Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  In vain the English sought to return to the scrimmage play; it was too late. The Rajputs had them rattled. Topham at full-back on the pie-bald was a stone wall, swift, hard-hitting and resourceful, but in vain. Swooping down the wings, and passing with the dextrous wrist-work and amazing body-bends that they alone seem able to accomplish, they put the English team on the defensive and kept them there. Once, at about half-time, by a dash all together the English did succeed in carrying t he ball down-field, but that was their last chance, and they missed it. In the last two minutes the Rajputs scored two goals, the last one driven home by Utirupa himself, racing ahead of the field with whirling stick and the thunder of a neck-and-neck stampede behind him.

  “That’ll be your month’s pay!” laughed Dick. “I hope you won’t starve for thirty days!”

  The crowd went mad with delight, and swarmed on to the ground, shouting and singing. Samson got up, looking as if he rather enjoyed to lose three thousand rupees in an afternoon.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, I’ll go and shake hands with Utirupa. He deserves congratulation. It was head-work won that game.”

  “I wonder what she said to him at the end of the third chukker,” Tess whispered to Dick.

  Samson found Utirupa giving orders to the saises, and shook hands with him.

  “Good game, Utirupa! Congratulate you. By the way: there’s going

  to be a meeting on important business in my office half an hour from now.

  When you’ve had a tub and a change, I wish you’d come and join us.

  We want a word with you.”

  “Where are the gunners going to?” asked Tess. “The men who kept the line — look! They’re all trooping off the ground in the same direction.”

  “Dunno,” said her husband. “Let’s make for the dog-cart and drive home.

  If we hang around Samson’ll think we’re waiting for that money!”

  Half an hour after that, Utirupa presented himself at Samson’s office in the usual neat Rajput dress that showed off his lithe figure and the straightness of his stature. There was quite a party there to meet him — Samson, Willoughby de Wing, Norwood, Sir Hookum Bannerjee, Topham (still looking warm and rather weary after the game) — and outside on the open ground beyond the compound wall two batteries of horse-guns were drawn up at attention. But if Utirupa felt surprise he did not show it.

  “To make a short story of a long one, Prince Utirupa,” Samson began at once, “as you know, Gungadhura abdicated yesterday. The throne of Sialpore is vacant, and you are invited to accept it. I have here the required authority from Simla.”

  Utirupa rose from his chair, and bowed.

  “I am willing to accep,” he answered quietly. His face showed no emotion.

  “There is one stipulation, though,” said Samson. “We are tired of these foolish ‘islands’ — our territory in yours and yours in ours. There’s a contract here. As your first official act — there’s no time like the present — we want you to exchange the River Palace, on this side of the river, for out fort on your side.”

  Utirupa said never a word.

  “It’s not a question of driving a bargain,” Samson went on. “We don’t know what the palace may be worth, or what is in it. If there is any valuable furniture you’d like removed, we’ll waive that point; but on the terms of the contract we exchange the fort, with the guns and whatever else is there except the actual harness and supplies of the garrison, against the land and palace and whatever it contains except furniture.”

  Utirupa smiled — perhaps because the guns in that fort were known to date from before the Mutiny.

  “Will you agree?”

  “I will sign,” said Utirupa. And he signed the contract there and then, in presence of all those witnesses. Ten minutes later, as he left the office, the waiting batteries fired him a fourteen-gun salute, that the world might know how a new maharajah occupied the throne of Sialpore.

  Meanwhile, up at the house on the hill Tess and Dick found Yasmini already there ahead of them, lying at her ease, dressed as a woman of women, and smoking a cigarette in the window-seat of the bedroom Tess had surrendered to her.

  “What was it you said to him after the third chukker?” was the first question Tess asked.

  “You recognized me?”

  “Sure. So did my husband. What did you say to him?”

  “Oh, I just said that if he hoped to win he must play the game of the English, and play it better, that was all. He won, didn’t he? I didn’t stay to the end. I knew he would win.”

