"So many men; so many loves."
—M. O. Willcocks.

A dinner of native dishes served on leaves—to each guest his own portion on his own leaf—eaten picnic-fashion on a Kashmir carpet in the presence of twelve regally reproachful chairs, is a form of entertainment only to be met with in India; and when, to these incongruities, is added the crowning one that the host may not defile himself by sharing the meal with his guests, you have a situation typical of the land where all things are possible.

Prompted by Colonel Mayhew, the Chumba Rajah, a shy taciturn boy of sixteen, had despatched a formal invitation, hoping that the Residency party would honour him with their company at the Palace on the evening of their arrival from Dalhousie; though in truth he wished them anywhere else in the world; and Colonel Mayhew, who was by no means too old to enjoy a spasmodic daylight flirtation with a woman of Quita's intelligence, had devised the native menu mainly for her delectation.

A large sheet, promoted to the rank of tablecloth, covered the carpet, while ten cushions apologised for the absence of chairs. A bowl of roses, rigidly arranged in alternate lines of flower and fern, filled the room with fragrance. In front of each guest a snowy dome of rice, ringed about with a strange assortment of curries, gleamed on a silver salver. A quaint array of flat baskets held fragments of roast chicken and kid; unleavened cakes of a peculiarly greasy nature did duty for bread; and the only concessions to civilisation were knives and forks, table-napkins, and champagne.

"Why shouldn't we have the courage of our barbarism, and do without knives and forks as well?" Quita had suggested airily, at the outset; and a faint look of horror convulsed Mrs Mayhew's bird-like face.

Her husband saw it, and came promptly to her aid.

"No forks, no champagne!" he retorted, laughing; and Quita picked up her fork straightway.

"Hobson's choice!" she said, in a tone of mock resignation. "It would be sheer brutality to deprive six men of champagne!"

She was sitting now on a cushion, at the Resident's right hand, feet tucked away under her skirts, and a napkin laid across her knee. On this she had set a leaf piled with saffron-tinted rice, which she was exploring eagerly for incidental sultanas and yellow lumps of sugar, exchanging bulletins, from time to time, with Desmond, who had taken her in to dinner, and in whom she speedily recognised a morning quality of mind that matched her own.

Lenox, sitting opposite between Honor and Elsie, acutely aware that his legs were too long for the occasion, almost forgot the torment of the past week in looking and listening, and wondering how he had ever attained even a passing hold upon a spirit so lightly poised, so compact of volatile essences, that he shrank, almost with awe, from the bare thought of subjecting her uncaptured loveliness to the pains and penalties of marriage. He sat for the most part in silence; content to let the ripple of her voice and laughter play over him like water over parched earth. Her voice had drawn him irresistibly from the first. It was a thing of exquisite modulations. It thrilled like a caress. Its clear, cool tones, pure from passion, intoxicated him like the rarefied atmosphere of the heights. Once or twice she flung him a question or a remark, as if compelling him to be aware of her existence. He answered her with grave politeness, and an occasional direct look, before which her eyes fell, as if dazzled by a helio-flash from the man's inner fire.

All these things Honor Desmond noted; and, by the searchlight of her womanhood, discerned more than Quita herself had yet realised.

Garth, from his uncoveted post of honour at Mrs Mayhew's left hand, noted them also; but with less of understanding. Stung to irritation by a sense of vague happenings in which he counted for nothing, and by the fact that Quita was evidently enjoying herself far more than the occasion seemed to warrant, he was in no mood to do justice to the supreme event of the day—his dinner. Strange foods, too, were an abomination to his clockwork order of mind; and when, in addition, he found himself condemned to eat them sitting cross-legged on the ground, a leaf balanced precariously on one knee, he began to entertain grave doubts as to the comparative values of the game and the candle.

He quite resented the manifest contentment of Elsie Mayhew and her partner, who sat facing him, absorbed in the low-toned talk of incipient lovers, blind and deaf to the insignificant doings around them. Nor was he greatly blest in his left-hand partner, Bathurst, the Rajah's tutor—a clean-limbed athlete of the two-adjective genus, who discoursed complacently of "bags," "mounts," and handicaps; the staple topics of his kind. And while the stream of words flowed on, unchecked by his flagrant inattention, Garth's ears were tantalised by snatches of talk from the lively end of the table, where Desmond and Quita were behaving like two children; by the silver quality of her laughter that whipped his senses, while it lulled his conscience like a narcotic, and set him devising a moonlight stroll with her later on, in the Palace courtyard, by way of compensation for present martyrdom endured on her account. For since the night of the dance she had been so uniformly gracious, that he was beginning to regard his rebuff on Dynkund as little more than a delicate prelude to surrender after all.

