Guns of the Gods | Page 8

and breadth of India the right to beg from place to place. These were not even true vagabonds, but rogues contented with one victim in one place as long as benevolence should last.
"Where is the third one?" Tess demanded. "Where is Pinga?"
They professed not to know, but she had seen all three squatting together close to the little gate five minutes before. She ordered Chamu to go and find the missing man and he waddled off, grumbling. At the end of five minutes he returned without him.
"One comes on horseback," he announced, "who gave the third beggar money, so that he now waits outside."
"What for?"
"Who knows? Perhaps to keep watch."
"To watch for what?"
"Who knows?"
"Who is it on horseback? A caller? Some one coming for breakfast? You'd better hurry."
The call at breakfast-time is one of the pleasantest informalities of life in India. It might even be the commissioner. Tess ran to make one of those swift changes of costume with which some women have the gift of gracing every opportunity. Chamu waddled down the steps to await with due formality, the individual, in no way resembling a British commissioner, who was leisurely dismounting at the wide gate fifty yards to the southward of that little one the beggars used.
He was a Rajput of Rajputs, thin-wristed, thin-ankled, lean, astonishingly handsome in a high-bred Northern way, and possessed of that air of utter self-assuredness devoid of arrogance which people seem able to learn only by being born to it. His fine features were set off by a turban of rose-pink silk, and the only fault discoverable as he strode up the path between the shrubs was that his riding-boots seemed too tight across the instep. There was not a vestige of hair on his face. He was certainly less than twenty, perhaps seventeen years old, or even younger. Ages are hard to guess in that land.
Tess was back on the veranda in time to receive him, with different shoes and stockings, and another ribbon in her hair; few men would have noticed the change at all, although agreeably conscious of the daintiness. The Rajput seemed unable to look away from her but ignoring Chamu, as he came up the steps, appraised her inch by inch from the white shoes upward until as he reached the top their eyes met. Chamu followed him fussily.
Tess could not remember ever having seen such eyes. They were baffling by their quality of brilliance, unlike the usual slumbrous Eastern orbs that puzzle chiefly by refusal to express emotion. The Rajput bowed and said nothing, so Tess offered him a chair, which Chamu drew up more fussily than ever.
"Have you had breakfast?" she asked, taking the conscious risk. Strangers of alien race are not invariably good guests, however good-looking, especially when one's husband is somewhere out of call. She looked and felt nearly as young as this man, and had already experienced overtures from more than one young prince who supposed he was doing her an honor. Used to closely guarded women's quarters, the East wastes little time on wooing when the barriers are passed or down. But she felt irresistibly curious, and after all there was Chamu.
"Thanks, I took breakfast before dawn."
The Rajput accepted the proffered chair without acknowledging the butler's existence. Tess passed him the big silver cigarette box.
"Then let me offer you a drink."
He declined both drink and cigarette and there was a minute's silence during which she began to grow uncomfortable.
"I was riding after breakfast--up there on the hill where you see that overhanging rock, when I caught sight of you here on the veranda. You, too, were watching the dawn--beautiful! I love the dawn. So I thought I would come and get to know you. People who love the same thing, you know, are not exactly strangers."
Almost, if not quite for the first time Tess grew very grateful for Chamu, who was still hovering at hand.
"If my husband had known, he would have stayed to receive you."
"Oh, no! I took good care for that! I continued my ride until after I knew he had gone for the day."
Things dawn on your understanding in the East one by one, as the stars come out at night, until in the end there is such a bewildering number of points of light that people talk about the "incomprehensible East." Tess saw light suddenly.
"Do you mean that those three beggars are your spies?"
The Rajput nodded. Then his bright eyes detected the instant resolution that Tess formed.
"But you must not be afraid of them. They will be very useful--often."
"How?"
The visitor made a gesture that drew attention to Chamu.
"Your butler knows English. Do you know Russian?"
"Not a word."
"French?"
"Very little."
"If we were alone--"
Tess decided to face the situation boldly. She came from a free land, and part of her heritage was