II
The moonlit nights which had so often shown two ghost-like figures amid the shadows of Kâli's shrine had given place to dark ones. And now, save for a whisper, there was no sign of life beneath the dim arches, since, as a rule, those two--Ramanund and the woman Fate had sent him--shunned the smoky flare of the lamps, and the half-seen watchfulness of that hideous figure within the closed fretwork doors. Yet sometimes little Anunda would insist on their sitting right in the very threshold of the Mother who, she said, would be angry if they distrusted Her. But at other times she would meet her lover, finger to lip, and lead him hastily to the darkest corner lest he should wake the goddess to direful anger at this desecration of Her holy place. Then again, she would laugh recklessly, hang the chaplets she had brought with her round his neck, cense him with sweet matches, and tell him, truthfully, that he was the only god she feared.
Altogether, as he sat with his arm round her, Ramanund used often to wonder helplessly if it were not all a dream. If so, it was not the calm controlled dream he had cherished as the love story suitable to a professor of mathematics. The heroine of that was to have been wise, perhaps a little sad, and Anunda was--well! it was difficult to say what she was, save absolutely entrancing in her every mood. She was like a firefly on a dark night flashing here and there brilliantly, lucidly; yet giving no clue to her own self except this--that she did not match with the exact sciences. Nor, for the matter of that, with the situation; for there were grave dangers in these nightly assignations.
In addition, their surroundings were anything but cheerful, anything but suitable to dreams. Cholera had the whole city in its grip now, and as those two had whispered of Love and Life many a soul, within earshot of a man's raised voice, had passed out of both into the grave. But Anunda never seemed to think of these things. She was the bravest and yet the timidest child alive; at least so Ramanund used to tell her fondly when she laughed at discovery, and yet trembled at the very idea of marriage.
Honestly, she would have been quite satisfied to have him as her lover only, but for the impossibility of keeping him on those terms. An impossibility because--as she told him with tears--she was only on a visit to the Brahmins downstairs and would have to return homewards when the dark month of Kâli-worship was over. And here followed one of those tales--scarcely credible to English ears--of the cold-blooded profligacy to which widows have to yield as the only means of making their lives bearable. Whereat Ramanund set his teeth and swore he would have revenge some day. Meanwhile it made him all the more determined to save her, and at the same time realise his cherished dream of defying his world by marrying a widow. Yet his boldness only had the effect of making little Anunda more timid and cautious.
"What need for names, my lord," she would say evasively when he pressed her for particulars of her past. "Is it not enough that I am of pure Brahmin race? Before Kâli, my lord need have no fears for that, and I have found favour in my lord's eyes. What, then, are the others to my lord? Let the wicked ones go."
"But if people do such things they should be punished by the law," fumed Ramanund, who, even with her arms round him, and a chaplet of chumpak blossom encircling his neck, could not quite forget that he was a schoolmaster. "You forget that we live in a new age, or perhaps you do not know it. That is one of the things I must teach you, sweetheart, when we are married."
The slender bit of a hand which lay in his gave a queer little clasp of denial, and the close-cropped head on his shoulder stirred in a shake of incredulity.
"We cannot marry. I am a widow. It would be better--so----" and the "so" was made doubly eloquent by the quiver of content with which, yielding to the pressure of his arm, she nestled closer to him. Ramanund's brain whirled, as she had a knack of making it whirl, but he stuck to his point manfully.
"Silly child! Of course we can marry. The law does not forbid it, and that is all we have to think of. It is legal, and no one has a right to interfere. Besides, as I told you, it is quite easy. To-morrow, the darkest night of Kâli's month, is our opportunity. Every one will be wearied out by excitement"--here his face hardened and his voice rose. "Excitement! I tell you it is disgraceful that these sacrifices should be permitted. I admit they are nothing here to what they are down country, but we of the Sacred Land should set an example. The law should interfere to stop such demoralising, brutalising scenes. If we, the educated, were only allowed a voice in such matters, if we were not gagged and blindfolded from engaging in the amelioration of our native land----" he paused and pulled himself up by bending down to kiss her in Western fashion, whereat she hid her face in quick shame, for modesty is as much a matter of custom as anything else. "But I will teach you all this when we are married. To-morrow, then, in the hour before dawn, when the worshippers will be drunk with wine and blood, you will meet me on the landing--not here, child, this will be no sight for you or me then. Ah! it is horrible even to think of it; the blood, the needless, reckless----"
Again he pulled himself up and went on: "I shall have a hired carriage at the end of the alley in which we will drive to the railway station; and then, Anunda, it will only be two tickets--two railway tickets."
"Two railway tickets," echoed Anunda in muffled tones from his shoulder; "I came up in the railway from----" She paused, then added quickly:
"They put me in a cage, and I cried."
"You will not be put in a cage this time," replied Ramanund with a superior smile; "you will come with me, and we will go to Benares."
Her face came up to his this time anxiously. "Benares? Why Benares?"
"Because good and evil come alike from Benares," he answered exultantly. "Mayhap you have been there, Anunda, and seen the evil, the superstition. But it is in Benares also that the true faith lives still. My friend has written to his friends there, and they will receive us with open arms; virtuous women will shelter you till the marriage arrangements are complete."
