Banked Fires Part 28

"And be awakened by a splendid prince?" she laughed, entering into the spirit of his raillery.

"I can picture him tearing his way through with the instinct to kiss you, so as to learn the true meaning of Life! You don't need enchantment to turn you into the Sleeping Beauty; you are that now. It would be interesting to see what would happen were the Prince to arrive."

"He arrived when I met Ray," she said colouring richly.

"You think he did, but that was in your dreams. You are not awake yet, so your experience has yet to come." He avoided her eyes while he spoke and left her puzzled to follow his thought.

"I cannot understand you. Why should you say I am asleep?"

"Because it is written in your eyes."

"Then I am a somnambulist?" she laughed.

"Yes. A dangerous one," and they laughed together.

"Who is going to wake me?" she coquetted with a pretty drooping of her lashes.

Dalton stole a look at her pouting lips, thinking he would defer the reply to her question for a while. She put him in mind of a child consciously playing with fire, yet expecting to escape unscorched. Of course, she would have to learn her mistake. She knew perfectly that nine out of ten men would be on fire with pa.s.sion for her under such intimate circ.u.mstances, and reveal the fact without loss of time; she was not quite so sound asleep as not to be aware of her own beauty and its spell, yet she dared to experiment on men and rouse their emotions.

Let her, then, take the consequences!

Soon, Joyce found herself in front of the ruined palace, standing on higher ground, its dome and minarets visible for miles in a setting of dense foliage and drooping palms. It had been built in the sixteenth century for heathen wors.h.i.+p, and subsequently converted by a Mohammedan grandee into a residence for his own accommodation and that of his harem. To Joyce it looked an irregular ma.s.s of ruined masonry, roofless in parts and overgrown with jungle. The portion which had been reserved to the women formed a separate wing which at one time had been enclosed by a high wall, but which was now reduced to mounds of fallen brick-work and shattered concrete. "The place looks almost as though it had suffered bombardment," she said, "how desolate and weird!"

"I could tell you a romance connected with that wing which savours of the _Arabian Nights_," said Dalton. "Want to hear it?"

"How do you know so much more about it than any one else?" she asked, accompanying him gingerly over the fallen masonry to gain a better view of the harem. All around them the undergrowth was dense and matted; date-palms reared themselves from thickets and mingled their drooping branches with tamarind trees, the p.r.i.c.kly _babul_, and the wild _jamun_[16].

[Footnote 16: Indian blackberry.]

"I make it my business to know all about every place I live in," he returned.

"Tell me the romance," she commanded.

Dalton spread the rug on a gra.s.sy mound, and when they had seated themselves, he began his tale in true Oriental fas.h.i.+on, with a charm of style that captured her fancy.

"Once upon a time, when the land belonged to those who could hold it by the sword, a rich Nawab built himself a costly residence out of a heathen temple. Behold the residence!"--with a wave of his hand. "And with him dwelt his retinue and his sycophants, his child-wife, and the women who contributed to her needs and his pleasures.

"Alas, for masculine confidence! In a moment of weakness, this great prince took into his service a young warrior of Rajputana as the chief of his bodyguard--a Hindu by religion and of exclusive caste--because of his great strength and the beauty of his youth and person. This one, tradition tells, conceived a burning pa.s.sion for the favourite wife of his master, having seen her face by chance, unveiled, at the bars that protected her window;--a girl of extreme loveliness, and as slender as a wand, whom custom prevented from disclosing her features to the eyes of men who were not her near relatives. She had therefore been closely guarded within the harem walls in company with other women of her lord's establishment, and left to find entertainment for herself in the priceless jewels that adorned her person.

"Every day the Rajput, by name Ramjitsu Singh, would pa.s.s and repa.s.s below the high wall that enclosed the women's quarters, hoping again to see, by favour of the G.o.ds, this beauteous vision whose wondrous charms were the talk of the bazaars; their fame having been spread by her female attendants. Small was she, they said, with eyes like a gazelle's, and lips of the redness of ripe berries. Her hands and her feet were the hands and feet of a babe, so slender were they, and soft; and the hair of her head could have robed her.