  Almost as they spoke the fourteen-gun salute boomed out from across the river, and echoed from the hills.

  “Ah!” said Yasmini. “Listen! The guns of the gods! He is maharajah now.”

  “But what of the treasure?” Tess asked her. “Dick told me this morning that the English have a guard all round the River Palace, and expect to dig the treasure up themselves.”

  “Perhaps the English need it more than he and I do,” Yasmini answered.

  That evening Tom Tripe turned up, and Yasmini came down-stairs to talk with him, Trotters remaining outside the window with his ash-colored hair on end and a succession of volcanic growls rumbling between flashed teeth.

  “What’s the matter with the dog, that he won’t come in?” asked Tess.

  “Nothing, ma’arm He’s just encouraging himself. He stays here tonight.”

  “Trotters does? Why?”

  “It’s known all over Sialpore that her ladyship’s staying here, and

  Gungadhura’s at large somewhere.

  You’re well guarded; that’s been seen to, but Trotters stays for double inner-guard. One or two men might go to sleep. Gungadhura might pass them a poisoned drink, or physic their rations in some way. And then, they’re what you might call fixed point men here, one there, with instructions they’ll be skinned alive and burned if they leave their exact position. Trotters has a roving commission, to nose and snarl whenever he’s minded. You can’t poison him, for he won’t eat from strangers. You can’t see to knife him in the dark, because he’s ash-colored and moves too swift. And if Gungadhura comes an’ shoots at where Trotters’ eyes gleam — well — Mr. Dick Blaine is liable to wake up an’ show his highness how Buffalo Billy imitates a Gatling gun! The house is safe, but I thought I’d come and mention it.”

  “When will my palace be ready?” Yasmini asked.

  “Tomorrow or the next day, Your Ladyship. There wasn’t so much taken out after all, though a certain amount was stolen. The first orders the new maharajah gave were to have your palace attended to; and some of the stolen stuff is coming in already; word went out that if stuff was returned there’d be nothing said, but if it weren’t returned there’d be something brand-new in the line of trouble for all concerned. The priests have been told to pass the word along. ‘No obedience from priests, no priests at the coronation ceremony! — It’s my belief from about two hours’ observation that we’ve got a maharajah now with guts, if you’ll excuse my bad French, please, ma’am.”

  “What does it matter to you, Tom, whether he is good or not?” Yasmini asked mischievously. Isn’t there a rumor that the English won’t allow any but the native-born instructors after this?”

  “Ah, naughty, naughty!” he laughed, shaking a gnarled forefinger. “I thought it was your voice in the crowd. Your Ladyship ‘ud like to have me all nervous, wouldn’t you? Well — if Tom Tripe was out of a job tomorrow, the very first person he’d apply to for a new one would be the Princess Yasmini; and she’d give it him!”

  “What have you in your hand?” Yasmini asked.

  “Gungadhura’s turban that he wore the night when Akbar chased him down the street.”

  Yasmini nodded, understanding instantly.

  Five minutes later, after a rousing stiff night-cap, Tom took his leave.

  They heard his voice outside the window:

  “Trotters!”

  The dog’s tail beat three times on the veranda.

&
nbsp; “Take a smell o’ this!”

  There was silence, followed by a growl.

  “If he comes, — kill him! D’ye understand? Kill him! There — there’s the turban for you to lie on an’ memorize the smell! Kill him! Ye understand?”

  A deep growl was the answer, and Tom Tripe marched off toward the stables for his horse, whistling Annie Rooney, lest some too enthusiastic watcher knife him out of a shadow.

  “When I am maharanee,” said Yasmini, “Tom Tripe shall have the title of sirdar, whether the English approve of it or not!”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Creator caused flowers to bloom in the desert and buried jewels in the bosom of the earth. That is lest men should grow idle, wallowing in delights they have, instead of acquiring merit in the search for beauty that is out of reach. — Eastern Proverb

  “Making one hundred exactly.”