She shook her head faintly. "We cannot be married--I am a widow," she repeated obstinately; "but I will go with you all the same." Then seeing a certain reproach in his face she frowned. "Dost think I am wicked, my lord? I am not wicked at all; but Mai Kâli gave me a lover, not a husband." Here the frown relaxed into a brilliant smile. "My husband is dead, and I do not care for dead men. I care for you, my lord, my god."
Ramanund's brain whirled again, but he clung to the first part of her speech as a safeguard.
"You are foolish to say we cannot be married. If you read the newspapers you would see that widows--child-widows such as you are, heart's-delight--are married, regularly married by priests of our religion. Those old days of persecution are over, Anunda. The law has legalised such unions, and no one dare say a word."
A comical look came to her brilliant little face. "And my lord's mother--will she say nothing?"
The question pierced even Ramanund's coat of culture. He fully intended telling his revered parent of his approaching marriage, and the thought of doing so, even in the general way which he proposed to himself, was fraught with sheer terror. What then would it be when he had to present her with this daughter-in-law in the concrete? He took refuge from realities by giving a lecture on the individual rights of man, while Anunda played like a child with the chumpak garland with which she had adorned him.
And so with a grey glimmer the rapid dawn began to dispute possession of those dim arches with the smoky flare of the lamps, making those two rise reluctantly and steal with echoing footsteps past the malignant half-seen figure behind the closed fretwork doors. The blood-red glint of those outstretched arms with their suggestion of clasping and closing on all within their reach, must have roused a reminiscence of that past defiance in the young schoolmaster's brain; for he paused before the shrine, his arms still round Anunda, to say triumphantly:
"Good-bye, Kâli mai! Good-bye for ever."
The girl, clinging to him fearfully, looked round into the shadows on either side. "Hush, my lord, who knows whether She really sleeps; and She is in dangerous mood. They say so." Her light foot marked her meaning by a tap on the echomy floor.
"What, reckless one!" said her lover in fond jest. "Hast grown so full of courage that thou wouldst signal them to come? Art not afraid what they might do?"
The panic on her face startled him. "Ramu," she whispered, "for my sake say it once--'Jai Kâli ma!' Say it; it will not hurt."
"Nothing will hurt, Anunda," he answered sharply. "Nothing can hurt."
"Can it not? Sometimes I have fancied, downstairs, that they suspect, Ramu!--if----"
"If they do, what then? To-morrow will see us far away. I tell you the times are changed. Why there is a police station within hail almost. Nay, sweetheart! I will not say it. Come, the dawn breaks."
"For my sake, Ramu, for my sake," she pleaded, even as he drew her with him, reluctant yet willing.
And now on the landing where the brick and the stone met, he paused again, his pulses throbbing with passion, to think that this was their last parting.
"Take heart, beloved," he whispered. "Sure I am Ram and thou art Anunda. Who can hinder God's happiness when He gives it?"[20]
The conceit upon the meaning of their names brought a faint smile to her face, and yet once more she whispered doubtfully: "But this is happiness. Ah, Ramu! it would be better--so----"
"It will be better," he corrected. "It is quite easy, heart's beloved. A hired carriage and two railway tickets, that is all! As for Mai Kâli--I defy her!"
Suddenly through the darkness, which seemed to hold them closer to each other, came a sound making them start asunder. It was the clang of the bell which hung before the shrine.
"Kâli ma! Kâli ma!" Anunda's pitiful little sobbing cry blent with the clang as she fled downstairs, and the mingled sound sent a strange thrill of fear to Ramanund's heart. Kâli herself could not have heard; but if there had been others beside themselves amid the shadows?
He climbed to his lodging on the roof full of vague anxiety and honest relief that the strain and the stress and the passion of the last fortnight was so nearly at an end. It was lucky, he told himself, that it had happened during holiday time, or the exact sciences must have suffered--for of course the idea of Anunda's yielding to them was preposterous; Anunda who had made him forget everything save that he was her lover. He fell asleep thinking of her, and slept even through the wailing which arose ere long in the next lodging. The wailing of a household over an only son reft from it by Kâli ma.
"The wrath of the gods is on the house," said Ramanund's widowed mother when he came down late next morning. "And I wonder not when children disobey their parents. But I will hear thy excuses no longer, Ramo. God knows but my slackness hitherto hath been the cause of that poor boy's death. The holy man downstairs holds that She is angry for our want of faith, and many folks believe him, and vow some sacrifice of purification. So shall I, Ramanund. This very day I will speak to my cousin Gungo of her daughter."
"Thou wilt do nothing of the kind, mother," replied Ramanund quietly. "I have made my own arrangements. I am going to marry a widow, a young and virtuous widow."
He felt dimly surprised at his own courage, perhaps a little elated, seeing how severe the qualms of anticipation had been; so he looked his mother in the face fairly as, startled out of all senses save sight, she stared at him as if he had been a ghost. Then suddenly she threw her arms above her head and beat her palms together fiercely.
"Mai Kâli! Mai Kâli! justly art Thou incensed. Ai! Kirpo! Ai! Bishun! listen, hear. This is the cause. My son, the light of mine eyes, the son of my prayers, has done this thing. He is the cursed one! He would bring a widow to a Brahmin hearth. Jai Kâli ma! Jai Kâli ma!"
