Sunni had his own room in the palace, a little square place with a
high white wall and a table and chair in it, which Dr. Roberts had
given him. The table held his books, his pen and ink and paper.
There was a charpoy in one corner, and under the charpoy a locked
box. There were no windows, and the narrow door opened into a
passage that ran abruptly into a wall, a few feet farther on.
So nobody saw Sunni when he carried his chirag, his little
chimneyless, smoking tin lamp, into his room, and set it in a niche
on the wall, took off his shoes, and threw himself down on his
charpoy at eleven o'clock that night. For a long time he had been
listening to the bul-buls, the nightingales, in the garden, and
thinking of this moment. Now it had come, and Sunni quivered and
throbbed all over with excitement. He lay very still, though, on
the watch for footsteps, whispers, breathings in the passage. Four
years in the palace had taught Sunni what these things meant. He
lay still for more than two hours.
At last, very quietly, Sunni lifted himself up by his elbows, put
first one leg, and then the other, out of the charpoy, and got up.
More quietly still he drew the locked box from under the bed, took
a key from his pocket, and opened it. The key squeaked in the
wood, and Sunni paused again for a long time, listening. Then in
the smoky, uncertain light of the chirag flaring in the niche, he
took from the box three gold bangles, two broken armlets, enamelled
in red and blue, and a necklace of pearls with green enamelled
pendants. Last, he drew out a little sword with rubies set in the
hilt. For an instant Sunni hesitated; the ornaments were nothing,
but the sword was his chief possession and his pride. It would be
so easy to carry away! He looked at it lovingly for a minute, and
laid it with the rest. All these things were his very own, but
something told him that he must not take them away. Then he took
the long coarse white turban cloth from his head, and wrapped
everything skilfully in it. Nothing jangled, and when the parcel
was made up it was flat and even. Then Sunni, with his English
pen, printed in Urdu:
[Urdu text]
which in English letters would have been spelled 'Maharajah ka
wasti,' and which meant simply, 'For the Maharajah,' upon one side
of it. Upon the other he wrote in the large round hand that Dr.
Roberts had taught him--
'To your Honner, the Maharajah of Chita. Sunni will take your
Honner in his hart to his oun country, but the gifs are too
heavie.'
Sunni had certainly learned politeness at last among the Rajputs.
Then he put the parcel back into the box, softly locked it, and
laid the key on the cover.
Still nobody came his way. Sunni took another turban cloth from
its nail in the wall, a finely-woven turban cloth, with blue and
gold stripes, nine yards long, for festivals. He twisted it
carelessly round his neck, and blew out the chirag. Then he
slipped softly into the passage, and from that into the close,
dark, high-walled corridors that led into the outer courts. He
stepped quickly, but carefully; the corridors were full of sleeping
servants. Twice he passed a sentinel. The first was stupid with
opium, and did not notice him. Mar Singh, the second, was very
wide awake.
'Where go you, Sunni-ji?' he asked, inquisitively.
'I go to speak with Tooni about a matter which troubles me so that
I cannot sleep,' answered Sunni; 'and afterwards I return to the
little south balcony that overlooks the river; it will be cooler
there if the wind blows.'
As Sunni went on, the thoughts of the sentinel became immediately
fixed upon the necessity of being awake when the sahib's son should
pass in again--the sahib's son had the ear of the Maharajah.
The ayah's hut was in the very farthest corner of the courtyard she
had begged for, somewhat apart from the others. It was quite dark
inside when Sunni pushed open the door, but the old woman,
slumbering light, started up from her charpoy with a little cry.
'Choop!' said he in a low, quick tone; and Tooni, recognising his
voice, was instantly silent.
Sunni made his way to the side of the bed, and took one of her
hands.
'Listen, Tooni,' said he, in the same tone, 'I am come for what is
mine. Give it to me.'
'Sonny Sahib!' quavered the old woman hoarsely, 'what have I to
give you? Dil kushi,[8] I have nothing.'
[8] 'Heart's delight.'
'What from fear you have never given up, nor burnt, nor thrown
away,' said Sunni, firmly; 'what you said false words to ee-Wobbis
about, when you told him it had been stolen from you. My little
black book, with my God in it.'
'Hazur! I have it not.'
'Give it to me,' said Sunni.
The old woman raised herself in the bed. 'A sahib's promise is
written in gold,' said she; 'promise that the Maharajah shall never
know.'
'He shall never know,' said Sunni.
