Rudyard Kipling : The Complete Novels and Stories. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

Queen bowed her head quietly. ‘I have thought of that also many times sitting here alone; and it was the tearing out of my own heart from my breast. Yes, it would be well if he were to go away. But’—she stretched out her hands despairingly towards the sunshine—‘what do I know of the world where he will go, and how can I be sure that he will be safe? Here—even here’ … She checked herself suddenly. ‘Since you have come, Miss Kate, my heart has known a little comfort, but I do not know when you will go away again.’

      ‘I cannot guard the child against every evil,’ Kate replied, covering her face with her hands; ‘but send him away from this place as swiftly as may be. In God’s name let him go away.’

      ‘Such hai! Such hai! It is the truth, the truth!’ The Queen turned from Kate to the woman at her feet.

      ‘Thou hast borne three?‘she said.

      ‘Yea, three, and one other that never drew breath. They were all men-children,’ said the woman of the desert.

      ‘And the gods took them?’

      ‘Of smallpox one, and fever the two others.’

      ‘Art thou certain that it was the gods?’

      ‘I was with them always till the end.’

      ‘Thy man, then, was all thine own?’

      ‘We were only two, he and I. Among our villages the men are poor, and one wife suffices.’

      ‘Arre! They are rich among the villages. Listen now. If a co-wife had sought the lives of those three of thine——’

      ‘I would have killed her. What else?’ The woman’s nostrils dilated and her hand went swiftly to her bosom.

      ‘And if in place of three there had been one only, the delight of thy eyes, and thou hadst known that thou shouldst never bear another, and the co-wife working in darkness had sought for that life? What then?’

      ‘I would have slain her—but with no easy death. At her man’s side and in his arms I would have slain her. If she died before my vengeance arrived I would seek for her in hell.’

      ‘Thou canst go out in the sunshine and walk in the streets and no man turns his head,’ said the Queen bitterly. ‘Thy hands are free and thy face is uncovered. What if thou wert a slave among slaves, a stranger among stranger people, and’—the voice dropped—‘dispossessed of the favour of thy lord?’

      The woman, stooping, kissed the pale feet under her hands.

      ‘Then I would not wear myself with strife, but, remembering that a man-child may grow into a king, would send that child away beyond the power of the co-wife.’

      ‘Is it so easy to cut away the hand?’ said the Queen, sobbing.

      ‘Better the hand than the heart, sahiba. Who could guard such a child in this place?’

      The Queen pointed to Kate. ‘She came from far off, and she has once already brought him back from death.’

      ‘Her drugs are good and her skill is great, but—thou knowest she is but a maiden, who has known neither gain nor loss. It may be that I am luckless, and that my eyes are evil—thus did not my man say last autumn—but it may be. Yet I know the pain at the breast and the yearning over the child new-born—as thou hast known it.’

      ‘As I have known it.’

      ‘My house is empty and I am a widow and childless, and never again shall a man call me to wed.’

      ‘As I am—as I am.’

      ‘Nay, the little one is left, whatever else may go; and the little one must be well guarded. If there is any jealousy against the child it were not well to keep him in this hotbed. Let him go out.’

      ‘But whither? Miss Kate, dost thou know? The world is all dark to us who sit behind the curtain.’

      ‘I know that the child of his own motion desires to go to the Princes’ School in Ajmir. He has told me that much,’ said Kate, who had lost no word of the conversation from her place on the cushion, bowed forward with her chin supported in her hands. ‘It will be only for a year or two.’

      The Queen laughed a little through her tears. ‘Only a year or two, Miss Kate. Dost thou know how long is one night when he is not here?’

      ‘And he can return at call; but no cry will bring back mine own. Only a year or two. The world is dark also to those who do not sit behind the curtain, sahiba. It is no fault of hers. How should she know?’ said the woman of the desert under her breath to the Queen.

      Against her will, Kate began to feel annoyed at this persistent exclusion of herself from the talk, and the assumption that she, with her own great trouble upon her, whose work was pre-eminently to deal with sorrow, must have no place in this double grief.

      ‘How should I not know?’ said Kate impetuously. ‘Do I not know pain? Is it not my life?’

      ‘Not yet,’ said the Queen quietly. ‘Neither pain nor joy. Miss Kate, thou art very-wise, and I am only a woman who has never stirred beyond the palace walls. But I am wiser than thou, for I know that which thou dost not know, though thou hast given back my son to me, and to this woman her husband’s speech. How shall I repay thee all I owe?’

      ‘Let her hear truth,’ said the woman under her breath. ‘We be all three women here, sahiba—dead leaf, flowering tree, and the blossom unopened.’

      The Queen caught Kate’s hands and gently pulled her forward till her head fell on the Queen’s knees. Wearied with the emotions of the morning, unutterably tired in body and spirit, the girl had no desire to lift it. The small hands put her hair back from her forehead, and the full dark eyes, worn with much weeping, looked into her own. The woman of the desert flung an arm round her waist.

      ‘Listen, my sister,’ began the Queen, with an infinite tenderness. ‘There is a proverb among my own people, in the mountains of the north, that a rat found a piece of turmeric, and opened a druggist’s shop. Even so with the pain that thou dost know and heal, beloved. Thou art not angry? Nay, thou must not take offence. Forget that thou art white, and I black, and remember only that we three be sisters. Little sister, with us women ’tis thus, and no other way. From all, except such as have borne a child, the world is hid. I make my prayers trembling to such and such a god, who thou sayest is black stone, and I tremble at the gusts of the night because I believe that the devils ride by my windows at such hours; and I sit here in the dark knitting wool and preparing sweetmeats that come back untasted from my lord’s table. And thou coming from ten thousand leagues away, very wise and fearing nothing, hast taught me, oh, ten thousand things. Yet thou art the child, and I am still the mother, and what I know thou canst not know, and the wells of my happiness thou canst not fathom, nor the bitter waters of my sorrow till thou hast tasted happiness and grief alike. I have told thee of the child—all and more than all, thou sayest? Little sister, I have told thee less than the beginning of my love for him, because I knew that thou couldst not understand. I have told thee my sorrows—all and more than all, thou sayest, when I laid my head against thy breast? How could I tell thee all? Thou art a maiden, and the heart in thy bosom, beneath my heart, betrayed in its very beat that it did not understand. Nay, that woman there, coming from without, knows more of me than thou? And they taught thee in a school, thou hast told me, all manner of healing, and there is no disease in life that thou dost not understand? Little sister, how couldst thou understand life that hast never given it? Hast thou ever felt the tug of the child at the breast? Nay, what need to blush? Hast thou? I know thou hast not. Though I heard thy speech for the first time, and looking from the window saw thee walking, I should know. And the others—my sisters in the world—know also. But they do not all speak to thee as I do. When the life quickens under the breast, they, waking in the night, hear all the earth walking to that measure. Why should they tell thee? To-day the hospital has broken from under thee. Is it not so? And the women went out one by one? And what didst thou say to them?’