"Mother! mother! for God's sake," pleaded Ramanund, aghast at the prospect of having the secret of his heart made bazaar property. "Think; give me time."
"Time!" she echoed wildly. "What time is there when folks die every minute for thy sin? Oh, Raino, son of my prayer, repent--do atonement. Lo! come with me even now and humble thyself before Her feet. I will ask no more but that to-day--no more." She thrust her hands feverishly into his as if to drag him to the shrine. "For my sake, Ramo, for the sake of many a poor mother, remember whose son thou art, and forsake not thy fathers utterly."
"Mother!" he faltered; "mother!" And then silence fell between them. For what words could bridge the gulf which the rapid flood of another nation's learning had torn between these two? A gulf not worn away by generations of culture, but reft recklessly through solid earth. Simply there was nothing he felt to be said, as with a heart aching at the utter impossibility of their ever understanding each other, he did his best to sooth her superstitious fears.
But here he was met by a conviction, an obstinacy which surprised him; for he had been too much occupied during the last fortnight to observe the signs of the times around him, and knew nothing of the religious terror which, carefully fomented by the priests as a means of extortion, had seized upon the neighbourhood. When, however, it did dawn upon him that the general consensus of opinion lay towards a signal expression of the Goddess' anger, which needed signal propitiation by more numerous sacrifices, his indignation knew no bounds, and carried him beyond the personal question into general condemnation, so that, ere many minutes were over, she was attempting to sooth him in her turn. That God was above all was, however, their one bond of unity; in that they both agreed. The truth would be made manifest by the sickness being stayed or increased by the sacrifices. Meanwhile the very thought of these latter, while it roused his anger, horrified his refinement into a certain silence, and kept him prisoner to the roof all day for fear of meeting some struggling victim on its way upstairs to the second story. This did not matter so much, however, since all his arrangements were made, and he had even taken the precaution to secure his railway tickets through a branch of Cook's agency which had been lately opened in the city. He took them out of his pocket sometimes and looked at them, feeling a vague comfort in their smug, civilised appearance. Fate must needs be commonplace and secure, surely, with such vouchers for safe conduct as these!
So the long hot day dragged its slow length along. Every now and again the death-wail, near or distant, would rise in even, discordant rhythm on the hot air; and as the sun set it began, loudly imperative, under his very roof. The only son was being carried out to the burning ghât, and the cries and sobs utterly overwhelmed the shouts and shufflings of feet, the moans and murmur of voices, which all day long had come from the second story. It was a relief that it should be so; that the ear might no longer be all unwillingly on the strain to catch some sound that would tell of a death-struggle in the slaughter-house downstairs. And yet the scene being enacted, perchance, on that three-cornered landing which, for once, visualised itself to Ramanund's clear brain, was not one in which to find much consolation. The crowds of mourners edging the bier down the narrow stairs, the crowd of worshippers dragging the victims up. He wondered which stood aside to give place to the other--the Living or the Dead? The flower-decked corpse or the flower-decked victim? Flowers and blood! Blood and flowers for a Demon of Death who was satisfied with neither! Ramanund, excited, overstrained, wearied by many a sleepless night of happiness, covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight even of the book which he tried to read.
So, as the sun sunk red in the western haze leaving the roof cooler, he fell asleep and slept soundly.
When he woke it was dark, and yet, as he stood up stretching himself, a faint paling of the horizon warned him that there was light beneath it--light that was coming to the world. The moon? Confused as he was by sleep, the thought came to him, only to be set aside by memory. There was no moon; for this was the dark night of Kâli.
The dark night! Then that must be the dawn when he had promised to meet Anunda on the threshold! Was it possible that he had slept so long? Yet not too long, since the dawn had not yet come, and he was ready. Hurriedly feeling for the safety of those precious tickets, and taking up a Gladstone bag which he had already packed, he stole down from the roof cautiously; and from thence to the landing. There was a new odour now blending with the perfumes of the flowers, and the incense, and the women: an odour which sickened him as he stood waiting and watching in the now deserted threshold. It was the odour of the shambles; an odour which seemed also to lie heavy on the breath and shorten it.
So by quick strides the grey glimmer through the stone lattice grew and grew to whiteness. Yet no one came, and there was no light step on the staircase below to tell of a late-comer.
"Anunda! Anunda!" he whispered more than once, even his low tones seeming to stir the heavy atmosphere into waves of sweet sickening perfume. Was it possible that she was waiting for him within--in the old place?
That must be it, surely, or else something had happened. What?
With a beating heart he moved on into the ante-shrine picking his steps in an almost morbid terror of what he might be treading upon.
"Anunda! Anunda!"
There was no answer save, heavier than before, that sort of scented, wave coming back from his own words.
She was not there, and something must have happened.... Not there! Impossible, with those tickets in his pocket, that hired carriage waiting at the end of the alley, that police station round the corner!...
He strode forward with renewed courage, heedless of the damp clamminess at his feet; strode recklessly right into the yellow flare of the lamps. Save for that ghastly crimson upon the floor, the walls, the canopy, the place lay unchanged, and quiet as the grave. No! there was a change; the iron doors were open, and there, upon the low stone-slab before those clutching arms, lay something....
God in Heaven! what was it?
