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"He will be dead when Mahommed Gunga comes, if only what we await has first happened. But this rising that is planned hangs fire. Were I Maharajah I would like to see the Rangar who dare flout me or ask questions! I would like but to set eyes on that Rangar once!
Half an hour later there arose a great shouting and blowing of trumpets inside the walls, the royal gate was flung open, and the Maharajah appeared, swaying in a blaze of silk and jewels upon an enormous elephant with a painted trunk and trappings fringed in gold and silver.
Isaacs spoke a few words in a low voice to the jemadar at the door, and we were admitted into a small room in the side of the house, opening, as all rooms do in India, on to the verandah. There were low wooden charpoys around the walls, and we sat down, waiting till the maharajah should be advised of our arrival.
"The same friendly relations have been maintained with the successors of Maharajah Runjeet Singh by the British government up to the present time.
As the custom was, he rode to the temple of Siva first with a ten-man guard; there, when the priests had finished droning age-old anthems to the echoing roof, when his brother, the Maharajah, also with a ten-man guard, had joined him, and the two had submitted to the sanctifying rites prescribed, eleven priests would walk with them in solemn mummery to the palace-entrance censer-swinging, chanting, blasphemously acting duty to their gods and state.
Neither the Maharajah nor his family ever touched any of the European food, though, as they were not Hindoos, but belonged to the Bramo-Somaj religion, there were no caste-laws to prevent their doing so.
I have not made up my mind." I looked at Isaacs in utter astonishment. What in the world could he mean? Had the maharajah offered him some more wives creatures of peerless beauty and immense value? No; I knew he would not hesitate now to refuse such a proposition. "Will you please to explain what you mean by his paying you in man?" I asked. "In two words.
I lent him the means of feeding his people and saving many of them from actual death by starvation, because there are so many Mussulmans among them, though the maharajah is a Hindoo. As for him, he might starve to-morrow, the infidel hound; I would not give him a chowpatti or a mouthful of dal to keep his wretched old body alive."
It was a house of one story with a broad verandah, was surrounded by a large well-kept garden, and formerly served a high official of the Maharajah as a residence. Apart from it lay two smaller buildings used as servants' quarters, of which, however, only one was at present in use.
"If there is danger," he said, "it is my place to lead." But nobody would permit that, Yasmini least of all. "Shall Samson choose a new maharajah so soon as all that?" she laughed. "Let the dog go first!" Tom proposed. Trotters was sniffing at the dark gap behind Jinendra's image, with eyes glaring and a low rumbling growl issuing from between bared teeth. But Trotters would not go.
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