Part 6

Three! What had happened--and what was to be done? For an instant the ordinary inrush of anxiety made her think of rousing the camp, of sending out search-parties; but the next brought her a curious conviction that in this case danger lay in seeking outside help: a certainty that in this matter she must stand alone, that in this crisis--whatever it was--there must be but three alone--if, indeed, there were three--herself, her lover, and this nameless Son of a King.

So, almost without a pause, the dimples left by her rapid feet were curving towards the highest sand-wave within sight of the camp. Thence she could watch the desert sea, and perhaps find him, even now, close at hand. But once there, the next sand-wave attracted her as being a better point of vantage, and so from wave to wave she flitted in her white dress like some desert bird, leaving behind her a curved track of dimples in the sliding sand, until a little wind, the herald blast of the hurrying clouds overhead, crept low down over the world and swept the dimples back into the old ripples.

"Khesroo!" she called, suddenly, for a shadow seemed beside hers in that empty wilderness; but there was no answer.

"Jim!" she called again, uncertainly; but there was no reply. Yet she was not frightened. She knew now, in that mysterious fundamental mind of hers, that she alone was responsible, that she, and she only, could solve the riddle. Khesroo had been right. If she wanted this thing, if she had believed, if she had trusted, she would have gone before. And now she must hurry, or it would be too late--wherefore or for what she scarcely considered.

"Khesroo!" she called once more, and this time there was a faint inflection of fear in her voice; for was that figure Khesroo, the goatherd, or was it her lover? Or was it neither; but someone only of whom she had dreamt as the Son of a King?

Should she go back? The wish struck her keenly, but she ignored it, and went on. She must, she knew, have left the camp far behind her, and, if she had kept the right direction, would soon be close on the spot where that straight line of an arrow had startled her by its intrusion into her dream of love.

If she had kept it! And surely she had, for behind her the east was faintly lightening with the dawn. Yonder, therefore, in the dark of the heralding clouds which had huddled upon the western horizon must lie the domed shadows of the buried city.

"Khesroo!" she cried, instinctively, the very soul of her speaking, "show it to me! For the sake of the woman who died, as women die for a life of love, a love of life, show it to me!"

And then, behind her, she heard a voice chanting, as Khesroo, the goatherd, had chanted, the call of guidance for the wanderers in the desert. Yet the words were different; for these were they:

"Seekers for sleep, arise! Your rest is done. Go forth with weary eyes To find your prize In vain, in vain! To none Will slumber have begun Till from the heart of one Desire dies."

Listening, she turned to look, then realised that in her searching she must once more have circled back on her own footsteps, for behind and not before her, dark, clear, unmistakable, the domed shadow of the lost city lay against the lightening east. And on its swelling side, as Khesroo had stood before, he stood again. Was it the rising sun which turned the fillet of knotted cord about his head to gold?--which dyed the coarse blanketing to royal purple, and transformed the wearer into the perfect kingliness of buoyant youth and beauty? She never knew. She only felt that something stronger than herself caught her, held her, clasped her, and yet drew her on, so that with hands outstretched she ran towards it, crying between smiles and tears:

"The Son of a King! The Son of a King!"

The next instant she had tripped and fallen heavily on her face over a tangled tuft of grass concealing an unusually deep descent of a desert wave. As she picked herself up, confused, somewhat dazed, and paused to free her eyes from the sand grains which clouded them, something almost at her feet brought her back to realities, and she gave a quick exclamation. For in the hollow beneath the wave, where he had evidently sought shelter deliberately, Jim Forrester lay curled up comfortably, fast asleep. At least, so it seemed, though Khesroo's quaint old bow must surely make rather an uncomfortable pillow.

She stooped over the sleeping man, and for an instant her face whitened; she bent lower to listen to his breathing. And as she listened a couple of startled sand-chaffs fled from a neighbouring thorn bush, their chuckling cry echoing over the desert like an evil laugh.