A head--a small dark----
Ramanund's scream caught in the big bell which hung above him, and the last thing he heard, as he fell forward on that crimson floor, was its faint booming echo of his own cry.
* * * * *
When he came to himself again, six weeks had passed by. The heat was over, the cholera had gone, and he lay in one of the new wards of a new hospital whither his anxious friends had had him conveyed when they found how ill he was. The very strangeness of his environment held him silent for the first few moments of consciousness; then with a rush it all came back upon him and, weak as he was, he sat up in bed wildly.
"Anunda! Anunda! My God! the shrine!--the blood!"
"It is a bad sign," remarked the doctor to one of his friends significantly when they had persuaded him to lie down again quietly, more from inability to sit up, than from obedience. "It is a bad sign when the delusions remain after the fever has left the brain. However, it is early days yet, and we must hope for the best."
"You should rid your mind of such things," said the pleader a week or two afterwards when, despite Ramanund's growing strength of body, he still reverted again and again to that terrible dark night of Kâli, imploring them to search out the criminals and have them brought to justice. "There is, pardon me, not a tittle of evidence for truth of your story; but circumstantial proof to contrary as I will state categorically. First, known dislike to and hatred for Kâli and such like, leading to language in my hearing calculated to break the peace. Second, known excitement consequent perhaps on general sickness, stress of examinations before holiday times, and such like, leading to general look of fatigue and absent-mindedness noticeable to friends as myself. Third, known physical horror of blood leading to much recrimination of sacrifices, and such like; even to extent of shutting yourself up all day, as per mother's evidence, from fear of disagreeables. Finally, profound feverish sleep watched by same mother with dubiosity several times, ending in sleep-walk to the reeking shrine where you are found by Brahmins after dawn unconscious. What can be closer chain of convincing proof?"
"We have made every inquiry," said his other friends soothingly, "short of informing the police; and we can find no trace of what you assert. Human sacrifices in times of great sickness may sometimes, doubtless, be on the tapis, but this one we believe is but figment of a still clouded brain. You must have patience. All will come clear in time."
And when he asked for his new friend, the friend in whom he had partly confided his love story, they shook their heads sadly. "He was almost last victim to cholera," they said, "the cause has lost a shining light. All the more need, Ramanund, why thou shouldst shake off these idle fancies, and be our leader to perfect freedom of thought and action."
Perfect freedom of thought and action! Ramanund as he lay slowly recovering of his brain fever wondered if he would ever have the heart to believe in such a thing again. Wondered if he would ever again dare to call himself a representative of India--that India which had killed Anunda. For that the horrible sight he had seen on the slab of stone beneath Kâli's clutching arms was no dream or delusion, but a reality, he never for an instant doubted. Why they had done her to death, was the only uncertainty which tortured him as he lay hopelessly silent; silent because there was no use in words when none believed them. Had it been simply a religious sacrifice to stay the plague--a sacrifice known to thousands who would guard the secret as a divine obligation? The choice falling, naturally enough, on one who was a stranger, and utterly helpless in the hands of her priestly relations? Or was it merely the jôgi's revenge for his challenge. Or was it jealousy. Had they discovered the intrigue, and was the man who had drawn the trident of Siva on his forehead also the man of whom poor little Anunda had spoken with such terror? Yet what did it matter, since she was dead? What did anything matter beside the memory of that piteous whisper, "Oh Ramu! it would be better--so----"
Ah! why had he tried to interfere with the old ways?--why had he sought for more--why had he not let her be happy while she could, in her own way?
When he left the hospital he found his mother installed in a new lodging. It would not be good for him, his friends had said, to return to the old environment while his mind was still clouded by delusions, so she had performed the utmost act of self-denial of which an Hindu woman is capable, and removed herself and her belongings from the house where she had lived her life. But she would have done anything for Ramanund at any time; how much more so now, when the Goddess had shown that She still held him as her faithful servant by signs and wonders. Had She not drawn him in his sleep to Her very feet, on Her dark night?--he who would never cross Her threshold! And had he not been found there prostrate amid the blood of sacrifices, with one of Her garlands round his neck?--he who would never wear a flower!
"A garland," faltered Ramanund when she told him this exultantly. Ay! a garland which she would cherish as her dearest possession since the Goddess Herself must have thrown it around him--a garland which she should show him--if--if he ever again talked foolishness as he had talked that day when he had frightened her so, not knowing that he was already in a fever.
"Show it me now, mother," he said quietly.
So she showed it to him. The chumpak blossoms were but yellow shreds upon a string, scentless, unrecognisable; here and there clogged black with the blood of sacrifice which had stained them as he fell.
"Take it away!" he cried fiercely, thrusting it from him. "Take it away! Oh! curses on the cruelty--curses on the----"
"Jai Kâli ma!" interrupted his mother as she laid the relic back in the little casket whence she had taken it. "Jai Kâli ma! for She stayed the sickness."
Ramanund looked at her in dull dazed wonder. But it was true what she said. The cholera had slackened from that very time when he had been found lying at the Goddess' feet.
