vague perplexity came to the dulled yet anxious face as he looked first
at the girl, then apologetically at Jim Forrester. "What the Presence
said about meeting me is perhaps right after all. Yes! it is right. I
did see the Huzoor. I have remembered from the graciousness of the
queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair."
The young Englishman frowned angrily. "You work miracles in memory, my
dear Queenie," he said, and there was quite an aggrieved tone in his
voice as he turned shortly on the speaker. "Why on earth didn't you
tell the truth before, then? And the old city? I suppose you remember
all about that, too?"
"The old city," echoed Khesroo, doubtfully. "No, Huzoor! What should I
know about it beyond what all know--that there was a city, and that it
is lost? Such as I know only what the wise tell them----" he paused,
and even to his deprecation came a half-resigned self-assertion,
"And yet I had more chance than most, seeing that my mother was
twice-born."
"She was, was she?" put in his hearer, and then looked round towards
his chief. "Do you hear that, sir? His mother was a Brahmani--that may
account for his profile, which you said this morning puzzled you in a
low-caste man."
"I said it was Scythic in type, and so it is," was the answer, as the
speaker laid down his paper and came forward for further inspection.
"So your mother was twice-born," he continued, addressing the goatherd;
"a child-widow, I suppose?"
Khesroo stretched his hand out, the fingers wide-spread in a dignified
assent, which suited him better than his former almost cringing
humility.
"Huzoor, yes! Her people, however, did not find her till I was nigh
six; but after that, of course, I was alone."
A hush fell on the group, for--to those three listeners who understood
them--the simple words told of a common enough tragedy in India; of a
life denied all natural outlet, of unworthy love, of outraged pride of
race followed by sure, if slow, revenge.
"And your father--who was he?"
Kresroo shook his head. "I had no one but my mother, Huzoor."
There was another hush, on which the girl's voice rose clear with a
curious thrill in it.
"And she was very beautiful, was she not?"
"Her son is a good-looking fellow, at any rate," remarked Jim
Forrester, coolly, and moving away, he took up the newspaper, conscious
of a certain irritation, and began to read the latest report of
wireless telegraphy with the unsuspicious and unquestioning assent
which we of these latter days reserve for the marvels of matter only.
Her father having gone back to his papers also, the girl and the
goatherd were left alone midway between civilisation and savagery.
Huddled in his coarse blanketing, his bare arms crossed over his bare
knees, there was nothing distinctive or unusual in Khesroo's figure,
behind which the background of shadowy desert was fast fading into
shadowy sky, except the haggardness of the aquiline face, the
hollowness of the dark eyes. These struck her, and she stretched out
her hand to feel his.
"Have you fever now? No, you are quite cool."
He shivered slightly at her touch, and his eyes, passing hers, seemed
to rest on the plaits of her hair.
"No, Huzoor," he replied, "it is a thief fever--it is hard to catch."
She smiled. "I think quinine will manage it."
He shook his head. "Nothing catches that which robs us of life at its
own time. It will leave me none some day." He spoke unconcernedly, as
if the fact were beyond question.
"Then why do you wear that amulet if it is of no use?" she said,
pointing to the little leathern bag, such as the wild tribes use for
the carrying of charms, which was tied round his arm.
Khesroo shook his head again, but smiled this time, and the flash of
his white teeth must have removed any doubt of his identity, had such
doubt existed.
"The queen-lady mistakes," he said. "It does not contain a charm. It is
my _photongrar_."
"Your what?" she echoed, uncomprehending.
"_Photongrar_. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all
things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba
long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother."
"You mean your photograph?"
"Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is
like my mother as she was--_before they found her!_"
Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like
_after_ that finding which made the English girl feel a vague
oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded
from a piece of red rag.
"I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much."
Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate,
yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had
evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the
childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a
flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a
startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her
father, with appeal in her voice.
"Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo
when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost
sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to
read the other day, because we were camping through the same country.
