"Well!" said Umballa, who understood that she was here from no idle
whim.
"Highness, you must hide with me this night."
"Indeed?"
"Or die," coolly.
Umballa sprang forward and seized her roughly.
"What has happened?"
"I was in the zenana, Highness, visiting my sister, whom you had
transferred from the palace. All at once we heard shouting and
trampling of feet, and a moment later your house was overrun with men.
They had found the king in the hut and had taken him to the palace.
That they did not find you is because you came here."
"Tell me all."
"It seems that the majordomo gave the poison to Ramabai, but the white
goddess . . ."
"The white goddess!" cried Umballa, as if stung by a cobra's fang.
"Ay, Highness. She did not die on that roof. Nothing can harm her.
It is written."
"And I was never told!"
She lived, lived, and all the terrors he had evoked for her were as
naught! Umballa was not above superstition himself for all his
European training. Surely this girl of the white people was imbued
with something more than mortal. She lived!
"Go on!" he said, his voice subdued as was his soul.
"The white goddess by mistake took Ramabai's goblet and was about to
drink when the majordomo seized the goblet and drained the poison
himself. He confessed everything, where the king was, where you were.
They are again hunting through the city for you. For the present you
must hide with me."
"The white woman must die," said Umballa in a voice like one being
strangled.
To this the priests agreed without hesitation. This white woman whom
the people were calling a goddess was a deadly menace to that scepter
of theirs, superstition.
"What has gone is a pact?"
"A pact, Durga Ram," said the chief priest. With Ramabai spreading
Christianity, the abhorred creed which gave people liberty of person
and thought, the future of his own religion stood in imminent danger.
"A pact," he reflected. "To you, Durga Ram, the throne; to us half the
treasury and all the ancient rites of our creed restored."
"I have said it."
Umballa followed the dancing girl into the square before the temple.
He turned and smiled ironically. The bald fools!
"Lead on, thou flower of the jasmine!" lightly.
And the two of them disappeared into the night.
But the priests smiled, too, for Durga Ram should always be more in
their power than they in his.
There was tremendous excitement in the city the next morning. It
seemed that the city would never be permitted to resume its old
careless indolence. Swift as the wind the news flew that the old king
was alive, that he had been held prisoner all these months by Durga Ram
and the now deposed council of three. No more the old rut of dulness.
Never had they known such fetes. Since the arrival of the white
goddess not a day had passed without some thrilling excitement, which
had cost them nothing but shouts.