GLORY-OF-WOMAN
This is the story of a backwater; one of those still nooks sheltered by sedges whither the sere and yellow leaves drift and rest, while the current beyond slips by swift as ever. Why this particular backwater should have called itself a Technical School of Art-needlework has nothing to do with the story. Briefly it was a sort of almshouse where twelve old Mohammedan ladies drew a poor monthly pittance of some few rupees, and sat contentedly enough year after year twining gold thread on to fine net. What became of the work when it was done has also nothing to do with the story. Perhaps it was sold to eke out the funds of a charity which did its fair share of solacing sorrow in keeping twelve pairs of small, soft, high-bred hands from the quern-handle; that last resource of the poor in India now, as it was when the Great Mogul refused to allow the importation of Western machinery on the ground that God's best gift to the poor was the millstone about their necks.
It was in this odd little courtyard, packed away decorously in the very heart of the loose-living, gambling, gold-worker's quarter, that Glory-of-Woman found shelter after many years of patient, peaceful privation; for Fakr-un-nissa (that was how her name ran in the soft courtly tongue of the most brutal of cities) was a Syyedani; in other words, of the poorest and proudest, too poor to bring a dowry to a husband of her own rank, too generous to take one without it, too proud to stoop to a partner beneath her--or rather too gentle, too conservative. There are hundreds such women in Delhi, and Fakr-un-nissa had been more fortunate than most, seeing that being learned in the Koran she had kept body and soul together by recitations at fast and festival in the zenanas, and so been spared hard labour. Perhaps it was this which made her look younger than her fifty and odd years; at all events there was scarcely a wrinkle on her small oval face, and her tall, slender figure showed no sign of age.
She was the youngest of the scholars, and every evening when the gold thread and the filmy net had been locked away in a queer little carven coffer, she was the last to slip her small feet into one of those twelve pairs of curly shoes which all day long had been ranged against the slip of wall doing duty as a screen at the door, and the last to use the rickety dhooli which the charity provided for the modest conveyance of the fair ones to their homes. It provided a chaperone too, in the shape of a big lump of a girl about twenty, who sat on the steps all day chattering to the passers-by, giggling at their jokes, and chewing pân. It was a queer arrangement seeing that Khâdjiya Khânum, the eldest of the scholars, was past eighty; but then age had nothing to do with the fact that she was a Syyedani, and Juntu only a gad-about. There was another pair of shoes, however, placed in a corner apart from the rest; for it had come to be a recognised custom in the backwater that there should always be a thirteenth pair of feet ready to slip into any vacancy made by the sure decay which comes alike to rest as to unrest. And so, five years before, when Fakr-un-nissa had stepped into the last pair of shoes left by a deserted wife who had gone down into the grave leaving one forlorn daughter behind her, the old ladies had cast about to choose a suitable aspirant. Not that they really had the right to appoint any one, but because experience showed them that the claims of a gratuitous worker were seldom overlooked when opportunity came for urging them. This time the choice fell, naturally enough, on the daughter of the dead scholar. Just in her teens, she was hopelessly alone in the world; for her mother, after estranging her own people by a marriage with a Mohammedan Râjpoot, had quarrelled with her husband's family; but not before little Yâsmin had been married, and had, according to the Rânghar custom, become a widow for life by the death of her childish bridegroom. For race is stronger than religion and the old Râjpoot ideas have survived conversion. So Yâsmin in her turn waited for a vacancy in the shoes; or rather Noorbânu waited, since the old ladies would have nothing to do with the flowery, half-heathen name, and set themselves diligently to transform her into a "Lady-of-light." It was not altogether a successful attempt, for the girl's wild Râjpoot blood waxed rebellious sometimes; but as a rule Fakr-un-nissa's soft voice with its polished periods and careful intonation would bring her back to obedience.
"Lo! thou shouldst mind me, Heart's Delight," Glory-of-Woman would say with a smile. "Do I not stand in Thy mother's shoes? Thou art young now, Yâsmina; so was I once; yet thou wilt be as I am, some day."
And Yâsmina would make a face. "Well! that is better than being like Khâdjiya Khânum, or Maimâna Begum with her little eyes."
So the years passed bringing no blank to the roll of high-sounding names, no break in the row of shoes, no vacant place in the semicircle of old women which chased the sunshine round the court during the cold months, and the shade during the hot ones. For they felt the stress of the seasons in their old bones. Otherwise winter and summer were alike to them; as was the green leaf and the sere since they had never seen either. But Yâsmin felt the spring-time in her blood and began to weary of being at every one's beck and call.
"She is a Rânghar! Bury a dog's tail for twelve years, and it will still be crooked," said Maimâna Begum. She was full to the brim of proverbial wisdom, and had a little clique of her own in that semicircle of flimsy net, glittering gold thread, and withered hands. Mumtâza Mahul's head, and those of half a dozen Lights, or Desires, or Ornaments of the Palace, the World, or, of Woman, wagged in assent to her words. It was easy to change a name but not a nature; and had every one heard that some one had seen Noor-Bânu talking to a woman with whom she ought not to have been talking?
Glory-of-Woman's thin face grew eager. "'Tis a cousin, Mai Khâdjiya. The girl told me of it and I have inquired. A cousin of the father's, married--yea! married, indeed, to a trooper, like he is, serving the Sirkar somewhere. Such folks lose hold on old ways, yet mean no harm. We must not judge them as ourselves."
"Wâh, Fakr-un-nissa! Wouldst say the Devil meant no harm next. Thy heart spoils thy faith. I marvel at thee, thou who dost fast and pray more than is needful."
