Chândni was standing in her cool recesses of shadow at the farther end of the gateway which adjoined the little strip of bazaar leading past the palace. A bazaar but a few yards long, yet retaining in that small space a specimen of all the vices which in past times had made the Moghuls of Hodinuggur infamous. A couple of young men with uncovered heads were dicing on a string bed thrust under a patched, dyed awning stretched from balcony to balcony. A group of half-a-dozen more were quarrelling vilely over a quail fight beside the liquor-seller's booth, gay in its coloured bottles. Two or three of various ages, heavy with drugs, were sprawling and nodding in the gutters. Just across the street a sutara-player was twanging away, and above him a girl, powdered and painted, bent over the wooden balcony flinging snatches of hideous song on the passers-by, and shrieking with coarse laughter at a naked monstrosity who, as he begged, made capital of his misfortunes. On this girl, with her grease-smirched hair and Brummagem jewelry, Chândni, from her shadows, cast glances of scorn, which she transferred after a time to Dalel Beg, who sat crouched up against a plinth smoking a rank hookah and sipping a 'rajah's peg' of brandy and champagne. He had discarded European dress entirely, and the few clothes he wore smelt horribly of musk.
Against the darkness of the arch behind her the woman's tall figure showed like a white shadow. Not a scrap of colour anywhere save in her stained lips and the pomegranate sprig she twirled idly in her hand. Keeping time with it to the thrum of the sutara; keeping time also with a clash of the silver anklets hidden by the long gauze draperies of her Delhi dress.
'Yea! Dalel!' she said mockingly, and the creamy column of her throat vibrated visibly with her smooth round voice. ''Tis over true what the little sahib said of thy coarse attempts. The pack of us are fools. The sahib-logue's drink yonder steals what brains God gave thee; then Meean Khush-hâl was never aught but a big belly, and the Diwân--Heaven keep him for the best of the lot--sits too high. There remains but Chândni the courtesan, and she----'
'Hath failed,' broke in Dalel with a forced explosion of malicious laughter. 'Lo! thou hast not had a civil tongue for others since he flouted thee. Sure the plant must be trampled in the dust ere it blossoms. Have patience, heart's delight.'
He was too weary even in his malice to seek the amusement of watching the rage grow to her face as she stood behind him.
'Whose fault----' she began hotly; then with a louder clash of the anklets ended in a laugh. 'Lo! 'tis past. And what care I? 'Tis naught to me, but if the treasure-chest of Hodinuggur be empty, 'tis good-bye to Chândni. She goes back to Delhi.'
'Nay! nay!' whimpered Dalel with a maudlin shake of the head, as he sought comfort in finishing the tumbler. 'We will succeed yet; but the boy hath no youth in his veins. I know not how to take him as the others. Yet have we done our best----'
'Best,' echoed the woman scornfully. 'Stale old tricks. A gold piece under his plate at dinner forsooth! That was soon over in a beating for the servant who should have seen it put there. A dish of oranges stuffed with rupees which the same servant, wise man, kept for himself. A gun he would not take! a dinner he would not eat! a horse he would not ride! Even a woman he would not look at. What care I? there be others who will. Stale old tricks indeed! insipid as uncooled water on a summer's day, or that thing yonder'--she pointed to the opposite balcony--'compared to me. Think not I did not see thee ere I came out, oh! Dalel. Not that I care. There be others, and Delhi is but a day's journey.'
'Mayhap the tricks are old,' he muttered in sullen discomfiture. 'Hast new to advise?'
She laughed. 'Not to thee; thou hast not the wit for it. And there is naught new. The crazy potter is right when he saith the world is in the dust. Sure every ploughman knows, that no matter what the surface be, the sand lies under all. Thou hast but to dig deep enough.'
She had moved forward to lean against the plinth. In the action her thin draperies clung to the long curve of her limbs from hip to ankle. Her right hand supported her head, which was thrown back against it, so that the arm framed her face. It was the attitude of the Medea in Pompeian frescoes; the face of a Medea also till the downward glance of her eyes met an upward one from the sutara-player. Then with a flash and a laugh the pomegranate blossom flew out into the sunlight and fell at the young man's feet. Dalel clutched at her savagely amid a volley of coarse English oaths.
'Let me go, beloved!' she giggled. 'Did I not say the sand lay under all? What! art jealous? jealous of Chândni the courtesan? Wouldst have me Dalelâh since thou art Dalel? If that be so, I will put thee in good temper again.'
She snatched at an old banjo hanging on a nail, sank down amid her draperies like a cobra on its coil, and began recklessly to sing 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,' while Dalel waggled his head, but half mollified.
'Thou canst not dance it though,' he maundered sleepily. 'Not as 'twas pictured in the English papers at the Jubilee Institute. Thou art no good at all. I will change thee for a half-caste girl. Yet if there be no money in the treasury? Lo! Fate is hard, and I have done my best.'
