"No! No! Let us trust him--let us take the chance."
There was no time for remonstrance.
The next second they were in the cool, scented darkness of the vault,
with those pink air-holes showing like shadowy roses among the low
arches, the squat pillars.
"At the farther end," came Hushmut's voice, amid his shuffling, till
the latter ceased in the rasping of a chain unhasped. "Here, _Huzoor_,
it leads to the Summer Palace beyond the garden wall. So by the mango
groves to the Residency. May He who knows the secret of the perfume of
the rose protect the bride."
His voice sounded hollow in their ears as they ran down the vaulted
passage which opened before them, lit at intervals by those cunning
air-holes hidden flowerfully in the scrollwork of one of the
marble-edged aqueducts, and the closing door behind them blew a breath
of the rose scent from the vault after their retreating figures.
* * * * *
Two years had passed. Nine long months spent in keeping a foe at bay;
three in following that spent and broken foe to the bitter end; and
then a year of English skies and English faces to dull the memory of
that long strain to mind and body.
And then once more a young Englishman, with a girl in a pink dress,
drove into that garden of dead Kings. But the four-square wall was in
ruins. It had been a rallying-point of that spent and broken foe.
The garden itself was neglected, the roses unpruned. And those two
were changed also, and an _ayah_ holding a baby remained in the hired
carriage which they left waiting for them under the blossoming trees,
as the dogcart had waited that May evening two years before.
"I'm afraid he must have thought us awfully ungrateful," said the man,
regretfully. "But it couldn't be helped at first; then afterwards one
had to move on. But I did write, you know, more than once about him,
after we got a grip on the place again; so I hope they have done
something."
"They will have to now, at any rate," said the wearer of the pink
dress, firmly.
The sight of the garden, changed, neglected as it was, had brought
back the very picture of that grizzled head with the curved hair,
slipping through the rose-bushes, the delicate dark hand holding the
tray of rose-leaves, as it slid over the bushes with its luck-offering
for the bride. Yes! even if justice had been slow, inevitably slow, it
should come now. This very evening, though she and her husband had
only arrived in the station that morning.
They went to the rose square first, but Hushmut was not there. Then,
seeing by the lack of blossom that the time of roses was not yet, they
went on to the orange groves.
No one was there. So, doubtfully, they passed to the jasmine, to the
lemon grass.
But no one was to be seen. Nothing was to be heard but the lazy yet
insistent cry of some one scaring the birds from the pomegranates.
"Let us ask him. He may know," suggested the wearer of the pink dress.
So they called him and he came--an old man, wizened, careworn.
Yes, he said, he knew. Wherefore not, when he had guarded fruit in
that garden since he was a boy? There was not much to guard now, owing
to past evils. Hushmut the essence-maker--Hushmut was dead. No one
made essences any more. How did he die? Very simply. He had seen it
with his own eyes when he was guarding fruit. The _Huzoors_ had
doubtless heard of the evil times, even though, as the coachman had
told him, they had just come from _wilayet_. Well, it began quite
suddenly one evening in May. It was the peaches he was guarding then.
There had been a "fool's dinner" in the garden, and afterwards a young
_sahib_ and a miss in a pink dress had come running in to take refuge
from the troopers. He had seen them, but what could he do? But Hushmut
had shown them the secret passage, no doubt. Anyhow he had come out
alone and closed the door, and sate beside it singing when the
troopers rode up.
And doubtless they would have believed him, seeing that he was friends
with all the bad walkers in the city through the selling of his
essences; but for a bit of the Miss-_sahiba's_ dress which had caught
in the door hasp. So they knew what he had done, and being enraged,
had killed him there, by the door. It was quite simple.
Quite. So simple that those two said nothing. Only their hands sought
each other as they turned back to the summer-house.
"I should like to see the place again," said the wearer of the pink
dress in a hard, even voice. "I wonder if the door is open?"
It was; for no one made essences now. So they entered.
The still stood in the corner as before. The pile of that strange fuel
lay between it and the trays of rose-leaves. But there was no
difference between them now. Both were yellow, scentless; and though
the pink paper which Hushmut had pasted over the rose-shaped air-holes
was all broken and torn by birds and winds and weather, the bees did
not drift in.
For there was no scent to lead them on. None.
The winds of two long years had swept it away absolutely. What else
was to be expected?
Yet a vague disappointment showed in the woman's face as it had in the
girl's.
But this time the man's voice trembled as he answered her look with
the words--
"Only the actions of the just,
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."