The ring of bitterness in old Khâdjiya's tones was explained by the fact that it was nigh the end of the first ten days' fast of Mohurrum-tide and she had not chosen that any, despite her age, should exceed her in the observance thereof. And Fakr-un-nissa's zeal had raised the price of self-complacency beyond reason.
"More than is needful!" echoed Maimâna Begum with a like tartness. "Art not rash to say so, Mai Khâdjiya? Sure the virtue of some folk is situate as the tongue among thirty-two teeth. It needs care to preserve itself."
The white shrouded figures chuckled. They were not really ill-humoured, or evilly disposed towards Glory-of-Woman; it was simply that her excellent example had made all their old bodies rather fretful. "And as for the girl," continued the acrid voice, "she is a cat on the wall. God only knows on which side she will jump down."
Fakr-un-nissa's eyes flashed, and her fingers entangled themselves in the gold thread. "Then, for sure, it is our part to make the right side more pleasant than the wrong; not to be always finding fault because she is young. Yea, 'tis so; for look you, it seems ever to me that we are to blame--that we are in her place. Five long years is it since she hath waited."
Khâdjiya Khânum's hands dropped from her work and flew out in vehement crackings of every joint against ill-luck. "Tobah, Tobah! (For shame, for shame!) Mistress Fakr-un-nissa. Die if thou wilt to make room for the hussy. As for me, I wait on the will of the Lord."
A murmur of assent ran through the semicircle once more.
"Nay, nay! I meant not so," protested Fakr-un-nissa hastily. "Lo, death comes to all, and goeth not by age. I meant but this,--sure 'tis hard to put it to words--that the old should make room for the young, or make the waiting bearable."
"Tchu! If the heart be set on a frog, what doth it care for a fairy?" insisted the hoarder of other folk's wisdom. "Dost mean to hint that in this place the girl hath not had virtue set constantly before her, ay, and preached too? It seems to me that we have it almost to satiety. Is it not so, sisters?"
Once more the chuckle ran round the circle, and Glory-of-Woman sat still more upright. "Amongst thy other proverbs, canst not recollect the one which says, 'Between the two priests the fowl killed for dinner became unlawful to eat'?" Then the temper died from her face and she went on in a softer tone: "I find no harm in the girl, and what wrong hath she done this day more than another?"
"No more, for sure," put in Mumtâza Mahul, "since she is late at work every day; that is no new thing, is it, sisters?"
"Yet she finishes her task as quick as any,--as I, anyhow," persisted Yâsmina's advocate, who having come to the gold thread late in life found it apt to knot.
"Wâh-illâh! What a fuss about a wilful girl," put in a new voice. "She is no worse than others, and needs restraint no more. She hath grown saucy since we gave her money instead of broken victuals. Put her back to the old footing, say I, when she had nought of her own."
Khâdjiya Khânum's veiled head nodded sagely. "Thou hast it, Hameda-bânu. Lo, I, for one, know not why the girl was ever given such freedom, save indeed that it tallies with Fakr-un-nissa's indecent hastening of Providence. I am for the old plan."
"And I,"--"And I,"--"And I,"--assented a chorus of set, certain voices.
Glory-of-Woman's fingers flew faster. "Then will ye drive the girl from us altogether. I know it, I feel it. Yea, I, Fakr-un-nissa, singer of the Koran till my tone failed me, remember it;--those days when some other song seemed better and one must needs sing it! Think, sisters, remember! The eyes of the body are two; the eye of the soul is one." The work had dropped from her hands which were stretched out in eager entreaty. "'Tis but patience for a year or two. Then, since there is no harm in her, she will settle down as--as I--as I did. 'Tis but the youth in her veins, and God knows that is soon past for a woman; yet one's glory remains." Her voice regaining some of its past strength, recollecting all its old skill under the stimulus of both memory and hope, filled the little courtyard,--and availed nothing.
Half an hour afterwards, struck dumb, as sensitive natures are, by the stress of passion around her, she was watching with stupid inaction Yâsmin's final vengeance on that decorous row of curly shoes behind the screening wall. To right and left, to this corner and that, they sped before the reckless young feet while the reckless young voice rose in mockery. "Lo, I wait no longer for old women's shoes. I will have new ones of my own. Khujju, and Mujju, and the rest of ye can sort them for yourselves, or go down to the grave one foot at a time as seemeth to ye best. I care not; I wait no longer."
One pair flew full in Maimâna Begum's face, and then came a pause before the last pair, an odd sound between a laugh and a sob, a sudden sweep of the net veil over the shoulder, and a half-defiant nod to the old white fingers. "These shall stay, because they were my mother's, and because----"
The next moment she was gone, leaving the twelve old women sitting in the sunshine, breathless, silenced by her youth, her unreason, her fire. Even Fakr-un-nissa had no word of defence. But after a time, when Juntu, full of smiles and winks, came from the steps to aid the cackle which arose as the silencing effect of the shock wore away, Glory-of-Woman began to feel the old pain at her heart once more. "Because they were my mother's, and because----" She could fill up the pause in two ways: "Because they are yours, and you have been kinder than the others"; "Because they should by rights be mine." Both answers were disturbing. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her thin hands to the thin breast which had known so little of a woman's life, save only that craving for another song.