And still the song of civilisation went on, full of incongruous barbaric intervals. The girl in the balcony retreated in a huff before an accomplishment unknown to her: the quail-fighters laughed at the noise. Only George Keene, wandering about one of the inner courts of the palace, seeking a good spot whence to sketch a certain blue-tiled mosque, found himself unconsciously whistling a refrain, and paused to listen in sickening suspense. Yes, it was! Fitzgerald was right when he said the country was being ruined by culture! What an inconceivable, unthinkable contrast to that great ruined courtyard, its blue tiles decorated in endless writing with the Attributes of God. At least how inconceivable it would have been six weeks ago, when he had first seen the mosque with Dan as his companion. For George Keene was becoming accustomed to being, as it were, depolarised. It would have made him very angry had any one told him that Hodinuggur had already altered his outlook on life, though it could scarcely have failed to do so. To begin with Dalel Beg's occidental follies, grafted on to a sound stock of ancestral vices, made him, as he leered over a billiard cue and tried to induce George to bet, quite a startling study. Not so disturbing, however, as the sober, gentle, inoffensive villagers with the confession, 'It is God's will,' on their patient lips. Content to toil and die, smiling over the fact. Surely, something ailed the terminology of religion if these were Heathen, and certain Western folk in his father's suburban parish were Christians? Then there was the mad potter in whose walled yard George listened to the oddest old-world tales, and the Diwân with whom the lad played chess. To tell truth, he never climbed up for that purpose to the tower without a breathlessness not altogether to be accounted for by the steepness of the stairs. Face to face with the old man, sitting still as a statue before the pieces, George felt himself face to face with something he could not set aside with a sneer. Yet he might have been playing with an automaton for all the interest Zubr-ul-Zamân displayed, while he, on his part, was agonising in anxiety. But once his hand had left the piece, the old man's would rise from his knee, hover over the board for a second, then swoop down unerringly with the murmur, 'My play is played.' And the move generally disposed of all George's deep-laid plans, for the Diwân was a passed master in chess. Yet the lad returned again and again for a beating, being dogged in his turn. He was, in fact, on his way from one when Chândni and the banjo started his thoughts along a familiar channel. Certainly they were an odd people, and somehow it was difficult to write home letters which should at once reflect the truth and give satisfaction to the British public.
Meanwhile Chândni, desisting with Dalel's first reliable snore, threw the banjo aside and reviewed the position. There was no mist of reserve between her and her profession. She had been born to it, as her forebears had been. Her success in it was rather a matter for pride than shame; her only anxiety being the future. Should she linger on as she had been doing in hopes that out of sheer conservatism Dalel Beg would attach her to him permanently by some of the many possible marriages? Or should she risk the life of a go-between in her old age, return to Delhi and amuse herself? The reappearance of the painted girl in the balcony decided her; she would not give way to such creatures as that until the emptiness of the Treasury was indubitable. Yet as she sat rolling the little pellets of opium for her midday dose between her soft palms she looked at her lover distastefully. He was no good, and if the sluice-gates were to be open that year she must bestir herself--she and the Diwân. So much was settled before she swallowed the dream-giver and threw herself full length on the bare string bed set deep in the shadows. Then the silence of noon fell on that sinful slip of bazaar. Even the quails ceased to challenge from their hooded cages, and the sutara-player with the pomegranate blossom stuck in behind his ear had forgotten the giver in sleep. But out in the fields the peasants were at work on their scanty crops, and George Keene as he entered the red brick bungalow paused to listen to a cry which never failed to impress him. The cry of praise to the giver with which the villagers drew water from the wells which stood between them and death. Truly in that wilderness of sand, water was the mother of all things. What wonder if it became the motive power in life? What wonder that, like the silver sword of the big canal, it cut the world into halves--the people who wanted, and the people who did not want the sluice-gates opened. With a laugh at his own fancy he went in to lunch, wondering this time what form the desert fowl would take: it certainly was the mother of all food! Hodinuggur might have its serious aspects, but on the whole it was farcical as well as tragical, and 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, counterbalanced that cry of thanksgiving.
And that same evening, while he was reading the last number of theNineteenth Centuryin the verandah, Chândni had an interview with the old Diwân on his tower, which, had George been aware of it, would have seemed to him farcical beyond belief, though it was deadly earnest to the actors. She sat at the old man's feet so as to be within earshot of a whisper, since walls, especially in an Indian palace, have ears. That was why Diwân's chair was set out in the open under the star-gemmed dome of the sky which paled to its circled setting of plain that, seen from the height, seemed in its turn to curve, cup-like, to meet the sky. The decent domino she had worn on her way was cast aside out of sheer coquetry, so that her supple figure, unadorned save for the heavy chaplets of jasmine flowers shrouding the filmy muslin, might stand outlined above the low parapet among the stars. For Chândni was shrewd. The ordinary jewels of her class might have aroused memories in the old man, and she wished to impress him with her individuality.
'Nay, daughter,' he said approvingly, 'I well believe failure was not thy fault. As for thy plan--speak.'
She drew her lips closer to his ear, and laid one hand on his knee, as if to hold his attention.
'Father! all men care for something. He cares not for what he has been given. Let us try others. If they fail, well and good. Now there is one thing such as he favour--God knows why?--but I have seen them myself in the bazaar at Delhi--sahibs who have come over the black water to buy ragged rugs and battered brass pots. Why? Because, forsooth, they are old! The crazy potter would say it was because they remember them. I know not. But this boy pokes about the old things--questions of the old tales.'
Zubr-ul-Zamân nodded approval. 'True, he favoured the Ayôdhya pot; but he returned it.'
Chândni's eyes sparkled, then fell. 'So! that is one thing to begin with. Then he is of those who watch flowers grow and birds build their nests; who paint colour an paper for the love of it. Again, when the fowler fails in all else he baits the snare with pity, and sets a decoy-bird a-fluttering within the net. This boy gives quinine to the old wives, and fish-oil to the babes born with the Potter's thumb-mark.' Her laughter crackled joylessly.
'Words--words,' muttered the old man impatiently. What wouldest thou do?'
She drew closer, and the movement sent a wave of perfume from the jasmine chaplets into the air.
'Lend me Azîzan for a week, and thou shalt see.'
Scent, so people say, is the most powerful stimulant to bygone memories; perhaps that was the reason why her words brought such a pulse of fierce life to the old face. 'Azîz! Nay! she is of the house.'
