The Bronze Bell Part 34

even as I am thine, if thou wilt take me.... Look upon it, thy father's kingdom, then upon me, thy queen.... Yea!" she cried, throwing back her head and meeting his gaze with eye languorous beneath their heavy silken lashes. "Yea, I am altogether thine, my king! Wilt thou cast me aside, then, who am faint with love for thee?... Never hast thou dreamed of love such as the love that I bear for thee. How could it be otherwise, when thou hast pa.s.sed thy days in the chill exile of the North? O my husband, turn not from me--"

He pulled himself together and stood away. "Madam," he said with an absurdly formal bow, "I am not your husband."

She opened her arms with infinite allure. "It is so little that is asked of thee--only to ascend thy father's throne and be honoured of all Bharuta, only to wield the sceptre that is thine by right, only to reign an undisputed king in two kingdoms--Khandawar and thy Naraini's heart!"

"I am very sorry," he returned with the same preciseness. "It is quite impossible. Besides, it seems that you leave the Sirkar altogether out of your calculations. It may not have occurred to you that the Supreme Government of India may have something to say about the contemplated change."

He saw her bite her lips with chagrin, and the look she flashed to his face was anything but kind and tender. "_Arre!_" she laughed derisively. "And of what account is this frail, tottering Sirkar's will besides the Will of the Body? Of what avail its dicta against the rulings of the Bell? Thou knowest--"

"Pardon, I know nothing. I have told thee, Ranee, that I am not Har Dyal Rutton."

She was mistress of a thousand artifices. Brought to a standstill on the one line of attack, she diverged to another without the quiver of an eyelash to betray her discomfiture.

"Yea, thou hast told me," she purred. "But I, Naraini, _I_ know what I know. Thou dost deny thyself even as thou dost deny me, but ... art thou willing to be put to the proof, my king?"

"If you've any means of proving my ident.i.ty, I would thank you for making use of it, Ranee."

"There is the test of the Token, _Lalji_."

"I am not aware of it."

"The test of the Token--the ring that was brought to thee, the signet of thy House. Surely thou hast it with thee?"

Since that night in Calcutta Amber had resumed his habit of carrying the Token in the chamois bag. Now, on the reflection that it had been given him for a special purpose, which had been frustrated by the death of Dhola Baksh, so that he had no further use for it, he decided against the counsels of prudence. "What's the odds," he asked himself, "if I do lose it? I don't want the d.a.m.n' thing--it's brought me nothing but trouble, thus far." And he thrust a hand within his s.h.i.+rt and brought forth the emerald. "Here it is," he told the woman cheerfully.

"Now this test?" "Place it upon thy finger--so, even upon thy little finger, as was thy father's wont with it. Now lift up thine arm, so, and turn the stone to the west, toward Kathiapur."

Without comprehension he yielded to this whim, folding up his right arm and turning the emerald to the quarter indicated by Naraini.

The hour had drawn close upon dawn. A cold air breathed down the valley and was chill to them in that lofty eyrie. The moon, dipping towards the rim of the world, was poised, a globe of dull silver, upon the ridge of a far, dark hill. As they watched it dropped out of sight and everything was suddenly very bleak and black.

And a curious thing happened.

Naraini cried out sharply--"_Aho_!"--as if unable to contain her excitement.

Somewhere in the palace behind them a great gong boomed like thunder.

A pause ensued, disturbed only by the fluttering of the woman's breath: for the s.p.a.ce of thirty pulse-beats nothing happened. Then Naraini's fingers closed like bands of steel about Amber's left wrist.

"See!" she cried in a voice of awe, while the bracelets s.h.i.+vered and clashed upon her outstretched arm, "The Eye, my king, the Eye!"

Amber shut his teeth upon an exclamation of amaze. For just above the far, dark mountain ridge, uncannily brilliant in the void of the pale, moonlit firmament, a light had blazed out; a vivid emerald light, winking and stabbing the darkness with shafts of seemingly supernatural radiance.

"And thy ring, lord--look! The Token!"

The great emerald seemed to have caught and to be answering the light Naraini called the Eye; in the stone's depths an infernal fire leaped and died and leaped again, now luridly blazing, now fitfully a-quiver as though about to vanish, again strong and steady: even as the light of the strange emerald star above the mountains ebbed and flowed through the night.

Naraini shuddered and cried out guardedly for very fear. "By Indur, it is even as the Voice foretold! Nay, Heaven-born"--she caught his sleeve and forcibly pulled down his hand--"tempt not the Unseen further. And put away this Token, lest a more terrible thing befall us. There be mysteries that even we of the initiate may not comprehend, my lord. It is not well to meddle with the unknown."