"Towards the bazaar, sayest thou?" came Khâdjiya's wrathfully satisfied voice. "To the bazaar, and in Mohurrum-tide, too! That means the worst, and we were none too soon in getting rid of her, Heaven be praised!"
"The cousin lives close to the Chowk," put in Fakr-un-nissa faintly. "Mayhap the girl goes there."
Juntu laughed. "The cousin is a bad one; no better."
Whereat Maimâna Begum remarked sagely that whether the knife fell on the melon or the melon on the knife was all one; the melon suffered. Yâsmin's reputation was hopelessly hurt by that going bazaar-wards.
"For a Syyedâni perchance," retorted Juntu with some acerbity. "Yet this I say: there is no harm in the girl though she be younger than some folk who need dhoolis to their virtue." She hated the proverb-monger who never from year's end to year's end gave her a cowrie or so much even as a word of thanks. And then being Mohurrum-tide, when in all pious houses the Assemblage of Mourning must be held, the work was folded away in the old carved coffer, the desecrated shoes sorted into pairs, and one by one the old ladies were smuggled into the curtained dhooli and trotted away to their homes, with buxom Juntu chattering and laughing alongside.
"Dost recite the Mursiâh[21] at the Nawâb's this year, Fakr-un-nissa?" asked Humeda-bânu, wrapping herself carefully in a thick white veil.
Glory-of-Woman shook her head. "They have a new one. Last Mohurrum I grew hoarse. Perhaps 'twas the fever; it had held me for days."
"Fever!" echoed the other. "Say rather the fasting. Thou hast a dead look in the face even now, and as for me, God knows whether I feel hungry or sick. Thou shouldst remember that thou art growing old."
"I do remember it," said Fakr-un-nissa half to herself.
In truth she did. As she sate awaiting her turn for the curtained dhooli she felt very cold, very helpless. Yâsmin, whom she had loved, had broken loose from all tradition and gone bazaar-wards. The very idea was terrifying. The brain behind that high narrow forehead of Fakr-un-nissa's could barely grasp the situation. For fifty years it had circled round the one central duty of pious seclusion, and Yâsmin's choice seemed almost incredible. For there was no harm in the girl; she had always been responsive to kind words. If she, Fakr-un-nissa, could only have had speech with her alone! The thought made her restless and sent her to the door, to peep, closely veiled, round the screen and watch the dhooli containing Humeda-bânu disappear from the steps. Yet she had done her best, giving the girl in secret what she could spare of the pittance; and this year there would be no recitation-fees to eke out the remainder. Perhaps the others were right, and this generosity of hers had fostered the girl's independence. Khâdjiya and Maimâna would say so, for sure, if they knew. Then was she to blame?--she who loved the girl, who had taken the mother's shoes. The mere possibility was a terror to the conscience where the womanhood that was in her had found its only chance of blossoming. It is the same East and West. Glory-of-Woman, as she stood, tall and thin, leaning against the dull brick screen, had as much claim to saintship as any in the canonised calendar; and wherefore not? Had not she spent nearly fifty years in learning the lives of the saints by heart, and chanting the dirge of martyred virtue? It came back to her dimly as she stood there. The sombre dresses of the mourning assemblage, the glittering Imâm-bârah[22] dressed with such care by reverent hands; and then her own voice above the answering chorus of moaning and sobbing. She had power then, she was helpless now; helpless and old, yet not old enough apparently to die; though when all was said and done, it was not her turn, but Khâdjiya Khânum's. Yet she had taken the mother's shoes, and had sat there silent when perhaps a word from her might have saved that awful journey to the bazaar. Then the thought came to her that the saints were never helpless,--not even the blessed Fâtima herself--Glory-of-Woman had fasted and prayed for long days and nights; she felt miserably ill in soul and body, in the very mood therefore to slip her feet into the pair of shoes Yâsmin's recklessness had spared, and, almost as recklessly, pass without a pause to the doorstep. The next instant she was back again in shelter, breathless, palpitating. Yet might it not be the voice of God? And no one would know; she might be back ere Juntu returned, and even if she were not, the gad-about had a kind heart. Besides, another rupee from the pittance would silence her in any case.
East and West nothing is impossible to such religious exaltation as changed the slow current in Fakr-un-nissa's veins to a stream of fire scorching and shrivelling every thought save the one,--that she stood in the mother's shoes yet had said no word. She wrapped her thick shroud of a veil tighter round her and stepped deliberately into the alley. The glory of woman, its motherhood, was hers indeed in that instant, though she did not realise it; though the thin breast heaving with her quickened breath had never felt the lip-clasp of a child.
It was a long, low room, opening by arches to a wooden balcony without, into which, half-fainting with pure physical fatigue, she stumbled after Heaven knows what trivial--yet to her sheer ignorance almost awful--difficulties by the way. Yet she was not afraid; indeed as she had passed through the crowded streets it had been wonder which had come to her. That this should be a time of fasting and mourning, and yet none seem to care! Had the world no time to bewail dead virtue? Had it forgotten the Faith? And this, too, was no mourning assemblage, though in some of the faces of the lounging men she recognised the features of her own race, the race of the Prophet himself. Had they forgotten also? She shrank back an instant, until--beside a flaunting woman whose profession was writ large enough for even fifty years of pious seclusion to decipher it instinctively--she saw a slender figure crouching half-sullen, half-defiant. The face was still veiled, but she knew it.