'Why not say of the race, father?' retorted Chândni coolly. 'Nay! in such talk as ours truth is best. Thinkest thou I am a fool when I go to dance and sing in the women's quarter? Is it not sixteen years since the potter's daughter disappeared on the night of the great storm'--hath not this fifteen-year-old the potter's eyes--Heaven shield us from them!' Her hand went out in the two-fingered gesture used to avert the evil eye in West as well as East.
Zubr-ul-Zamân scowled at her.
'There be other girls and plenty; take them,' he began. 'Besides, she is betrothed. I will not lose the dower.'
'Wherefore shouldest lose it? I said a week, and Zainub, the duenna, will see to safety. He will but paint her picture.'
The Diwân spat piously. 'And what good will such accursed idol-making do?' he asked more calmly.
''Twill bring the quarry within reach; he lives too far away now. Give me the girl, my lord, else will I know that the Diwân Zubr-ul-Zamân Julâl-i-dowla Mustukkul-i-jung is afraid of the potter's eyes.'
'As thou art, daughter of the bazaars,' he retorted fiercely. 'Shall I set them on thee and thine?'
Chândni essayed an uneasy laugh. 'I will do her no harm,' she muttered sullenly. 'I will not even speak to her if thou wilt. Zainub shall do all.'
Half-an-hour afterwards Chândni, wrapped in her white domino, paused on her way home at the door leading to the women's quarters and knocked. After a while an old woman appeared at the latticed shutter. The courtesan whispered a word or two, the door opened, and the two disappeared down a dark passage.
''Tis Chândni come to dance.' The whisper ran through the airless, squalid rooms, causing a flutter among the caged inhabitants. Out of their beds they came, yawning and stretching, to sit squatted in a circle on the bare floor, and watch Chândni give a spirited imitation of the way the mem-sahibs waltzed with the sahib-logue. It was not an edifying spectacle, but it afforded infinite satisfaction to the audience. An audience which has to take its world at second-hand, and in the process has grown careless as to abstract truth. The young women tittered, the old ones called Heaven to witness their horror, and then they all sat without winking an eye while the courtesan sang the songs of her profession.
But little Azîzan's light eyes saw nothing at which to smile or to cry in either performance. She was young for her years, and very sleepy; besides, she was betrothed to an old man whom she had never seen, because, as all the other girls took care to tell her, she really was too ugly to be kept in the family. And that sort of thing takes the zest from life.
When the entertainment was over, Chândni sat and talked with Zainub, the duenna, until dawn, with that careless disregard of bed-time, which makes it quite impossible to foretell at what hour of the day or night a native of India will be asleep or awake.
But George Keene, over the way in the branded bungalow, was safely tucked up in sheets and blankets, whence nothing short of an earthquake would have roused him.
An earthquake, or else a prescience of the hideous caricature Chândni had been making of thetrois tempsover in the palace.
George Keene was trying to translate the cloth-of-gold sunlight into cadmium yellow, with the result that the blue of the tiles in his sketch grew green, and the opal on the pigeon's breasts as they sidled along the cornice, was dimmed to dust colour.
The courtyard with its blind arcades of Saracenic arches surrounding the mosque, lay bare and empty, as it always did save at the hours of prayer. He looked across it with a dissatisfied expression, noting the intense colour of certain tiles which were mixed up with those more modern ones bearing the Arabic letterings. The former reminded him of the Ayôdhya pot, and set him a-wondering if he should ever have an honest chance of procuring one like his first bribe. The old potter, his authority in such matters, had told him they were still to be found, more or less broken, in the digging of graves, or the sinking of wells. Hitherto, however, he had failed to hear of one. Yet, the possibility remained, since those tiles, which must be centuries older than thecafé chantantsort of proscenium on which they were inlaid, had survived. The latter he saw clearly, now he came to draw it, had been added on to an older building behind; probably a Hindu temple. So, when all was said and done, that figure of a grave and reverend Mohammedan moulvie, which he had intended to put in the foreground, might not have so much right to be there as a priest of Baal. It was a confusing country!
When he looked up again from his work, he gave a start; for a totally unexpected model was squatting on the flags of his foreground. A mere slip of a village girl; and yet was she of the village? More likely a stranger--perhaps one of the southern tribes of whom the potter told tales--since her dress was odd.
It consisted of a reddish purple drapery, more tike wool than cotton in texture, with a stitched border in browns and creams such as the desert folk embroider on their camel trappings. It was an admirable piece of colouring against that blue background, and he began upon it at once, reckless of the averted face; for he was accustomed to be thus watched furtively from afar, and knew that the least notice would end in instant flight, as of a wild animal. Besides, the faces were apt to be disappointing. This one, however, was not, and his first glimpse of it gave him quite a shock. Without being beautiful, it was most peculiar; a golden brown face, with a long straight nose, and a wide, curved mouth; golden brown hair under the reddish purple of the veil; golden brown eyes, and a golden brown arm circled with big bronze bracelets stretched out so that the hand rested on----!
He gave an irrepressible exclamation and half rose from his seat. Down fell his box and brushes, and over went the dirty water streaming across his hard-won sunshine. He mopped at it hastily with his handkerchief--as hastily as he dared; but when he looked up the girl had gone. He sat down and eyed the spot where she had been suspiciously; not because of her disappearance--there had been time for that--but because he was doubtful of his own eyes in thinking that her hand had rested on an Ayôdhya pot. If so, what a rare chance he had lost; if not, he must be going to have fever, and had better go home and take some quinine. Go home, however,viâthe potter's house, and ask that inveterate gossip if he knew anything of an odd-looking child with light eyes--here George gave a low whistle, paused in his packing up of paint-boxes, and looked round again to where the girl had squatted, feeling that it was foolish of him not to have noticed the resemblance before. Doubtless the girl was a relation of some sort, though the old man had always strenuously asserted that he had none living. Perhaps he had meant no male ones; yet, strangely enough, Fuzl Elâhi did not seem to share that contempt for girls which all the other natives of George Keene's acquaintance professed. He often talked about his dead daughter, and whenever he talked he became excited and restless; indeed, the fear of thus arousing him made George somewhat reticent in his description of the girl he had seen, which he confined as far as possible to the dress.