But a minute afterwards, in answer to her touch, Jim Forrester was staring at her trying to collect his sleep-scattered senses.

"Hullo!" he said, slowly. "How on earth did I--Ah! I remember. That brute of a goatherd played the garden ass and I lost him, so after wandering about for hours, I turned in till daylight. But you--my dearest dear----"

He started to his feet as he realised her presence there, and held out both his hands to her.

As he did so, something dropped from them and lay glittering on the sand at his feet. It was a gold coin.

They looked at each other, amazed; then she stooped and picked it up.

"A double profile," she said slowly, holding it so as to catch the growing sunlight, "and the legend round"--she spelt it out from the Greek lettering--"'Basileus Basileon.'"

"And the date," he cried, "the date!"

"Yes, the date is there," she replied, still more slowly turning to the obverse, "the bird and the date--it is all right--but I was thinking of the other----"

"What other?"

"Basileus Basileon--'the King of Kings,'" she said softly, and looked out towards the sunrise. But the light had claimed the whole world and sent all shadows flying.

So happily, prosaically, they went home to breakfast. Yet there was one thing which she never told anyone, perhaps because it might have stood in the way of the popular explanation of the whole affair--namely, that Khesroo had happened on the coin and must have put it in Jim Forrester's hand after the latter fell asleep. So, not even when her father proudly pointed out to admirers that the double profile was that of a man and a woman, and that the latter, curiously enough, might almost be a portrait of his married daughter, did she ever say that when she found her husband asleep in the sand that morning, the looped bowstring of Khesroo the goatherd's bow was loose about his neck.

But she often wonders if it would have been drawn tighter had she not gone to seek for what she wanted.

THE BIRTH OF FIRE

The night was clear and silent.

The light-pulse of the stars as they wheeled with slow certainty to meet the dawn was the only visible movement in the whole expanse of shadowed earth and sky.

And the only sound audible was my own life breath as I sate beside the glowing embers of the camp fire.

Strictly speaking, however, there was no camp, for I, and the two coolies who carried my breakfast, had missed our way in our detour through the eternal sameness of faint curve and level in the wide uplands, and finally, in despair of rejoining our tents, had bivouacked as best we could on the shore of a small frozen lake; one of those obstinate, rock-bound pools which, even when spring has set seal of conquest on the world, refuse to melt, and so yield up their treasure of sweet water to its renewed thirst for Life.

My servants had forced this particular lakelet to philanthropy with rude blows; wantonly rude it had seemed to me, as I watched the swift shiver with which the stable unity of surface had split into forlorn fragments of ice, each adrift at the mercy of that which they had held prisoner for so long.

The other necessary element, fire, my men had also commandeered by a raid on the low juniper which crept like moss below the taller grasses of the plain.

The result had not been altogether satisfactory, for the pungent smoke of the aromatic wood had--at least, so the sufferers averred, though, at the time, I suspected a recourse for comfort to my whisky-flask--produced unmistakable symptoms of intoxication in the amateur cooks, who, after valiantly serving me up a réchauffé of breakfast had succumbed to sleep. The mattress of creeping juniper on which they lay like logs was springy enough to have hidden them from sight even if the shadowed earth had not been so dark; for it was dark, formless, void, as only an unbroken expanse of featureless plain can be when the very sky grows velvet black because of the infinitely distant brilliance of the stars. Indeed, the uniformity of indefinable shadow was almost oppressive, although I knew right well the scene that lay around me; for who that has once seen it can fail of seeing again with the mind's eye the marvellous mosaic as of white marble and precious jewels which covers the high upland stretches of the World's Roof, when the winter snow retreats reluctantly, as if loth to leave the carpeting of spring flowers which follow on its fleeing footsteps.

I even remembered as I watched the embers that just behind them, finding faint shelter from a solitary boulder, there grew a tiny azalea I had never seen before; a fragile, leafless thing set sparsely with sweet-scented flowers that were flecked rose on saffron like a sunset sky.

