Voices in the Night Part 64

'No reason at all. I'm awfully glad you did.'

He looked it, and Lesley felt once more that absurd desire to smile and feel happy as she sat listening, watching the withered old face, waiting for the answer.

It was not much when it came. It was only a pursing up of the lips that had never known a lover's kiss, a gentle raillery in the kind tear-dimmed eyes, and a brisk flirt of the fingers that had worn themselves to the bone to bring happiness to others.

'_Trra!_' said Auntie Khojee, with supreme unconcern for explanations.

'_Trra!_'

'I'm afraid it is no go, Miss Drummond,' said Jack decorously. 'I believe it--it would save trouble if we--for the time only, of course----'

Lesley blushed a fine blush. 'I daresay you are right,' she a.s.sented, supremely superior; 'it doesn't really matter--for the time,' she added significantly.

And after that an almost reckless happiness was added to the peace of the roof.

Lateefa quoted Hafiz by the yard. Auntie Khojee got hold of Lesley's hand and held it fast with one of hers, while the other slid up and down the girl's arm with the little caressing pats and pinches with which she had tried to wile away Noormahal's weariness, and Jack Raymond sat and looked on with----

With what? Lesley did not quite realise what the expression was till they were alone together on their way back through the garden once more. Then she recollected it; for his face was all soft and kind, all lit up with a delicate raillery, a forgetfulness of the workaday world, just as it had been that evening--that evening, when another woman had been his companion--that evening when she had felt so lonely--when the cinnamon dove----

'_Do-you-love-too? do-yon-love-too?_' came the question from the rose-bush once more; but the bird did not fly from its shelter now.

There was no thorn in the path now to make those two pause and startle it. So the question followed them. '_Do-you-love-too?

do-you-love-too?_' as they walked side by side, leaving the Sanctuary behind them, nearing the gilded summer-house before them.

'There's no hurry, is there?' said the man suddenly when they reached it. 'Let us sit down a bit and talk--about ourselves.'

The girl sat down, but shook her head. 'It was only for the time, Mr.

Raymond,' she said, not pretending to misunderstand his meaning.

'Why should it only be for the time?'

'Why?' she echoed, looking out into the Pleasure-garden of Kings. 'For a great many reasons, I think.'

And then she began on them, one by one, dispa.s.sionately, rationally; and sometimes he agreed with her despondently as to his character and interests, and sometimes he gave in to her greater knowledge regarding her own.

And the dove cooed on its question, and the jewelled parrots--winged creatures as they were--flew from one screen of flowering trees to the other, unable to escape the thraldom of the high wall hidden by leaf and blossom--unable to escape from that prisonment of pleasure.

'And so you see, Mr. Raymond,' came the girl's voice, 'the odds are----'

'The odds!' he echoed quickly, almost mischievously. 'Ah! if it is a question of odds, it's my innings--I'll take twenty to one on Bonnie Lesley!' He held out his hand.

She essayed a frown, she essayed a smile, and then she said, 'Really, you are too foolish----Jack!'

And so in the years to come, the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote will no doubt rescind his reproof, and, having forgotten Jerry, will call another little laddie 'a son of heroes.' And he may be; but Jack Raymond himself will keep that name for a boy who, by that time, will be at Eton or Harrow. And that boy will think of the graves in the Hollow of Heroes, and wonder if Jan-Ali-shan ever came back to claim his.

He has not yet, and so the two hundred and odd thousand people in the city of Nushapore, and the fifty thousand people in cantonments, still expect him to be there some day, _when he is wanted_.

And he will, no doubt; for it is only the Spirit of Slaves that dies; the Spirit of Kings lives for ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Barrister.]

[Footnote 2: Members of Munic.i.p.al Committee.]

[Footnote 3: The Mohammedan Easter.]

[Footnote 4: Failed for middle school examination; a very general claim to culture in India.]

[Footnote 5: In India, members can buy provisions or wines imported by their club.]

[Footnote 6: Measure.]

[Footnote 7: _Nigar bani_, lit. looking at, favouritism.]

[Footnote 8: Straight, fair.]

[Footnote 9: Lit. earth, a corpse.]

[Footnote 10: Lit. outcast.]

[Footnote 11: Wors.h.i.+pper of s.h.i.+va.]

[Footnote 12: The king of death; his emblem is a crocodile, _i.e_.

death will be busy.]

[Footnote 13: _Hansi-ki-bat_, lit. smiling word.]

[Footnote 14: The true faith.]

[Footnote 15: _Ikbal_, lit. power, prestige.]

[Footnote 16: Post-office.]

[Footnote 17: Doctors.]

[Footnote 18: Models of the tombs of Hussan and Hussein.]