'She is not of Hodinuggur, Huzoor,' declared the old man confidently. 'They who wear wool live far to the south. They never leave the hearthstone where their fathers lie buried. 'Tis the old way, Huzoor, and we of this place did it also long ago.' Suddenly his eyes lit up, he let the wheel slacken and clasped his hands closely over the dome of clay in its centre. It shot up under the pressure like a fountain. 'Perhaps the Huzoor hath seen one of the old folk; they come and go, they go and come. I see them often; my fathers and their fathers, but never my daughter. She will not come, she will not come.' As his voice died away the cadence of the wheel recommenced, only to stop with a jar. 'Huzoor! Haveyouseen her? A slip of a girl with a fawn face tinted like a young gazelle's? Not black like these people--but sun colour and brown--all sun colour and brown with little curls on her forehead----'
For the life of him George could not help acknowledging the thrill that ran through him. The man was mad, of course, hopelessly mad; yet if he had seen the girl he could scarcely have given a better description. Perhaps he had seen her, knew all about her, and only pretended ignorance, to serve his own ends; that overweening desire, for instance, to pose as one apart from commonplace humanity, at which George alternately laughed and frowned.
'Your daughter is dead, potter-ji, how can I have seen her?' he said rather brutally; yet what else was there to say with that glaring daylight shining down remorselessly on the squalid reality of the scene? It was an ordinary potter's yard, no more, no less; the kneaded clay on one side of the wheel, the unbaked pots lying on the other. In the outer yard a couple of children were playing in the dust, while their mother sought a satisfactory ring in one of the pile of ready-baked water-pots before bringing it with her to haggle and bargain over the price. Overhead a kite or two wheeled in circles, and down the slope, of course, lay the palace and its inhabitants; who were very ordinary examples of impoverished native nobility in its worst aspect. So George Keene meant to be brutal, his common-sense demanded it of him. But that evening, as he sat smoking as usual in the verandah, he saw a light flickering about the ruins, and told himself that, despite his reticence, the potter was in one of his restless moods, when he would seek for his daughter all night long, returning at dawn with a handful of dust, which he would knead to clay and mould upon his wheel into odd little nine-pins. Sometimes he would bury these in pairs upon the mound--George had seen him doing it--more often he would give them to the village children as toys. George had seen them, too, with sticks for arms and bits of charcoal for eyes, doing duty as dolls. He had laughed at the oddity of it all; but now in the soft darkness the thought sent that thrill through his veins once more. This would never do! He had been too long mooning about Hodinuggur sketching and playing chess. It was time to ride down the canal, bully the workman at the brick-kilns, and have a day or two at the bustard in the desert; so then and there he called to the factotum and gave his orders for breakfast to be ready twenty miles off the next morning. That would settle his nerves.
When he returned, after four days, absence, he set to work rationally to finish his sketch. The cloth-of-gold sunshine was brilliant as ever, the blue tiles glowed, the prismatic pigeons sidled along the cornices. He told himself that Hodinuggur was not such a bad place if you refused to allow imagination----
'The Huzoor gives medicine to the poor,' came a voice behind him. 'Mother is ill; I want quinine.'
It was the girl with the Ayôdhya pot in her hand. George Keene laughed out loud in the satisfaction of his heart at his own wisdom.
'What is the matter with your mother?' he asked judiciously.
'She is sick, I am to get quinine,' repeated the girl. 'I came once before, but the Huzoor jumped up; so I became frightened and ran away. Since then I have come often, but the Huzoor was not here.'
George felt vaguely that he too had run away before something ridiculously commonplace and simple, and in the effort to bolster up his dignity, his tone became pompous and condescending.
'You are not frightened now, I hope?'
The queerest demure look came to her downcast eyes.
'Wherefore should I be afraid? The Huzoor is my father and mother.'
George had heard the saying a hundred times. Even now, incongruous as it was, it pleased him by its flattering recognition of the fact that his benevolence and superiority were undeniable.
'But, unfortunately, I don't carry quinine with me,' he began.
'If the Huzoor were to bring it to-morrow when he comes to put paints on paper, his slave could return and fetch it,' she interrupted readily. He looked at her more sharply, wondering what her age might be. 'Shall I come, Huzoor?' she continued, with a certain anxiety in her grave face.
'What else?' he answered quickly. It would suit him admirably, since he could come armed with rupees wherewith to bribe the Ayôdhya pot from her, and with canvas and oil-colour more suitable to the portrait which, as he looked at her golden brown face and reddish purple draperies, he resolved to have. He would paint her against the dark mound of the ruins rising formless and void upon a sunset sky, and he would call it----
'You had better tell me your name,' he said suddenly, 'then I shall know to whom I have to send the quinine in case you can't come.'
Her white teeth flashed between the long curves of her mouth.
'I am Azîzan, Huzoor. I am quite sure to come, and I will bring the pot for the medicine.'
It was almost as if she had divined his intention, he thought, as he watched her pass out through the gateway behind him. It was a queer chance altogether, all the greater because the name Azîzan was familiarly commonplace. Briefly, it happened to be that of his factotum's wife. He had, of course, never seen that estimable female, but he had often heard her addressed in tones of objurgation when delay occurred between the courses, thus--'Azîzan! egg sarse. Azîzan! salt fish is not without egg sarse.' From which George inferred that she was responsible for the kitchen-maid's portion of the Barmecidal feast. The remembrance made him smile as he packed up his colours, resolving to do no more till he could begin in earnest on that most interesting study. He would have thought it still more interesting if he could have seen it slipping into the white domino which old Zainub, the duenna, held ready at the gate, where she had been warding off possible intrusion by the bare truth, that one of her palace ladies was within. For the custom of seclusion renders intrigue absolutely safe, since none dare put the identity of a white-robed figure to the test, or pry into the privacy of a place claimed by a veiled woman.
