In the Guardianship of God Part 13

Nagdeo sat gazing stupidly at his grandson's long length, at his fairer beauty; then suddenly he stood up.

That was it, of course!

And if that were so, then it were best to settle it before dawn, when folk might come prying. He bent curiously over the dead lad, then laid his hand on the dead heart.

"Go! Keeper of the Pa.s.s, to the Slumberers without fear. I, Nagdeo, will punish the intruder."

Half-an-hour after, he stood silently in his hut beside his still sleeping wife. The old woman, blind, deaf, near her end as it was, scarcely stirred as he drove his spear through her heart.

"I doubt thee not, Naole," he said inwardly, "unless a devil wronged thee; but thy son's son must be avenged. He must take no stranger's blood to the Slumberers."

But Herdasi, the lad's mother, was awake, and screamed.

"Hold thy peace, fool!" said the old man, fiercely, "if thou wouldst not proclaim thyself harlot. Thy son is dead--face downwards. It came not from me, nor from my son; so that of us which goes to join the Slumberers must be avenged on the vile spirit that took form within thee. Come out from under the bed, woman! if thou wouldst prove he got it not with thy knowledge. Oh! untrustworthy feminine!"

And after a pause the untrustworthy feminine did come out with a curious dignity.

"He got it not from me but from my love. Yet what matter if he be dead!" said Herdasi, and so died with her face to the foe to save her son's name. Since, if it was a devil's doing, none could blame the lad.

They found the old man sitting beside the two dead women when they came to tell him that the Keeper of the Pa.s.s had given his life for its safety.

"Yea, I know," replied Nagdeo, quietly. "I went and found him before dawn when he returned not. So I came home and slew these useless ones.

Since he was dead, and I am nigh death, and there was none to keep the untrustworthy feminine from wandering."

He adhered to this story steadfastly in the district magistrate's court, and when he was condemned to death made but one request--that he might be allowed to face it with the insignia of his office about him. So on the eve of his execution they gave the old man back his necklace of tiger claws, and told him he would be allowed to jingle his bells on his way to the scaffold. But when they came to rouse him in the morning he was lying dead, face upward; his arms, his chest, his throat all rent and ripped by those same tiger claws.

But there was not even a scratch upon the back of the last Keeper of the Pa.s.s.

THE PERFUME OF THE ROSE

"I think we ought to be going back to the others," said the girl.

She was a pretty, fair English girl, fresh as a rose in her dainty pink muslin dress, flounced as they wore them in the mutiny year--in three full flounces to the waist, like the corolla of a flower. And the lace sunshade she held tilted over her shoulder as a protection against the slanting rays of the afternoon sun added to her rose-likeness by its calyx of pale green lining.

"Ought we?" said the young Englishman who walked beside her, his hand clasping hers. They were a good-looking pair, pleasant to behold.

"What a bore; it is so jolly here."

The epithet was not happy, save as an expression of the speaker's frame of mind. For the garden into which these engaged lovers had wandered away from the gay party of English men and women who had taken possession of the marble summer-house in its centre for a picnic, or, as the natives call it, "a fool's dinner," was something more than jolly.

It was beautiful, this garden of a dead dynasty of kings past and gone like last year's roses.

But there were roses and to spare still within its high four-square walls that were hidden from each other by the burnished orange-groves, by the tall forest trees fringing its cross of wide marble aqueducts bordered by wide paths.

Such blossoming trees! The _kachnar_ flinging its bare branches, set thick with its geranium flowers, against the creamy feathers waving among the dense dark foliage of the _mangoes_, the _bakayun_ drooping its long lilac ta.s.sels beside the great gold ones of the _umultas_, and here and there its whole vitality lavished on a monstrous leaf or two, a huge flower or two, white, curved, solid, as if cut in cold marble, yet with a warm fragrance at its heart, a hill magnolia challenged the scent of the roses below.

Ineffectually, at least here in this square of the garden; for that cross of wide, empty aqueducts divided it into squares.

And this one was a square of roses--roses everywhere, even in the lower level of what in the old kingly days had been a marble-edged water-way, which now, half filled with soil, held more roses.

But they were all of one kind--the pink Persian rose, whose outer petals pale in the sunlight, whose rose of roses heart is full of an almost piercing perfume.

What wonder, when it is the otto of roses rose! It grew here for that set purpose in orderly lines, its grey green, velvety leaves almost hidden by its profusion of flowers.

And the scent of them filled the whole square of garden, where the air, still warm from the past noon, lay prisoned in that fringe of blossoming trees.

It seemed to fill the brain, also, with the quintessence of gladness, beauty, life, and love.

So His arm sought Her waist and their eyes met.

But only for a second; the next, Her blush matching Her flounces, She had drawn back, and He with an angry frown was glaring in the direction of the voice which had interrupted them.

It was a high, clear voice full of little trills and bubblings like a bird's, and it sang on incessantly, as if to give those two time to recover from their confusion. And as it sang, the Persian vowels seemed as piercingly sweet as the perfume into which they echoed.

"The rose-root takes earth's kisses for its meat, The rose-leaf makes its blush from the sun's heat, The rose-scent wakes-who knows from what thing sweet?

Who knows The secret of the perfume of the rose?"

As the song ended, a head showed above the tufted bushes. It was rather a fine head; bare of covering, its long grizzled hair parted in the middle lying in a smooth outward curve on the high narrow forehead, then sweeping in an equal inside curve between the ear and throat. So much, no more, was to be seen above the roses, save, for a moment, a long-fingered, delicate brown hand hiding the face in its _salaam_.

"Who the _shaitan_ are you?" asked the young man fiercely in Hindustani.

The head and hand met in a second _salaam_, then the face showed; rather a fine face, preternaturally grave, but with a cunning comprehension in its gravity.

"I am Hushmut the essence-maker, _Huzoor_," was the reply. "I belong to the garden, and, being hidden from the n.o.ble people in my occupation of plucking roses for my still, I sang to let them know."

The young Englishman gave a half-embarra.s.sed laugh.

"What does he say?" asked the girl. She had only been two months in India, and these had been spent in falling in love.

"He thought we might like to know he was there, that's all--a joke, isn't it?" answered her lover. She smiled, and so holding each other's hands boldly they stood facing that head above the roses.

It nodded cheerfully.

"The _Huzoors_ are doubtless about-to-marry persons," came the voice.

"It is not always so, even with the _Huzoors_. But this being different, if they require essences for the bridal let them come to Hushmut. Rose, jasmine, orange, sandal, lemon gra.s.s. I make them all in their season. Yea, even 'wylet'[4] which the _memi_ love. It is not really _banafsha_, _Huzoor_; they grow not in the plains. I make it from the _babul_ blossom, and none could tell the difference. Mayhap there _is_ none, since He who makes the perfume of the flowers in His still, may send the same to many blossoms, as I send my essences to many lovers; even the n.o.ble people!"

[Footnote 4: Violet.]