by Talbot Mundy
“Lynn!” Mrs. Harding shouted. It was the voice with which she called women’s club meetings to order. “Come here. I wish to talk to you.”
Lynn returned slowly, thinking swiftly, pausing at the door of the verandah to summarize what she was thinking about. She was tired of meekness. She was feeling ashamed of herself. She needed ten words for a sort of telegram to hurl at Aunty and begin the battle instead of waiting as usual to let Mrs. Harding open fire. But ten words are not easy to find when memories of fifteen years of rank injustice surge into the mind. A million words, yes. A big dictionary would have made an almost perfect missile. But there wasn’t one.
“Lynn, you’re letting in the flies. Come in and close that door behind you.”
Lynn slammed the screen door. “Aunty, did anyone ever throw a book at you or something equally heavy?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then you know what it feels like. So I needn’t do it. Please consider yourself thrown at.”
“Girl, what on earth do you mean? Have you gone crazy?”
“I mean this: you’re a fanatic, and you’re cruel. But all your fanaticism, and all your cruelty, can’t change what I think.”
Mrs. Harding snorted. “Do you ever think? Do you know what you think?”
Lynn walked to the end of the verandah and stood staring at the garden with her back toward her aunt. The trouble was that she did not know what she thought. Her rebellion against Mrs. Harding was an emotion; she didn’t have to think about that; it was as natural as any other honest reaction. But Norwood? Rundhia? She knew, without needing to ask, what Aunty thought. But what did she think?
Chapter Twelve
“LYNN, please rearrange my pillows.”
It was not Aunty’s cultured, conventional voice but the hard, unsympathetic one in which she almost always commanded attention to her comfort as a prelude to the luxury of an explosion of temper. Two palace women, loaned by the Maharanee, had been fussing with the pillows less than five minutes before. Lynn rearranged them. She waited. Her silence offered the old termagant no opening, so Aunty Harding abandoned her usual gradual style of attack. She exploded:
“Don’t dare to speak to me, you sullied creature, until you have washed your mouth! There is soap and water in the bedroom.”
“Aunty — !”
“Wash your mouth this minute! I saw you — permitting yourself to be kissed by Prince Rundhia!”
“Aunty, I’m no longer five! Aren’t you forgetting—”
“To my humiliation I remember too much! You are old enough at least to try to keep up an appearance of decency.”
“Aunty! Decency?”
“Would you rather I should call you what you are? After all my care to raise you properly and to provide you with advantages that less fortunate girls have to do without: after seventeen years of continual effort to teach you dignity and ladylike conduct — what am I to think of a girl who lets herself be kissed, like a common adventuress, in public, at ten in the morning? Our journey has been one long series of outrageous offenses against my dignity — to say nothing of your own reputation.”
Lynn made a brave effort to keep her temper. She sat down in a wicker chair beside the chaise longue, and controlled her voice. She forced a laugh. It sounded unforced.
“Aunty, there’s no harm in a kiss after breakfast! It’s kisses after midnight that—”
“Don’t you dare to try to justify your grossness! Even your graceless father had enough sense of his social position to keep his indecencies out of sight!”
“Aunty!”
“Don’t ‘aunty’ me! You inherit your father’s wantonness.”
“I never knew him,” Lynn answered. “I only know what you and other people have told me. Others seem to have admired him. Wasn’t he merry and brave and generous? Would he have endured your injustice? I have had to. For seventeen years. Aunty, I am very near the end of endurance. I knew you were looking. That is why I let Rundhia kiss me.”
“Oh! So you defend yourself by adding impudence to vulgar—”
“Aunty, I won’t listen to you! You are not well, so I am trying to be patient, but—”
“Nonsense! You took advantage of my accident to misbehave like an ill-bred strumpet. What were you doing last night after supper?”
“I was in the garden with Prince Rundhia. Alone with him part of the time. Captain Norwood turned up later.”
“I suppose he caught you kissing Rundhia! He saw you kissing him again this morning. And he knew I had seen you. I could hardly keep myself in countenance. The moment he had fetched you here to me he almost ran away, he was so disgusted.”