'Now mind,' scolded Zainub, as they shuffled back to the women's apartments, 'if thou sayest a word of this to the girls thou goest not again; but the old bridegroom comes instead.'
'I will go again,' said the girl gravely, 'I liked it. But the sun made my eyes ache without the veil. Yes! I will go again, amma-jân' (nursie).
To tell the truth, she had small choice. We have all heard of an empire whereon the sun never sets, and where slavery does not exist. Even those who shake their heads over the former statement, applaud the latter. But slavery, unfortunately, is as elusive as liberty, and when not a soul, save those interested in making you obey, is even aware of your existence, individual freedom is apt to be a fraud. This was Azîzan's case. Born of an unknown wrong, she might have died of one also, and none been the wiser. The zenana walls which shut her in, shut out the penal code of the alien. If she had chosen to be prudish, the alternative would have been put before her brutally; but she did not choose; for naturally enough, as she said, she liked the masquerade, even if the sun did make her head ache. So she sat all that afternoon under the lattice-window, whence, if you stood on tiptoe, you could see the flags in front of the mosque, and thought of the morrow; naturally, also, since it was a great event to one who had never before set foot beyond the walls of the women's quarter.
Yet George had to wait a long time the next day ere she appeared and squatted down before him confidently. 'It was the black man who came with the Huzoor's things,' she explained quite openly. 'Mother would not let me come while he was here. The Huzoors are quite different; they are our fathers and mothers.'
The repetition of the phrase amused George, and tickled his sense of superiority. It scarcely needed stimulus, for, like most of his race, he was inclined to consider the natives as automata, until personal experience in each case made him admit reluctantly that they were not. So he wondered vain-gloriously what certain politicians at home would say to this candid distrust of the black man, produced the quinine, and then offered Azîzan five whole rupees if she would let him draw a picture of her, as he had of the mosque.
'Is that the mosque?' she asked dubiously.
George's reply was full of condescension, which it would not have been had he looked on Azîzan in the light of a girl capable, as girls always are, of mischief; for the sketch was accurate to a degree. It ended in an offer of ten rupees for a finished picture of that odd, attractive, yellow-brown face. It was now resting its pointed chin on the tucked-up knees, round which the thin brown arms were clasped; and the smile which lengthened the already long curves of the mouth George set down to sheer greedy delight at an over large bribe, which, to tell truth, he regretted. Half would have been sufficient.
'Then the Huzoor must really think me pretty.'
The words might have been bombs, the sigh of satisfaction accompanying them a thunderclap, from the start they gave to his superiority. So she was nothing more nor less than a girl; rather a pretty girl, too, when she smiled, though not so picturesque as when she was grave.
'I think you will make a pretty picture,' he replied with dignity. 'Come! ten rupees is a lot, you know.'
'I'll sit if the Huzoor thinks me pretty,' persisted Azîzan, now quite grave. And her gravity, as she sat with the reddish purple drapery veiling all save the straight column of her throat and the thin brown hands clasping the Ayôdhya pot, appealed so strongly to George Keene's artistic sense, that he would have perjured himself to say she was beautiful as a houri twenty times over if thereby he could have made her sit to him.
She proved an excellent model; perhaps because she had done little else all her life but sit still, with that grave tired look on her face. So still, so lifeless, that he felt aggrieved when, without a word of warning, she rose and salaamed.
'I must go home now, Huzoor,' she said in answer to his impatient assertion that he had but just begun. 'I will come to-morrow if the Huzoor wishes it.'
'Of course you must come,' he replied angrily, 'if you are to get the ten rupees. Why can't you stay now?'
Azîzan might have said with truth that a hand from the gateway behind the sketcher's back had beckoned to her, but she only smiled mysteriously.
George, left behind in the sunny courtyard, looked at the charcoal smudges on his canvas with mixed feelings. He had the pose; but should he ever succeed in painting the picture which rose before his mind's eye? To most amateurs of real talent, such as he was, there comes some special time when the conviction that here is an opportunity, here an occasion for the best possible work, brings all latent power into action, and makes the effort absorbing. Something of this feeling had already taken possession of George; he began to project a finished picture, and various methods of inducing his sitter to give him more time. Perhaps she had found it dull. Native women, he believed, chattered all day long. So when she came next morning, he asked her if she liked stories, and when she nodded, he began straightway on his recollections of Hans Andersen; choosing out all the melancholy and aggressively sentimental subjects, so as to prevent her from smiling. He succeeded very well so far; Azîzan sat gravely in the sunshine listening, but every day she rose to go with just the same sudden alacrity. Then he told her the tale of Cinderella, and the necessity for her leaving the prince's ball before twelve o'clock; but even this did not make Azîzan laugh. On the contrary, she looked rather frightened, and asked what the prince said when he found out.
'He told her that he thought her the most beautiful girl in the world, so they lived happy ever after,' replied George carelessly.
It was two nights after this incident that old Zainub the duenna paid a visit to Chândni in her shadowy recesses.
