Voices in the Night Part 25

This was ripping, simply ripping. He had not had to use the adjective for months, and with it came back a world of recollection--of idle harmless larks, of boyish mischief. It almost seemed as if the figure understood, for a gleam of pure mischief came to the black eyes, as Sobrai stood up also. In truth she found it ripping also, the only bit of fun she had had in a fortnight's freedom!

And behind No. 34 B Company's red coat some fresh spectators had gathered, curious, surprised.

A sudden dare-devil delight seized on the girl, her voice rose to its fullest pitch, she began to dance. Not with the posturings and suggestions of the bazaar, but with dignified gestures and scarcely perceptible swayings suited to her heavy robes, and to the words she sang. And all but her eyes were still covered by the green and the stars. And now a rushlight or two, caught hastily from the neighbouring shops, came to show more distinctly that graceful figure, and a voice or two in English called out to friends behind to come and see.

The bazaar was re-filling; but it was forgetting other things in her--Sobrai!

The thought, the unmistakable admiration, drove caution to the right-about. Let Miss Leezie come and see, if she chose! See that the apprentice had been right, that it was amus.e.m.e.nt people wanted!

For the present, indeed, it seemed so.

How long the novelty might have kept familiarity in check, it is impossible to say; for there was Miss Leezie horrified, indignant, forcing her way shrilly through a gathering of red-coats sufficient to ruin the good name of her house, should it be seen by any of the authorities.

And Heaven only knew whether some might not fancy that bazaar as a short-cut home!

'You let 'er be--she's worth ten o' your lot,' remonstrated more than one voice; but No. 34 B Company had got further in admiration than that. Sobrai, for the time, had captured his imagination. It was vice against virtue, or at any rate dull sensuality against romance.

Perhaps Sobrai saw something of this in his eyes. Anyhow, with a fierce exultation, she threw back her veil, and the hour-gla.s.s drum, twirled above her head, sent its message out over the cl.u.s.tering crowd.

So it came to pa.s.s that Lady Arbuthnot, driving home, saw in the flesh what she had seen in her mind's eye--the woman's figure centring a circle of eager men's faces.

'Stand back! clear the way! _Hut! Hut!_' came the orders of policemen, recalled to a sense of duty. Then came a louder one, as an inspector on his way back rode up to see what caused the block.

In an instant there was an uproar, a boy's voice, 'Don't you touch her, you----' a scuffle, a blow, a fall, a girl's shriek.

Finally there was a lull, with two red-coats, under the orders of a pa.s.sing officer, holding back a third, Miss Leezie protesting innocence, and a girl, still defiant, shrinking back into the darkest corner of the narrow entrance.

'She doth not belong to me,' shrilled Miss Leezie. 'She comes from the city. I am not responsible. I will prove her thief.'

'It is a lie! I am no thief,' gasped Sobrai, shrinking still farther from the policeman, who stepped up on to the plinth, while the red-coat, held by the other two, struggled madly.

'Oh! dash it all,' muttered the officer to himself, 'this can't be allowed. Sergeant, send your prisoner to the quarter-guard under escort, and see that every one returns to barracks at once. Constable, arrest both women.'

Miss Leezie fell on her knees and shrieked.

'_Huzoor!_ I can prove her thief. She hath pearls like the Lady-_sahib's_ pearls. She offered them to me as a bribe to take her into my house this very day, and I, dissembling, said I would see, and kept the pearls to show the police. I have them. She is thief for sure!'

'Touch me not! I am no thief; they are mine!' panted Sobrai as the policeman dragged her forward. Then, as the sense of indignity came to her, she fought desperately. 'I am no thief--I am no common woman.

Touch me not, I am Sobrai of the Nawab's house! The pearls are his. I am princess, I say? Will none help me? Oh! Lateef, Lateef! say it is true!'

She had broken from her captor with sudden irresistible pa.s.sion, and thrown herself at the feet of some one who had newly pushed his way into the crowd; so, her hands clasping a pair of thin legs, she looked in frantic appeal to the thin face of the kite-maker.

But Lateefa knew his part of hanger-on to n.o.bility better than to admit anything derogatory to its honour. He essayed to pa.s.s on with his quaint cry--

'Use eyes and choose, Use and choose.'