Stay! I'll fetch it----"
She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and
fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end.
"There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!"
Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester,
looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were
identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand
had written:
"_The Son of a King!_"
The title fitted the picture, and reminded the girl of something in
Khesroo which had struck her yesterday and which was absent to-day. She
turned over the page, but beyond it all was blank. Those words were the
last in the diary.
"I think I remember something about it now, my dear," said her
father, taking his hand away from the book gently; "it may have been
the last she took, for I was camping round here as assistant just
before--before you were born. And she was always taking children and
giving pictures to the mothers; not that I remember that particular
one--you see it must be fifteen years ago--at least."
"Nearer five-and-twenty, dear," she said, softly, and as she realised
the impotence of what the world counts as time to touch the smallest
thing that once has been, the utter irrelevance of days and weeks and
years in connection with a single thought, the photographs before her
grew dim to her eyes, the fine feminine writing with its verdict, "The
Son of a King," became invisible.
So through her tears she saw only--blurred and indistinct--the
wondering face of Khesroo the goatherd.
"Look!" she said, in sudden impulse. "The sun must have held two
pictures of you."
He stared at the duplicate stupidly. "I did not steal it," he began,
uneasily.
"Of course you didn't," she replied, smiling now. "It was my mother who
took the picture, and gave it to yours--she was the mem-sahiba you
spoke of--perhaps you remember her?"
A look almost of relief came to the goatherd's haggard, anxious face.
"Yes! Perhaps your slave remembers, and that is why he thought he
recollected the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of
her hair. That will be it, and your slave did not lie to the Huzoor."
He looked apologetically towards the young Englishman; but the latter
had once more an aggrieved tone in his voice as he said shortly in
English:
"Whether he did or did not doesn't much matter. There isn't anything to
be got out of him apparently, so perhaps you had better tell the
orderly to take him back to the tent and see that he takes the quinine
you send--as I suppose you will."
III
"I meant to tell him yesterday, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone,
glancing with almost maternal solicitude at her father, who was writing
within, his grey, somewhat bald head shining out in the light of the
lamp by which he was working, against the intense shadowy darkness of
the tent walls, "but that disappointment about the lost city, wasn't,
so to say, propitious. And to-day there was that letter from Hausmann
about the coin somebody has discovered, which has quite upset him. Poor
father," she added, turning to her lover again, "it will be hard on
him. Did you notice how he said it was but fifteen years ..."
She broke off and looked out into the night. The stars were showing
overhead through the fine fret of the kikar trees, though the horizon
still held a hint of the day that was dead. Against this paler
background she fancied she could see--itself a shadow, yet half hidden
by shadow--that curving dome as of a new world forcing its way through
the crust of the old, or an old one through the new.
"It was odd about those photographs, wasn't it?" she said,
irrelevantly. "He must be five years older than I am."
"His age is honoured by the comparison."
"My dear Jim," she interrupted, opening her eyes, "this unfortunate
goatherd seems----"
"I said he was fortunate, I think. But I admit hating things I don't
quite understand."
"Then you must hate me--now don't be angry," she added: "I mean no
blame. I very often don't understand myself."
"I know that--and that is why I want this business settled and
clear--you--you seem so far off sometimes."
There was a passion in his voice; he stretched his hands out to her as
she stood apart, her filmy dinner dress looking ghostly and elusive
seen half in the dark, half by the feeble light from within the tent.
She stretched out her hands also, but there was all the world between
his almost pathetic appeal and her almost amused repulse.
"You must make haste and find the ducat, Jim. I feel sure that without
it--and especially in his present mood--father will never consent----"
He certainly did not seem in a consenting frame of mind as he came out
to them with the offending letter from Hausmann in his hand.
"I've answered it," he said, sternly, "but as the man is an ass, he
will most likely miss the point, which is, of course, Kapala's
description of this coin. He says distinctly that it has one profile
superimposed on another with the legend beneath, and the date below the
flower on the obverse. Really, child, I think I will get you to figure
it for me, since Hausmann seems unable to understand words."
