Guns of the Gods Part 23

Within the palace Tess was reveling in vaudeville In the first place, Yasmini had no Western views on modesty. Whatever her mother may have taught her in that respect had gone the way of all the other handicaps she saw fit to throw into the discard, or to retain for use solely when she saw there was advantage. The East uses dress for ornament, and understands its use. The veil is for places where men might look with too bold eyes and covet. Out of sight of privileged men prudery has no place, and almost no advocates all the way from Peshawar to Cape Comorin.

And Yasmini had loved dancing since the days when she tottered her first steps for her mother's and Bubru Singh's delight. Long before an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm--scandalizing, then amazing, then educating bit by bit--Yasmini had developed her own ideas and brought them by arduous practise to something near perfection. To that her strength, agility and sinuous grace were largely due; and she practised no deceptions on herself, but valued all three qualities for their effect on other people, keeping no light under a bushel.

The consciousness of that night's climactic quality raised her spirits to the point where they were irrepressible, and she danced her garments off one by one, using each in turn as a foil for her art until there was nothing left with which to multiply rhythm and she danced before the long French mirrors yet more gracefully with nothing on at all.

Getting Tess disrobed was a different matter. She did not own to much prudery, but the maids' eyes were over-curious. And, lacking, as she knew she did, Yasmini's ability to justify nakedness by poetry of motion, she hid behind a curtain and was royally laughed at for her pains. But she was satisfied to retain that intangible element that is best named dignity, and let the laughter pa.s.s unchallenged. Yasmini, with her Eastern heritage, could be dignified as well as beautiful as nature made her.

Not so Tess, or at any rate she thought not, and what one thinks is after all the only gage acceptable.

Then came the gorgeous fun of putting on Tess's clothes, each to be danced in as its turn came, and made fun of, so that Tess herself began to believe all Western clothes were awkward, idiotic things--until Yasmini stood clothed complete at last, with her golden hair all coiled under a Paris hat, and looked as lovely that way as any. The two women were almost exactly the same size. Even the shoes fitted, and when Yasmini walked the length of the room with Tess's very stride and att.i.tude Tess got her first genuine glimpse of herself as another's capably critical eyes saw her--a priceless experience, and not so humiliating after all.

They dressed up Tess in man's clothes--a young Rajput's--a suit Yasmini had worn on one of her wild excursions, and what with the coiled turban of yellow silk and a little black mustache adjusted by cunning fingers she felt as happy as a child in fancy dress. But she found it more difficult to imitate the Rajput walk than Yasmini did to copy her tricks of carriage.

For a few minutes they played at walking together up and down the room before the mirror, applauded by the giggling maids. But then suddenly came anti-climax. There was a great hammering at the outer door, and one of the maids ran down to investigate, while they waited in breathless silence.

The news the maid brought back was the worst imaginable. The look-out at the northern corner of the wall (Yasmini kept watch on her captors as rigorously as they spied on her) had run with the word to the gateman that Gungadhura himself was coming with three eunuchs, all four on foot.

Almost as soon as the breathless girl could break that evil tidings there came another hammering, and this time Hasamurti went down to answer.

Her news was worse. Gungadhura was at the outer gate demanding admission, and threatening to order the guard to break the gate in if refused.

"What harm can he do?" demanded Tess. "He won't dare try any violence in front of me. Let us change clothes again."

Yasmini laughed at her.

"A prince on a horse may ride from harm," she answered. "When princes walk, let other folk 'ware trouble! He comes to have his will on me.

Those eunuchs are the leash that always hunt with him by night. They will manhandle you, too, if they once get in, and Gungadhura will take his chance of trouble afterward. The guard dare not refuse him."

"What shall we do?" Tess wondered. "Can we hide?" Then, pulling herself together for the sake of her race and her Western womanhood: "If we make noise enough at the gate my husband will come. We're all right."

"If there are any G.o.ds at all," said Yasmini piously, "they will consider our plight. I think this is a vengeance on me because I said I will leave my maids behind. I will not leave them! Hasamurti--you and the others make ready for the street!"

That was a simple matter. In three minutes all five women were back in the room, veiled from head to foot. But the hammering at the front door was repeated, louder than before. Tess wondered whether to hope that the risaldar of the guard had already reported to Gungadhura the lady doctor's visit, or to hope that he had not.

"We will all go down together now," Yasmini decided, and promptly she started to lead the way alone. But Hasamurti sprang to her side, and insisted with tears on disguising herself as her mistress and staying behind to provide one slim chance for the rest to escape.

"In the dark you will pa.s.s for the memsahib," she urged. "The memsahib will pa.s.s for a man. Wait by the gate until the maharajah enters, while I stand at the door under the lamp as a decoy. I will run into the house, and he will follow with the eunuchs, while the rest of you slip out through the gate, and run before the guard can close it. Perhaps one, at least, of the other maids had better stay with me."

A second maid volunteered, but Yasmini would have none of that plan.