Such absorbing reflections made him so neglectful of his hostess, that the little lady's spasmodic efforts to enliven him with spiced snippets of gossip—more than one item of which had emanated from himself—fizzled out dismally, long before the meal was over; and it was with an audible sigh of relief that she glanced across at Mrs Desmond, and got upon her feet with as much dignity as a cushion, a plump figure, and cramped limbs would allow.

"What? You do not desert us?" Quita asked, as Desmond offered her his arm.

"No—I do not desert you!" He spoke lightly, but significance lurked in his tone. "The Rajah and his suite are waiting to receive us in the Durbar Hall, and unless you object to my cigar, or send me to the right-about, I claim you as my prisoner of war for the evening!"

"À la bonheur! Smoke as much as you please. You will not need to tie a thread round my ankle, I promise you. Why didn't I get to know you sooner?"

"Perhaps because you discovered metal more attractive?"

The light thrust drew blood. She flushed, and laughed uneasily.

"A palpable hit! I might retaliate with a coal of fire in the shape of a compliment. But you don't deserve it. Anyway, let's make up for lost time now. I have a feeling that we shall be good friends, only . . . ."

"Only—what?"

"Mrs Desmond may disapprove of me."

"You'd not say that if you knew her better," he answered, warmly. "She isn't one of your good women who make a hobby of disapproval."

"That's a mercy! It is the pet vice of the virtuous; and Mrs Mayhew deals in it largely. No doubt it keeps her happy, and makes her feel superior; and I wouldn't rob my worst enemy of such a heavenly sensation! I'm sorry for her to-night, though. She hates natives almost as much as Colonel Mayhew loves them; and I'm afraid she's not envying herself; nor will poor Elsie, if Captain Lenox makes her a prisoner of war for the evening! He hardly vouchsafed her half a dozen words through dinner."

"Lenox is no conversationalist," Desmond answered, looking straight before him. "But he is a splendid fellow—worth fifty of your drawing-room acrobats."

"You like him so much, then?"

"I do more than that. I admire him."

"You are an enthusiast!"

The shadow of change in her tone did not escape him.

"Is that also one of the vices you detest?"

"But, no! I gave you credit for more discernment. Enthusiasts and idealists are the salt of the earth. That's why I want to know more of you. There! In spite of myself I have crowned you with a coal of fire after all! Now, please introduce me to our resplendent Rajah Sahib. I am going to make him talk. Colonel Mayhew has dared me to succeed!"

They entered the Durbar Hall as she spoke—a long room overloaded with gilt furniture, gilt-framed mirrors, and the inevitable chandeliers and musical boxes that are the insignia of semi-civilised opulence throughout India. No self-respecting Maharajah, or Rana, or Nawab would dream of living in a Palace devoid of either.

Rajah Govind Singh and his four companions stood together by a marble-topped table, laughing and whispering over a book filled with photographs of music-hall celebrities, while beside it a spurious album, whose heart was a musical box, tinkled an age-old air from "Les Cloches" with maddening precision. At the far end of the room a native conjurer had established himself, and was already performing indefatigably for the benefit of no one in particular.

The group by the table showed a medley of colour quite in keeping with the flash and glitter of the whole. Over spotless shirts and trousers the boys wore brilliant silk chogas[1] cunningly patterned with gold wire, and surmounted by turbans of palest primrose, orange, and green. But Govind Singh, by divine right of Rajahdom, eclipsed the rest. Beneath his scarlet coat gleamed a waistcoat of woven gold, and the jewelled buckle of his Rajput chuprass.[2] Three strings of pearls formed a close collar at his throat, and in front of his sea-green turban a heron's plume sprang from a cluster of brilliants. The faces of all were no darker than ripe wheat; for your high-caste hill-man never takes colour, like his brother of the plains.

They had long since eaten their own simple dinner, in the scantiest clothing, and in a solemn silence, squatting on a bare mud floor. For to the Hindu a meal is a sacred ceremony, and the Sahib's idiosyncrasy for making merry over his food can only be accepted as part and parcel of his bewildering lack of sense and dignity in regard to the conduct of life.

During a long minority this boy had been zealously inoculated with Western knowledge and Western points of view; and with the deceptive pliancy of the Oriental he had smilingly submitted to the process. But deep down in the unplumbed heart of him he waited for the good day when he would be rid of these well-meaning interlopers,—tireless as their own fire-carriages,—who troubled the still waters of life and talked so vigorously about nothing in particular; when he would be free to forget cricket and polo and futile efforts to cleanse the State from intrigue; free to sit down in peace and grow fat, unhindered by the senseless machinations of the outer world.

