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

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СКАЧАТЬ of Mrs. Estes. She added that Mrs. Estes had believed that the young prince was suffering from a return of his usual malady; she had seen him in paroxysms of this kind twice before Kate came.

      ‘Now look at this,’ said Kate, taking down the chart of her hospital cases, on which were recorded the symptoms and progress of two cases of hemp-poisoning that had come to her within the past week.

      ‘These men,’ she said, ‘had been given sweetmeats by a gang of travelling gipsies, and all their money was taken from them before they woke up. Read for yourself.’

      Tarvin read, biting his lips. At the end he looked up at her sharply.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, with an emphatic nod of his head—‘ yes. Sitabhai?’

      ‘Who else would dare?’ answered Kate passionately.

      ‘I know. I know. But how to stop her going on! how to bring it home to her!’

      ‘Tell the Maharajah,’ responded Kate decidedly.

      Tarvin took her hand. ‘Good! I’ll try it. But there’s no shadow of proof, you know.’

      ‘No matter. Remember the boy. Try. I must go back to him now.’

      The two returned to the house of the missionary together, saying very little on the way. Tarvin’s indignation that Kate should be mixed up in this miserable business almost turned to anger at Kate herself, as he rode beside her but his wrath was extinguished at sight of the Maharaj Kunwar. The child lay on a bed in an inner room at the missionary’s, almost too weak to turn his head. As Kate and Tarvin entered, Mrs. Estes rose from giving him his medicine, said a word to Kate by way of report, and returned to her own work. The child was clothed only in a soft muslin coat; but his sword and jewelled belt lay across his feet.

      ‘Salaam, Tarvin Sahib,’ he murmured. ‘I am very sorry that I was ill.’

      Tarvin bent over him tenderly. ‘Don’t try to talk, little one.’

      ‘Nay; I am well now,’ was the answer. ‘Soon we will go riding together.’

      ‘Were you very sick, little man?’

      ‘I cannot tell. It is all dark to me. I was in the palace laughing with some of the dance-girls. Then I fell. And after that I remember no more till I came here.’

      He gulped down the cooling draught that Kate gave him, and resettled himself on the pillows, while one wax-yellow hand played with the hilt of his sword. Kate was kneeling by his side, one arm under the pillow supporting his head; and it seemed to Tarvin that he had never before done justice to the beauty latent in her good, plain, strong features. The trim little figure took softer outlines, the firm mouth quivered, the eyes were filled with a light that Tarvin had never seen before.

      ‘Come to the other side—so,’ said the child, beckoning Tarvin in the native fashion, by folding all his tiny fingers into his palms rapidly and repeatedly. Tarvin knelt obediently on the other side of the couch. ‘Now I am a king, and this is my court.’

      Kate laughed musically in her delight at seeing the boy recovering strength. Tarvin slid his arm under the pillow, found Kate’s hand there, and held it.

      The portière at, the door of the room dropped softly. Mrs. Estes had stolen in for a moment, and imagined that she saw enough to cause her to steal out again. She had been thinking a great deal since the days when Tarvin first introduced himself.

      The child’s eyes began to grow dull and heavy, and Kate would have withdrawn her arm to give him another draught.

      ‘Nay; stay so,’ he said imperiously; and relapsing into the vernacular, muttered thickly—‘Those who serve the King shall not lack their reward. They shall have villages free of tax—three, five villages; Sujjain, Amet, and Gungra. Let it be entered as a free gift when they marry. They shall marry, and be about me always—Miss Kate and Tarvin Sahib.’

      Tarvin did not understand why Kate’s hand was withdrawn swiftly. He did not know the vernacular as she did.

      ‘He is getting delirious again,’ said Kate, under her breath. ‘Poor, poor little one!’

      Tarvin ground his teeth, and cursed Sitabhai between them. Kate was wiping the damp forehead, and trying to still the head as it was thrown restlessly from side to side. Tarvin held the child’s hands, which closed fiercely on his own, as the boy was racked and convulsed by the last effects of the hemp.

      For some minutes he fought and writhed, calling upon the names of many gods, striving to reach his sword, and ordering imaginary regiments to hang those white dogs to the beams of the palace gate, and to smoke them to death.

      Then the crisis passed, and he began to talk to himself and to call for his mother.

      The vision of a little grave dug in the open plain sloping to the river, where they had laid out the Topaz cemetery, rose before Tarvin’s memory. They were lowering Heckler’s first baby into it, in its pine coffin; and Kate, standing by the graveside, was writing the child’s name on the finger’s length of smoothed pine which was to be its only headstone.

      ‘Nay, nay, nay!’ wailed the Maharaj Kunwar. ‘I am speaking the truth; and oh, I was so tired at that pagal dance in the temple, and I only crossed the courtyard…. It was a new girl from Lucknow; she sang the song of “The Green Pulse of Mundore.” … Yes; but only some almond curd. I was hungry, too. A little white almond curd, mother. Why should I not eat when I feel inclined? Am I a sweeper’s son, or a prince? Pick me up! pick me up! It is very hot inside my head…. Louder. I do not understand. Will they take me over to Kate? She will make all well. What was the message?’ The child began to wring his hands despairingly. ‘The message! The message! I have forgotten the message. No one in the State speaks English as I speak English. But I have forgotten the message.

      ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright

      In the forests of the night,

      What immortal hand or eye

      Framed thy fearful symmetry?

      Yes, mother; till she cries. I am to say the whole of it till she cries. I will not forget. I did not forget the first message. By the great god Har! I have forgotten this message.’ And he began to cry.

      Kate, who had watched so long by bedsides of pain, was calm and strong; she soothed the child, speaking to him in a low, quieting voice, administering a sedative draught, doing the right thing, as Tarvin saw, surely and steadily, undisturbed. It was he who was shaken by the agony that he could not alleviate.

      The Maharaj Kunwar drew a long, sobbing breath, and contracted his eyebrows.

      ‘Mahadeo ki jai!’ he shouted. ‘It has come back. A gipsy has done this. A gipsy has done this. And I was to say it until she cried.’

      Kate half rose, with an awful look at Tarvin. He returned it, and, nodding, strode from the room, dashing the tears from his eyes.

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XVI

      Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise

      To warn a King СКАЧАТЬ