Part 38 (2/2)
Kate felt the blood tingle to her face as she laid violent hands on the first ornament she touched. It happened to be a solid gold bangle.
”It is too small too,” she said petulantly, trying to squeeze her hand through it. ”Really it would be better----”
”Excuse me,” he replied coolly, ”if you will let me.” He drew the great carved k.n.o.bs apart deftly, slipped her wrist sideways through the opening, and had them closed again in a second.
”You can't take it off at night, that is all,” he went on, ”but I will tell Tara to show you how to wear the rest. I must be off now and settle a thousand things.”
As he pa.s.sed into the outer roof once more, Kate felt that flush, half of resentment, half of shame, still on her face. In such surroundings how trivial it was, and yet he had guessed her thought truly. Had he guessed also the odd thrill which the touch of that gold fetter gave her? Half-mechanically she tried to loosen it, to remove it, and then with an impatient frown desisted and began to put on the other bracelets. What did it matter, one way or the other? And then, becoming interested despite herself, she set to work to puzzle out uses and places for the pile.
Meanwhile Jim Douglas was dinning instructions into Tara's ear; but she also, he told himself angrily, was trivial to the last degree. And when finally he urged an immediate darkening of Kate's hair and a faint staining of the face to suit the only part possible with her gray eyes--that of a fair Afghan--he flung away in despair from the irrelevant remark:
”But the mem will never be so pretty as Zora; and besides she has such big feet.”
Big feet! He swore under his breath that all women were alike in this, that they saw the whole world through the medium of their s.e.x; and _that_ was at the bottom of all the mischief. Delhi had been lost to save women; the trouble had begun to please them. Even now, as far as he could see, resistance would collapse but for one woman's ambition; though despite the Queen and her plots, a hundred brave men or so might still be masters of Delhi if they chose. Since it was still each for himself, and the devil take the hindmost with the mutineers. The certainty of this had made these long days of inaction almost beyond bearing to him; and as Jim Douglas pa.s.sed out into the street he thought bitterly that here again a woman stood in the way; since but for Kate he could surely have forced Meerut into making reprisals by reporting the true state of affairs.
Yet every hour made these reprisals more difficult. Indeed, as he left the Mufti's quarters on that morning of the 16th of May, something was going on in the Palace which ended indecision for many a man and left no chance of retreat. For Zeenut Maihl saw facts as clearly as Jim Douglas, and knew that the first tramp of disciplined feet would be the signal for scuttle; if a chance of escape remained.
And so this something was going on. By someone's orders of course; by whose is one of the unanswered questions of the Indian Mutiny.
The Queen herself was sitting with the King, amicably, innocently, applauding his latest couplet; which was in sober truth, one of his best:
”G.o.d takes this dice-box world, shakes upside down, Throws one defeat, and one a kingly crown.”
He was beginning to feel the latter on the old head, which was so diligently stuffed with dreams; but the Queen knew in her heart of hearts that the fight for sovereignty had only just begun. So her mind was chiefly occupied in a spiteful exultation at the thought of some folk's useless terror when--this thing being done--they would find their hands irrevocably on the plow. Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, for instance; their elaborate bridges would be useless; and Abool-Bukr with his squibs and processions, Farkhoonda with her patter of virtue and religion. If only for the sake of immes.h.i.+ng this last victim Zeenut Maihl would not have shrunk; since those three or four days of cozening had left the Queen with a still more vigorous hate for the Princess Farkhoonda, who had fallen into the trap so easily, and who already began to give herself airs and discuss the future on a plane of equality. Pretty, conceited fool! who even now, so the spies said, was waiting to receive the Prince, her nephew, for the first time since she came to the Palace. The very fact that it was the first time seemed an aggravation in the Queen's angry eyes, proving as it did a certain reality in Farkhoonda's pretensions to decorum.
In truth they were very real to the Princess herself; had been gaining reality ever since that first deft suggestion of a possibility had set her heart beating. The possibility, briefly, of the King choosing to set aside that early marriage so tragically interrupted; choosing to declare it no marriage and give his consent to another. Newasi had indignantly scouted the suggestion, had stopped her ears, her heart; but the remembrance of it lingered, enervating her mind, and as she waited for the interview with the Prince she felt vaguely that it was a very different matter receiving him in these bride-like garments, in these dim, heavily scented rooms, to what it had been under the clear sky in her scholar's dress. Yet as she stooped from mere habit, aroused by the finery itself, to arrange her long brocaded train into better folds, she gave something between a sigh and a laugh at the certainty of his admiration. And after all, why should she not have it if the King----
The sound of a distant shot made her start and pause, listening for another. So she stood a slim figure ablaze with color and jewels, a figure with studied seductiveness in every detail of its dress; and she knew that it was so. Why not? If--if he liked it so, and if the King----
Newasi clasped her hands nervously and walked up and down the dim room. Abool was late, and he had no right to be late on this his first visit of ceremony to his aunt. The Mirza-sahib was no doubt late, admitted her attendants, but the door-keeper had reported a disturbance of some kind in the outer court which might be the cause of delay.
A disturbance! Newasi, a born coward, shrank from the very thought, though she felt that it could be nothing--nothing but one of the many brawls, the constant quarrels.
G.o.d and his prophet! who--what was that? She recoiled with a scream of terror from the wild figure which burst in on her unceremoniously, which followed her retreat into the far corner, flung itself at her knees, clasping them, burying its face among her scented draperies.
But by that time her terror was gone, and she stooped, trying to free herself from those clinging arms, from the disgrace, from the outrage; from the drunken----
”Abool!” she cried fiercely, then turning to the curious t.i.ttering women, stamped her foot at them and bade them begone. And when they had obeyed, she beat her little hands against those clinging ones again with wild upbraidings, till suddenly they fell as if paralyzed before the awful horror and dread in the face which rose from her fineries.
”Come, Newasi!” stammered the white trembling lips, ”come from this hangman's den. Did I not warn thee? But thou hast put the rope round my neck--I who only wanted to live my own life, die my own death.
Come! Come!”
He stumbled to his feet, but seemed unable to stir. So he stood looking at his hands stupidly.
Farkhoonda looked too, her face growing gray.
”What is't, Abool?” she faltered; ”what is't, dear?”
But she knew; it was blood, new shed, still wet.
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