'What is to come of this foolishness?' she asked crossly. ''Twas a week at first; now 'tis ten days. She used to give no trouble, and now she sits by the lattice in a fever for the next day. That is the plague of girls; give them but a glimpse outside and they fret to death. So I warned Meean Khush-hâl sixteen years agone, when the mother took refuge with us during her father's absence on the night of the storm; but he listened not when he had the excuse of the wall. Yea, that is the truth, O Chândni! 'tis well thou shouldst know the whole, since thou hast guessed half. Mayhap thou wilt think twice when thou hast heard. Ai! my daughter! I seem to hear her now; I would not pass such another year with this one for all the money thou couldst give. Nor is it safe for me, or for thee, Chândni, with those eyes in the child's head. Let be--'tis no good. Would I had never consented to begin the work! I will do no more.'
'True!' yawned Chândni, lounging on her bed. 'Thou art getting old for the place--it needs a younger woman. I will tell the Diwân so.'
Zainub whimpered. 'If aught were to come of it, 'twould be different; but thou thyself hast but the hope of beguiling him to some unknown snare within the walls.'
'An unknown snare is the deadliest,' laughed the other shrilly. 'What care I for the girl? 'Tis something to have him meet a screened inmate of the palace day after day; many things may come of that. If Azîzan pines, tell her the wedding is delayed; tell her anything----'
'Tell her!' broke in the old duenna between the whiffs of the hookah whence she sought to draw comfort. 'Sobhân ullah! There is too much telling as it is.Hetells her--God knows what!--not sensible reasonable things, like the tales of a parrot, about real men and women; but upside-down rigmaroles about beggar-maidens and kings and sighs without kisses. Lo! she hath them pat! But now, because I bid her hold her tongue from teasing me with them when I wished to sleep, she flung out her hands so, quite free like, saying if she might not speak them she would think them, since they were true words. He had told her, and the sahib-logue ever spake the truth.'
Chândni burst into high pitched laughter. 'So! the little Moghulâni learns fast! 'Tis not strange, seeing the blood which runs in her veins. The cross breed hath but given it strength. Lo! if this be as thou sayest, she would not thank thee for stopping her ears with the cotton of decency. Thus, for the eyes' sake, Zainub, thou hadst best let well alone, and give the girl the rein--while thou canst.'
In good sooth the old dame felt the truth of Chândni's words, and knew herself to be between two stools. Either by interference, or non-interference, she ran the risk of Azîzan's anger; more, perhaps, by the latter than the former. So the girl in her odd dress continued to steal out in the fresh mornings--for March had come with its hot glaring noons--to sit between George and the mosque, and to steal back again, obedient to that beckoning hand from the gate; Zainub's authority remaining sufficient for that, backed as it was by an ill-defined fear on the girl's part, lest the fate of Cinderella should befall her before the proper time. There was little conversation between the odd couple; chiefly because Azîzan had none, and seemed to know nothing of her neighbours and the village. Her mother? Oh yes! she was better for the quinine. She was a purdah woman, more or less, and lived yonder--this with a wave of the hand palacewards. Yes! she had heard there was a potter, but she had never seen him. Oh, no! they were not related. Her dress? It was very old because they were very poor. Her mother had had it by her; it was very ugly. She would rather have 'Manchester'; but they--that is to say, her mother--would not give it her. The Ayôdhya pot? That was old also. She had asked her mother, and she was willing to sell it. When the Huzoor had finished the picture her mother would come, if she were well enough, and settle the price. If not, the Huzoor might go 'yonder' and speak to her mother. The Huzoors were their fathers and mothers. It was not like a black man. This much, no more, George gleaned during the morning hours which passed so swiftly for them both. He in a novel absorption and pride in the success of his own work. She? It is hard to say. She sat listening, while the pigeons sidled and coo'd, the blue tiles glowed, and the blind arcades shut out all the world save George and his stories. They were of the simplest, most uncompromising nature; partly because his sense of superiority made him stoop, perhaps unnecessarily, to Azîzan's level; partly because his knowledge of the language, though long past the stuttering stage, did not extend to niceties of emotion. But loving was loving, hating was hating, when all was said and done. Sometimes the crudity of his own words made the lad smile, as, by the aid of his own complexity, he recognised how entirely they dealt in first principles; and then Azîzan would smile too, not from comprehension, but from first principles also. The woman's smile born of the man's.
It was different, however, when he laid down his brush with an elated laugh. 'There! that's done! and you have sat like--like anything. Earned your ten rupees and--Azîzan! my dear little girl--what is the matter?'
First principles with a vengeance, and the sunlight turning tears to diamonds as they rolled down those sun-coloured cheeks! He rose, divided between pity and impatience, and stood looking at her almost incredulously. 'Come, don't cry--there's nothing to cry about. Look! how pretty you are in the picture; but it wouldn't have been half so pretty if you hadn't sat so still. I owe you more than the ten rupees, Azîzan, and that's a fact. What shall it be--money or jewels? What would you like best?'
She did not answer, and with the same careless superiority he stooped and turned her downcast face to his; he was used to turning it this way or that at his pleasure. But this somehow was different; so was the sun-colour and brown he saw. Sun-colour indeed! He was only one-and-twenty, and the brightness and the glamour which seemed to fall in a moment on everything, as he saw the heart-whole surrender of her eyes, dazed him utterly; only one-and-twenty, and he had never before seen such a look as this that came to him from the sun-coloured face; but it was brown also! Truth is truth. It was not a sense of duty, it was a sense of colour which prevented him from kissing it then and there. So much may be said for him and his morality, that the difference between a brown and a white skin was the outward sign of the vast inward gulf between sentiment and sheer passion. The transition was too abrupt; for the time it shocked his culture, and brought a look to his face before which poor little Azîzan gave a cry, and fled, just as she had fled on that first day when George had spilled the dirty water over the sunshine. He had spilled it now with a vengeance, and--over the sunshine of her face, sent shame--needless shame. 'Azîzan!' he called after her, his pulses bounding and beating, 'Azîzan!'
