Winds of the World | Page 3

up the
lower stairs before hurrying back to the squadron. And a little later on,
being almost as inquisitive as they were careful for their major, the
squadron delegated other men, in mufti, to watch for him at the foot of
Yasmini's stairs, or as near to the foot as might be, and see him safely
home again if they had to fight all Asia on the way.
These men had some money with them, and weapons hidden
underneath their clothes; for, having betted largely on the quail-fight at
Abdul's stables, the squadron was in funds.
"In case of trouble one can bribe the police," counseled Nanak Singh,
and he surely ought to know, for he was the oldest trooper, and trouble
everlasting had preserved him from promotion. "But weapons are good,
when policemen are not looking," he added, and the squadron agreed
with him.
It was Tej Singh, not given to talking as is rule, who voiced the general
opinion.
"Now we are on the track of things. Now, perhaps, we shall know the
meaning of field exercises during the monsoon, with our horses up to
the belly in blue mud! The winds of all the world blow into Yasmini's
and out again. Our risaldar-major knows nothing at all of women--and
that is the danger. But he can listen to the wind; and, what he hears,
sooner or later we shall know, too. I smell happenings!"

Those three words comprised the whole of it. The squadron spent most
of the night whispering, dissecting, analyzing, subdividing, weighing,
guessing at that smell of happenings, while its risaldar-major, thinking
his secret all his own, investigated nearer to its source.
Have you heard the dry earth shrug herself For a storm that tore the
trees?
Have you watched loot-hungry Faithful Praising Allah on their knees?
Have you felt the short hairs rising When the moon slipped out of sight,
And the chink of steel on rock explained That footfall in the night?
Have you seen a gray boar sniff up-wind In the mauve of waking day?
Have you heard a mad crowd pause and think? Have you seen all Hell
to pay?

CHAPTER II
Yasmini bears a reputation that includes her gift for dancing and her
skill in song, but is not bounded thereby, Her stairs illustrated it--the
two flights of steep winding stairs that lead to her bewildering
reception-floor; they seem to have been designed to take men's breath
away, and to deliver them at the top defenseless.
But Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh mounted them with scarcely an
effort, as a man who could master Bagh well might, and at the top his
middle-aged back was straight and his eye clear. The cunning,
curtained lights did not distract him; so he did not make the usual
mistake of thinking that the Loveliness who met him was Yasmini.
Yasmini likes to make her first impression of the evening on a man just
as he comes from making an idiot of himself; so the maid who curtsies
in the stair-head maze of mirrored lights has been trained to imitate her.
But Ranjoor Singh flipped the girl a coin, and it jingled at her feet.

The maid ceased bowing, too insulted to retort. The piece of silver--
she would have stooped for gold, just as surely as she would have
recognized its ring--lay where it fell. Ranjoor Singh stepped forward
toward a glass-bead curtain through which a soft light shone, and an
unexpected low laugh greeted him. It was merry, mocking,
musical--and something more. There was wisdom hidden in
it--masquerading as frivolity; somewhere, too, there was
villainy-villainy that she who laughed knew all about and found more
interesting than a play.
Then suddenly the curtain parted, and Yasmini blocked the way,
standing with arms spread wide to either door-post, smiling at him; and
Ranjoor Singh had to stop and stare whether it suited him or not.
Yasmini is not old, nor nearly old, for all that India is full of tales about
her, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. In a land where twelve is a
marriageable age, a woman need not live to thirty to be talked about;
and if she can dance as Yasmini does--though only the Russian ballet
can do that--she has the secret of perpetual youth to help her defy the
years. No doubt the soft light favored her, but she might have been
Ranjoor Singh's granddaughter as she barred his way and looked him
up and down impudently through languorous brown eyes.
"Salaam, O plowman!" she mocked. She was not actually still an
instant, for the light played incessantly on her gauzy silken trousers and
jeweled slippers, but she made no move to admit him. "My honor
grows! Twice--nay, three times in a little while!"
She spoke in the Jat tongue fluently;