"You could use the handsome goatherd as a model, you know," remarked
Jim Forrester, vaguely surprised at his own irritation; "your father
said his features were Scythic."
"Yes!" assented the numismatist, abstractedly, as he tried to re-read
part of the offending missive by the distant light of the lamp; "rather
an uncommon type in India, nowadays, though one sees it elsewhere.
Queenie has it partly--your mother had Russian blood in her, you know."
"Perhaps that is why I feel so interested in Khesroo," said the girl,
looking coldly askance at her lover.
"Oh, by the way," put in her father, breaking in on his own indignation
and the silence which ensued between those two who loved each other--a
silence which both felt to be at once incomprehensible yet inevitable,
intolerable yet in a way rascinating--"that reminds me. The orderlies
reported he was bad with fever to-night. Send him over some more
quinine."
"I'll take it, if you like," said Jim Forrester, faintly penitent.
She looked at the two men with disdainful tolerance. "I will see him
first. One never knows what these people call fever--it may be
pneumonia."
She moved off as she spoke, into the night, meaning to cross over
towards the orderlies' tent, then paused to glance back at the
figure--which followed. "Are you coming, too?" she said, curtly. "I can
manage all right."
"Of course I am coming!" replied Jim Forrester. "It is pitch dark,
to begin with, and I can at least help you to find your patient. I
think you had better keep outside the camp, so as to avoid the
tent-ropes--it isn't any longer, really."
It was, if anything, shorter, but it brought them instantly into the
grip, as it were, of the desert, which crept hungrily upon the camp on
all sides; so that, ere they had gone five steps beyond the canvas
wings of the tent, they seemed as much alone, as far from conventional
twentieth-century life, as they had been two days before, when they
first sat together as betrothed lovers in the sunset of a world of
curves telling the tale of eternal, of unseen circlings. Even so much
of Life's secret was invisible now. All they saw was a darkness they
knew to be wilderness, a dim outline of themselves, close together,
hand in hand. For with the knowledge that they were alone--perhaps with
the memory of the wilderness--they had clasped hands instinctively, and
for the time the sense of stress and strain had passed.
It returned again, however, with curious vividness, as, right in their
path, a shadow, dim as their own, showed suddenly.
She knew who it was instinctively before it spoke.
"I thought you had fever," she said. "Why are you here?"
"I have been waiting the graciousness of the queen-lady," came the
reply, and the voice was buoyant with joyous vitality. "I have to tell
her my dreams--the fever always brings dreams, and I remember now! Yea!
I remember all things from the beginning. So, if she will come, I will
show her the lost city where we lived, and she will dream the dream
also."
Dimly, in the darkness, she fancied she could see the shining of his
eyes, see his beckoning hand. What her lover saw was a movement of the
shadow towards the wilderness: what he felt was a faint increase in the
distance between his hand and hers which made him claim it again.
"Queenie!" he cried, "what are you thinking of? You can't possibly go
now. The man is delirious with fever--surely you hear that in his
voice. You had better come back to the tent and let me send someone to
take him into shelter and look after him."
For an instant no one spoke, and then it seemed almost a bodiless voice
from the desert which broke the silence, for in his desire to detain
her, Jim Forrester had drawn the girl back a pace or two, so that the
darkness lay deeper between their two shadows and that third one nearer
the wilderness.
"Let the queen-lady decide for herself. If she comes, I will show her
all forgotten things--the golden crown that is not plaited hair, the
golden coin that was made for the lovers----"
"Jim," she whispered, almost fiercely, "do you hear? It is the gold
coin--it is waiting to be found. I must go----"
"This is pure folly," protested the young Englishman. "If anyone has to
go, I will, of course. But what hurry is there? Why not wait till
to-morrow--now, do be reasonable, Queenie, and consider----"
She ceased trying to release her hand, and when she spoke again it was
in a natural tone.