And the silence was oppressive also. I caught myself listening--listening almost breathlessly--for a sound--for some sound! But there was not even a whisper among the tall grasses.

In sudden impulse I threw a fresh juniper branch upon the embers, and the silence, the stillness ended as if by magic; for the green spines spat and sputtered as they shrivelled, and sent out a dense cloud of smoke to circle up endlessly into the darkness.

A pungent smoke indeed! Involuntarily I drew back from it and covered my eyes with my hand waiting until the smouldering should lighten into flame.

The waiting, however, prolonged itself strangely. No flicker of light reached me, and I began to wonder dreamily what had happened; so dreamily, indeed, that when at last I looked up, I did so reluctantly, and with a curious sense of confusion.

It was this, no doubt, which prevented surprise at finding that I was no longer the solitary watcher of those dull embers.

Opposite me, nearly hidden in the endless curlings of the juniper smoke was a man crouching towards the fire as if he felt the cold of the high uplands. Only his face, and the hands he held towards the heat, showed clearly; the rest was lost in billowy clouds which, drifting upwards behind him, obscured the very stars.

I sate silent for a while, disinclined even for curiosity, and then, rather to my own surprise, I spoke as I might have spoken to a familiar friend.

"You are cold, I'm afraid."

To this day, I do not know in what language he replied--if, indeed! he spoke at all. My only recollection is of the eloquence of liquid, lustrous eyes, the confident certainty of comprehension which is the child's ere it can speak articulately.

"I am a Star-gazer; so the Fire draws me."

"Why?"

"Why? Surely all know it is the Star Fire which fell when She first came to me--Hai-me! Hai-me! When She first came and laid her hand in mine."

The drifting billows parted, showing the stars above his head, then closed again, blotting them out; blotting out all things, it seemed to me, even my own self as I sate listening to the faint wail which rose vaguely, filling the wide shadows.

"Io! Io! Disturber of dreams, why didst thou come? Io! Io! Bringer of dreams, why didst go? Lo! the Star fire was not thine though thou earnest with the Fire of the Star."

Through the pungent aroma of the burning branches, a faint breath of perfume from the sunset-dyed azalea swept, mingling with it, and so passing with it into the endless circling.

The lustrous eyes drooped, losing their brilliance; but when they looked up again only serene confident comprehension was there.

"In forest days none of us were Star-gazers, for there was no Rim to the world on which the following Footsteps could be seen. But when we left the forest for the upland, with its milch kine and seed grains, we learnt to look; for there was the Rim. And all things went to stand on it and disappear among the Stars.

"So, gazing, we saw that the Stars disappeared also; they, too, were following the Footsteps. But they never came back as they went, like other things. Their footsteps were faithful; so faithful that you could foretell by them the ripening of the seed grains, the coming of milk to the herds.

"So gazing, we wondered. Here by this pool I watched, taking no need of harvest or milk time; but I saw nothing but the following Footsteps and the footsteps of the Stars.

"Nothing, though I followed with mine eyes, wheeling as the Stars wheeled to meet the dawn while the shadows and my kind, and all other things, slept as they do now."

They slept, indeed! The very smoke had ceased to circle. It hung in motionless curves, soft, impenetrable, and I could see nothing now save the lustrous eyes, and the dull glow of the fire.

"So I gazed, until one night, as I stood following the footsteps of the faithful Stars with mine eyes, the knowledge came to me, that as I stood watching them, so Someone stood watching me and all things. Someone who did not move. And I was glad, though I was afraid.

"But that dawn, when I went down after our custom to gather the seed grains with my kind, they looked at me askance as if I were a stranger. Only Io, she of the beautiful young one that all cherished, paused as she suckled it to follow me with curious wondering eyes."

There was a pause, and through it came, soft as a sigh, that faint wail:

"Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, why didst come? Io! Io! Bringer of Dreams, why didst thou go?"

