II
"My dear child, all your geese are swans--and so were your poor mother's before you," said her father. And then his eyes grew dreamy, perhaps over the intricacies of some new coins he was classifying; though, in truth, the memory of the young wife who had left him alone with a week-old baby in the days of his youth had somehow come harder to him during the last few happier, more home-like years since his daughter had returned to take her mother's place as mistress of the house; for the girl was very like the dead woman.
She had brought her father his afternoon cup of tea to the office-tent, cleared for that brief recess of the cloud of clerks and witnesses, who through the wide canvas-wings, set open to let in the air, could be seen huddled in groups among the sparse shadows of the stunted kikar trees amid which the camp was pitched. They could be heard also, since in the limited leisure at their disposal they were hubble-hubbling away at their hookahs conscientiously; the noise in its rhythmic, intermittent insistency seemed like a distant snore from the sleepy desert of sand that stretched away to the horizon on all sides.
"Of course," he went on, "you could hardly be expected to know--though really, my dear, you have all your mother's quickness of perception regarding people and places--but the mere fact of that goatherd fellow giving his name as Khesroo, and admitting he was low-caste, should have made you doubt his assertion. I confess I had little hope, for such knowledge as he professed to have is generally in the keeping of the priesthood only."
"But Jim was there--I mean Mr. Forrester," she began. Her father coughed uneasily.
"Because I call my personal assistant, whom I have known as a child, Jim, that is no reason, my dear Queenie, why you should contract the habit. I don't think your poor mother would have liked it. Besides, though he is an able young man--very much so, indeed, and when he grows older will make an excellent officer--Mr. Forrester--ahem!" (he made a violent effort over the name) "has no genius for antiquities. He utterly fails, for instance, to realise the far-reaching importance--for it would, of course, alter the whole chronology of the Græco-Bactrian era--of my contention concerning what Hausmann and the German school generally venture to designate a post-Vicramaditya. Yet some day, I feel sure, the gold coin of which Kapala gives so exact a description in B.C. 200, with the date under the legend and a double profile on the obverse, will turn up, and then the point will be settled, even if I do not live to see it."
He was fairly off on his hobby and had risen to pace the tent, his hands behind his back. Many a time and oft she had listened to him patiently, almost eagerly, for the story of India's golden age always fired her imagination, but to-day she was thinking of other things--of her engagement for one, which she must break to him sooner or later. So she went up to him and tucked her arm into his coaxingly.
"You may, father. It might be found any day. Do you know, I believe you would give almost anything--even your daughter--for that ducat. Wouldn't you?"
Absolute jest as it was, her voice trembled over the trivial words, as voices often do unconsciously when Fate means to turn them to her own purposes.
He smiled and patted her hand. "Undoubtedly, I would, my dear. But, nice as you are, no one is likely to offer me that exchange. To begin with, the coin, as a simple unique, would be worth a fortune, and then there is the fame. Think of it! Half the philologists, most of the historians, and all those German fellows routed on their own ground!"
"Who knows?" she said, and then a frown dimmed the amusement in her eyes. "Though I can't understand," she added, "why that man Khesroo denied--as you say he did--having met Jim--I mean, us--yesterday. He can't be the wrong man, can he?"
"Mr. Forrester thinks he is not. But you can see for yourself," replied her father, returning to his tea and his treasures, "for he is still over in the orderlies' tent. They had such trouble hunting him out of the jungles and persuading him to come here that they said they must keep him overnight, anyhow, in case he was wanted."
An hour or so afterwards, therefore, a yellow-legged constable escorted the goatherd who had answered to the name of Khesroo into the verandah of the Miss-Sahiba's drawing-room tent. It, also, was set wide to the cool of the desert evening, and its easy-chairs and low, flower-decked tables strewn with books and magazines struck a curiously dissonant note from that sounded by the wilderness of sandy waste which on all sides hemmed in the little square of white-winged camp with a certain hungry emptiness.
"He is the man, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone (for her father had come over from office and was seated within, reading the daily papers which the camel-post had just brought). "And yet--he looks different somehow--and so ill, too."
He did look ill, with the languid yet harassed air which follows on malarial fever. The buoyancy of his carriage was replaced by an almost dejected air. Yet it was unmistakably the goatherd they had met the evening before, who, in obedience to a sign, squatted down midway, as it were, between the culture inside the tent and the savagery without it.
"You look as if you had been having fever--have you?" asked the girl abruptly, for her years of authority had made her knowledgeable in such things.
"The malika sahiba says right," replied Khesroo, indifferently. "I have had it much--this long while back."
"And you had it yesterday or the day before?"
"It was yesterday. I was put past by it all day. And yet----" here a vague perplexity came to the dulled yet anxious face as he looked first at the girl, then apologetically at Jim Forrester. "What the Presence said about meeting me is perhaps right after all. Yes! it is right. I did see the Huzoor. I have remembered from the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair."
The young Englishman frowned angrily. "You work miracles in memory, my dear Queenie," he said, and there was quite an aggrieved tone in his voice as he turned shortly on the speaker. "Why on earth didn't you tell the truth before, then? And the old city? I suppose you remember all about that, too?"
