Guns of the Gods | Page 4

later years for
its own peace as it thought, but for her own recuperation as it happened.
She told me many other things besides that have some little bearing on
this story but that, if all related, would crowd the book too full. The real
gist of them is that she grew to love India with all her heart and India
repaid her for it after its own fashion, which is manyfold and
marvelous.
There is no fairer land on earth than that far northern slice of Rajputana,
nor a people more endowed with legend and the consciousness of
ancestry. They have a saying that every Rajput is a king's son, and
every Rajputni worthy to be married to an emperor. It was in that
atmosphere that Yasmini learned she must either use her wits or be
outwitted, and women begin young to assert their genius in the East.
But she outstripped precocity and, being Western too, rode rough-shod
on convention when it suited her, reserving her concessions to it solely
for occasions when those matched the hand she held. All her life she
has had to play in a ruthless game, but the trump that she has learned to

lead oftenest is unexpectedness. And now to the story.

Chapter One

Royal Rajasthan
There is a land where no resounding street With babel of electric-garish
night And whir of endless wheels has put to flight The liberty of leisure.
Sandaled feet And naked soles that feel the friendly dust Go easily
along the never measured miles. A land at which the patron tourist
smiles Because of gods in whom those people trust (He boasting One
and trusting not at all); A land where lightning is the lover's boon, And
honey oozing from an amber moon Illumines footing on forbidden wall;
Where, 'stead of pursy jeweler's display, Parading peacocks brave the
passer-by, And swans like angels in an azure sky Wing swift and silent
on unchallenged way. No land of fable! Of the Hills I sing, Whose
royal women tread with conscious grace The peace-filled gardens of a
warrior race, Each maiden fit for wedlock with a king, And every
Rajput son so royal born And conscious of his age-long heritage He
looks askance at Burke's becrested page And wonders at the
new-ennobled scorn. I sing (for this is earth) of hate and guile, Of
tyranny and trick and broken pledge, Of sudden weapons, and the
thrice-keen edge Of woman's wit, the sting in woman's smile, But also
of the heaven-fathomed glow, The sweetness and the charm and dear
delight Of loyal woman, humorous and right, Pure-purposed as the
bosom of the snow.
No tale, then, this of motors, but of men With camels fleeter than the
desert wind, Who come and go. So leave the West behind, And, at the
magic summons of the pen Forgetting new contentions if you will,
Take wings, take silent wings of time untied, And see, with
Fellow-friendship for your guide, A little how the East goes wooing
still.

"Gold is where you find it."
Dawn at the commencement of hot weather in the hills if not the
loveliest of India's wealth of wonders (for there is the moon by night) is

fair preparation for whatever cares to follow. There is a musical silence
cut of which the first voices of the day have birth; and a half-light
holding in its opalescence all the colors that the day shall use; a
freshness and serenity to hint what might be if the sons of men were
wise enough; and beauty unbelievable. The fortunate sleep on roofs or
on verandas, to be ready for the sweet cool wind that moves in advance
of the rising sun, caused, as some say, by the wing-beats of departing
spirits of the night.
So that in that respect the mangy jackals, the monkeys, and the
chandala (who are the lowest human caste of all and quite untouchable
by the other people the creator made) are most to be envied; for there is
no stuffy screen, and small convention, between them and enjoyment of
the blessed air.
Next in order of defilement to the sweepers,--or, as some particularly
righteous folk with inside reservations on the road to Heaven firmly
insist, even beneath the sweepers, and possibly beneath the
jackals--come the English, looking boldly on whatever their eyes desire
and tasting out of curiosity the fruit of more than one forbidden tree,
but obsessed by an amazing if perverted sense of duty. They rule the
land, largely by what they idolize as "luck," which consists of tolerance
for things they do not understand. Understanding one another rather
well, they are more merciless to their own offenders than is Brahman to
chandala, for they will hardly let them live. But they are a