Part 27 (1/2)

'Where'er you walk, Cool gales shall fan the glade; Trees where you sit Shall crowd into a shade; Where'er you tread, the blus.h.i.+ng flowers shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.'

The most pa.s.sionate, yet the purest, praise a woman ever won from man, perfect in its self-forgetfulness, in its delight in the admiration of the whole world for what is praised, fell from John Ellison's lips in almost perfect style; for he had been taught the song in those early days of surpliced choirs.

And Chris Davenant, as he listened, staring out over the river, clinched his hands on the iron rail in a sudden pa.s.sion of self-pity.

This is what he had found in the poets of the West! This was what he had sought in the prose of life! It was for this he had forsaken so much--this white-robed woman with the breezes cooling the hot blood, and the trees crowding to shade her from the fierce heat of noon!

And he had found--what?

Something worse?--yes!--for one brief second he admitted the truth that it _was_ worse; that Naraini, despite her ignorance, would have given him something nearer to that ideal of all men who were worth calling men, than Viva with her cigarettes, her pink ruffles, her strange mixture of refinement and coa.r.s.eness, of absolute contempt for pa.s.sion and constant appeal to it. Why had he ever forsaken his people? Why had he ever forsaken her--Naraini?

'I am Brahmin, my hand is pure.'

The memory of her voice, her face, as she spoke the words returned to him, and, with an irresistible rush, all that had swept him from his moorings, swept him from the common current of the lives around him, all the sentimentality, all the intuitive bias towards things spiritual, swept him back again to that life--and to Naraini!

'It's a rippin' song, ain't it, sir?' remarked Jan-Ali-shan, who had been warbling away at the runs and trills like any blackbird, as he watched Chris Davenant's listening face. 'Wraps itself round a feller somehow. Kep' me from a lot o' tommy rot, that song 'as in my time, an'

sent me to the flowing bowl instead.'

As he walked over to see if the tank was full, he whistled,

'Let the toast pa.s.s, here's to the la.s.s, I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a gla.s.s,'

with jaunty unconcern. He returned in a moment, the coolies behind him carrying the iron ladder back to its hooks on the pier.

'All right, sir,' he reported. 'Give 'er two men an' she'll 'old her own against a thousand.'

Chris, absorbed in his thoughts, made an effort to wrench himself from them by a.s.senting.

'Yes. They'd find it difficult without guns, unless they could manage it by the river.'

Jan-Ali-shan shook his head. 'Not if we'd a rifle or two aboard, sir, to nick 'em off in the boats.'

'Couldn't they get along the spit,' suggested Chris, absolutely at random.

'Might be done, mayhap,' admitted the other, after a reflective pause.

'Leastways, if you was a ”_Ram Rammer_” an' 'ad a right o' way through the 'ouse o' r.i.m.m.i.n.g--beg pardin, sir, though you _'ave_ chucked old 'Oneyman an' 'is lot--I mean, if you was a Hindoo an' they'd let you through the temple. But even then we could nick 'em in the water afore they could get ropes slung.'

'There's the ladder, suggested Chris once more. He was not thinking of what he said. He was asking himself _what_ he had not 'chucked' away recklessly? 'It is only about six feet up; they could easily----'

'They could easily do a lot if they was let, sir,' interrupted Jan-Ali-shan, as he turned to go, with a pitying look. 'But we don't let 'em. That's how it is. An we ain't such bally fools as to leave 'em ladders. No, sir? Two men--if they _was_ men-'u'd keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time.'

As the trolly buzzed back stationwards, the group of yellow faces above the faded brocades gave up watching the man[oe]uvres of the drawbridge, and returned to their kite-flying; and on the bathing-steps the men and women returned to the day's work. On the bastion there was a shade more listless doubt and dislike, on the steps a shade more uneasy wonder as to the signs of the times. That was all.

Only Burkut Ali, as he weighted his kite's tail with an extra grain or two of rice, nodded his head, and said with a sinister look--

'Two could play that game, and the first come would be master. ”_He who sits on the throne is king_.”'

'And he who sits not is none,' added Jehan's antagonist with a wink. He had quarrelled two days before with the Rightful Heir's pretensions to authority in the matter of a dancing-girl, and so, for the time being, headed the dissentient party which, with ever-s.h.i.+fting numbers and combinations, made the royal house--to the great satisfaction of the authorities--one divided against itself. 'If the Sun of the Universe is ready,' he went on, with mock ceremony, 'his slave waits to begin the match.'