“What concern am I of Captain Norwood’s?” Lynn retorted. “Aunty, I’m so fed up with your constant bullying and misrepresentation that I won’t stand any more of it. Think that over.”
“Lynn, are you threatening me?”
“Yes.” Lynn stood up. “I am going to say what I think. I am not ungrateful, though you constantly accuse me of it. I know I have been expensive, and perhaps disappointing, although I have tried to please you, even to the point of becoming engaged to the humorless specimen that you picked out for me to marry. That was the last straw. I admit that I did think of marrying him. To be rid of your tyranny. And then of divorcing him. To be free to go my own way. I thought it through, and it didn’t seem decent to me. So I broke the engagement. I said why. I told him. I told you.”
“You humiliated us all. And now—”
“Aunty, you may take back the word strumpet, if you said it without thinking.”
Aunty’s grim silence as good as repeated the word. She took back nothing.
Lynn repeated: “I kissed Prince Rundhia, in a spirit of fun and partly to defy you.”
“Fun indeed! Vulgar, suggestive impropriety, with an Indian prince whose immorality is notorious! Don’t answer me! I am so ashamed of you I can’t discuss it! I am dumbfounded. You must be a throw-back to that wench that your great-grandfather Harding married, in the gold-rush days, in Sacramento. Bad breeding always will out, I suppose. I should have realized it long ago. There is nothing to be done now except to recognize the fact. Heaven knows what your end will be. The moment I am well enough to move, I will take the first ship home. No European tour! That is out of the question. You can’t behave yourself. From the moment we reach home, I am through with you. Whether or not I disinherit you will depend—”
Lynn’s rebellion flared to its inevitable climax. She interrupted: “Disinherit me now, if you please! Do it now, Aunty. I have made my last submission to your cruel money! You have educated me so that I haven’t one chance in a thousand to earn a living. God knows what I can do. But I will find something. I accept the odds. I will make a go of it somehow.”
Aunty’s stare was skeptical, scornful. Lynn turned away.
“Where are you off to now?”
“To the palace. The Maharanee is human. Perhaps she and I can find something to laugh at.”
“Very well, Lynn. All your clothes were removed to the palace last night, against my wishes.
Go and pack them. If it kills me, we are taking the first boat home, and you may say so to the Maharanee. You may tell her why. If you don’t, I will.”
“And if you don’t,” Lynn answered, “the palace women will! They have been listening through the bedroom window. So if you want to get the first malicious word in, you had better be quick! Write a letter, why don’t you? I assure you I won’t discuss it.”
She picked up her tennis racket and unscrewed the frame. It was a hardly conscious gesture: it was much too hot for tennis. She walked out through the screen door, carrying the racket. On her way to the palace, she swished at imagined tennis balls. She kept passing people, but no one spoke to her. Several respectable looking turbaned Indians salaamed and stared. They seemed to wonder what those angry eyes and the toss of her chin might mean. Aware of that, she got control of herself. She even laughed — and then laughed at the laugh, it was so patheticall
y dismal.
As she approached the palace front door, she saw Norwood’s horse near the portico. She recognized Norwood’s sais, squatting down under the horse’s nose, half asleep, instead of flicking flies off the horse as he should.
Lynn stood where she was for a moment, thinking. If she hadn’t felt too proud, she would have waited there to speak to Norwood when he came out from the palace. Had he really seen her kissing Rundhia? He would probably refuse to talk about it. But he wouldn’t lie; one knew that about Norwood. She would know the truth in a second.
Then she saw Rundhia. He had been watching for her. One could tell that by his manner. He looked astonishingly handsome in a gray suit of some thin material and a gray silk turban.
“Tennis?” he asked. “In this heat?”
“No. Tantrum! I’m so angry I could kill.”
“Don’t kill me, Lynn. I’m important. Tell me instead.”
She studied him. Then, smiling: “You are not the right person to tell. I have been talking to me. Me and I don’t like each other. Say something humorous. Please!”