And in the heart of Govind Singh you have a fair epitome of the great heart of India herself: aloof, long-suffering, illogical to a degree inconceivable by Western minds; ready to lavish deep-hearted devotion upon individual Nicholsons and Lawrences when they come her way; yet, for all her surface submission and progress, not an inch nearer to racial sympathy, or to the inner significance of English life and character than she was fifty years ago.

But, in the meanwhile, our concern is with a minor Maharajah, and his passion for musical boxes.

At the Resident's approach, the laughter and whispering ceased; and the four boys endured with impassive politeness the mysterious rite of introduction. The tinkling album gave Quita her cue. She insisted on hearing its entire repertoire, which was mercifully limited; and her natural ease of manner, her knack of plunging whole-heartedly into the subject of the moment, soon put Govind Singh's shyness to flight. He deserted monosyllables for clipped, hurried sentences, jerked out with an odd mixture of nervousness and self-satisfaction. Quita flashed a smile at Desmond, who stood sentry at her elbow, in seeming ignorance of the fact that Garth was making tentative attempts to usurp his place.

"You must show me some of the others, Rajah Sahib," she declared, as the complacent album clicked into silence, "and when I go home to England I will hunt you up a new kind to add to your collection!"

The boy's eyes lost their look of lazy indifference; a gleam of superb teeth illumined his face.

"An upright grand is the last trifling addition to it, Miss Maurice," Colonel Mayhew informed her, "but the Rajah was a little disappointed when he found that it couldn't be set going by the turning of a key."

"I am liking the big noise—the big tamasha," the young monarch explained in all gravity. "And I think that one is too much price for a box that will do nothing unless somebody knows to make it speak."

"Mrs Desmond can make it speak for you, Rajah Sahib," Colonel Mayhew suggested; and the boy turned upon her with shy eagerness.

"Can you really do a tune?" he asked.

"Several tunes!" she answered, smiling. "A big noise, if you like."

"Oh, that is very good business. Thanks awfully."

He spoke the slang phrases, picked up from Bathurst, with mechanical precision; and Honor, still smiling, went over to the piano—a flamboyant instrument of rosewood and gold. After a second of hesitation Lenox followed, opened it for her, and resting a hand on the gilt back of her chair, bent down to speak to her before she began to play. The suggestion of intimacy in his attitude was not lost on Quita, who saw it all, without glancing in their direction. Her lips tightened; and she started slightly when Desmond spoke to her.

"Will you go round the musical boxes with me?" he asked, in an undertone that bordered on tenderness. For he saw that something in her suffered, whether it were pride or love.

"But yes—by all means," she answered, with a lift of her head which suggested to Desmond a jerk on the curb-chain. In moving off together they passed close to Garth. But Quita, who was abstractedly opening and closing her fan, did not seem aware of his presence; and he stood looking after them—nonplussed and inwardly blaspheming. He did not hold the key to this new phase of the situation.

Mrs Mayhew—noting his detachment from the Palace group, and quite needlessly alarmed lest politeness should impel him to return to her—sought out a strategic seat near the piano; though in truth Honor Desmond's masterly rendering of Chopin's heroic polonaise was, for her, no more than a complicated tumult of sound without sense, and her wrapt expression resulted from the fact that she was debating whether her durzi could possibly reproduce at sight the subtle simplicity of Mrs Desmond's evening gown. For she had sons growing up at home—this insignificant woman, whose plump proportions and bird-like eyes had earned her the nickname of "the Button Quail"; and even a good appointment did not annul the vagaries of the rupee, which was behaving peculiarly ill just then. In the intervals of imaginary dressmaking, she was enjoying shrewd speculations as to the nature and extent of the budding "affair" between the two at the piano; for her small mind clung tenaciously to the Noah's Ark view of life. Also it seemed that Elsie's own "little affair" was assuming quite a promising aspect. Personally, she disliked the man, but his talent was undeniable. She supposed he must be making money by it; and he was quite clearly making a right-of-way into her daughter's heart.

They had drifted apart from the rest without need of spoken suggestion; and now, under cover of Honor's music, which produced a tendency to gravitate towards the piano, the man grew bolder.

"There is moonlight out in the courtyard," he said, very low; and he tried, without success, to look into her eyes. "Que dÍtes-vous? Shall we go?"

She did not answer at once. A new spirit of boldness was awake in her, urging her to take hold of her golden hour with both hands, nothing doubting. But the man, even when he charmed her most, failed to inspire her trust. And while she stood hesitating, his gaze never left her face.

"Are you thinking it would scandalise la petite mÈre?"

"It might. She is easily scandalised!"

"But you would like to come?"

"Yes—I would like to come."

"Eh bien—that is enough."

"Is it?"

She looked up at him now with those great, truthful eyes of hers, which he found oddly disconcerting at times.