Then he paused, since she would not; and told himself that there was no need for pursuit. She would come back, for there, as she had left it, lay the Ayôdhya pot. Yes! she must come back. He could scarcely think of her without it clasped in her thin hands; so silent--yet all the time----? He gave a little laugh, tender, half regretful. Dear little Azîz! What a brute, what a fool he had been to bring that look to her face! His brain was in a whirl; he could think of nothing save her shy, confident eyes, and ask himself if, when all was said and done, that world beyond the desert held anything better despite its palaver and pretension? Did it not come back in the end to the old ways, to the first principles? He laughed recklessly at his own thoughts more than once as, scarcely seeing the ground beneath his feet, he made his way homewards to the branded red brick bungalow.
The factotum was standing in the verandah.
'The mem-sahib is waiting for the Huzoor,' he said calmly,
'The mem! what mem?'
'This slave knows not. She came half an hour gone, and said she would await the Huzoor's return.'
'Wait! where?'
The man pointed to the sitting-room. 'In there, Huzoor. She has since fallen asleep in the sahib's arm-chair.'
George stared helplessly at the bamboo-screen which, hanging before the open door, prevented him from seeing inside. Who could it be? Rose Tweedie? The mere thought sent the first blush of the morning to his cheek, by bringing him back with a round turn to civilisation.
'Here! take these things,' he said, thrusting the picture and the pot hastily into the servant's hand; 'and see!--wipe my boots--they are not fit to be seen.'
And as the factotum carefully brushed the dust of Hodinuggur from George's feet, the latter had forgotten everything in wonder as to who the 'mem' could possibly be.
It was a lady, whom he had never seen before, fast asleep in his arm-chair;thearm-chair of bachelor's quarters, which, having served as a deck lounge on the way out, brings a solitary luxury afterwards to the bare sitting-room.
Its present occupant appeared to find it comfortable, for she did not stir. It must be confessed, however, that there was not much to disturb even a light sleeper, for George's entrance was shy, and his surprise sufficient to petrify him for a time. She was dressed in a riding-habit, and a pair of neatly-booted feet rested on the only other chair in the room. Evidently she had made herself quite at home, for a helmet and veil lay with her gloves familiarly beside the cup and saucer set out on the table for the young man's breakfast. Altogether there was an air of easy proprietorship about the figure which lay with throat and cheek sharply outlined against the Turkey red cushions; one hand tucked behind the fair, rumpled hair, the other resting slackly on the knee. It increased George Keene's shyness by making him feel an intruder even in his own room, and without a word he turned, instinctively, to leave it. As he did so a glitter on the floor at his feet made him stoop to find a diamond pin. He stepped aside to lay it out of harm's way on the mantelpiece, and in so doing caught a closer view of the half-averted face.
When he slipped out again into the verandah, he stood with his hands in his pockets and whistled softly; it was a habit of his when taken aback. A most surprising adventure indeed! An Englishwoman--a perfectly beautiful one into the bargain--at Hodinuggur alone! How on earth had she come there? From Rajpore, seventy odd miles of sheer desert to the north, or from the south? The Chief's camp had arranged to cross the sandy strip in that direction, perhaps on its return to look in on Hodinuggur, but that did not account for her being alone.
The factotum having disappeared into the cook-room, George, in order to avoid calling, strolled thither, intent on further information. In so doing he became aware of his groom at work on a strange horse. The Huzoor was right, said the man with a grin, it was the mem's, and was it to have three or four pounds of grain? George, noticing the little Arab's hanging head, suggested a bran mash, and went on feeling as if he had tumbled into another person's dream. Yet no more was to be discovered. The mem had come, sent her horse round, and gone to sleep in the sahib's arm-chair. Furthermore, what did the Huzoor mean to do about his breakfast?
George, who, to tell truth, was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, hesitated between awaking his guest and taking his bath. He chose the latter alternative, moved thereto by the remembrance that he would be none the worse for a clean collar and what he termed 'all that sort of thing'; but half an hour afterwards, when he returned to the verandah with the refreshingly clean look of a newly-tubbed young Englishman, the situation had not improved. It had become worse, for, while the lady still slept, George felt ravenous; nor could he turn to his pipe as a palliative lest she should wake suddenly to find him reeking of tobacco--for he had always been a bit of a dandy, and fastidious over such things. This did not prevent him from feeling injured. No woman, be she ever so beautiful, had a right to take possession of a fellow's breakfast as she had done; and yet it was not so much her fault as the detestable Indian lack of pantries and larders, which led to every plate and knife, every eatable, save the desert-fowl in the cook-room, being, as it were, under the immediate guardianship of the Sleeping Beauty. Even if the store-closet had been in the bedroom, he might have 'vittled free, off sardines and captain's biscuit. And still she slept. At last, in sheer desperation, he determined to wake her; and, raising the screen, was beginning a preparatory cough, when the sight of the breakfast-table suggested the possibility of a raid. The next instant his shoes were off and the boyhood in him uppermost, as he stole in, his eyes on the sleeper. 'A good conscience, and no mistake,' he thought, as he annexed the loaf and a tin of sardines. 'One of the Seven Sleepers, surely!'--this as he passed more leisurely to a pat of butter and a knife and fork; these he piled on the loaf, with a spoonful or two of marmalade. Apparently she had no intention of awakening for days! This thought led to a cup and some tea from the canister, finally to a milk jug; the latter proving fatal, for in retiring backward with his spoil through the screen, its contents dribbled on to his best suit, and the effort to prevent this, overbalanced the spoon of marmalade, which fell with a clatter.