Rundhia looked sympathetic, gently mocking. “Had a row with Aunty? So have I had a row with my aunt. Let’s exchange confidences.”
Lynn used the racket as if she were returning one of Rundhia’s serves. “Would you tell me the truth?”
He grinned. “Well, almost. Who can be in love and tell the whole truth? I will lie to you, of course, about my character. But I will tell the truth about yours! You’re a lovely, inspiriting, challenging fact, Lynn Harding. You’re an event.”
“I feel like a skeleton in my own dark closet,” she retorted, and Rundhia laughed.
“Come and I’ll show you the treasures. Drive away the very memory of Aunty!”
All the way up the palace stairs and along the ancient corridor, Rundhia chattered gaily. Lynn answered in monosyllables, perfectly aware that Rundhia was talking to divert attention from his motive. There was a huge mirror where the corridor made a right angle turn into the ancient, recently restored wing of the palace. Side-by-side with her, Rundhia stood and smiled at their reflections. Servants in the corridor smiled too.
“Beauty and the beast!” said Rundhia.
“Bromide! Rundhia, you look like secrets in a suave disguise.”
“My very inmost heart,” he answered, “is an open book. Can’t you read it?”
“I don’t want to.”
He kept his distance. That sinuous right arm of his behaved itself. He walked ahead of her through the narrow anteroom, where two turbaned guards salaamed respectfully. Rundhia spoke to one of the guards, who switched on the electric light in the treasure room. The masonry wall was ten feet thick; the door a foot thick. The guard closed the door behind them and opened an eyehole. Lynn could see the guard’s eyes.
It was stuffy in there. A smell of incense — almost a religious atmosphere, utterly quiet. Rundhia’s footfall on the tiled floor sounded like a disturbance in church. He went to the far side, to an iron-bound chest, and seemed to be examining the lock. Lynn, with her back to the closed door, stared around the room.
There was a long teak table between her and Rundhia, loaded with golden and jewelled ornaments: embossed golden shields, scimitars in gold sheaths, scores of objects such as are carried in procession by the servants of an oriental throne. Electric light shone within lanterns, suspended on chains from the ancient beams. At the far end of the room, on the right, was a huge glass case, in which the famous Kadur diamonds sparkled, stealing color from the jewelled lanterns.
When she glanced at Rundhia again, he had his back to the iron chest and he was staring at her, dark-eyed, not smiling — noticeably not. Lynn accepted the unspoken challenge:
“I am sorry I let you kiss me this morning. I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair. It may have given you a wrong impression.”
“The correct one being—”
“Oh, I was just being mischievous. It meant nothing.”
“No?”
Rundhia eyed her for several seconds without speaking. She didn’t feel afraid of him, but every fibre in her being was aware of crisis. Simulating calmness that she did not feel, she almost unconsciously moved the tennis racket from one hand to the other.
“Careful with that,” he advised. “Put it down. You might break something. Come over here and see the emeralds.”
She did not put down the tennis racket. That would have been obedience. She was obeying no one. It was not obedience that made her walk toward him around the overloaded table. She was walking straight into danger. She didn’t deceive herself about that for a moment. Neither did Rundhia try to deceive her. Passion, confident and self-avowed, glowered in his splendid eyes. They were more arresting than the diamonds in the glass case. He looked bold, experienced, and much more masculinely beautiful than any human being she had ever met. She could feel her heart pounding. And she felt as sure of herself as if she were about to plunge into a warm inviting sea. She didn’t hesitate.
“Lynn, I love you!”
“Weren’t you going to show me the emeralds?”
Strange, how such tactics checked him. He behaved as he did in the garden the previous night when she mentioned the British Resident and Norwood. It seemed to make him nervous — to remind him of some insufficiency within himself. He glanced past her, at the eyehole in the door, then turned and opened the iron chest. He took out two handfuls of huge emeralds:
“Some of these are engraved with Cleopatra’s cartouche. Part of the treasure that she sent to India, when she was planning to escape from the Romans. Two thousand years ago! Take them. Hold them.”
