A Thunder of Trumpets Page 6

  “I have not seen you at the palace or in the village,” she said. “Do you live nearby?”

  “Not far away,” he answered. “But here comes Sir Hugh looking for you.”

  She saw the party an instant later—Sir Hugh, a tall, long-legged Englishman whose bony dependable face was now creased with worry, and several stately native officers of Jhundra Singh’s court. They saw her, and Sir Hugh shouted and came galloping toward her; she felt a warm little glow under her heart as she saw the worry erased from his face by a glad light. But she knew exactly what he’d say and do.

  “Jove, I’m glad you’re safe!” Sir Hugh exclaimed—exactly as she had known he would. And he caught her hands with an eager, awkward tenderness, and then let go of them as if fearful of hurting her. Mentally she sighed, wishing he had shown some of the emotion she knew he felt—such as grabbing her and crushing her in a spasm of relief, and then shaking her for riding off alone. But his reproof was limited to a gentle: “Really, old girl, you shouldn’t go running about like this alone, you know.”

  “You might have had cause for worry, if it hadn’t been for this gentleman—” she began, turning, then stopped. Ranjit was nowhere in sight. “Where is he?” she cried.

  “Who?”

  “The—the man! Ranjit! The man who saved me from the tiger!”

  “Tiger!” Sir Hugh convulsively loosened his collar. “My word! You don’t mean to tell me—”

  “Yes, a man-eater! My horse ran away and threw me off and the tiger came, and then Ranjit came—and drove him off,” she concluded lamely, realizing how fantastic it would sound to say: “He looked the tiger in the eye, and the tiger pulled his foot!”

  “By Jove, that was sporting of him!” quoth Sir Hugh. “I must find him and thank him.”

  “Yes, of course! But let’s go on to the palace now. Aunt Cecelia will be worried.”

  Bernice had an idea that no one would find Ranjit if Ranjit did not wish to be found, and this seemed to be one of the times. Besides, she had a strange reluctance for sharing him with Sir Hugh; she was like a child clinging selfishly to the possession of a glorious secret.

  The native gentlemen came up, with many speeches of congratulation, respectful and beautifully enunciated, and then they all rode back to the palace where Aunt Cecelia would be waiting and provide the scolding, but it would merely be boresome, coming from her. Bernice sighed, realizing that Sir Hugh would never bully her, even after they were married—if they ever were. She caught herself up with a jerk and glanced at the beautifully groomed native officers who rode so magnificently on each side of her. They were men, but to her they must be merely stuffed uniforms, forever presenting only the formal stiff-starch side of their personalities to her. There was fire and spirit in them all, under the gold braid and polish, but, she knew with a sigh, she’d never see it. The British had taught natives how to treat white women—dammit! A delicious little thrill ran through her at the thought of Ranjit; it was with a start that she realized that he would be considered a native by Sir Hugh and Aunt Cecelia. She rebelled at the implication; Ranjit could not be classified according to role and rule—he was Ranjit.

  So they came back primly and respectably to the great rambling palace on the hill with its towers rising amidst the sprawling luxuriance of the flaming gardens that overlooked the green foamy ocean of jungle on all sides except one. That was the side toward the squalid village. Bernice felt as never before the artificialities of her existence; the pleasant lies built about the gardens of her soul and her beauty to keep out of the jungle—or to keep her out of the jungle, which? Suddenly she wanted to cry out to Sir Hugh: “For God’s sake if you want me as badly as you say you do, snatch me up and ride away into the green wilderness with me and conventions be damned!” She said: “It was so nice of you to come looking for me, Hugh!”

  “Could I have done anything else?” he asked with a humbleness that made her want to kick his shins. And then they were at the palace court, and Aunt Cecilia was there, a tall, stately woman, with finely chiseled aristocratic features, beautiful and passionless as those of a classical statue, and the poise attained by forty years of repressing and denying the natural instincts—required by position in society.

