"Only--what?"

"Mrs Desmond may disapprove of me."

"You'd not say that if you knew her better," he answered, warmly. "She isn't one of your good women who make a hobby of disapproval."

"That's a mercy! It is the pet vice of the virtuous; and Mrs Mayhew deals in it largely. No doubt it keeps her happy, and makes her feel superior; and I wouldn't rob my worst enemy of such a heavenly sensation! I'm sorry for her to-night, though. She hates natives almost as much as Colonel Mayhew loves them; and I'm afraid she's not envying herself; nor will poor Elsie, if Captain Lenox makes _her_ a prisoner of war for the evening! He hardly vouchsafed her half a dozen words through dinner."

"Lenox is no conversationalist," Desmond answered, looking straight before him. "But he is a splendid fellow--worth fifty of your drawing-room acrobats."

"You like him so much, then?"

"I do more than that. I admire him."

"You are an enthusiast!"

The shadow of change in her tone did not escape him.

"Is that also one of the vices you detest?"

"But, no! I gave you credit for more discernment. Enthusiasts and idealists are the salt of the earth. That's why I want to know more of _you_. There! In spite of myself I have crowned you with a coal of fire after all! Now, please introduce me to our resplendent Rajah Sahib. I am going to make him talk. Colonel Mayhew has dared me to succeed!"

They entered the Durbar Hall as she spoke--a long room overloaded with gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab would dream of living in a Palace devoid of either.

Rajah Govind Singh and his four companions stood together by a marble-topped table, laughing and whispering over a book filled with photographs of music-hall celebrities, while beside it a spurious alb.u.m, whose heart was a musical box, tinkled an age-old air from "Les Cloches" with maddening precision. At the far end of the room a native conjurer had established himself, and was already performing indefatigably for the benefit of no one in particular.

The group by the table showed a medley of colour quite in keeping with the flash and glitter of the whole. Over spotless shirts and trousers the boys wore brilliant silk _chogas_[1] cunningly patterned with gold wire, and surmounted by turbans of palest primrose, orange, and green.

But Govind Singh, by divine right of Rajahdom, eclipsed the rest.

Beneath his scarlet coat gleamed a waistcoat of woven gold, and the jewelled buckle of his Rajput _chupra.s.s_.[2] Three strings of pearls formed a close collar at his throat, and in front of his sea-green turban a heron's plume sprang from a cl.u.s.ter of brilliants. The faces of all were no darker than ripe wheat; for your high-caste hill-man never takes colour, like his brother of the plains.

They had long since eaten their own simple dinner, in the scantiest clothing, and in a solemn silence, squatting on a bare mud floor. For to the Hindu a meal is a sacred ceremony, and the Sahib's idiosyncrasy for making merry over his food can only be accepted as part and parcel of his bewildering lack of sense and dignity in regard to the conduct of life.

During a long minority this boy had been zealously inoculated with Western knowledge and Western points of view; and with the deceptive pliancy of the Oriental he had smilingly submitted to the process. But deep down in the unplumbed heart of him he waited for the good day when he would be rid of these well-meaning interlopers,--tireless as their own fire-carriages,--who troubled the still waters of life and talked so vigorously about nothing in particular; when he would be free to forget cricket and polo and futile efforts to cleanse the State from intrigue; free to sit down in peace and grow fat, unhindered by the senseless machinations of the outer world.

And in the heart of Govind Singh you have a fair epitome of the great heart of India herself: aloof, long-suffering, illogical to a degree inconceivable by Western minds; ready to lavish deep-hearted devotion upon individual Nicholsons and Lawrences when they come her way; yet, for all her surface submission and progress, not an inch nearer to racial sympathy, or to the inner significance of English life and character than she was fifty years ago.

But, in the meanwhile, our concern is with a minor Maharajah, and his pa.s.sion for musical boxes.

At the Resident's approach, the laughter and whispering ceased; and the four boys endured with impa.s.sive politeness the mysterious rite of introduction. The tinkling alb.u.m gave Quita her cue. She insisted on hearing its entire repertoire, which was mercifully limited; and her natural ease of manner, her knack of plunging whole-heartedly into the subject of the moment, soon put Govind Singh's shyness to flight. He deserted monosyllables for clipped, hurried sentences, jerked out with an odd mixture of nervousness and self-satisfaction. Quita flashed a smile at Desmond, who stood sentry at her elbow, in seeming ignorance of the fact that Garth was making tentative attempts to usurp his place.

"You must show me some of the others, Rajah Sahib," she declared, as the complacent alb.u.m clicked into silence, "and when I go home to England I will hunt you up a new kind to add to your collection!"