She laid her tennis racket on the table. He poured emeralds into her hands. They seemed alive. They seemed to have within their green depths timeless, luxurious consciousness of secrets.
“Thousands,” she said, “I suppose, are like me. What is it about precious stones that—”
“Thrills you? Sensuous things, aren’t they? Feel their magic! Press them against your face! Enjoy them! One of these days they’ll be mine. These emeralds are not State property. Lynn! Love me and I’ll give them to you!”
“Thank you. I don’t want them.”
“Maharanee Lynn of Kadur! How would that be? Lynn—”
He moved both arms toward her. She poured back the emeralds into his hands. He had to take them, or they would have crashed to the tiled floor and that might have brought in the guard. Rundhia dumped them back into the chest. Lynn spoke before he could:
“Show me the diamonds. Captain Norwood—” Rundhia flinched. Lynn noticed it— “wouldn’t show me those that he has.”
Again she had sent Rundhia’s thought off on a tangent. His eyes weren’t steady any longer. Lynn followed up:
“They looked like big ones, but he’s careless with them. If I hadn’t noticed them fall he might have lost them.”
“Diamonds?” said Rundhia. “In Norwood’s pocket? When?”
“This morning. He let them fall while he was talking to me.”
She was already sorry she had said it. Rundhia’s eyes darkened with what looked like cunning. Lynn felt safer. Rundhia was running wild along a new line, for the moment. But Lynn felt guilty. She should not have defended herself at Norwood’s cost. She hadn’t meant to. But she guessed now that she had. It made her self-contemptuous and angry.
“Rundhia, what are you thinking about?”
“You! You only!” His eyes sought hers again. “To hell with Norwood! Lynn beloved, beautiful, glorious girl—”
Lynn laughed. “Ask Aunty Harding what I am! She saw us!”
“Damn her, what do we care?”
“Captain Norwood also saw us.”
“Any of his business?” Rundhia checked again. His eyes darkened. “Look here, Lynn, I don’t like to tell tales about people—”
“Why do it then?”
“You ought to know this. Norwood has been talking.”
“About me?”
“Yes. While he was waiting t
o enter the audience room just now he asked a palace official where you slept last night.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“The official told me.”
“Captain Norwood never would do such a thing.”
“Don’t you know he’s a spy for the British Intelligence? Such fellows haven’t a scruple. Do you think I would lie to you?”
“Yes! I know you would! Let’s go now, Rundhia. I’ve seen enough. I want to talk to the Maharanee.”
“Merciless! You want to tantalize me? I’m already mad about you! Mad, I tell you! Lynn, do you believe this love that sweeps me like a storm can’t conquer you? Do you suppose you can fire my veins, torture my heart — and not burn in the same ecstasy? I said burn! You are as passionate as I am! You are no cold beauty. Come here.”
She would rather have died than have screamed for the guard. The guard had closed the eyehole in the door. She saw that as she struggled in Rundhia’s arms. He was as strong as a panther — as fierce. And she wasn’t afraid. She resisted with all her might. She didn’t hate him. She couldn’t.
“Lynn, I’m lonely! Love me!”
She was against the table. He was pushing her backward. Things were falling off the table. He was kissing her. His face was buried in her hair. She freed her right arm — groped — seized the tennis racket and struck him hard in the face with its edge. Blood. Blood on her frock. Lots of it. Rundhia let go then. He found his handkerchief and held it to his face. Blood.
Lynn gasped, breathless: “What have I done?”
He didn’t answer. With the handkerchief to his face he turned away from her.
“Rundhia,” she said, “I wouldn’t have hurt you for worlds.”
“You have broken my heart,” he answered.
“Rundhia!”
It was the Maharanee’s voice. The great teak door had swung open. The Maharanee stood in the doorway, staring, with the guards behind her. She turned and dismissed the guards.
“Rundhia, what have you been doing? There is blood on Lynn’s frock! Lynn! Darling, what has he done to you?”
“No harm,” Lynn answered. She turned to hide the blood and the rip in her frock.