve a letter for the princess, send it along and I’ll see she gets it. If she cares to answer it, I’ll see the answer reaches you. As for dropping hints to the maharajah about my doing little services for the princess, — a gentleman’s a gentleman, and don’t need instruction — nor advice from me. If I was out of a job tomorrow I’d still be a man on two feet, to be met as such.”