"The old city," echoed Khesroo, doubtfully. "No, Huzoor! What should I know about it beyond what all know--that there was a city, and that it is lost? Such as I know only what the wise tell them----" he paused, and even to his deprecation came a half-resigned self-assertion, "And yet I had more chance than most, seeing that my mother was twice-born."
"She was, was she?" put in his hearer, and then looked round towards his chief. "Do you hear that, sir? His mother was a Brahmani--that may account for his profile, which you said this morning puzzled you in a low-caste man."
"I said it was Scythic in type, and so it is," was the answer, as the speaker laid down his paper and came forward for further inspection. "So your mother was twice-born," he continued, addressing the goatherd; "a child-widow, I suppose?"
Khesroo stretched his hand out, the fingers wide-spread in a dignified assent, which suited him better than his former almost cringing humility.
"Huzoor, yes! Her people, however, did not find her till I was nigh six; but after that, of course, I was alone."
A hush fell on the group, for--to those three listeners who understood them--the simple words told of a common enough tragedy in India; of a life denied all natural outlet, of unworthy love, of outraged pride of race followed by sure, if slow, revenge.
"And your father--who was he?"
Kresroo shook his head. "I had no one but my mother, Huzoor."
There was another hush, on which the girl's voice rose clear with a curious thrill in it.
"And she was very beautiful, was she not?"
"Her son is a good-looking fellow, at any rate," remarked Jim Forrester, coolly, and moving away, he took up the newspaper, conscious of a certain irritation, and began to read the latest report of wireless telegraphy with the unsuspicious and unquestioning assent which we of these latter days reserve for the marvels of matter only.
Her father having gone back to his papers also, the girl and the goatherd were left alone midway between civilisation and savagery. Huddled in his coarse blanketing, his bare arms crossed over his bare knees, there was nothing distinctive or unusual in Khesroo's figure, behind which the background of shadowy desert was fast fading into shadowy sky, except the haggardness of the aquiline face, the hollowness of the dark eyes. These struck her, and she stretched out her hand to feel his.
"Have you fever now? No, you are quite cool."
He shivered slightly at her touch, and his eyes, passing hers, seemed to rest on the plaits of her hair.
"No, Huzoor," he replied, "it is a thief fever--it is hard to catch."
She smiled. "I think quinine will manage it."
He shook his head. "Nothing catches that which robs us of life at its own time. It will leave me none some day." He spoke unconcernedly, as if the fact were beyond question.
"Then why do you wear that amulet if it is of no use?" she said, pointing to the little leathern bag, such as the wild tribes use for the carrying of charms, which was tied round his arm.
Khesroo shook his head again, but smiled this time, and the flash of his white teeth must have removed any doubt of his identity, had such doubt existed.
"The queen-lady mistakes," he said. "It does not contain a charm. It is my photongrar."
"Your what?" she echoed, uncomprehending.
"Photongrar. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother."
"You mean your photograph?"
"Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is like my mother as she was--before they found her!"
Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like after that finding which made the English girl feel a vague oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded from a piece of red rag.
"I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much."
Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate, yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her father, with appeal in her voice.
"Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to read the other day, because we were camping through the same country. Stay! I'll fetch it----"
She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end.
"There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!"
Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester, looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand had written:
"The Son of a King!"
The title fitted the picture, and reminded the girl of something in Khesroo which had struck her yesterday and which was absent to-day. She turned over the page, but beyond it all was blank. Those words were the last in the diary.
"I think I remember something about it now, my dear," said her father, taking his hand away from the book gently; "it may have been the last she took, for I was camping round here as assistant just before--before you were born. And she was always taking children and giving pictures to the mothers; not that I remember that particular one--you see it must be fifteen years ago--at least."
"Nearer five-and-twenty, dear," she said, softly, and as she realised the impotence of what the world counts as time to touch the smallest thing that once has been, the utter irrelevance of days and weeks and years in connection with a single thought, the photographs before her grew dim to her eyes, the fine feminine writing with its verdict, "The Son of a King," became invisible.
So through her tears she saw only--blurred and indistinct--the wondering face of Khesroo the goatherd.
"Look!" she said, in sudden impulse. "The sun must have held two pictures of you."
He stared at the duplicate stupidly. "I did not steal it," he began, uneasily.
"Of course you didn't," she replied, smiling now. "It was my mother who took the picture, and gave it to yours--she was the mem-sahiba you spoke of--perhaps you remember her?"
A look almost of relief came to the goatherd's haggard, anxious face. "Yes! Perhaps your slave remembers, and that is why he thought he recollected the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair. That will be it, and your slave did not lie to the Huzoor." He looked apologetically towards the young Englishman; but the latter had once more an aggrieved tone in his voice as he said shortly in English:
"Whether he did or did not doesn't much matter. There isn't anything to be got out of him apparently, so perhaps you had better tell the orderly to take him back to the tent and see that he takes the quinine you send--as I suppose you will."