"Yes. I forgot that. Khesroo, I will come with you to-morrow. It will
be easier by daylight. Go back to the orderlies' tent now, and I will
send you over some more medicine, and when the fever has gone----"
"The dreams will have gone, too," came the voice out of the night; but
it, also, was more natural, more like that of Khesroo the goatherd. "I
shall forget again, and then the gold coin that was struck for her and
her lover----"
"For her and her lover," echoed the girl, softly. "Did you hear, Jim? I
must go and get it for you."
"Long--long ago----" came the voice again.
She echoed the words almost inaudibly this time, and Jim Forrester drew
her closer as he said sharply: "If anyone goes, I will; but I don't
see----"
The voice interrupted him. "But the queen-lady sees. She is like her
mother; she sees pictures in the sun. Of course, the Huzoor can come;
but if the queen-lady really wants this thing--if she believes--if she
trusts----"
"Let me go, Jim! let me go!"
"You shall not," he cried, seizing her round the waist in swift
antagonism to some unseen influence, in sudden consciousness of
conflict.
And so to both him and her in the darkness and stillness of the desert,
within a few steps only of quiet, comfortable, commonplace
civilisation, came like a whirlwind a perfect tumult of bewildering
emotions, and all the deathless forces which never slumber or sleep in
their work of moulding the soul of man, leapt from silence into speech.
Love, jealousy, hatred, resolve, high courage--all these seemed to
sweep through their every fibre of mind and body, leaving them
breathless, wondering, uncertain if they were awake or dreaming, if
they were real or mere shadows of a reality which Time cannot touch or
alter. For an instant only they were conscious of all this--but the
instant might have been an hour in its suggestion of infinite
experience.
Then Time claimed them once more, time and trivialities and
commonsense, so that ten minutes afterwards, Jim Forrester, having made
his preparations for a tramp into the desert, was stooping to say
good-night to his betrothed and to assure her of his speedy return. The
moon would rise in half-an-hour, the distance to the place where they
had first met Khesroo could not be over three miles, he would be back
by midnight.
Meanwhile, she could tell her father he had turned in, but if she chose
herself to sit up--well ...
As their lips met lingeringly, a little breeze that had wandered from
the desert shifted a ripple or two on the sand-waves about their feet,
and died away like a sigh in the fine fret of the kikar trees above the
unseen tents.
IV
It was an hour before dawn.
The desert itself could scarcely have been stiller than the camp. In
the white moonlight the white tents looked like some shrouded city of
the dead, forgotten yet unburied; for, here and there, some out in the
moonlit open, other flecked with the fine shadow of the kikar trees,
lay corpse-like figures swathed in sheets, as if waiting for their
graves. There was no sound, no sign of life, not even where the
moonlight, slanting through the still, wide-set wings of the
drawing-room tent, showed the folds of a woman's dress, the daintiness
of a high-heeled shoe.
The rest of the figure was in shadow, though the light, in its last
effort against the darkness of the tent, claimed the pages of the open
book which lay on the sleeping girl's lap, and turned one of them into
a silver framing for the photograph of a child. So vivid was the light
that even the fine feminine writing beneath it showed in the dead
woman's verdict:
"_The Son of a King!_"
For the girl had been pondering over the strange chance which had
brought her, in her turn, within the influence of this nameless
kingship when, as she waited for her lover's return, she had fallen
asleep in her chair. And yet, as she had sat there, thinking, watching,
she had felt very wide awake indeed. Not with anxiety, however; that
had passed. In fact, as she followed in her mind what had gone before
Jim Forrester's quite prosaic start to walk three or four miles into
the wilderness on a moonlight night to be shown the bearings of a
buried city and possibly to be given proof positive that there were
ruins beneath the sand, she had been in grave doubt as to what had
actually occurred. Had there been conflict? Had love and jealousy and
hatred and resolve risen up and claimed them all? Surely not. Why,
indeed, should it be so? Though, doubtless, in her, in her lover, in
the goatherd, there was something held, as it were, in common, yet
which had struggled to be individual, separate.