"Enough for me, at all events!" he answered boldly. "Come!"

And she came.

The flagged quadrangle, walled in with darkness and worn with the tread of numberless women's feet, showed silver-grey in the light of a moon nearing the full; and above it, in a square patch of sky, stars sparkled with a veiled radiance like diamonds caught in a film of gossamer. As Elsie emerged from the shadow of the verandah, she had a sense of stepping into an unreal world, and the Palace walls, shutting out the familiar contours of earth, strengthened the illusion. The night seemed the accomplice of her mood, in league with her own exquisite sensibility; a night created for sheltering tenderness.

Michael Maurice, divining her sensations with the uncanny accuracy of his type, pressed a little closer to her as they walked, so that now and again, as if by chance, his arm brushed her own, and each contact quickened her happy commotion of heart and pulse. They came upon a rough stone bench, and he paused.

"It is pleasanter to sit, n'est-ce pas?"

"Yes. But we mustn't sit long."

"Mustn't we? How does one measure time on such a night as this? By the beating of hearts, or by the pulsations of stars?"

She laughed softly.

"How foolish you are!"

"It is good to be foolish at the right time, and with the right person! Wisdom is the death's-head at the feast of life. But we are going to shut her outside the door for a whole week—you and I."

The strangely sweet magic of those linked pronouns stirred Elsie as never before; though the sound of them had pleased her once, not a little, on the lips of Kenneth Malcolm. Bud she answered lightly, as women will, when they feel barriers giving way.

"I never knew I had agreed to anything so desperate!"

He had laid his arm along the back of the seat; so that his hand was within an inch of her shoulder. He moved it closer.

"You have done more than that without knowing it—petite amie," he said, yielding himself, as always, to the witchery of the moment. "It is your doing that I have achieved an inspired picture. It is your doing that I want this week in Arcadia to be an idyll we shall neither of us forget—an idyll of sunlight, moonshine, and blessed freedom from les convenances. No past—no future—only the present; and in it two spirits tuned to one key. That is the secret of perfect enjoyment."

She shook her head.

"I don't quite understand. It sounds too fantastic. The past and the future are there always. One can't get rid of them."

"But one can shut the door on them when they threaten to disturb the present, which is the great reality after all."

"Can one? You seem to have a talent for shutting doors!"

"A convenient talent; worth cultivating! You may take my word for it."

Something in the statement or its manner of utterance jarred, ever so slightly,—threatened to break the charm that held her.

"Dangerously convenient," she murmured, in gentle reproof.

"Little Puritan! What a narrow track you walk upon. Hardly room on it for two abreast. Is there?"

The last words were almost a whisper. He pressed nearer, bringing his face close to hers. At the same moment she felt a light touch on her shoulder, and drawing back to escape the disturbing eloquence of his eyes, she discovered the presence of his encircling arm. The discovery brought her to her feet—flushed, palpitating, aquiver with anger at this first shadow of insult to her maidenhood.

"Will you take me in again, please?" she said quietly, and the request savoured of command. For her gentle nature was founded on a rock; and a very little below the unresisting surface one came upon adamant, pure and simple. But the unabashed Frenchman caught one of her hands, and crushed it against his lips.

"Petite amie—forgive me! I was overbold. I am not fit to touch the hem of your dress. But one is only flesh and blood; and you . . . say you are not angry with me, in your heart . . . ."

She drew her hand away decisively; and with unconscious cruelty rubbed the back of it against her dress, as if to remove a stain.

"I am angry—I have a right to be angry," she answered in the same toneless voice. "And if you will not come in with me, I shall go alone."

He rose then; and they crossed the enchanted courtyard together—a clear foot of space between them.

The brilliance of the Durbar Hall smote the girl painfully. It was as though the light had power to penetrate and reveal her hidden perturbation. Without looking up, she felt her mother's eyes upon her; and the wild-rose tint of her cheeks deepened under their scrutiny. But she avoided meeting them, and, going straight to her father, slipped a small hand under his arm. She felt indefinably in need of protection, not only from the man, whose kiss had moved her more than he guessed, but from herself, and the new emotions quickening at her heart; and in all times of trouble she turned spontaneously to her father. He was the true parent of her spirit; and, but for the matter-of-fact, half-condescending devotion of three boys at home, Mrs Mayhew might, at times, have felt left out in the cold.

"Enjoying yourself, little girl?" the father asked, smiling down at her.

"Yes, of course, dear—ever so much," she replied, with brave untruthfulness; and the lie must have been forgiven her in heaven.

But the veil of enchantment was rent; and no needle of earth has ever been ground fine enough to draw its frayed edges together.

[1] Long loose coats.

[2] Cross-belt.