THE COLLECTED WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard Kipling

The palace was reported to hold within its walls four thousand living, and no man knew how many buried, dead.

      There were many women--how many she did not know--worked upon by intrigues she could not comprehend, who refused her ministrations absolutely. They were not ill, they said, and the touch of the white woman meant pollution. Others there were who thrust their children before her and bade her bring colour and strength back to these pale buds born in the darkness; and terrible, fierce-eyed girls who leaped upon her out of the dark, overwhelming her with passionate complaints that she did not and dared not understand. Monstrous and obscene pictures glared at her from the walls of the little rooms, and the images of shameless gods mocked her from their greasy niches above the doorways. The heat and the smell of cooking, faint fumes of incense, and the indescribable taint of overcrowded humanity, caught her by the throat. But what she heard and what she guessed sickened her more than any visible horror. Plainly it was one thing to be stirred to generous action by a vivid recital of the state of the women of India, another to face the unutterable fact in the isolation of the women's apartments of the palace of Rhatore.

      Tarvin meanwhile was going about spying out the land on a system which he had contrived for himself. It was conducted on the principle of exhaustion of the possibilities in the order of their importance--every movement which he made having the directest, though not always the most obvious, relation to the Naulahka.

      He was free to come and go through the royal gardens, where innumerable and very seldom paid gardeners fought with water-skin and well-wheel against the destroying heat of the desert. He was welcomed in the Maharajah's stables, where eight hundred horses were littered down nightly, and was allowed to watch them go out for their morning exercise, four hundred at a time, in a whirlwind of dust. In the outer courts of the palace it was open to him to come and go as he chose--to watch the toilets of the elephants when the Maharajah went out in state, to laugh with the quarter-guard, and to unearth dragon-headed, snake-throated pieces of artillery, invented by native artificers, who, here in the East, had dreamed of the mitrailleuse. But Kate could go where he was forbidden to venture. He knew the life of a white woman to be as safe in Rhatore as in Topaz; but on the first day she disappeared, untroubled and unquestioning, behind the darkness of the veiled door leading to the apartments of the women of the palace, he found his hand going instinctively to the butt of his revolver.

      The Maharajah was an excellent friend, and no bad hand at pachisi; but as Tarvin sat opposite him, half an hour later, he reflected that he should not recommend the Maharajah's life for insurance if anything happened to his love while she remained in those mysterious chambers from which the only sign that came to the outer world was a ceaseless whispering and rustling. When Kate came out, the little Maharaj Kunwar clinging to her hand, her face was white and drawn, and her eyes full of indignant tears. She had seen.

      Tarvin hastened to her side, but she put him from her with the imperious gesture that women know in deep moments, and fled to Mrs. Estes.

      Tarvin felt himself for the moment rudely thrust out of her life. The Maharaj Kunwar found him that evening pacing up and down the verandah of the rest-house, almost sorry that he had not shot the Maharajah for bringing that look into Kate's eyes. With deep-drawn breath he thanked his God that he was there to watch and defend, and, if need were, to carry off, at the last, by force. With a shudder he fancied her here alone, save for the distant care of Mrs. Estes.

      'I have brought this for Kate,' said the child, descending from his carriage cautiously, with a parcel that filled both his arms. 'Come with me there.'

      Nothing loth, Tarvin came, and they drove over to the house of the missionary.

      'All the people in my palace,' said the child as they went, 'say that she's your Kate.'

      'I'm glad they know that much,' muttered Tarvin to himself savagely. 'What's this you have got for her?' he asked the Maharaj aloud, laying his hand on the parcel.

      'It is from my mother, the Queen--the real Queen, you know, because I am the Prince. There is a message, too, that I must not tell.' He began to whisper, childlike, to himself, to keep the message in mind. Kate was in the verandah when they arrived, and her face brightened a little at sight of the child.

      'Tell my guard to stand back out of the garden. Go, and wait in the road.'

      The carriage and troopers withdrew. The child, still holding Tarvin's hand, held out the parcel to Kate.

      'It is from my mother,' he said. 'You have seen her. This man need not go. He is'--he hesitated a little--'of your heart, is he not? Your speech is his speech.'

      Kate flushed, but did not attempt to set the child right. What could she say?

      'And I am to tell this,' he continued, 'first before everything, till you quite understand.' He spoke hesitatingly, translating out of his own vernacular as he went on, and drawing himself to his full height, as he cleared the cluster of emeralds from his brow. 'My mother, the Queen--the real Queen--says, "I was three months at this work. It is for you, because I have seen your face. That which has been made may be unravelled against our will, and a gipsy's hands are always picking. For the love of the gods look to it that a gipsy unravels nothing that I have made, for it is my life and soul to me. Protect this work of mine that comes from me--a cloth nine years upon the loom." I know more English than my mother,' said the child, dropping into his ordinary speech.

      Kate opened the parcel, and unrolled a crude yellow and black comforter, with a violent crimson fringe, clumsily knitted. With such labours the queens of Gokral Seetarun were wont to beguile their leisure.

      'That is all,' said the child. But he seemed unwilling to go. There was a lump in Kate's throat, as she handled the pitiful gift. Without warning the child, never loosening for a moment his grip on Tarvin's hand, began to repeat message word by word, his little fingers tightening on Tarvin's fist as he went on.

      'Say I am very grateful indeed,' said Kate, a little puzzled, and not too sure of her voice.

      'That was not the answer,' said the child; and he looked appealingly at his tall friend, the new Englishman.

      The idle talk of the commercial travellers in the verandah of the rest-house flashed through Tarvin's mind. He took a quick pace forward, and laid his hand on Kate's shoulder, whispering huskily.

      'Can't you see what it means? It's the boy--the cloth nine years on the loom.'

      'But what can I do?' cried Kate, bewildered.

      'Look after him. Keep on looking after him. You are quick enough in most things. Sitabhai wants his life. See that she doesn't get it.'

      Kate began to understand a little. Everything was possible in that awful palace, even child-murder. She had already guessed the hate that lives between childless and mother queens. The Maharaj Kunwar stood motionless in the twilight, twinkling in his jewelled robes.

      'Shall I say it again?' he asked.

      'No, no, no, child! No!' she cried, flinging herself on her knees before him, and snatching his little figure to her breast, with a sudden access of tenderness and pity. 'O Nick! what shall we do in this horrible country?' She began to cry.

      'Ah!' said the Maharaj, utterly unmoved, 'I was to go when I saw that you cried.' He lifted up his voice for the carriage and troopers, and departed, leaving the shabby comforter on the floor.

      Kate was sobbing in the half darkness. Neither Mrs. Estes nor her husband was within just then. That little 'we' of hers went through Tarvin with a sweet and tingling ecstasy. He stooped and took her in his arms, and for that which followed Kate did not rebuke him.

      'We'll pull through together, little girl,' he whispered to the shaken head on his shoulder.

      X

       Table of Contents

      Ye know the Hundred Danger Time when, gay with paint and flowers,

       Your household