King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of AdventureMundy, Talbot
History
King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure
Mundy, Talbot
British -- India -- Fiction; Historical fiction; India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction; Love stories; War stories
The place where he was did not look like a cave, but a palace chamber,
for the rock walls had been trimmed square and polished smooth; then
they had been painted pure white, except for a wide blue frieze, with
a line of gold-leaf drawn underneath it. And on the frieze, done in
gold-leaf too, was the Grecian lady of the lamps, always dancing. There
were fifty or sixty figures of her, no two the same.
A dozen lamps were burning, set in niches cut in the walls at measured
intervals. They were exactly like the two outside, except that their
horn chimneys were stained yellow instead of red, suffusing everything
in a golden glow.
Opposite him was a curtain, rather like that through which he had
entered. Near to the curtain was a bed, whose great wooden posts were
cracked with age. And it was at the bed he stared, with eyes that took
in every detail but refused to believe.
In spite of its age it was spread with fine new linen. Richly
embroidered, not very ancient Indian draperies hung down from it to
the floor on either side. On it, above the linen, a man and a woman lay
hand-in-hand; and the woman was so exactly like Yasmini, even to her
clothing, and her naked feet, that it was not possible for a man to be
self-possessed.
They both seemed asleep. It was as if Yasmini, weary from the dancing,
had laid herself to sleep beside her lord. But who was he? And why did
he wear Roman armor? And why was there no guard to keep intruders out?
It was minutes before he satisfied himself that the man's breast did not
rise and fall under the bronze armor and that the woman's jeweled gauzy
stuff was still. Imagination played such tricks with him that in the
stillness he imagined he heard breathing.
After he was sure they were both dead, he went nearer, but it was a
minute yet before he knew the woman was not she. At first a wild thought
possessed him that she had killed herself.
The only thing to show who he had been were the letters S. P. Q. R. on a
great plumed helmet, on a little table by the bed. But she was the woman
of the lamp-bowls and the frieze. A life-size stone statue in a corner
was so like her, and like Yasmini too, that it was difficult to decide
which of the two it represented.
She had lived when he did, for her fingers were locked in his. And he
had lived two thousand years ago, because his armor was about as old as
that, and for proof that he had died in it part of his breast had turned
to powder inside the breastplate. The rest of his body was whole and
perfectly preserved.
Stern, handsome in a high-beaked Roman way, gray on the temples,
firm-lipped, he lay like an emperor in harness. But the pride and
resolution on his face were outdone by the serenity of hers. Very surely
those two had been lovers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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