The boy's eyes lost their look of lazy indifference; a gleam of superb teeth illumined his face.

"An upright grand is the last trifling addition to it, Miss Maurice,"

Colonel Mayhew informed her, "but the Rajah was a little disappointed when he found that it couldn't be set going by the turning of a key."

"I am liking the big noise--the big _tamasha_," the young monarch explained in all gravity. "And I think that one is too much price for a box that will do nothing unless somebody knows to make it speak."

"Mrs Desmond can make it speak for you, Rajah Sahib," Colonel Mayhew suggested; and the boy turned upon her with shy eagerness.

"Can you really do a tune?" he asked.

"Several tunes!" she answered, smiling. "A big noise, if you like."

"Oh, that is very good business. Thanks awfully."

He spoke the slang phrases, picked up from Bathurst, with mechanical precision; and Honor, still smiling, went over to the piano--a flamboyant instrument of rosewood and gold. After a second of hesitation Lenox followed, opened it for her, and resting a hand on the gilt back of her chair, bent down to speak to her before she began to play. The suggestion of intimacy in his att.i.tude was not lost on Quita, who saw it all, without glancing in their direction. Her lips tightened; and she started slightly when Desmond spoke to her.

"Will you go round the musical boxes with me?" he asked, in an undertone that bordered on tenderness. For he saw that something in her suffered, whether it were pride or love.

"But yes--by all means," she answered, with a lift of her head which suggested to Desmond a jerk on the curb-chain. In moving off together they pa.s.sed close to Garth. But Quita, who was abstractedly opening and closing her fan, did not seem aware of his presence; and he stood looking after them--nonplussed and inwardly blaspheming. He did not hold the key to this new phase of the situation.

Mrs Mayhew--noting his detachment from the Palace group, and quite needlessly alarmed lest politeness should impel him to return to her--sought out a strategic seat near the piano; though in truth Honor Desmond's masterly rendering of Chopin's heroic polonaise was, for her, no more than a complicated tumult of sound without sense, and her wrapt expression resulted from the fact that she was debating whether her _durzi_ could possibly reproduce at sight the subtle simplicity of Mrs Desmond's evening gown. For she had sons growing up at home--this insignificant woman, whose plump proportions and bird-like eyes had earned her the nickname of "the b.u.t.ton Quail"; and even a good appointment did not annul the vagaries of the rupee, which was behaving peculiarly ill just then. In the intervals of imaginary dressmaking, she was enjoying shrewd speculations as to the nature and extent of the budding "affair" between the two at the piano; for her small mind clung tenaciously to the Noah's Ark view of life. Also it seemed that Elsie's own "little affair" was a.s.suming quite a promising aspect.

Personally, she disliked the man, but his talent was undeniable. She supposed he must be making money by it; and he was quite clearly making a right-of-way into her daughter's heart.

They had drifted apart from the rest without need of spoken suggestion; and now, under cover of Honor's music, which produced a tendency to gravitate towards the piano, the man grew bolder.

"There is moonlight out in the courtyard," he said, very low; and he tried, without success, to look into her eyes. "_Que dites-vous_?

Shall we go?"

She did not answer at once. A new spirit of boldness was awake in her, urging her to take hold of her golden hour with both hands, nothing doubting. But the man, even when he charmed her most, failed to inspire her trust. And while she stood hesitating, his gaze never left her face.

"Are you thinking it would scandalise _la pet.i.te mere_?"

"It might. She is easily scandalised!"

"But you would like to come?"

"Yes--I would like to come."

"_Eh bien_--that is enough."

"Is it?"

She looked up at him now with those great, truthful eyes of hers, which he found oddly disconcerting at times.

"Enough for me, at all events!" he answered boldly. "Come!"

And she came.

The flagged quadrangle, walled in with darkness and worn with the tread of numberless women's feet, showed silver-grey in the light of a moon nearing the full; and above it, in a square patch of sky, stars sparkled with a veiled radiance like diamonds caught in a film of gossamer. As Elsie emerged from the shadow of the verandah, she had a sense of stepping into an unreal world, and the Palace walls, shutting out the familiar contours of earth, strengthened the illusion. The night seemed the accomplice of her mood, in league with her own exquisite sensibility; a night created for sheltering tenderness.

Michael Maurice, divining her sensations with the uncanny accuracy of his type, pressed a little closer to her as they walked, so that now and again, as if by chance, his arm brushed her own, and each contact quickened her happy commotion of heart and pulse. They came upon a rough stone bench, and he paused.

"It is pleasanter to sit, _n'est-ce pas_?"

"Yes. But we mustn't sit long."

"Mustn't we? How does one measure time on such a night as this? By the beating of hearts, or by the pulsations of stars?"