  Even Jhundra Singh roused himself out of his maze of worries and perplexities to express vague satisfaction for her safe return—a small, pot-bellied man with pouches under his eyes, and nervous hands. He had been educated in England, and he hated his principality and all the people in it, the priests who whined and bullied by turns, the people who cheered him one day and cursed him the next, and the Government which alternately stroked his back with the steel hand in the velvet glove, and, when he wanted to do something merely because he wanted to do it, doubled that hand into an enormous fist which it waggled politely but definitely under his shrinking nose. Just now he wanted to get hold of enough money to forget his frustrations in a prolonged spree in Paris; Sir Hugh offered him the means, as payment for oil concessions to be granted to Sir Hugh’s company—the mission that had brought the Englishman to Sawlpore. He lusted for the lucre Sir Hugh dangled before him; but the Government approved the concessions, and that made him suspicious. And there were other factors. Already a delegation of Muhammadans had waited on him to protest the invasion of the infidels—as they always protested about everything, particularly when it was none of their business. And the Hindu priests had their oar in, too; seeing no chance of getting a slice of the melon themselves, they objected on religious grounds.

  Bernice spoke of the tiger, and Jhundra Singh hoped it would eat the high priest. She spoke of her benefactor.

  “A tall, handsome, well-built man in a white European suit and turban—” she began.

  “Ranjit Bhatarka,” he said. “A Yogi! So the people call him. With a Muhammadan turban! But he wears what he wishes, does what he pleases. How fortunate some people are! He is above caste. The Hindus think he is a holy man and fear him. Even the Muhammadans concede his holiness, and fear him even more. I don’t like him myself. He looks right through you—”

  “Perhaps he could persuade the priests that it’s all right for me to have those oil concessions,” suggested Sir Hugh.

  Bernice mentally planted a trim boot in the seat of his riding-breeches. A Yogi wangling an oil lease! Ye gods! And they call Americans materialistic!

  “He wouldn’t do it,” snarled the prince. “Never interferes in anything. I’m surprized he didn’t let the tiger eat the memsahib and call it Karma. He’s the sort of a damned—”

  “Well?” inquired Sir Hugh.

  “Nothing,” muttered Jhundra Singh, sneaking a wary look around. “The fellow has uncanny powers. Animals obey him. The natives say he’s hundreds of years old. They say he can read people’s minds. I don’t want to offend him.”

  Even as she smiled at the natives’ superstition, Bernice’s feminine vanity fixed itself on what Jhundra said about Ranjit’s not interfering in human affairs, ordinarily. That meant that in Ranjit’s sight she was not ordinary. Looking out the palace window that night into a garden turned black and silver by the moonlight, she gave herself over to exotic fantasies in which Ranjit moved mistily but definitely. Once she thought she saw him looking over the wall toward her window, but the next instant the figure resolved itself into a shadow cast by a palm tree whose fronds quivered in the slight breeze.

  Then she sank into sleep, and presently she dreamed. She saw herself kneeling on a shining floor of many-colored mosaics, carefully building toy houses, such as children build, out of gleaming ivory blocks. Ranjit stood above her with his arms folded and a smile on his dark face; the smile was neither scornful nor cynical, but gentle, kindly, perhaps a little sad. She knelt, looking at him, and her toy houses toppled to the floor in gleaming ruin, but she still clung to the smooth cubes in her hands. Ranjit’s smile wavered; in a sort of horror she saw uncertainty and weakness pass like a shadow across that face that had seemed strong as a carven bronze. But in that instant a burst o
f blinding light enveloped all so she could see no more, and she could only hear a sound like a child crying and it was her own voice. It was at that instant that she woke.

  It was full day. The dreaming stillness of Indian morning wrapped the world. She lay there for a moment, feeling like one newly born. The uncertain tag ends of thoughts and surmises drew together, merged and crystallized. Fears and doubts left her, and an understanding of her desire hung like a nebulous crystal ball before her. Without calling her maid, she rose, dressed and went out into the garden, straight toward the spot where she had thought to see Ranjit the night before. There was a little gate there, which fastened with a bronze dragon claw. She opened it and went out into the dew-blazing glory of the forest. She felt no surprize when she saw Ranjit standing there smiling, with his arms folded.