"It was cold here, on the uplands, gazing; but the faithful Stars shone quite near me. It seemed as if I could reach up and clasp them. And I was faithful as they in the Footsteps; for I have driven a stake of wood into the ground firm as the ground itself, and night after night, as I watched the Stars wheel, I twirled the slender wand I held in my hands upon it, following their faithful Footsteps so that the Someone who watched might see me even as they were!

"And I was happy, though I was afraid.

"But one night, when the tall grasses were stiff and the low green things were white with the cold, my fingers could scarce twirl the wand, and the fear lest the Someone might grow angry with me came so strong that suddenly I lifted my head and cried to It to be kind.

"How the stars shone! My hands longed to leave the wand and reach them, and in me there rose a great new joy, as if I had found myself.

"But that Dawn, when I went after the custom to gather the grain with my kind, they fled from me as if I had been an enemy.

"Only Io, she of the beautiful young one, with her breasts full of milk, left the cherished one athirst to follow my footsteps and hold out a handful of the grain she had gathered for herself.

"But I feared her and she feared me, so she left it lying on the ground, and afterwards I went and ate it, for I was hungry. But the touch of her hand that was on the grain touched my lips so that I felt it even as I gazed.

"Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, why didst come? Io! Io! Why didst thou go? The Star fire was not thine, though thou wast in the fire of the Star!"

Even the lustrous eyes were hidden from me now; I saw nothing but the fading glow of the embers as I sate listening amid the uttermost peace of all things to that soft almost voiceless wail.

"The nights grew hot, and the tall grasses crackled in the drought, and the low green things wilted to greyness. But I cared not, for I had found myself, and I knew there was a Beginning and an End. And even that touch on my lips did not disturb my dreams as, faithful as they, I followed the faithful footsteps of the Stars.

"Until one night--it was so hot that something in me seemed to out-beat the beating of the Stars--a great Darkness that was not Night came from the Rim and swallowed up all things.

"I had seen it come before and had hidden my face from it like the rest of my kin, but now my fear was too strong for hiding. Besides, who could hide when Someone watched always? And why should I hide if I were faithful--if I were as the Stars?

"Thus a great joy mingled with my fear, until something in me cried out with a great longing for something that was not in me, and something that I had not, seemed to come to me until my wand twirled faster, as if other hands were on it, and my lips, as I cried out that I was faithful, felt the touch of other lips upon them.

"So through the Darkness that hid the Stars while the hot wind howled about me and flung hot earth grains in my face, I shouted to the Stars to come down to me."

The very fire had gone now, and I strained my eyes into the shadows, seeing nothing but endless curves as of smoke.

"And lo! One came!

"Just where the wand whirled by my hot hasty hands touched the steady stake of wood I saw a tiny star.

"But, as I saw it, something came to me also, making me forget the Star!

"It was Io!

"She had left her cherished one; with her breasts full of milk, she had left the little drinker athirst; she had followed my footsteps through the darkness to find me and lay her hand in mine.

"Io! Io! Bringer of Dreams! Io! Io! Disturber of Dreams, thou didst come!

"And the touch of our hands and our lips together made us forget the starshine which had come with it.

"But the shine grew and grew, so that when we looked again it was not a Star at all, but something new and strange. Something that crept among the dry grasses and the wilted green things, something that leaped and laughed amid the darkness, something that sent hot arms towards us, till I caught her in mine and fled from it, leaving the wand and the steady stake behind.

"So we fled and fled, with the Fire which came from the Starshine behind us always. Fled in the faithful footsteps of the Stars.... Fled to find the Dawn!..."

* * * * *

There was silence; a long silence! And was that the Dawn, the gracious Dawn!

Something, surely, all rose flecked on saffron and suffused with Light lay before my upturned eyes.

It was an azalea blossom. But, as I rose to my feet from the springy juniper where I had been lying, my head sheltered by the straggling branches of the leafless bush, the dawn had come, indeed, on the far rim of the wide plain.

