Winds of the World | Page 6

the squadron that he loved so much
better than his life, but not caring to magnify his own importance by
claiming the regard of the other squadrons, too. But Yasmini, who
never in her life went straight from point to point of an idea and never
could believe that anybody else did, supposed he meant that one
squadron was in his confidence, whereas the rest had not yet been
sounded.
"So speaks one who is for the Raj!" she grinned.

Playing for profit and amusement, she never, never let anybody know
which side she had taken in any game. Therefore she despised a man
who showed his hand to her, as she believed Ranjoor Singh had done.
But she only showed contempt when it suited her, and by no means
always when she felt it.
The minor music ceased and all eyes in the room were turned to her.
She rose to her feet as a hooded cobra comes toward its prey, sparing a
sidewise surreptitious smile of confidence for Ranjoor Singh that no
eye caught save his; yet as she turned from him and swayed in the first
few steps of a dance devised that minute, his quick ear caught the truth
of her opinion:
"Buffalo!" she murmured.
The flutes in the window wailed about mystery. The lights, and the
sandal-smoke, and the expectant silence emphasized it. Step by step, as
if the spirit of all dancing had its home in her, she told a wordless tale,
using her feet and every sinuous muscle as no other woman in all India
ever did.
Men say that Yasmini is partly Russian, and that may be true, for she
speaks Russian fluently. Russian or not, the members of the Russian
ballet are the only others in the world who share her art. Certainly, she
keeps in touch with Russia, and knows more even than the Indian
government about what goes on beyond India's northern frontier. She
makes and magnifies the whole into a mystery; and her dance that night
expressed the fascination mystery has for her.
And then she sang. It is her added gift of song that makes Yasmini
unique, for she can sing in any of a dozen languages, and besides the
love-songs that come southward from the hills, she knows all the
interminable ballads of the South and the Central Provinces. But when,
as that evening, she is at her best, mixing magic under the eyes of the
inquisitive, she sings songs of her own making and only very rarely the
same song twice. She sang that night of the winds of the world which,
she claims, carry the news to her; although others say her sources of
information speak more distinctly.

It seemed that the thread of an idea ran through song and dance alike,
and that the hillmen and beyond-the-hills-men, who sat back-to-
the-wall and watched, could follow the meaning of it. They began to
crowd closer, to squat cross-legged on the floor, in circles one outside
the other, until the European three became the center of three rings of
men who stared at them with owls' solemnity.
Then Yasmini ceased dancing. Then one of the Europeans drew his
watch out; and he had to show it to the other two before he could
convince them that they had sat for two hours without wanting to do
anything but watch and listen.
"So _wass!_" said one of them--the drunken.
_"Du lieber Gott--schon halb zwolf!"_ said the second.
The third man made no remark at all. He was watching Ranjoor Singh.
The risaldar--major had left the divan by the end wall and walked-- all
grim straight lines in contrast to Yasmini's curves--to a spot directly
facing the three Europeans; and it seemed there sat a hillman on the
piece of floor he coveted.
"Get up!" he commanded. "Make room!"
The hillman did not budge, for an Afridi pretends to feel for a Sikh the
scorn that a Sikh feels truly for Afridis. The flat of Ranjoor Singh's foot
came to his assistance, and the hillman budged. In an instant he was on
his feet, with a lightning right hand reaching for his knife.
But Yasmini allows no butcher's work on her premises, and her words
within those walls are law, since no man knows who is on whose side.
Yasmini beckoned him, and the Afridi slouched toward her sullenly.
She whispered something, and he started for the stairs at once, without
any further protest.
Then there vanished all doubt as to which of the three Europeans was
most important. The man who had come in first had accepted sherbet

from the maid who sat beside him; he went suddenly from drowsiness
to slumber, and the woman spurned his bullet-head away from her
shoulder, letting him fall like a log among