  “I hoped you would come,” he said simply.

  “I knew you would come,” she answered.

  Without another word they turned and walked into the forest.

  “Sir Hugh wishes to meet and thank you,” she said.

  “He has already,” he answered. “We met last night, near the village. He has given his permission for me to show you the places of interest in the vicinity.”

  “I am afraid his affairs are not going well at present,” she murmured absently. Sir Hugh seemed part of an old life, separated from this new life by the immeasurable gulf of a single night; everything seemed to assume new proportions this flaming morning. It did not seem strange to her that she should be walking through the forest before breakfast with a man the natives called a Yogi.

  That day was the beginning of many days; in later years when Bernice tried to recall them in detail, those details merged obscurely; the memory of those days became a drifting, many-colored haze in which nothing stood out clearly except Ranjit’s strong face, looming like a carven god above a morning mist, and the ocean-like intonations of his deep, bell-like voice.

  There were long walks in the forest, when they strolled side by side, and she never grew weary, as if some of his incredible strength was transmitted to her; rides—at least she rode, while he swung along beside her, with the effortless ease of a great cat. And all the while the mellow waves of his golden voice beat on her consciousness, tranquil, gigantic, all but engulfing, like waves out of a sea beyond her ken. The imagery of his speech, the strange wisdom of his words, the cosmic import of his sayings, these things faded the instant she had left him, became dim and often inexplicable, as if her consciousness were too feeble to retain their lasting impression. But the quality of his tones remained, resounding in her ears when she was alone, or even when listening to the trivial prattle of others; reverberating through her dreams. His voice was less like a human voice than an emanation of power, a surge and flow from some colossal source beyond the scope of her comprehension.

  She remembered little of their actual conversation. While she was with him she understood; each word, each phrase, each sentence stood out clean-cut and distinct, diamond-clear and bright. Through his eyes she saw the world anew, from the grass blades glistening in the morning dew to the golden face of the full moon thrusting up through a sheath of silvery mist. Deep in the jungle, where creepers hung from the arching branches like green pythons, he showed her ruins of cities that were old when Rome was young: broken domes thrusting up through the trees, cracked pavings half-hidden in the jungle grasses, crumbling walls that were once battlemented ramparts that housed the treasure of kings. Under the witchery of his magic words she saw the glorious, glamorous, tragic and terrible pageant of the past move before her in living colors. She sensed the unfolding of mysteries and secrets, vaguely realized that she was hearing and seeing things that the historians of the world would give years off their lives to learn. But when she was alone the vivid color of his words slipped from her, merging in a vague, many-colored mist; only the golden resonance of his voice filled her ears, like the echo of the sea heard in a seashell.

  Once she saw him lift a living cobra from a ruined wall with his naked hand and place it gently among the bushes, and it did not seem strange that the reptile did not harm him.

  The ordinary people about her seemed unreal, though. Their speech sounded hollow, their actions were meaningless. They seemed blind to the change in her; blind to the fact that Ranjit was the cause of the change. Sir Hugh, struggling with business difficulties, saw no more than the others. Vaguely he knew that Ranjit was “showing Bernice about” a great deal. That there might be anything between them more than respectful courtesy on one side and impersonal courtesy on the other, never occurred to him. Aunt Cecelia, so wise in her own plane, sensed nothing; caught like a beast in the cage of inhibitions, beliefs and conventions pertaining to her place in the scheme of life, she was unable to see anything above or below her own level.

  In after years memory of the hours spent with Ranjit merged into a myriad-colored shimmering of glory. But now those hours were the only realities in a dimming world.

  She sensed its dimming. She sensed the opening of gates into a world whose very existence she had not guessed. She sensed that the man beside her moved on heights far above her; blindly she groped to stand beside him, and she felt his power lifting and guiding her, but each time she felt herself sink back again to the commonplace. The sense of rising was not altogether pleasant; it was like being torn from a petty but safe refuge and hurled naked into a dizzy cosmos where titanic winds roared and thundered.