And between it and me, rising from the retreating snow and the carpeting of spring flowers, was a white vapour which, lit by the rosy sun rays behind it, showed like smoke from a prairie fire.

But our fire was out. Only a heap of grey ashes remained, though the sleep which had come from the juniper branches still held the sleeping servants.

It needed a rough awakening, as rough as that which had left the prisoning ice at the mercy of the prisoned water, to rouse them and make them stand yawning, stretching in the dawn, avowing that _haschish_ itself could not bring wilder dreams than those which had been theirs that night. But was it a dream? or does the man, hand-in-hand with the woman, still fly from the Fire which came from the Star-shine!

THE GIFT OF BATTLE

"Then you recommend them both," said the mild little Commissioner, doubtfully; he was a vacillating man, by nature lawful prey to his superiors.

Tim O'Brien, C.I.E.--the uncoveted distinction had been, to his great disgust, bestowed on him after a recent famine, in which his sheer vitality had saved half a province, and earned him, rightfully, the highest honour of the empire--removed his long Burmah cheroot from his lips and smiled brilliantly. He was a thin brown man with a whimsical face.

"And what would I be doing with wan of them on the Bench and the other in the dock? For it would be that way ere a week was past. It is very kind of the L.G. to suggest putting either Sirdar Bikrama Singh or Khân Buktiyar Khân on the Honorary Magistracy, but he doesn't grasp that they are hereditary enemies and have been the same for eight hundred years. Ever since the Pathans temporarily conquered the Rajputs, in the year av' grace 1256! So you couldn't in conscience expect wan of them not to commit a crime if the other was to be preferred before him. Ye see, he'd just have to kill someone. But, if ye appoint them both, the dacencies of Court procedure and the hair-splittin' formalities of the local Bar will conduce to dignity--to say nothing of their own sense of justice, which, I'll go bail, is stronger than it is in most people ye could appoint. Equity's apt to go by the board if ye've too much legal knowledge; and they have none of that last. But I'll give them a good Clerk of the Court and guarantee they come to no harrm. Yes, sir, I recommend them both--to sit _in banco_."

When Tim O'Brien spoke, as he did in the last sentence, curtly and without a trace of his usual rollicking Irish accent, his superior officers invariably fell in with his views; it saved trouble.

So, in due course, what answers to a J.P.'s commission at home (with no small extra powers thrown in) was sent to Sirdar Bikrama Singh, Rajput at his castle of Nagadrug (the Snake's Hole), and also to Khân Buktiyar Khân at his fortress of Shakingarh (the Falcon's Nest).

Both buildings had been for some centuries in a hopeless state of dilapidation, as, from a worldly point of view, were their owners' fortunes. But, just as the crumbling walls still commanded the wide arid valley which lay between the rocky steeps of the sandhills on which they stood, so the position of the two most ancient families of Hindus and Mahomedans in the district still commanded the respect of the whole sub-division. Of course, they were antagonistic. Had they not been so always? But, in truth, the old story of how they came to be so was such a very old story, that none knew the rights of it: not even the two high-nosed, high-couraged old men, who, having in due time succeeded to the headship of their respective families, had done as their fathers had done; that is to say, glared at each other over their barren fields, formulated every possible complaint they could against their neighbour, and denied any good quality to him, his house, his wife, his oxen, or his ass.

Yet the two had one thing in common. They were both soldiers by race. Their sons were even now with the colours of Empire, and in their own youth both had served John Company, and afterwards, the Queen. This bond, however, was not one of union, but rather of discord. For the one had belonged to the crack Hindu and the other to the crack Mahomedan corps of the Indian army, and their respective sons naturally followed in their fathers' footsteps. Indeed, on occasions the pair of dear old pantaloons would appear in the uniforms of a past day, hopelessly out of date as regards buttons and tailoring, but still worn with the distinctive cock of the turban and swagger of high boots that had belonged of old days and still belonged to the "rigimint."