gardens — for it was afternoon and the household followed the custom of retiring until the sun had fallen half-way to the horizon, even in this cooler season.
‘
‘
The khitmagar filled a silver cup, placed it on a tray by his side and took his leave with a low bow.
Lime juice, sweetened, with something giving it an edge: it was a prompt restorative. Selden had said they would have the afternoon to themselves, until seven, when the rajah would show them his gardens and menagerie and then feast them with the honour due to those who had saved one of his most favoured elephants. And if Hervey had been in any doubt as to the veneration in which the rajah held the elephant then the number and magnificence of the carvings of that animal about the palace would soon convince him. So, with Selden’s assurance that he would be called to bathe an hour before the appointed time, he lay down on the wide divan and gave himself to the pleasure of rest.
His Highness Godaji Rao Sundur, the Rajah of Chintalpore, spoke English with clear, precise diction, and without the inflections of other than an educated Englishman. Selden had told him that the rajah had had both an English nurse and governess, and a tutor from Cambridge, though he had travelled little beyond the frontiers of his princely state — except, in his youth, for a journey through the Ottoman domains to Rome, whose history enthralled him and whose religion still intrigued him. Although his native tongue was Telugu, the language of the majority of his Hindoo subjects, he was fluent in Urdu, and he even had a very passable acquaintance with French. But he preferred to converse in English, and many of Chintal’s officials were proficient, too. Indeed, with so many languages alive in Chintalpore, it was almost impossible for a visitor not to be able to make himself understood. The rajah’s daughter, Her Highness Suneyla Rao Sundur — the raj kumari — had likewise learned English at her nursemaid’s knee, but she had retained a religious sensibility — said Selden — that was wholly native. So native, indeed, as to be unfathomable, for, he confessed, after all his years in India he was still unable to give any account of what the Hindoo religion truly held to. The rajah, he believed, was at heart a good man, but for the raj kumari he could not speak, for she would never converse with him other than of mundane matters.
The rajah was all ease at their meeting. He greeted Hervey as if he were the saviour of one of his children, and Henry Locke hardly less. ‘In my father’s day, gentlemen, such an act as the rescue of a royal elephant would have been rewarded by the gift of a dozen virgins,’ he smiled; ‘but I much regret that I must offer you less than that.’
Hervey was momentarily unsure whether the rajah’s undoubtedly fine command of English embraced the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’. Henry Locke failed to register any distinction, and wondered merely — and with keen anticipation — what would be the precise, if reduced, number of maidens who might be sent to his chamber.
The rajah was a figure of dignified restraint, and evidently of sensibility and cultivation, concluded Hervey — in spite of his apparent jesting. His face was clean-shaven and fine-featured, his sallow complexion clear, and his shoulder-length hair was pulled back with slides. Around his eyes were darker rings, like those of the elephants to which he was so devoted. Perhaps it was a natural coloration, but so marked were they that Hervey thought them of cosmetic making. He was not tall, nothing like as big as the bazaar Hindoos who thronged the streets, yet he was possessed of a stature which, if it did not actually
‘That is Seejavi,’ whispered Selden. ‘He was one of the late rajah’s war elephants. Now he is allowed free roam of the palace. His mahout is with him only because he has always been. Seejavi may trample anything and anyone he pleases.’
‘And does he?’ asked Hervey.
‘How are we to know? No-one would admit evidence of Seejavi’s ill behaviour.’
The rajah took a sugared favour from a silver tray which a khitmagar carried ready, and held it out in his palm — not at arm’s length, but close to, making him hostage to the elephant’s forbearance.
‘Your Highness,’ said Selden, more wearied than anxious, ‘I do urge more circumspection with Seejavi. He is old and may not always remember his place.’
The rajah smiled, without turning, and took another favour from the tray. ‘An elephant not remember, Mr Selden? The notion is an intriguing one. Seejavi would never be disloyal, of that I am sure.’
Selden made no reply.
The next voice was female. ‘You are too trusting, father. Constancy is no more an animal virtue than it is a human one.’
Both the appearing and appearance of the raj kumari was of some moment. Hitherto she had been hid by the acacia screen, a slender figure, of about Hervey’s age and not much less than his height, her skin lighter than the Madrasi women whose complexion he had admired at Fort George (so close in colour as they were to Jessye’s bay), though her hair was blacker and her eyes larger. She was, by any estimate, a beauty of considerable degree, and, after the formalities of presentation, both Hervey and Locke found themselves, temporarily, less than fluent in their replies to her questions — which she asked without any of the coyness or reservation they had been led to believe was the mark of Hindoo women.
At first they walked side by side along the aviary, and neither Hervey nor Locke felt able to look but ahead. When, however, she went a little in advance of them in order to attract the attention of a favourite peacock, Hervey saw that she wore not the saree but something divided, allowing her to walk with singular grace. In consequence he almost failed to hear the rajah’s enquiry as to how he liked the aviary, and thereafter he was all attention as they processed back to the palace down an avenue of deodars. ‘My grandfather grew them from seeds brought from a great hunting expedition to Kumaon,’ said the rajah, with no little pride.
The raj kumari herself had shown no dismay on seeing Locke’s face. She spoke with warm civility, unafraid to look at him fully as they talked of this and that brightly feathered species in the aviary. Hervey saw nothing but the same warmth as that of her father, nothing that suggested a need for the circumspection Selden had advocated.
The tamasha that evening was a regalement such that Hervey and Locke might never forget — as, indeed, was the rajah’s intention. The brilliance of the hundreds of candles and scented oil lamps, reflected by the white marble in the great dining chamber, seemed no less than the midday sun. The guests sat on cushions at a low table covered by a richly embroidered white cloth, on which were laid dishes of pomegranates, grapes and jujubes. To Hervey was accorded the honour of sitting on the rajah’s right, while Locke was seated to the raj kumari’s left, she herself being next to her father. Selden, who sat at the angle of the table, but in view of their host, had correctly predicted this arrangement, explaining to them that, unlike in other native, even princely, households, the raj kumari did not take a retiring role. Her mother, the ranee, had died within a year of labour — a conception for which there had been many years’ unanswered prayers — and the rajah had placed the overseeing of the palace in her trust from an early age, while he had withdrawn increasingly to his menagerie and his library. He had even shown less pleasure in the chase of late, though this was, thought Selden, because he disliked leaving the palace, fearing perhaps that on his return he would find it no longer in his hands, the possession instead of the nizam or one of his acolytes. Throughout his life, and his father’s before him, Haidarabad had laid claim to Chintal, a claim which, had not the late Maratha war diverted him, the nizam might by now have made good.
But this evening the rajah was in good spirits. Musicians in a gallery at the other end of the chamber played lively ragas, and there was laughter among the two dozen courtiers enjoying his hospitality. A welldrilled troop of khitmagars brought more fruit to the table: oranges, peeled and dusted with ginger, fingerlengths of tender young sugar cane, and mangoes whose soft, peach-coloured flesh and abundant juice especially became the evening’s sensuality.
‘I am informed, Captain Hervey,’ said the rajah, casting an eye over the procession, ‘that in England you would not begin a feast with sweet things, that you must earn sweetness, so to speak, by progression through much sourness — as in life itself. But in India we have no such coyness in our pleasures. We have each earned title