First and last the great outstanding difference between her and the ordinary run of conspirators, Western or Eastern, was unwillingness to sacrifice faithful friends even in a pinch--although she could be ruthlessness itself toward half-hearted ones. Both those habits grew on her as she grew older.

By the time they reached the little curtained outer hall the maids were on the verge of hysteria. Tess had herself well in control, and was praying busily that her husband might only be near enough to hear the racket at the gate. She was willing to be satisfied with that, and to ask no further favors of Providence, unless that d.i.c.k should have Tom Tripe with him.

Outwardly calm enough, she could not for the life of her remember to stride like a man. Yasmini turned more than once to rally her about it.

Yasmini herself looked unaccountably meek in the Western dress, but her blue eyes blazed with fury and she walked with confidence, issuing her orders in a level voice. The gateman had come to the door again to announce that Gungadhura had issued a final warning. Two more minutes and the outer gate should be burst in by his orders.

"Tell the maharajah sahib that I come in person to welcome him!" she retorted, and the gateman hurried back into the dark toward his post.

There were no lights at the outer gate. One could only guess how the stage was set--the maharajah hooded lest some enemy recognize him-- the eunuchs behind him with cords concealed under their loose outer garments--and the guard at a respectful distance standing at attention.

There was not a maharajah's sepoy in Sialpore who would have dared remonstrate with Gungadhura in dark or daylight.

Only as they pa.s.sed under the yellow light shed by the solitary lantern on the iron bracket did Tess get an inkling of Yasmini's plan. Light glinted on the wrought hilt of a long Italian dagger, and her smile was cold- uncompromising--shuddersome.

Tess objected instantly. "Didn't you promise you'd kill n.o.body? If we'd a pistol we could fire it in the air and my husband would come in a minute."

"How do we know that Gungadhura hasn't killed your husband, or shut him up somewhere?" Yasmini answered, and Tess had an attack of cold chills that rendered her speechless for a moment. She threw it off with a prodigious effort.

"But I've no weapon of any kind, and you can't kill Gungadhura, three eunuchs and the guard as well!" she argued presently.

"Wait and see what I will do!" was the only answer. "Gungadhura caused my pistols to be stolen. But the darkness is our friend, and I think the G.o.ds--if there are any G.o.ds--are going to a.s.sist us."

They walked to the gate in a little close-packed group, and found the gateman stuttering through the small square hole provided for interviews with strangers, telling the maharajah for the third or fourth time that the princess herself was coming. Gungadhura's voice was plainly audible, growling threats from the outer darkness.

"Stand aside!" Yasmini ordered. "I will attend to the talking now."

She went close to the square hole, but was careful to keep her face in shadow at the left-hand side of it.

"What can His Highness, Gungadhura Singh, want with his relative at this strange hour?" she asked.

"Open the gate!" came the answer. He was very close to it--ready to push with his shoulder the instant the bolt was drawn, for black pa.s.sion had him in hand. But in the darkness he was as invisible as she was.

"Nay, how shall I know it is Gungadhura Singh?"

"Ask the guard! Ho, there! Tell her who it is demands admission!"

"Nay, they might lie to me! The voice sounds strange. I would open for Gungadhura Singh; but I must be sure it is he and no other."

"Look then!" he answered, and thrust his dark face close to the opening.

Even the utterly base have intuition. Nothing else warned him. In the very nick of time he stepped back, and Yasmini's long dagger that shot forward like a stab of lightning only cut the cheek beneath the eye, and slit it to the corner of his mouth.

The blood poured down into his beard and added fury to determination.

"Guards, break in the gate!" he shouted, and Yasmini stood back in the darkest shadow, about as dangerous as a cobra guarding young ones.

With her left hand she signed to all six women to hide themselves; but Tess came and stood beside her, minded in that minute to give Gungadhura Western aftermath to reckon with as well as the combined present courage of two women. Wondering desperately what she could do to help against armed men she suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the long hat-pins that she herself had adjusted in her own hat on Yasmini's head.

Yasmini hugged her close and kissed her.

"Better than sister! Better than friend!" she whispered.

Gungadhura had not been idle while he waited for his message to reach Yasmini, but had sent some of the guard to find a baulk of timber for a battering-ram. The b.u.t.ts of rifles would have been useless against that stout iron.

The gate shook now under the weight of the first a.s.sault, but the guards were handling the timber clumsily, not using their strength together.

Gungadhura cursed them, and spent two valuable minutes trying to show them how the trick should be worked, the blood that poured into his beard, and made of his mouth a sputtering crimson mess, not helping to make his raging orders any more intelligible.

Presently the second crash came, stronger and more elastic than the first. The iron bent inward, and it was plainly only a matter of minutes before the bolt would go. The gateman came creeping to Yasmini's side, and, with yellow fangs showing in a grin meant to be affectionate, displayed an Afghan tulwar.

"Ismail!" she said. "I thought you were afraid and ran to hide!"

"Nay!" he answered. "My life is thine, Princess! Gungadhura took away all weapons, but this I hid. I went to find it. See," he grinned, feeling the edge with his thumb, "it is clean! It is keen! It will cut throats!"