And this had been most marked between the young Englishman and the
goatherd. Unaccountable as it was, she felt that in some mysterious
fundamental mind of hers these two were associated indissolubly--that
they stood towards her on the same plane. Nay, more! that it was the
consciousness of this which kept her calm, which overbore the
possibility of future danger, the memory of past conflict. What harm
could happen to the Son of a King or with the Son of a King?
The phrase had been on her lips as she fell asleep. It was on them as
she awoke and stood up suddenly, the open book sliding soundless from
her lap into the soft sand. But the phrase brought no comfort with it
now. Had she been asleep for long! Had her lover returned? Was it past
midnight?
The anxious questions surged up through the crust of calm before she
was half awake, and instinctively she was outside the tent in a moment
on her way towards her lover's, her rapid feet, shod in the dainty
high-heeled slippers, dimpling the shifting sand.
The coming dawn had sent cloud heralds to the west, and an advanced
pursuivant, drifting across the moon, shadowed all things faintly and
seemed to increase the silence.
She called softly; there was no reply, so she looked in. A glance told
her that her lover had not returned, and the light stealing in through
the uplifted screen showed her by the travelling-clock hung to the
tent-pole that it was already past three o'clock.
Three! What had happened--and what was to be done? For an instant the
ordinary inrush of anxiety made her think of rousing the camp, of
sending out search-parties; but the next brought her a curious
conviction that in this case danger lay in seeking outside help: a
certainty that in this matter she must stand alone, that in this
crisis--whatever it was--there must be but three alone--if, indeed,
there were three--herself, her lover, and this nameless Son of a King.
So, almost without a pause, the dimples left by her rapid feet were
curving towards the highest sand-wave within sight of the camp. Thence
she could watch the desert sea, and perhaps find him, even now, close
at hand. But once there, the next sand-wave attracted her as being a
better point of vantage, and so from wave to wave she flitted in her
white dress like some desert bird, leaving behind her a curved track of
dimples in the sliding sand, until a little wind, the herald blast of
the hurrying clouds overhead, crept low down over the world and swept
the dimples back into the old ripples.
"Khesroo!" she called, suddenly, for a shadow seemed beside hers in
that empty wilderness; but there was no answer.
"Jim!" she called again, uncertainly; but there was no reply. Yet she
was not frightened. She knew now, in that mysterious fundamental mind
of hers, that she alone was responsible, that she, and she only, could
solve the riddle. Khesroo had been right. If she wanted this thing, if
she had believed, if she had trusted, she would have gone before. And
now she must hurry, or it would be too late--wherefore or for what she
scarcely considered.
"Khesroo!" she called once more, and this time there was a faint
inflection of fear in her voice; for was that figure Khesroo, the
goatherd, or was it her lover? Or was it neither; but someone only of
whom she had dreamt as the Son of a King?
Should she go back? The wish struck her keenly, but she ignored it, and
went on. She must, she knew, have left the camp far behind her, and, if
she had kept the right direction, would soon be close on the spot where
that straight line of an arrow had startled her by its intrusion into
her dream of love.
If she had kept it! And surely she had, for behind her the east was
faintly lightening with the dawn. Yonder, therefore, in the dark of the
heralding clouds which had huddled upon the western horizon must lie
the domed shadows of the buried city.
"Khesroo!" she cried, instinctively, the very soul of her speaking,
"show it to me! For the sake of the woman who died, as women die for a
life of love, a love of life, show it to me!"
And then, behind her, she heard a voice chanting, as Khesroo, the
goatherd, had chanted, the call of guidance for the wanderers in the
desert. Yet the words were different; for these were they:
"Seekers for sleep, arise!
Your rest is done.
Go forth with weary eyes
To find your prize
In vain, in vain! To none
Will slumber have begun
Till from the heart of one
Desire dies."