"One day, the Rajput's patience was rewarded by a sight of the beautiful face which made his senses swim as in a sea of delight. She stood again, unveiled, at the bars of her window, and gazed down at him with great sadness and yearning. Like a bird in its cage she looked upon the free world with longing, and sighed. The foolish one!--The faithless one!"

"How can you call her foolish and faithless?" Joyce interrupted indignantly.

"That is how the Indian story-teller speaks of her."

"It was only natural. Think of her youth and the conditions to which she was obliged to conform!"

"Well, see what happened. Are you interested?"

"I am thrilled. Go on!"

"Thereafter, the Rajput neither ate nor slept till he had devised a plan for carrying her away; for what are laws to lovers? or bolts and bars?

Neither caste nor creed can hold a man back whose soul is on fire for a woman." He paused to allow his words to take effect.

"How very romantic!" laughed Joyce, unmoved. "It is like a poem, as unreal as it is picturesque!"

"Don't you believe a man's soul can be aflame with love and desire for a woman?" he asked, picking up a stone idly and flinging it after a disturbing crow.

"Books tell one so, but how am I to know?"

"It must have been proved to you times without number!--but I said you were asleep!" he remarked with his inscrutable smile. "Know, then, that men have cheerfully risked h.e.l.l for a woman's favours. They have broken every law for the transcendent bliss of lovers' kisses!--Anyhow, that's not the story.

"To proceed: Poor old Ramjitsu was ready to dare or die for his Love, as many another man has been since the world began, and will continue to be while the world lasts. Every night, when darkness covered the land, and the people within and without the palace slept, Ramjitsu Singh would climb the wall by means of a stout bamboo, and clinging to the sill, would wait for the G.o.ds to grant him the opportunity to plead his love.

"At last, one night, attracted by the silvery radiance of the moon, she came to the grating to gaze without, and hearing a quivering sigh, she turned and beheld her gallant lover. He looked like a G.o.d himself in the bright moonlight, and the words of his mouth, uttered with breathless pa.s.sion, held her spellbound. With her flower-face pressed to the bars she received his caresses."

"Oh, poor little thing!" cried Joyce, her breath hurried with sympathy.

"Did she love him, too?"

"She must have, in that moment, for nature at such times speaks loudly to youth. Listening to his impa.s.sioned vows, she, who was of a different religion, as apart from his as the East is from the West, was willing to place her destiny in his hands. Human nature, you will see, is stronger than caste or creed, and tradition is brought to naught by romance and pa.s.sion.

"One night, when all seemingly slept, Ramjitsu, who had from time to time cautiously loosened the iron bars in their sockets, removed them altogether and received in his arms the form he coveted. Conceive that thrilling moment of ecstasy! Suddenly, however, a lightning stroke from a sword descended upon the faithless one from within, and she was slain in her lover's arms. The weight of her falling body, thus violently flung forward, unbalanced the Rajput whose foothold at the best was precarious, and together they were hurled to the paved court below, Ramjitsu breaking his neck in the fall.

"So ended the love story of the Palace--a tragedy which has remained an everlasting tribute to love, and serves as an example to the Indians of a just vengeance on the unfaithful. The spies of the Nawab had betrayed the young wife and her lover, and the husband had punished them both with death."

"Just vengeance!" repeated Joyce scornfully. "A brutal murder, I call it."

"The Mohammedans speak of it with pride."

Joyce brushed away the tears and laughed hysterically. "It is a horribly tragic tale and I wish you had not told me of it, for the memory of it will haunt me."

"Why do you mind?"

"I can't help feeling for that poor little prisoner who wanted to be loved and was killed! They had probably married her off as a little child to the Nawab whom she afterwards learned to hate."

"You wish she had escaped with the Rajput? That would have violated every law of their religion and tradition." He watched her keenly.

She looked distressed. "Why are laws so hard and fast? These poor women!

Can they never choose for themselves who they will marry?"

"Never. Among Eastern races marriages are always arranged. So you don't condemn the Rajput for wanting to steal her?"

"Oh, no. How could he help it?"

"Or her for wanting to run away with him?"

"Not for _wanting_ to run away. But laws have to be kept, I suppose, or no homes would be safe. Individuals have to be sacrificed to communities," she said thoughtfully. "Show me where it all happened."