The Bronze Bell

by Louis Joseph Vance

Amber began to suspect that the troops had been furnished as a guard less of honour than of espionage, less in formal courtesy than in demonstration of the unsleeping vigilance of the Eye—kindly assisted by the Maharana of Khandawar.

A man who, warmed by the ardour of his first love, feels suddenly the shadow of death falling cold upon him, is apt to neglect nothing. Amber considered that he had given Ram Nath no commission of any sort, and bent an attentive ear to the communication which the tonga-wallah insisted upon making to him.

Ram Nath had returned, he asserted, solely for the purpose of informing Amber in accordance with his desires. "The telegraph-office for which you enquired, sahib, stands just within the Gateway of the Elephants," he announced. "The telegraph-babu will be on duty very early in the morning, should you desire still to send the message."

"Oh, yes," said Amber indifferently. "I'd forgotten. Thanks."

He returned to his charpoy with spirits considerably higher. Ram Nath had not winked this time, but the fact was indisputable that Amber had not expressed any interest whatever in the location of the telegraph-office.

Wondering if the telegraph-babu by any chance wore pink satin, he dozed off on the decision that he would need to send a message the first thing in the morning.

Some time later he was a second time awakened by further disputation in the compound. The troopers were squabbling amongst themselves; he was able to make this much out in spite of the fact that the sepoys, recruited exclusively from the native population of Khandawar, spoke a patois of Hindi so corrupt that even an expert in Oriental languages would experience difficulty in trying to interpret it. Amber did not weary himself with the task, but presently lifted up his voice and demanded silence, desiring to be informed if his sleep was to be continually broken by the bickerings of sons of mothers without noses. There followed instantaneous silence, broken by a chuckle and an applausive "Shabash!" and nothing more.

Amber snuggled down again upon his pillow and soothed himself with the feel of the pistol that his fingers grasped beneath the clothes.

A bar of moonlight slipped through the blinds and fell athwart his eyes. He cursed it bitterly and got up and moved his charpoy into shadow. The sibilant lisping of the wavelets against the bund sang him softly toward oblivion … and a convention of water-fowl went into stormy executive session out in the middle of the lake. This had to be endured, and in time Amber's senses grew numb to the racket and he dropped off into a fitful doze….

Footfalls and hushed voices in the bungalow were responsible for the next interruption. Amber came to with a start and found himself sitting up on the edge of the charpoy, with a dreamy impression that two people had been standing over him and had just left the room, escaping by way of the khansamah's quarters. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went out to remonstrate vigorously with the khansamah. The latter naturally professed complete ignorance of the visitation and dwelt with such insistence upon the plausibility of dreams that Amber lost patience and kicked him grievously, so that he complained with a loud voice and cast himself at the sahib's feet, declaring that he was but as the dust beneath them and that Amber was his father and mother and the light of the Universe besides. In short, he raised such a rumpus that some of the sepoys came in to investigate and—went out again, hastily, to testify to their fellows that the hazoor was a man of fluent wrath, surprisingly versed in the art and practice of abuse.