But this was between themselves; this could hurt no one. By and by, of course, he would insist on a commonplace engagement, and a wedding. Yes! a commonplace wedding. He had, despite his vague repugnance to her origin, made up his mind to that. No one but an utter cad could take what he was taking, and then shake his bridle rein and ride away. But for the present, it was the most absolutely perfect bit of romance in his whole life. He could not, would not give it up. Laila was right! This was the essence. As a rule, people mixed love, diluted it, were vaguely ashamed of its absorbing influence. But when you came to analyze even the diluted feeling, its virtue lay in this irrational content, this desire for nothing better than this best of pleasures--this paradise of a woman's or a man's love.
He laughed, suddenly, at the memory of Laila's quick grasp of his meaning when Muriel had overheard his remark about the time. Such quickness, in the latter, would have made him revolt from it; but with Laila it was different. A passionate gratitude to the girl to whom fear, remorse, the very possibility of change seemed unknown, rose up and claimed him. Dear little girl! She was so absolutely single-minded in her love for him. How could anyone expect him to forego the luxury of such love yet awhile?
In thinking Laila single-minded, Vincent thought the truth, so far as he was concerned. If love, passionate as Juliet's, and far more innocent in one way, far more rusé in another, ever existed, hers was that love. Nevertheless, its very integrity made her curiously cunning in regard to anything which threatened to disturb that idyll in the garden. So, at that very moment, when Vincent looked up at her windows asserting her absolute lack of pretence and single-mindedness, she was pitting her wits against old Akbar Khân in a manner worthy of her grandmother, Anâri Begum; since Akbar, far more than her guardian, was to be feared. The latter, honest man, went to his bed, beyond the chapel, at ten of the clock precisely; but Akbar, who from ancient habit was given to prowling about at night, and napping in odd corners, had many chances of discovery. During the last few days, however, when she, for her own purposes, had let him talk, he had become so garrulous regarding his past that she had recognized in him an unscrupulous confidant, with whom, in face of the possibility of requiring one, it was wise to remain on terms.
So, as she lounged on the sofa, she listened to his endless talk with tolerance.
"Nay!" she interrupted at last. "If, as thou sayest she will, she brings me more dresses and jewels, she may call me Begum, and hint at my being one, really, a thousand times over! Why not? Begum and Princess are the same, and my great-grandmother in Italy was that. Pidar Narâyan told me so to-day."
The memory of the old man's voice, when, with new-found courage, she had questioned him concerning those old days, made her eyes soft. Yes! he would, he must understand. So, by and by, when Vincent and she were tired of playing Romeo and Juliet (the story of the star-crossed lovers had been her only reading since Vincent had taken to quoting so much from it) they would make Pidar Narâyan play Friar Laurence, and marry them on the sly. That would be so much more amusing than a regular wedding. He could not refuse, since he had once loved as she loved. You could hear that in his voice; after how many years?--fifty or sixty! And the Princess had, of course, loved also in exactly the same way. Laila felt sure of it. That curious, inexpressible feeling had come to her also. Laila, trying to formulate that feeling, slipping her heel idly in and out of her dainty little bronze shoe as she lounged, suddenly remembered Vincent's song to the tambourine, and laughed. That was it!
"Golden feet upon a golden stair."
That expressed it exactly. Two pair of feet going side by side up a golden stair, to golden gates. So contented. Ah, God! how content! Seeking something, claiming something, yet still content. That feeling came, sometimes, when you were saying your prayers. A sort of yearning for, a sort of satisfaction in, something that was not you; so, surely if it came then, there could be no harm in it.
Harm! The very sisters allowed that you must love the man you were going to marry. And she and Vincent would be married by and by and live happily, for that was better than having a "statue of pure gold" erected to you! In the meantime, secrecy, so long as Vincent wished to play Romeo and Juliet, was her cue; therefore, the more she could blind old Akbar, the more he could be turned on a wrong track, the better. Especially when the turning was so delightfully ridiculous!
She managed, however, not to laugh her childish love of mischief into Mumtâza Mahal's very face when, after much shrinking into white sheets held up as screens, and quick cuddlings into corners at the faintest suspicion of a possible peep, that good lady, in her very, very best pink satin continuations, was ushered in through the dark deserted passages of the palace, to Laila's boudoir. For, despite the amusement, the girl's heart was beating fast with determination to climb her golden stairs without interruption. So she allowed herself to be kow-towed to, and called Begum-sahiba and she accepted the new dress and jewels without protest. Eagerly, in fact, since they were far more gorgeous than the first, and caught her taste better. The former, indeed, had been Roshan Khân's own choice, dictated by his acquired knowledge of the sort of things mem-sahibs admired; these latter were her grandmother's, purely, entirely oriental. The difference was great. Put briefly, this was the costume in which Anâri Begum had flouted the Nawab, the other that in which she had caught Bun-avatâr's fancy.