The Lily Hand and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

force you to take it down? It was your property, you had a right to hang it wherever you liked.’
    He looked at her gravely, but without any distress, his large eyes wide open to the sun. ‘It did not matter so much. It is only a picture. Cobb Sahib is like a child about pictures. You must go gently with children, when they do not understand.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, for some reason gloriously reassured, even though Andrew would surely remain a child to the end of his self-sacrificing days in this place, and never come near understanding of the thing he had done, or the forbearance extended to him. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
    â€˜He is a good man. It would be wrong to hurt him.’
    He pricked up his head alertly, looking beyond her towards the road. A car and its attendant dustcloud rounded the curve of the village, the first tourists of the day. Subramanya tightened the cord round his waist, and hitched the lantern expectantly against his hip.
    â€˜Lord Krishna is not jealous; he knows, he will wait. Some day Cobb Sahib will stop caring so much about images, and look for God.’
    That was perfect, there was nothing more to be said. He had illuminated everything.
    â€˜Take my picture with you,’ he said suddenly. ‘I don’t need it. It was mine, I bought it. I give it to you.’
    The car had stopped in the arc of gravel by the road; two men were getting out, festooned with cameras. Subramanya rose to go to his duty.
    â€˜Not because it is a little spoiled,’ he said, turning on her his sudden, blazing smile. ‘I like it better now, because you brought it back. But I give it to you.’
    â€˜Thank you, Subramanya. I’ll keep it gladly.’
    â€˜To remember me,’ he said, already skipping away from her with one bright eye upon his clients; but he turned once more before he left her, and joined his hands in a last salute.
    â€˜Namaste!’
    â€˜Namaste!’
    He ran away from her as he had run towards her on the first day, headlong and eager, clutching his lantern firmly by the ring at the top. As she drew back into the trees with the cardboard folder under her arm she heard him announce himself magnificently to the newcomers, astride before them at the edge of the sandstone outcrop, with the instrument of revelation uplifted proudly in his hand.
    â€˜I am Subramanya. I am light-boy.’

Grim Fairy Tale
    Looking back now, I realize that I ought to have smelt a rat right from the start. If I hadn’t been as vain as I was green, I should have wondered whatever possessed my boss to take me with him on that business trip across Europe, when he had so many older and abler men at his disposal. My driving was all right, but certainly no better than Smith’s or Davidson’s, and I couldn’t speak a word of German, while Brent was completely bilingual, and they were all senior to me.
    But at the time, of course, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that Mr Fordyce should choose me; so it never occurred to me that the real difference between Smith, Davidson and Brent and me was that they were married, and I was single.
    Mr Fordyce had a daughter. Lilian was coming with us as far as Cologne, where she was going to spend the two weeks of her father’s business jaunt with friends of the family, and we were to pick her up again on the drive home. I didn’t see anything fishy in that, either. She seemed a nice girl, and I never noticed anything peculiar about her, such as her being twenty-eight. I was twenty-two myself, and rather partial to the company of girls older than myself, because they were better listeners. All across France and Belgium I enjoyed having my driving admired – so intelligently, too – and my ego gently groomed by Lilian’s approbation, and I really missed her when she left us at Cologne.
    From then on I don’t know which of us talked more about her, her father or me. He must have been