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"Only bumped a bit," Roy panted, still out of breath. "I spec' it startled you. I'm sorry." The bareheaded one laughed. "You startled the Scab's minions a jolly sight more. Cleared the course! And a rare good riddance eh, Chandranath?" To that friendly appeal the Indian boy vouchsafed a muttered assent.
Should he succeed, Chandranath would doubtless guess at his share in Dyán's defection; and few men care about courting the enmity of the unscrupulous. That is the secret power behind the forces of anarchy, above all in India, where social and spiritual boycott can virtually slay a man without shedding of blood. For himself, Roy decided the game was worth the candle.
Enlightened, he set off at a trot, down another vast street, all hazy in the level light that conjured the dusty air to gold. But contact with human anguish, naked and unashamed as he had not seen it since the war and that sudden queer encounter with Chandranath, had rubbed the bloom off delicate films of memory and artistic impressions.
Too polite to go for him; but quite prepared if need be!" When they had turned the corner of the building, Chandranath fired a parting shot. "I infer you came here fancying you can marry her, because diluted blood of Seesodias runs in your veins. But here in India, you will find forces too powerful militating against it." But Roy was not to be goaded again into letting slip his self-control.
The son of a jackal should know who struck him. He should taste fear, before he tasted death. And then the Lake, that would never give up its secret or its dead. Siri Chandranath would disappear from his world, like a stone flung into a river; and India would be a cleaner place without him. He knew himself hampered, if it came to a struggle. But tcha! the man was a coward.
"Did you say much, before I came?" he asked, after a pause, "to that fellow Chandranath?" "I spoke a little thinking him a guru " She paused. The name woke a chord of memory. "Chandranath," she repeated, "that is the name they said " "Who?" Roy asked sharply, coming out of his own dream. "Mátaji and the widowed Aunt " "What do they know of him?" "How can I tell?
"I don't wish to go back. I would rather be by myself." "As you please. Those cads won't bother you again." "If they do I will kill them." He made that surprising announcement in a fierce whisper. It was the voice of another race. And the English boy's answer was equally true to type. "Right you are. Give me fair warning and I'll lend a hand." Chandranath stared blankly.
With a swift unexpected move, he tripped Roy up so that he nearly fell backward; and, in a supreme effort to keep his balance, unconsciously loosened his hold. This time, Chandranath slipped free of him; and, in the act, pushed him so violently that he staggered and came down among sharp broken stones with one foot twisted under him.
But he did not choose to embroil himself, or his people, on account of anything so contemptible as the creature that was writhing and scratching in his grasp. He simply wanted to secure him and hand him over to the Jaipur authorities, who had several scores up against him. But Chandranath, though not skilled, had the ready cunning of the lesser breeds.
Mrs Leigh is thrusting her fingers into complicated issues of which she is lamentably ignorant." Roy, taken aback, nearly gave himself away but not quite. "I gather she acted with Sir Lakshman Singh's approval," was all he said. Chandranath shrugged. "Sir Lakshman is an able but deluded man. His dreams of social reform are obsolete.
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