Bootea's eyes glistened like stars when, lowering a hand, Barlow said:
"Put a foot upon mine, Gulab, and I'll swing you up."
When they were on the road she said; "I saw them. It is as the runner
said, war--is it so, Sahib?"
"The Captain says that he goes to collect revenue, but it may be that
he spoke a lie, for it is said that a man of the land of the Five
Rivers, which is the Punjaub, has five ways of telling a tale, and but
one of them is the truth and comes last."
The girl pondered over this for a little, and then asked; "Does the
Sahib think perhaps it is war against his people?"
That was just what was in Barlow's mind since he had seen the big gun
going forth at night; that perhaps the plot that was just a whisper,
fainter than the hum of a humming bird's wing, was moving with swift
silent velocity.
"Why do you ask that question? Have you heard from lips--perhaps
loosened by wine or desire--aught of this?"
When she remained without answer, Barlow tapped his fingers lightly
upon her shoulder, saying, "Tell me, girl."
"I have heard nothing of war," she said. "There was a something though
that men whispered in the dark."
"What was it?"
"It was of the Chief of the Pindaris."
She felt the quivering start that ran through Barlow's body; but he
said quietly: "With the Pindaris there is always trouble. Something of
robbery--of a raid, was it?"
"I will listen again to those that whisper in the dark," she answered,
"and perhaps if it concerns you, for your protection, I will tell."
"I hope those men didn't fall in with my two chaps," Barlow said,
rather voicing his thoughts than in the way of speaking to the girl.
"The two who rode--they were the Captain Sahib's servants?"
Barlow started. "Yes, they were: I suppose I can trust you."
"And the Sahib is troubled? Perhaps it was a message for the Sahib
that they carried."
"I don't know," he answered, evasively. "I was thinking that perhaps
they might be messengers, for our sepoys are not stationed here, and
come but on such errands."
"And if they were lulled, and the message stolen, it would cause
trouble?"
She felt him tremble as he looked down into her eyes.
"I don't know. But the messages of a Raj are not for the ears of men
to whom they have not been sent."
Barlow had an intuition that the girl's words were not prompted by idle
curiosity. He was possessed of a sudden gloomy impression that she
knew something of the two men who rode. And it was strange that they
had not been seen upon either of the roads. The officer spoke of them
frankly, and not as a man hiding something.
Suddenly he took a firm resolve, perhaps a dangerous one; not dangerous
though if his men had really gone through.
"Gulab," he said,--and with his hand he turned her face up by the chin
till their eyes were close together,--"if the two bore a message for
me, and it was stolen, I would be like that one you loved was lost."
The beautiful face swung from his palm and he could hear her gasping.
"You know something?" he said, and he caressed the smooth black tresses.
"I did not see them, Sahib."
They rode in silence for half a mile and then she said, "Perhaps,
Sahib, Bootea can help you--if the message is lost."
"And you will, girl?"
"I will, Sahib; even if I die for doing it, I will."
His arm tightened about her with a shrug of assuring thankfulness, and
she knew that this man trusted her and was not sorry of her burden.
Little child-dreams floated through her mind that the silver-faced moon
would hang there above and light the world forever,--for the moon was
the soul of the god Purusha whose sacrificed body had created the
world,--and that she would ride forever in the arms of this fair-faced
god, and that they were both of one caste, the caste that had as mark
the sweet pain in the heart.
And Barlow was sometimes dropping the troubled thought of the missing
order and the turmoil that would be in the Council of the Governor
General when it became known, to mutter inwardly: "By Jove! if the
chaps get wind of this, that I carried the Gulab throughout a moonlit
night, there'll be nothing for me but to send in my papers. I'll be
drawn;--my leg'll be pulled." And he reflected bitterly that nothing
on earth, no protestation, no swearing by the gods, would make it
believed as being what it was. He chuckled once, picturing the face of
the immaculate Elizabeth while she thrust into him a bodkin of moral
autopsy, should she come to know of it.
Bootea thought he had sighed, and laying her slim fingers against his
neck said, "The Sahib is troubled."
"I don't care a damn!" he declared in English, his mind still on the
personal trail.
Seeing that she, not understanding, had taken the sharp tone as a
rebuke, he said, "If I had been alone, Gulab, I'd have been troubled
sorely, but perhaps the gods have sent you to help out."
"Ah, yes, God pulled our paths together. And if Bootea is but a
sacrifice that will be a favour, she is happy."
If the girl had been of a white race, in her abandon of love she would
have laid her lips against his, but the women of Hind do not kiss.
The big plate of burnished silver slid, as if pushed by celestial
fingers, across the azure dome toward the loomed walls of the Ghats
that it would cross to dip into the sea, the Indian Ocean, and mile
upon mile was picked from the front and laid behind by the grey as he
strode with untiring swing toward his bed that waited on the high
plateau of Poona.
The night-jars, even the bats, had stilled their wings and slept in the
limbs of the neem or the pipal, and the air that had borne the soft
perfume of blossoms, and the pungent breath of jasmine, had chilled and
grown heavy from the pressure of advancing night.
The two on the grey rode sleepily; the Gulab warm and happy, cuddled in
the protecting cloak, and Barlow grim, oppressed by fatigue and the
mental strain of feared disaster. Now the muscles of the horse rippled
in heavier toil, and his hoofs beat the earth in shorted stride; the
way was rising from the plain as it approached the plateau that was
like an immense shelf let into the wall of the world above the lowland;
a shelf that held jewels, topaz and diamonds, that glinted their red
and yellow lights, and upon which rested giant pearls, the moonlight
silvering the domes and minarets of white palaces and mosques of Poona.
The dark hill upon which rested the Temple of Parvati threw its black
outline against the sky, and like a burnished helmet glowed the golden
dome beneath which sat the alabaster goddess. At their feet, strung
out between forbidding banks of clay and sand, ran a molten stream of
silver, the sleepy waters of the Muta.
"By Jove!" and Barlow, suddenly cognisant that he had practically
arrived at the end of his ride, that the windmill of Don Quixote stood
yonder on the hill, realised that in a sense, so far as Bootea was
concerned, he had just drifted. Now he asked: "I'm afraid, little
girl, your Sahib is somewhat of a fool, for I have not asked where you
want me to take you."
"Yonder, Sahib," and her eyes were turned toward the jewelled hill.
As they rose to the hilltop that was a slab of rock and sand carrying a
city, he asked: "Where shall I put you down that will be near your
place of rest, your friends?"
"Is there a memsahib in the home of the Sahib?" she asked.
"No, Bootea, not so lucky--nobody but servants."
"Then I will go to the bungalow of the Sahib."
"Confusion!" he exclaimed in moral trepidation.
Bootea's hand touched his arm, and she turned her face inward to hide
the hot flush that lay upon it. "No, Sahib, not because of Bootea; one
does not sleep in the lap of a god."
"All right, girl," he answered--"sorry."
As the grey plodded tiredly down the avenue of trees, a smooth road
bordered by a hedge of cactus and lanten, Barlow turned him to the
right up a drive of broken stone, and dropping to the ground at the
verandah of a white-waited bungalow, lifted the girl down, saying:
"Within it can be arranged for a rest place for you."
A _chowkidar_, lean, like a mummified mendicant, rose up from a
squeaking, roped _charpoy_ and salaamed.
"Take the horse to the stable, Jungwa, and tell the _syce_ to undress
him. Remember to keep that monkey tongue of yours between your teeth
for in my room hangs a bitter whip. It is a lie that I have not ridden
home alone," Barlow commanded.