  Stand up naked in the storm! he seemed to say. Shake back your mane and face the thunders and the giant winds that roar between the worlds. Face the rush of events, the gigantic Truths, the dizzying realities. Be one with the tempests, the roaring ocean, and the swirling constellations. His hand was on her wrist, guiding and sustaining, but she felt her path as swaying and uncertain as a bridge suspended from star to star in the roaring, cloudy gulfs.

  This was only one, and that the most disturbing side of their relationship. These things she felt vaguely, sensed rather than thought, as one senses the thunder of the surf before it is seen or really heard. For the most part, she saw Ranjit as a virile and romantic figure, god-like in beauty and certitude, who roused all the basic feminine in her.

  Their relationship was mental only; he had never so much as kissed her. Yet she felt at times as if he had enveloped her whole being, incorporated her into his own personality; she felt herself wavering on the verge of a surrender so complete it terrified her. And at such times she sensed a deliberate curbing of his power, as a strong but gallant fighter curbs his strength lest it overwhelm a weaker antagonist.

  Absorbed in him, she paid little attention to what went on about her. With others she smiled, voiced the conventional trivialities, and mechanically played the part she had always played. Sir Hugh did not sense that she was daily drawing away from him. A bit obtuse, as Anglo-Saxons are likely to be in matters not concerning business, he did not notice her abstraction. He had other things to worry him, and with an Englishman or American, business must always come before love. He seemed no nearer the possession of those concessions than he was at first. The deviousness of Jhundra Singh maddened him, though he practiced the iron control and patience of the true Englishman. He did not realize that Jhundra Singh was as helpless as himself. The prince could no more come out squarely on the issue—any issue—than he could fly. He veered and shifted like a weather vane, taking one stand one day and its opposite the next, but he did so only because he had to. A thousand generations of shifty and subtle sires held him in a grip of heredity as unyielding as an iron cage. Of necessity he approached his goal obliquely, and through a maze of blind alleys, detours and meanderings that made Sir Hugh clench his fists in his fight against the insane desire to kill the man.

  And the prince had his troubles. Fear and greed all but tore him asunder; fear that Sir Hugh might lose patience and withdraw his offer; fear that he, Jhundra Singh, might give way too soon, before Sir Hugh had reached the limit of what he was able and willing to pay.

&nbs
p; The priests opposed the granting of the concessions. He suspected business interests rival to Sir Hugh’s company were bribing them. He threw this accusation in their faces and they stood on their bitter dignity and spoke to him sternly about sacrilege and the wrath of the gods until he wept with fury and chewed the cushions of his royal divan. He did not believe in the gods, but he feared them. The priests harangued the common man at length, and the common man listened without comprehension and with much pious passion. Conch shells blared in the temples and natives gathered on the streets in impassioned groups. Hindus and Muhammadans broke each others’ heads without rhyme or reason, but with passionate zeal.

  It was on the very day when the prince, greed defeating fear at last, summoned Sir Hugh to a hasty audience, that Ranjit said to Bernice: “We can go no further in this manner.”

  They were standing within the fringe of the jungle; there was a scent of spices on the soft vagrant breeze. In later years that scent was to recur to Bernice in strange places, bringing with it a blind, aching wistfulness.

  “What do you mean?” She knew what he meant; he knew she knew.

  “I am in love with you,” he said, his voice vibrant with a strange awe. “It is amazing—inexplicable—but it is so.”

  “Is it so amazing that anyone should fall in love with me?” she asked.

  “Amazing that I should fall in love with anyone. I thought that was a madness I had left in the lowlands of development, generations ago.”

  “Generations?” She stared at him, startled. “What do you mean by that?”

  He had been about to speak, but now he paused at the questioning, disturbed look in her eyes. For a long minute he studied her, and he shook his head.