Tooni felt her way to the side of the hut; then her hand fumbled
along the top of the wall; it seemed to Sunni for an interminable
time. At a certain place she parted the thatch and put her hand
into it with a little rustling that Sunni thought might be heard in
the very heart of the palace. Then she drew out a small, tight
sewn, oilskin bag, that had taken the shape of the book inside it,
groped across the hut again, and gave it to Sunni. The boy's hand
trembled as he took it, and without a word he slipped into the
darkness outside.
Then he stopped short and went back. 'Great thanks to you, Tooni-ji,'
he said softly into the darkness of the hut. 'When I find my
own country I will come back and take you there too. And while I
am gone Moti will love you, Tooni-ji. Peace be to you!'
Mar Singh was still awake when Sunni re-entered the palace. The
wind had come, he said. Sleep would rest upon the eyelids of
Sunni-ji in the south balcony.
It was a curious little place, the south balcony, really not a
balcony at all, but a round-pillared pavilion with a roof that
jutted out above the city wall. It hung over a garden too, rather
a cramped garden, the wall and the river came so close, and one
that had been left a good deal to take care of itself. Some fine
pipal-trees grew in it though, one of them towered within three
feet of the balcony, while the lower branches overspread the city
wall. All day long the green parrakeets flashed in and out of the
pipal-trees, screaming and chattering, while the river wound blue
among the yellow sands outside the wall; but to-night the only
sound in them was the whispering of the leaves as the south wind
passed, and both the river and the sands lay silver gray in the
starlight. Sunni, lying full length upon the balcony, listened
with all his might. From the courtyard, away round to the right
where the stables were, came a pony's neigh, and Sunni, as he heard
it once--twice--thrice--felt his eyes fill with tears. It was the
voice of his pony, of his 'Dhooplal,' his 'red sunlight,' and, he
would never ride Dhooplal again. The south breeze brought no other
sound, the palace stretched on either side of him dark and still, a
sweet heavy fragrance from a frangipanni-tree in the garden floated
up, and that was all. Sunni looked across the river, and saw that
a group of palms on the other side was beginning to stand
distinctly against the sky. Then he remembered that he must make
haste.
The first thing he did was to unwind his long turban from his neck,
and cut it in two. Two-thirds he twisted round his waist, the
other he made fast to one of the little red stone pillars of the
balcony. It hung straight and black down into the shadows of the
pipal-tree. Then, very gradually and cautiously, Sunni slipped
over the balcony's edge and let himself down, down, till he reached
a branch thick enough to cling to. The turban was none too long,
the branches at the top were so slender. Just as he grasped a
thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying
desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face,
and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic. The boy
almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in
his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the
owl's cry. It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah believed, and
sometimes he believed it with less reason.
As quickly as he dared, Sunni let himself down branch by branch
till he reached the level of the wall. Presently he stood upon it
in the subsiding rustle of the leaves, breathless and trembling..
He seemed to have disturbed every living thing within a hundred
yards. A score of bats flew up from the wall crevices, a flying
fox struck him on the shoulder, at his feet something black and
slender twisted away into a darker place. Sunni stood absolutely
still, gradually letting go his hold upon the pipal twigs.
Presently everything was as it had been before, except for the
little dark motionless figure on the wall; and the south wind was
bringing across the long, shrill, mournful howls of the jackals
that plundered the refuse of the British camp half a mile away.
Then Sunni lay down flat on the top of the wall, and began to work
himself with his hands and feet towards the nearest embrasure. An
old cannon stood in this, and threatened with its wide black mouth
any foe that should be foolish enough to think of attacking the
fort from the river. This venerable piece of ammunition had not
been fired for ten years, and would burst to a certainty if it were
fired now; but as nobody had ever dreamed of attacking Lalpore from
the river that didn't particularly matter. When Sunni reached it,
he crouched down in its shadow--the grayness behind the palms was
spreading--and took the rest of his turban cloth from his waist.
Then he took off his coat, and began to unwind a rope from his
body--a rope made up of all sorts of ends, thick and thin, long and
short, and pieced out with leather thongs. Sunni was considerably
more comfortable when he had divested himself of it. He tied the
rope and the turban cloth together, and fastened the rope end to
the old gun's wheel. He looked over for a second--no longer--but
it was too dark to tell how far down the face of the thirty-foot
wall his ragged contrivance hung. It was too dark as well to see
whether the water rippled against the wall or not; but Sunni knew
that the river was low. As a matter of fact he had only about five
feet to drop, and he went very comfortably into a thick bed of wet
sand. Nor was anything known of his going in Lalpore until
daybreak, when one of the palace sweepers found the end of a blue
and gold turban flapping about the south balcony; and Moti, who
often went early to tell his dreams to Sunni, brought the Maharajah
a parcel.