Part 27 (2/2)

Yes! a commonplace wedding. He had, despite his vague repugnance to her origin, made up his mind to that. No one but an utter cad could take what he was taking, and then shake his bridle rein and ride away. But for the present, it was the most absolutely perfect bit of romance in his whole life. He could not, would not give it up. Laila was right!

This was the essence. As a rule, people mixed love, diluted it, were vaguely ashamed of its absorbing influence. But when you came to a.n.a.lyze even the diluted feeling, its virtue lay in this irrational content, this desire for nothing better than this best of pleasures--this paradise of a woman's or a man's love.

He laughed, suddenly, at the memory of Laila's quick grasp of his meaning when Muriel had overheard his remark about the time. Such quickness, in the latter, would have made him revolt from it; but with Laila it was different. A pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude to the girl to whom fear, remorse, the very possibility of change seemed unknown, rose up and claimed him. Dear little girl! She was so absolutely single-minded in her love for him. How could anyone expect him to forego the luxury of such love yet awhile?

In thinking Laila single-minded, Vincent thought the truth, so far as he was concerned. If love, pa.s.sionate as Juliet's, and far more innocent in one way, far more _ruse_ in another, ever existed, hers was that love. Nevertheless, its very integrity made her curiously cunning in regard to anything which threatened to disturb that idyll in the garden. So, at that very moment, when Vincent looked up at her windows a.s.serting her absolute lack of pretence and single-mindedness, she was pitting her wits against old Akbar Khan in a manner worthy of her grandmother, Anari Begum; since Akbar, far more than her guardian, was to be feared. The latter, honest man, went to his bed, beyond the chapel, at ten of the clock precisely; but Akbar, who from ancient habit was given to prowling about at night, and napping in odd corners, had many chances of discovery. During the last few days, however, when she, for her own purposes, had let him talk, he had become so garrulous regarding his past that she had recognized in him an unscrupulous confidant, with whom, in face of the possibility of requiring one, it was wise to remain on terms.

So, as she lounged on the sofa, she listened to his endless talk with tolerance.

”Nay!” she interrupted at last. ”If, as thou sayest she will, she brings me more dresses and jewels, she may call me Begum, and hint at my being one, really, a thousand times over! Why not? Begum and Princess are the same, and my great-grandmother in Italy was that.

Pidar Narayan told me so to-day.”

The memory of the old man's voice, when, with new-found courage, she had questioned him concerning those old days, made her eyes soft. Yes!

he would, he _must_ understand. So, by and by, when Vincent and she were tired of playing Romeo and Juliet (the story of the star-crossed lovers had been her only reading since Vincent had taken to quoting so much from it) they would make Pidar Narayan play Friar Laurence, and marry them on the sly. That would be so much more amusing than a regular wedding. He could not refuse, since he had once loved as she loved. You could hear that in his voice; after how many years?--fifty or sixty! And the Princess had, of course, loved also in exactly the same way. Laila felt sure of it. That curious, inexpressible feeling had come to her also. Laila, trying to formulate that feeling, slipping her heel idly in and out of her dainty little bronze shoe as she lounged, suddenly remembered Vincent's song to the tambourine, and laughed. That was it!

”Golden feet upon a golden stair.”

That expressed it exactly. Two pair of feet going side by side up a golden stair, to golden gates. So contented. Ah, G.o.d! how content!

Seeking something, claiming something, yet still content. That feeling came, sometimes, when you were saying your prayers. A sort of yearning _for_, a sort of satisfaction _in_, something that was not you; so, surely if it came _then_, there could be no harm in it.

Harm! The very sisters allowed that you must love the man you were going to marry. And she and Vincent would be married by and by and live happily, for that was better than having a ”_statue of pure gold_”

erected to you! In the meantime, secrecy, so long as Vincent wished to play Romeo and Juliet, was her cue; therefore, the more she could blind old Akbar, the more he could be turned on a wrong track, the better.

Especially when the turning was so delightfully ridiculous!