It was, perhaps, an unfortunately well-known one; and many of those present, seeing the girl's brocades and remembering her gestures, hesitated; while one said--

'He is Lateefa of Jehan's house for sure. She hath his name pat. Mayhap she says truth!'

The sergeant of police pulled out another pair of handcuffs with evident joy.

'There is room for both in the lock-up,' he said cheerfully.

Lateefa gave a jerk to the string he held, which sent the single kite, which he always reserved as his trade-mark, skimming downwards in the gloom, to rise again higher than ever.

'Mayhap! I am Lateef, for sure, as G.o.d made me. And she is what the devil made her--a woman!'

There was something of Lateefa's philosophy in the police-officer's words when, an hour or two later, he called round at Government House to say that four pearls, apparently belonging to Lady Arbuthnot's string, had been found in the Lal bazaar in a dancing-girl's house.

'The house where I saw that girl as I pa.s.sed?' asked Grace quickly. She felt, somehow, that it must be so; that there was a fate in it.

'I expect so,' answered the police-officer, then he paused. 'It is likely to be a troublesome case, sir,' he continued, turning to Sir George, 'for she claims to belong to the Nawab s house. And as if that wasn't enough, it seems that one of the soldiers knocked a man down.

Just knocked him down as one would anybody, you know. He seemed none the worse for half an hour, when he suddenly went out. Spleen, of course. I wonder when Tommy will remember that half the natives about him ought to be in gla.s.s cases!'

Sir George Arbuthnot frowned too. 'It is most unfortunate; especially just now. These women are really----' he paused and looked apologetically at his wife. 'However, we shall have no more of this sort of thing. Both regiments go out to Moradki as soon as we can get the carriage together. We settled that finally. The desert will do them good!'

CHAPTER XI

THE SPIRIT OF KINGS AND SLAVES

Jerry Arbuthnot, in his smart little riding-suit, was seated on the top step of John Ellison's tomb, his pony, meanwhile, held by a syce, trying to s.n.a.t.c.h a bite of long gra.s.s growing close to the bottom one.

Between the two, forming a pyramid of which the child's dainty little figure made the apex, were several other figures. First of all, bareheaded, eminently respectable in a clean suit of drill, was Jan-Ali-shan, seated sideways a step below, his face towards Jerry.

Below again--crouched up knees and elbows--was Budlu the caretaker, his eyes on Jan-Ali-shan's; and beside him, resplendent in red coat and gold lace, the Mohammedan _chupra.s.si_ told off to accompany his little master on his morning rides. For the dew still lay heavy on the gra.s.s, like h.o.a.r-frost, so that the hoopoes, hopping over it in the search for food, left greener trails behind them to lattice the grey glisten.

'Then,' came the child's clear, high voice, 'you are quite the most youngest hero of the lot--sir.'

He hesitated over the t.i.tle; finally gave it, palpably, as a tribute to the heroism, perhaps to the name. Jan-Ali-shan brushed a faint speck of dust from his white drill. 'That is so, sir. I was but a two month when I done the job, an' that don't leave much margin for honest compet.i.tion. It runs to a mono-polly; that's what it do, sir, a regular mono-polly.' He tailed off into

'Polly, my Polly; she is so jolly.

The jolliest craft in the world!'

which he carolled cheerfully, making the hoopoes c.o.c.k their crests and hold their heads on one side to listen.

Jerry sate looking at them thoughtfully. 'I was afwaid you must be, 'cos, you see, it's such ages ago,' he said at last, argumentatively.

'Ages an' ages. I wasn't even near borned then. How much older'n me d'you s'ppose you are, sir?'

It was Jan-Ali-shan's turn to look at Heaven's messenger-birds thoughtfully, and admire their golden crowns. Then he drew his white drill cuffs down over his tanned wrists, as if to hide as much of himself as was possible.

'Older?' he echoed. 'Why-six-an'-thirty year, I should say; six-an'-thirty year o' constant wickedness--that's about it, sir--o'

constant wickedness, please G.o.d!' He hovered over a penitential response in a minor key, and then nodded at the child cheerfully. 'But don't you fret, sir. There ain't no call for it. You're all right--your time'll come; only you must grow a bit more, or you wouldn't never fill a grave like this--would 'e, Budlu?'