Adventure Magazine Cover — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

intriguers whose delight and livelihood it is to fish the troubled waters of the courts of All these things Yasmini told me in that scented chamber of another palace, in which a wrathful government secluded her in later years—for its own peace as it thought, but for her own recuperation -as it happened. She told me many other things ‘besides that have some little bearing on this story but, if all related, would crowd the book too full. The real gist of them all is that she grew to love India with all her heart, and India has repaid her for it after its own fashion, which is manifold and marvelous. There is no fairer land on earth than that far northern slice of Rajputana, nor a people more endowed with legend and the consciousness of ancestry. They have a saying that every Rajput is a king’s son, and every Rajputni worthy to be married to an emperor. It was in that atmosphere that Yasmini learned she must either use her wits or be outwitted, and women begin young to as- sert their genius in the East. But she vut- stripped precocity and, being Western too, rode rough-shod on convention when it suited her, reserving her concessions to it solely for occasions when those matched the hand she held. All her life she had had to play in a ruthless game, but, the trump that she had learned to lead oftenest is unexpectedness; and now to the story. ROVAL RAJASTHAN ERE is a land where no resounding street With babel of electric-garish night And whir of endless wheels has put to flight | The liberty of leisure. Sandled feet And naked soles that feel the friendly dust Go easily along the never measured miles— A land at which the patron tourist smiles Because of gods in whom those people trust (He boasting One and trusting not at all); , A land where lightning is the lover’s boon, And honey oozing from an amber moon Illumines footing on forbidden wall; Where, ’stead of jeweler’s display, The flaunting peacocks brave the passer-by, And swans like angels in an azure sky Wing swift and silent on unchallenged way. No land of fable! Of the Hills I sing, Whose royal women tread with.conscious grace The peace-filled gardens of a warrior race, Each maiden fit for wedlock with a king, And every Rajput son so royal born And conscious of his age-long heritage He looks askance at Burke’s becrested page And wonders at the new-ennobled scorn. I sing (for this is earth) of hate and guile, 6 3 ‘Adventure Of tyranny and trick and broken pledge, Of sudden weapons, and the thrice-keen edge Of woman’s wit—the sting in woman’s smile— But also of the heaven-fathomed glow, The sweetness and the charm and dear delight Of loyal woman, humorous and_right— Pure-purposed as the bosom of the snow. Ne TALE, then, this of motors, but of men -: With camels fleeter than the desert wind, Who come and go. So leave the West behind And, at the magic summons of the pen Forgetting new contentions if you will, Take wings, take silent wings of time untied— And see, with Fellow-friendship for your guide, A little how the East goes wooing still. CHAPTER I “Gold is where you find it,” AWN at the commencement of hot weather in the Hills, if not the loveliest of India’s wealth of wonders—for there is the moon by night—is fair preparation for whatever cares to follow. There is a musical silence out of which the first voices of the day have birth; and a half- light holding in its opalescence all the colors that the day shall use; a freshness and se- renity to hint what might be if the sons of men were wise enough; and beauty unbe- » lievable. The fortunate sleep on roofs or on verandas, to be ready for the sweet, cool wind that moves in advance of the rising sun, caused, as some say, by the wing-beats of departing spirits of the night. So that in that respect the mangy jackals, the monkeys, and the chandala (who are the lowest human caste of all and quite un- touchable by the other people the Creator made) are most to be envied; for there is no stuffy screen, and small convention, between them and enjoyment of the blessed air. Next in order of defilement to the sweep- ers—or, as some folk with inside reserva- tions on the road to heaven insist, even beneath the sweepers, and possibly beneath the jackals —come the English, looking boldly on whatever their -eyes desire and tasting out of curiosity the fruit of more than one forbidden tree, but obsessed by an amazing if perverted sense of duty. They rule the land, largely by what they idolize as “luck,” which consists of tolerance for things they do not understand. Under- standing one another rather well, they are more merciless to their own offenders than is Brahman to chandala, for they will hardly let them live. But they are a peopl of =COMiICbOOKS: (E@)