She managed, however, not to laugh her childish love of mischief into Mumtaza Mahal's very face when, after much shrinking into white sheets held up as screens, and quick cuddlings into corners at the faintest suspicion of a possible peep, that good lady, in her very, very best pink satin continuations, was ushered in through the dark deserted pa.s.sages of the palace, to Laila's boudoir. For, despite the amus.e.m.e.nt, the girl's heart was beating fast with determination to climb her golden stairs without interruption. So she allowed herself to be _kow-towed_ to, and called Begum-_sahiba_ and she accepted the new dress and jewels without protest. Eagerly, in fact, since they were far more gorgeous than the first, and caught her taste better. The former, indeed, had been Roshan Khan's own choice, dictated by his acquired knowledge of the sort of things _mem-sahibs_ admired; these latter were her grandmother's, purely, entirely oriental. The difference was great.

Put briefly, _this_ was the costume in which Anari Begum had flouted the Nawab, the _other_ that in which she had caught Bun-avatar's fancy.

Laila took up one of the heavy, gorgeous, glittering garments. It smelt strongly of musk, attar of roses, and jasmin, and she snuffed at it with a smile. That was ever so much better than the dull lavender water, which was the only scent her guardian said a lady could use.

Vincent would like that; he, like she did, loved strong scents. If only the stupid old frumpish thing would go away in time, she would put on that dress at once, and so give him pleasure. That was all her thought.

As she sat, with a happy smile, her face half-buried in a tiny, three-cornered corselet of scarlet net embroidered in seed pearls, Mumtaza and Akbar Khan winked at each other; and Laila's sharp eyes, catching this, brimmed over with laughter. She felt glad the rest of her face was hidden, until she was grave enough to reply graciously to the hints, the suggestions; for Mumtaza had been bound over by oaths not to go too fast, and she obeyed her instructions.

Even so, Akbar Khan, listening with folded hands in a mantis-like att.i.tude, his angles all crushed together into humility, wondered if he was standing on his head or his heels, as he heard Laila admit, gravely, that she was certainly, in a way, the head of the family, in that she possessed its land; but that, of course, Roshan was really the heir. That it had given her great gratification to see how thoroughly he had adopted English ways. That, of course, it would be impossible for him to marry an uneducated cow of a girl. Here, for a moment, she had relapsed to sincerity in order to remark that it must be impossible to love a person you had not seen, and that for her part, she knew in an instant if she was going to like or dislike people. If the latter, she tried never to see them, really, again. Then, remembering her part, she had resumed it hastily by saying that no doubt she would see more of her cousin,--who, by the way, was very nice-looking,--in the future, as he was quite in society.

Old Mumtaza had hard work at this juncture to prevent herself from cracking all her finger-joints over the girl's head for luck, and wis.h.i.+ng her a numerous offspring; while Akbar gave a gasp that was not all pleasure. He felt that he was being rushed, that the crisis might come before he was ready for it. At this rate, Pidar Narayan would have no chance of dying. At this rate, Roshan Khan's castle in the air must topple over from sheer lack of foundation to such a lofty structure.

As he trotted back beside Mumtaza's curtained _dhooli_ to that little parasite of a house against the palace wall, where he knew Roshan was waiting for the upshot of the interview, his one consolation was that bow-strings were out of fas.h.i.+on!

In truth, there was no more restless man in Eshwara that night than Roshan Khan. The desire for this paradise had grown overwhelming, and as he listened to his grandmother, while Akbar pointed each triumphant appeal of the old lady's with a helpless ”_Gereeb-pun-was_,” his face grew pale with emotion; until, at the mention of his good looks and Laila's desire to see him, he turned fiercely to the go-between, and bade him fix a time; the sooner the better!

Akbar felt inclined to tell the truth then. To admit that he had never breathed a word of Roshan's pretensions to the Miss-_sahiba_ and that, so far, the negotiations only existed in his own imaginings. But the look on Roshan's face--he had seen it often in his youth in connection with women, and sacks, and bow-strings--reduced him to protestations.

He would do his best, he said, but with Pidar Narayan it would be difficult to manage.

Roshan strode about the little courtyard like a wild beast in a cage, biting his mustache, and thinking. Then he turned to the old phrase-monger.

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