  Technically, Yasmini was as much maharanee of Sialpore as she would ever be, the moment that the fourteen-gun salute boomed out across the river. For the English do not recognize a maharanee, except as courtesy title. The reigning prince is maharajah, and, being Hindu, can have one wife or as many as he pleases. Utirupa and Yasmini claimed to have married themselves by Gandharva rite, and, had she chosen, she could have gone to live with him that minute.

  But that would not have paid her in the long run. The priests, for instance, whom she despised with all her character, would have been outraged into life-long enmity; and she knew their power.

  “It is one thing,” she told Tess, “to determine to be rid of cobras; but another to spurn them with your hand and foot. They bite!”

  Then again, it would not have suited her to slip quietly into Utirupa’s palace and assume the reins of hidden influence without the English knowing it. She proposed taking uttermost advantage of the purdah custom that protects women in India from observation and makes contact between them and the English almost impossible. But she intended, too, to force the Indian Government into some form of recognition of her.

  “If they acknowledge me, they lock swords with every woman in the country. Let them deny me afterward, and all those swords will quiver at their throats! A woman’s sword is subtler than a man’s.”

  (That was the secret of her true strength in all the years that followed. It was never possible to bring her quite to bay, because the women pulled hidden strings for her in the sphere that is above and below the reach of governments.) So she moved back into her own palace, where she received only Tess of all the Anglo-Saxon women in India.

  “Why don’t you keep open house to English women, and start something?”

  Tess asked her. But Yasmini laughed.

  “My power would be gone. Do you fight a tiger by going down on all-fours with him and using teeth and claws? Or do you keep your distance, and use a gun?”

  “But the English women are not tigresses.”

  “If they were, I would laugh at them. Trapping tigers is a task the jungle coolies can attend to well! But if I admit the English women into my palace, they will come out of curiosity. And out of pity, or compassion or some such odious emotion they will invite me to their homes, making an exhibition of me to their friends. Should I be one of them? Never! Would they admit other Indian women with me? Certainly; any one I cared to recommend. They would encourage us to try to become their social equals, as they would call it, always backing away in front of us and beckoning, we striving, and they flattered. No! I will reverse that. I will have the English women striving to enter our society! They shall wake up one day to discover there is something worth having that is out of reach. Then see the commotion! Watch the alteration then! Today they say, when they trouble to think of us at all, ‘Come and visit us; our ways are good; we will not hurt you; come along,’ as the children call to a kitten in the street. Then they will say, ‘We have this and that to offer. We desire your good society. Will you admit us if we bring our gifts?’ That will be another story, but it will take time.”

  “More than time,” Tess answered. “Genius.”

  “I have genius. That is why I know too much to declare war on the priests. I shall have a proper wedding, and priests shall officiate, I despising them and they aware of it. That will be their first defeat. They shall come to my marriage as dogs come to their mistress when she calls — and be whipped away again if they fawn too eagerly! They will not dare refuse to come, because then war would be joined, and I might prove to people how unnecessary priests are. But they are more difficult to deal with than the English. A fat hypocrite like Jinendra’s high priest is like a carp to be caught with a worm, or an ass to be beaten with a stick; but there are others — true ascetics — lusting for influence more than a bellyful, caring nothing for the outside of the power if they hold the nut — nothing for the petals, if they hold the seed. Those men are not easy. For the present I shall seem to play into their hands, but they know that I despise them!”

  So great preparations were made for a royal wedding. And when Samson heard that Yasmini was to be Utirupa’s bride he was sufficiently disgusted, even to satisfy Yasmini, who was no admirer of his. Sita Ram’s account of Samson’s rage, as he explained the circumstance to Willoughby de Wing, was almost epic.