The ring was off his finger now and the woman was cramming it into his coat-pocket with tremulous hands. And where the Eye had shone, the sky was blank. They stood in darkness, Amber mute with perplexity, Naraini clinging to his arm and shaking like a reed in the wind.

"Now am I frightened, lord of my heart! Lead me back to the garden, for I am but a woman and afraid. Who am I, Naraini, to see the Eye? What am I, a weak woman, to trespa.s.s upon the Mysteries? I am very much afraid.

Do thou take me hence and comfort me, my king!" She drew his arm about her waist, firm, round, and slender, and held it so, her body yielding subtly to his, her head drooping wearily upon his shoulder.

They moved slowly from the turret and back along the lighted walks of the garden, the woman apparently content, Amber preoccupied--to tell the truth, more troubled than he would have been willing to confess. As for the intimacy of their att.i.tude, he was temporarily careless of it; it meant less to him than the woman guessed. It seems likely that she inferred a conquest from his indifference, for when they had come back to the tank of the gold-fish beneath the banian she slipped from his embrace and confronted him with a face afire with elation.

"See now how thou art altogether controverted, _Lalji!_" she cried joyfully. "No longer canst thou persist that thou art other than thy true self, the lord of Naraini's heart, the king returned to his kingdom.... For who would dare give the lie to the Eye?... Indeed," she continued with a low, sighing laugh, "I myself had begun to doubt, my faith borne down and overcome by thy repeated denials; but now I know thee. Did not the Bell foretell that the Eye should be seen of men only when Har Dyal Rutton had returned to his kingdom, and then only when he wore the Token? Even as it was said, so has it been.... And now art thou prepared to go?"

"Whither?"

"To Kathiawar--even to the threshold of the Gateway?... There is yet time, before the dawn, and it were wise to go quickly, my king; but for one night more is the Gateway open to receive thee. Thou didst see the saddled stallions in the courtyard? They wait there for thee, to bear thee to Kathiawar.... Nay, it were better that thou shouldst wait, mayhap, for the hours be few before the rising of the sun. Go then to thy rest, heart of my heart, since thou must leave me; and this night we shall ride, thou and I, together to the Gateway."

"So be it," he a.s.sented, with a grave inclination of his head.

Convinced of the thanklessness of any further attempt to convince the woman against her will, he gave it up, and was grateful for the respite promised him. In twelve or eighteen hours he might accomplish much--with the aid of Labertouche. At worst he would find some means to communicate with the Farrells and then seek safety for himself in flight or hiding until what he had come to term "that d.a.m.ned Gateway-thing" should be closed and he be free to resume his strange wooing. Some way, somehow, he could contrive to extricate himself and his beloved.

Therefore he told the woman: "Be it so, O Queen! Now, I go."

"And leave me," she pouted prettily, "with no word but that, my king?

Am I not worth a caress--not even when I beg for it?"

He smiled down at her, tolerant and amused, and impulsively caught her to him. "The point's well taken," he said. "Decidedly you're worth it, Naraini. And if you were not, the show was!"

And he kissed and left her, all in a breath.

CHAPTER XVI

SUNRISE FOR TWO

I

Amber found his way out of the garden without difficulty; at the doorway an eunuch waited. The Maharana himself, perhaps in deference to the dictates of discretion, did not reappear, and Amber had no desire to see him again. He was eager only to get away, to find a place and time to think, and to get into communication with Labertouche.

The eunuch bowed submissively to his demand to be shown out, and silently led him down through the echoing marble corridors and galleries of the many-tiered palace. They took a different way from that by which Amber had ascended; had his life depended on it, he could not have found his way back to the garden of Naraini, but by accident.

As they pa.s.sed through the lower court of stables he remarked the fact that the stallions were being led away to their stalls. The circ.u.mstances confirmed Naraini's statement; the hour of their usefulness was ended for the day--or, rather, for the night.

The Virginian wondered dully if ever he would find himself astride one of the superb animals. After what he had witnessed and been a part of there was for him no longer any circ.u.mscribing horizon to the world of possibility. For him the improbable no longer existed. He had met the incredible face to face and found it real.

In the cavern-like chamber at the water-level Dulla Dad had the boat in readiness. Amber embarked, not without a sigh of relief, and the Mohammedan with his double-bladed paddle drove the boat out of the secret entrance, in an impa.s.sive silence. In the stern Amber watched the indefinite grey light of dawn wavering over the face of the waters and wondered ...

The boat swung in gently to the marble steps of the bund. Amber rose and stepped ash.o.r.e, very tired and very much inclined to believe he would presently wake up to a sane and normal world.

"Hazoor," the voice of Dulla Dad hailed him. He turned. "Hazoor, I was to say that at the third hour after sunset to-night this boat will be in waiting here. You are to call me by name, and I will put in for you, hazoor."

"What's that? I don't understand.... Oh, very well."