They rode along Beadon Street in a glamorous after-sunset glow (the car was threading through swarms whose sheet-like garments blended softly with the gray pastel of houses and the lingering rose-light) and Trent, eyes upon the girl, felt the sheer call of youth and romance at dusk. The very atmosphere was an electrode, drawing its current from the first white stars. Nor was Dana Charteris unreceptive. She was aware of a shielding warmth, and not of the physical, in his presence. The play of muscles of sunburnt cheek and jaw was vital and challenging, but behind that, more convincing because it was not visible to the eye, but to a sense of inner perception, was a compelling cleanliness; strength that had not to do with thews or tendons.
The theater was in a neighborhood of white houses and green palms, close to Beadon Square; their seats in an orchestra-stall. Over the pit hung oil lamps, round yellow moons suspended in cavernous gloom; dim electric lights in the ceiling; about them, a loose-robed, turbaned audience, the majority chewing pellets of crushed areca-nut and lime.
Musicians in white raiment filed in and played an overture, and the performance began.... A tale of chivalrous deeds and chivalrous days (thus translated Trent in a whisper, as the actors, flashes against the rich gloom of a back-drop, recited their lines); of Kurnavati, the Rani of Chitor, and Humayun, the Great Mogul. Bahadur Shah, so went the story, was hurling his armies against Chitor. The Rani had sent out the pride of the Rajputs, but they could not check the onrush of Bahadur Shah. Chitor was lost. Then the Rani, recalling a custom, took from her arm a bracelet and gave it to a servant, bidding him carry it, with a plea for succor, to Humayun, the Great Mogul. The servant departed.... And the first act ended.
"And you said it would be dull!" This from Dana Charteris when Trent had explained all that happened. "Somehow it makes me think of the Brahmin priest who lectured—a sort of thrilling mysticism; color and tragedy."
Just before the second act Trent glanced around the betel-chewing audience and saw—a pink turban. It disappeared as he looked, and he smiled at the thought of Tambusami crouching between the seats of the back row of stalls.
The second act was at the court of Humayun. The messenger of the Rani of Chitor arrived; presented the bracelet. Humayun, knowing of the custom, accepted it. By that act he became the bracelet-brother of the Rani, bound by custom to go to her if she called. Then the servant delivered the Rani's plea. And Humayun, who was a noble monarch, drew a jewelled sword from a jewelled scabbard and declared that the blade should not return to its sheath until his bracelet-sister was free of the oppression of Bahadur Shah.
Thus the second act. There was a third; a fourth. Clash of steel upon steel; the clangor and strident ring of battle. In the last act Humayun reached Chitor—too late. For Kurnavati, rather than be conquered by the terrible Bahadur Shah, died upon the funeral pyre. And Humayun, borne to the walls in a golden palanquin, looked toward the smoky ruins and wept.
Trent, leaving the theater, let his eyes quest over the crowd in search of Tambusami. But he had gone. However, the Englishman suspected he would find him at the hotel, the essence of innocence.
"Now that you've seen the Chinese quarter and a Bengali theater," he said as they rode toward the modern city, "what other reason can you think of to prowl about after dark?"
"I won't have another chance in Calcutta," she answered, smiling. "I'm leaving to-morrow; and when I'm with my brother—well, you know how brothers are.... I felt so sorry for the Rani in the play—she looked as I've always visualized Ameera, in 'Without Benefit of Clergy.' Was that really a custom—the part about the bracelet-brother?"