  “Damn the woman! And damn him! She’s known for a trouble-maker. Simla will be asking me why on earth I permitted it. They’ll want to know why I didn’t caution Utirupa and warn him against that princess in particular. She’s going to parade through the streets under my very nose and in flat defiance of our government, just at the very time when I’ve gone on record as sponsor for Utirupa. I’ve assured them he wouldn’t do an ill-advised thing, and I specifically undertook to see that he married wisely. But it was too early yet to speak to him about it. And here he springs this offense on me! It’s too bad — too bad!”

  “You’ll be all right with Simla,” said Willoughby de Wing. “Dig up the treasure and they’ll recommend you for the K. C. B., with the pick of all the jobs going!”

  “They don’t give K. C. B.’s to men in my trade,” Samson answered rather gloomily. “They reserve them for you professional butchers.”

  He was feeling jumpy about the treasure, and dreaming of it all night long in a way that did not make the waking fears more comfortable. A whole company of sappers bad been sent for; and because of the need of secrecy for the present, a special appropriation had had to be made to cover the cost of lumber for the tunnel that Dick began, and that the sappers finished. They had dug right up to the pipal trees, and half-killed them by tunneling under their roots along one side; but without discovering anything so far, except a few old coins. (The very ancient golden mohur in the glass case marked “Sialpore” in the Allahabad Museum is one of them.) Now they were going to tunnel down the other side and kill the ancient trees completely.

  Being a man of a certain courage, Samson had it in mind — perhaps — to send the map to an expert for an opinion on it. Only, he hated experts; they were so bent always on establishing their own pet theory. And it was late — a little late for expert opinions on the map. The wisest way was to keep silent and continue digging, even if the operation did kill ancient landmarks that one could see — from across the river, for instance.

  And, of course, he could not refuse to recognize the wedding officially and put on record the name, ancestry and title of the maharajah’s legal first wife. Nor could he keep away, because, with amazingly shrewd judgment, Yasmini had contrived the novelty of welding wedding and coronation ceremony and festival in one. Instead of two successive outbursts of squandering, there would be only one. It was economic progress. One could not withhold approval of it. He must go in person, smile, give a valuable present (paid for by the government, of course), and say the proper thing.

  One modicum of consolation did ooze out of the rind of Samson’s situation. It would have been no easier, be reflected, to say the right thing at the right time at the coronation ceremony, especially to the right people, if that treasure should already have been
dug up and reposing in the coffers of the Indian Government. After a certain sort of bargain, one’s tongue feels unpleasant in one’s cheek.

  Sialpore, however, was much more taken up with preparations for the colossal coronation-wedding feast than with Samson’s digging. Yasmini went on her palace roof each day to see how the trees leaned this and that way, as the earth was mined from under them. And Tom Tripe, standing guard on the bastion of the fort to oversee the removal of certain stores and fittings before the English should march out finally and the maharajah’s men march in, could see the destruction of the pipal trees too. So, for that matter, could Dick Blaine, on the day when he took some of the gang and blocked up the mouth of the mine on the hill with cemented masonry — to prevent theft; and cursed himself afterward for being such a fool as to brick up his luncheon basket inside the tunnel, to say nothing of all the men’s water bottles and some of their food and tools. But nobody else in Sialpore took very much notice of Samson’s excavation, and nobody cared about Dick’s mine.

  Every maharajah always tries to make his wedding and coronation ceremonies grander, and more extravagant and memorable than anybody’s else have been since history began; and there are plenty whose interest it is to encourage him, and to help him do it; money-lenders, for instance. But Utirupa not only had two magnificent ceremonies to unite in one, but Yasmini to supply the genius. The preparations made the very priests gasp (and they were used to orgies of extravagance — taught and preached and profited by them in fact.)

  Once or twice Tess remonstrated, but Yasmini turned a scornfully deaf ear.

  “What would you have us do instead? Invest all the money at eight per cent., so that the rich traders may have more capital, and found an asylum where Bimbu, Umra and Pinga may live in idleness and be rebuked for mirth?”

  “Bimbu, Umra and Pinga might be put to work,” said Tess. “As for mirth, they laugh at such unseemly things. They could be taught what proper humor is.”