"The purse is empty," repeated Tiddu in a warning voice, and Jhungi, with a laugh, pulled himself and his disguise together, as it were, and passed out of the tent; his beggar's cry, "Alakh! Alakh!" growing fainter and fainter while Tiddu and Jim Douglas looked at each other.
"Jhungi-Bhungi--Bhungi-Jhungi," jeered the Baharupa, suddenly, jingling the names together. "Which be which, as he said, God knows, not man. That is the best of lies. They last a body's lifetime, so the Huzoor may as well learn old Tiddu's----"
"Or Siddu's?"
"Or Siddu's," assented the mountebank calmly. "But the Huzoor cannot learn to use his gift from that old rascal. He must come to the many-faced one, who is ready to teach it."
"Why?"
Tiddu abandoned mystery at once.
"For fifty rupees, Huzoor; not a pice less. Now, in my hand."
Was it worth it? Jim Douglas decided instantly that it might be. Not for the gift's sake; of that he was incredulous. But Tiddu was a consummate actor and could teach many tricks worth knowing. Then in this roving commission to report on anything he saw and heard to the military magnate, it would suit him for the time to have the service of an arrant scoundrel. Besides, the pay promised him being but small, the wisdom of having a second string to the bow of ambition had already decided him on combining inquiry with judicious horse-dealing; since he could thus wander through villages buying, through towns selling, without arousing suspicion; and this life in a caravan would start him on these lines effectively. Finally, this offer of Tiddu's was unsought, unexpected, and, ever since Kate Erlton's appeal, Jim Douglas had felt a strange attraction toward pure chance. So he took out a note from his pocket-book and laid it in the Baharupa's hand.
"You asked fifty," he said, "I give a hundred; but with the branch of the neem-tree between us two."
Tiddu gave him an admiring look. "With the sacred 'Lim ke dagla' between us, and Mighty Murri-am herself to see it grow," he echoed. "Is the Huzoor satisfied?"
The Englishman knew enough of Bunjârah oaths to be sure that he had, at least, the cream of them; besides, a hundred rupees went far in the purchase of good faith. So that matter was settled, and he felt it to be a distinct relief; for during the last day or two he had been casting about for a fair start rather aimlessly. In truth, he had underrated the gap little Zora's death would make in his life, and had been in a way bewildered to find himself haunting the empty nest on the terraced roof in forlorn, sentimental fashion. The sooner, therefore, that he left Lucknow the better. So, as the Bunjârah had told him the caravan was starting the very next morning, he hastily completed his few preparations, and having sent Tara word of his intention, went, after the moon had risen, to lock the doors on the past idyl and take the key of the garden-house back to its owner; for he himself had always lodged, in European fashion, near the Palace.
The garden, as he entered it, lay peaceful as ever; so utterly unchanged from what he remembered it on many balmy moonlit nights, that he could not help looking up once more, as if expectant of that tinsel flutter, that soft welcome, "Khush-âmud-und Huzrut." Strange! So far as he was concerned the idyl might be beginning; but for her? All unconsciously, as he paused, his thought found answer in one spoken word--the Persian equivalent for "it is finished," which has such a finality in its short syllables:
"Khutm."
"Khutm." The echo came from Tara's voice, but it had a ring in it which made him turn, anticipating some surprise. She was standing not far off, below the plinth, as he was, having stepped out from the shadow of the trees at his approach, and she was swathed from head to foot in the white veil of orthodox widowhood, which encircled her face like a cere-cloth. Even in the moonlight he could see the excitement in her face, the glitter in the large, wild eyes.
"Tara!" he exclaimed sharply, his experience warning him of danger, "what does this mean?"
"That the end has come; the end at last!" she cried theatrically; every fold of her drapery, though she stood stiff as a corpse, seeming to be instinct with fierce vitality.
He changed his tone at once, perceiving that the danger might be serious. "You mean that your service is at an end," he said quietly. "I told you that some days ago. Also that your pay would be continued because of your goodness to her--to the dead. I advised your returning north, nearer your own people, but you are free to go or stay. Do you want anything more? If you do, be quick, please, for I am in a hurry."
His coolness, his failure to remark on the evident meaning of her changed dress, calmed her somewhat.
"I want nothing," she replied sullenly. "A suttee wants nothing in this world, and I am suttee. I have been the master's servant for gratitude's sake--now I am the servant of God for righteousness' sake." So far she had, spoken as if the dignified words had been pre-arranged; now she paused in a sort of wistful anger at the indifference on his face. The words meant so much to her, and, as she ceased from them, their controlling power seemed to pass also, and she flung out her arms wildly, then brought them down in stinging blows upon her breasts.
"I am suttee. Yes! I am suttee! Reject me not again, ye Shining Ones! reject me not again."
The cry was full of exalted resolve and despair. It made Jim Douglas step up to her, and seizing both hands, hold them fast.
"Don't be a fool, Tara!" he said sternly. "Tell me, sensibly, what all this means. Tell me what you are going to do."
His touch seemed to scorch her, for she tore herself away from it vehemently; yet it seemed also to quiet her, and she watched him with somber eyes for a minute ere replying: "I am going to Holy Gunga. Where else should a suttee go? The Water will not reject me as the Fire did, since, before God! I am suttee. As the master knows,"--her voice held a passionate appeal,--"I have been suttee all these long years. Yet now I have given up all--all!"
With a swift gesture, full of womanly grace, but with a sort of protest against such grace in its utter abandonment and self-forgetfulness, she flung out her arms once more. This time to raise the shrouding veil from her head and shoulders. Against this background of white gleaming in the moonlight, her new-shaven skull showed death-like, ghastly. Jim Douglas recoiled a step, not from the sight itself, but because he knew its true meaning; knew that it meant self-immolation if she were left to follow her present bent. She would simply go down to the Ganges and drown herself. An inconceivable state of affairs, beyond all rational understanding; but to be reckoned with, nevertheless, as real, inevitable.
"What a pity!" he said, after a moment's pause had told him that it would be well to try and take the starch out of her resolution by fair means or foul, leaving its cause for future inquiry. "You had such nice hair. I used to admire it very much."
Her hands fell slowly, a vague terror and remorse came to her eyes; and he pursued the advantage remorselessly. "Why did you cut it off?" He knew, of course, but his affected ignorance took the color, the intensity from the situation, by making her feel her coup de theatre had failed.
"The Huzoor must know," she faltered, anger and disappointment and vague doubt in her tone, while her right hand drew itself over the shaven skull as if to make sure there was no mistake. "I am suttee--" The familiar word seemed to bring certainty with it, and she went on more confidentially. "So I cut it all off and it lies there, ready, as I am, for purification."
She pointed to the upper step leading to the plinth, where, as on an altar, lay all her worldly treasures, arranged carefully with a view to effect. The crimson scarf she had always worn was folded--with due regard to the display of its embroidered edge--as a cloth, and at either end of it lay a pile of trumpery personal adornments, each topped and redeemed from triviality by a gold wristlet and anklet. In the center, set round by fallen orange-blossoms, rose a great heap of black hair, snakelike in glistening coils. The simple pomposity of the arrangement was provocative of smiles, the wistful eagerness of the face watching its effect on the master was provocative of tears. Jim Douglas, feeling inclined for both, chose the former deliberately; he even managed a derisive laugh as he stepped up to the altar and laid sacrilegious