"Yâsmin!" she cried breathlessly. "Come back! Come back to us!"
The girl sprang to her feet with a fierce cry, and was beside the tall white form in an instant, screening it with swift arms that strove to force it back. "Go! I say go! Why art thou here? Thou shouldst not have come hither! Go! See, I will come also if thou wilt not go without me."
"Not so fast, my pigeon," tittered the flaunting woman, answering the half-surprised looks of the men with nods and winks. "Thou art in my charge now, since thou hast left the saints. Who is this woman? Let her speak her claim."
Yâsmin's hand flew to Fakr-un-nissa's mouth. "Not a word, Amma,[23] not a word. See, I will go; quick, let us go."
The surprise had lessened, and a man's voice rose with a laugh. "What, let thee go for nothing, with an unknown? Nay, Mistress Chambelé, that were unwise. She is thy cousin; the claims of kinship must be considered."
"The claims of numbers, too," put in another. "Let the veiled one unveil since she has come among us."
"Nay, brothers," interrupted a third hastily in a lower voice, "mayhap she is one of the saintly women, and----"
A laugh checked the speech. "So much the better. What doth a saint here?"
Some one had barred the doorway with thrust-out arm, and half a dozen others with jeering faces lounged against the wall crying languidly, "Unveil, unveil." But Yâsmin's arms clasped close. "I will go," she panted. "I will go with her. She,--she is my mother."
Chambelé's titter rang high and shrill. "Wâh! That is a tale! See you, friends; her mother hath been dead five years. Enough of this, little fool! Thou hast made thy choice already; there is no place for thee yonder with the saints."
"She hath her mother's," cried Fakr-un-nissa, freeing herself from Yâsmin's hold with new strength, born of the girl's words. "Lo, she speaks truth, my sister! I stand in her mother's shoes. Let her go in peace, and she shall have them surely."
Something in the urbane polish of her speech awoke memory in the men, and one, older than the rest, said with a frown, "Yea, 'tis enough, Chambelé; let the woman go, and the child also if she wish it. She will come back another day if she be of this sort; if not, there are others."
"But not without a ransom," interrupted one with an evil face and evil eyes which had seen enough of Yâsmin's figure beneath the veil to think her presence gave unwonted piquancy to the business.
"Yea, a ransom, a ransom for coming here, and spoiling pleasure! Let the saint pay the price of the sinner; unveil! unveil!" cried half a dozen jeering voices.
The sunshine without streamed through the arches in broad bands upon the floor, but Fakr-un-nissa's tall muffled figure stood in shadow by the door. A fighting quail was calling boastfully from a shrouded cage over the way; the cries of the noisy bazaar floated up to the balcony, a harmonious background to Chambelé's noisier laugh. Then, suddenly, came a step forward into the sunlight, and the heavy white veil fell in billowy curves like a cloud about Fakr-un-nissa's feet. For the first time in her life Glory-of-Woman stood unsheltered from the gaze of men's eyes. And those eyes saw something worth seeing, despite her fifty and odd years: a woman beautiful in her age, graceful as ever in the sweeping white draperies of the graceful Delhi dress; but a woman forgetful utterly of the womanhood, even of the motherhood in her, as with one swift outspreading of the arms she broke into the opening lines of the Mursiâh, that dirge of martyred virtue which is as closely interwoven with all that is best in the life of a Mussulman as "Hark, the herald angels sing!" is with the Christian's tender memories of home; a dirge sacred to the day and the hour; a dirge forgotten by this new world. Fakr-un-nissa remembered nothing else. Many and many a time listless indifferent hearts had responded to the fervour of her declamation; women's hearts, it is true, and that was a woman's derisive laugh! But above it rose a man's swift curse commanding silence for all save that skilful voice; and not silence only--for that was a sigh! So the cadences rang truer and stronger out into the sunlight making the passers-by pause to listen.
"An Assemblage at Chambelé's house!" sneered some one. "That is a sinner's ransom indeed."
But Glory-of-Woman heard nothing save those responsive sighs, saw nothing but the orthodox beatings of the breast with which one or two of the elder men gave in to custom.
The last ameen left her still blind, still deaf. Then came a laugh. "With half her years I'd take the saint before the sinner," said the man with the evil face.
Glory-of-Woman stood for a second as if turned to stone. Then she threw up her hands with a cry and sank in a huddled heap upon the white curves of her fallen veil.
"God smite your soul to eternal damnation!" cried a man's voice.
But Glory-of-Woman was to hear no man's voice again. She had kept her promise, and the last pair of curly shoes behind the screen was vacant. In due time Noor-bânu slipped into them, for the eleven old ladies and Juntu made peace with her for the sake of Fakr-un-nissa.
"Lo! the ways of Providence are not our ways," said Khâdjiya Khânum piously over her horn spectacles. "And she was ever in a hurry. For my part I wait on the will of the Lord."
Maimâna Begum cackled under her breath. "Hair-oil is wasted on a bald head," she said in a whisper to Humeda-bânu. "Her time is near, hurry or no hurry. Who comes, must go."