Some people wake to the full enjoyment of their faculties, and with the first glance of those grey-blue eyes, George saw that concealment--with half the breakfast-table clasped to his bosom--was impossible. He blushed furiously, and began to apologise; which was foolish, since excuses, if due at all, were clearly owed by the sleeper. She did not, however, make any.
'How kind of you not to disturb me before, Mr. Keene,' she interrupted in a charming voice. 'Have you been in long?'
Her coolness increased his apologies, making him assert on the contrary, he had but just returned. Only being rather in a hurry for his breakfast----
'Apparently,' she interrupted again. 'Dear me, what a very miscellaneous meal it would have been! But, as I am awake, hadn't you better put it all down before the marmalade runs into the sardines? Then, as I am quite as hungry as you can possibly be, you might tell the man to bring breakfast.'
George, if a trifle taken aback by her nonchalance, felt grateful for the opportunity, given with such easy grace, of getting at his shoes again before beginning explanations. On his return he noticed that she, also, had made use of the time to tidy her hair and restore a general daintiness of appearance. As he entered she was stooping to look under the table as if to seek something she had lost.
'It is a little diamond pin,' she said; 'I left it here with my gloves.'
'No,' he answered quickly, off his guard. 'It was on the floor--I mean--I--I think it is on the mantelpiece.'
'Thanks, so much!' She took it gravely ere going back to the arm-chair. Then she looked up at him archly.
'Was I snoring dreadfully when you came in first, Mr. Keene?'
For the third time since he had become aware of her presence he blushed.
'Snoring?--oh dear no,' he began angrily.
'That is a relief. I was afraid I must have been, to make you perjure yourself so. As if any sane woman could believe that you went about Hodinuggur in that costume! I believe you have been in for hours and hours, and I'm so sorry, Mr. Keene; but you will forgive me when you hear my tale of woe.'
George, with an odd little rapture at the thought, told himself he could forgive her anything because she was so beautiful.
'I'm Mrs. Boynton,' she went on; 'you will have heard of me, I expect, from Rose?'
He told her that he had heard of her from most people at Rajpore, which was the truth; but he did not say, which was also the truth, that their praises of her looks seemed to him miserably inadequate. No doubt, however, she saw this in his eyes, though she had too large an acquaintance with the expression to take any interest in it. Nice boys always admired her immensely, and this one looked very nice, with the beauty of cleanliness on him from head to foot, so she detailed her adventures with that confidence in sympathy and help which is such a charm to very young men. To say sooth George deserved it, for he was one of those who are born to stand between their womenfolk and that necessity for taking the initiative which--pacethe strong-minded sisters--most women cordially detest, and which is the cause of half the nervous exhaustion of the present age. So after a very short time he took possession of her future even more decidedly than she had taken possession of his bungalow. Briefly, the case lay thus. Colonel Tweedie's camp, owing to the increasing heat, had changed its route slightly, and was due, as the incoming post would doubtless let George know, at Hodinuggur next morning. To do this it had doubled up two marches across the desert into one, so as to include some inspection work before turning at right angles along the canal. Owing to this and some good sport on the way, every one had started by daybreak through the Bâr; that is to say, hard waste land dotted with tufts of grey caper-bushes, and stunted trees, just high enough and thick enough to prevent one seeing more than twenty or thirty yards in any direction, since beyond that the clumps became a continuous hedge shutting out the world. Colonel Tweedie and his immediate staff having ridden on in haste, the shooting party, beguiled by the prospect of bustards, had spread themselves through the jungle on one side of the track, followed by their horses and grooms. Mrs. Boynton, however, preferring such road as there was, had been walking her horse along it in the expectation of being rejoined, when the sudden firing of an unseen gun made her Arab bolt. First along the track, then missing it at a bend, the beast had swerved into some bushes, where a thorny branch had caught in his long tail, making him perfectly unmanageable. After a mile or more, he had apparently broken into the track again, and sobered down to a walk, much to her delight. Then a solitary native traveller had passed, and assured her, as she imagined, that she was right for the sahib-logue's camp; so she had trotted on, until, fearing she might lose the track once more, she had been foolish enough to walk her horse back on its traces, thus completely losing all her bearings. Finally, at a fork in the almost invisible path, she had been forced to confess that she had not the least idea in which direction her destination lay, north or south, east or west; the sun, therefore, being of little use to her as a guide. (Here her pretty smile growing a trifle tremulous, made George profusely indignant with the desert.) Then, regaining her head, she remembered to have heard Mr. Fitzgerald--who, as Mr. Keene would know, had of course joined the camp on its entrance into the division--say that the more open country lay eastward, and so she had ridden as straight as she could into the shadows, that being her best chance of steering aright. (Here George grew clamorous over her courage.) Nevertheless, it had almost failed, she said, when on a sudden the great silver streak of the canal had appeared from among the bushes, and she had ridden along its banks till she came to a treeless waste with a big mound looming in the far distance.
'I knew it must be Hodinuggur,' she finished with a sort of caress to her own comfort among the pillows, 'by Mr. Fitzgerald's description, and I knew you from Rose Tweedie's, so I felt it was all right. And now, Mr. Keene! don't you wonder I didn't snore, considering I had been in the saddle for eight hours?'
George protested it was virtue itself for her to wake at all; but that she would have the whole day to rest, as it was manifestly impossible for her to return to the camp; absurd also, since the latter was to come on to Hodinuggur next day. So he would send to the Diwân and borrow a camel sowar, who would ride over with a note telling of her safety in the bungalow, and asking for anything she might require. For the rest, all he had was at her service.
'But I shall be turning you out of house and home, shan't I?' she asked kindly.
The young fellow's eyes softened. 'I don't think I ever thought of it as a home before,' he said with an embarrassed laugh at his own words; 'but won't you come to breakfast? It's awfully nasty, I'm afraid----'
'Then we can fall back on the sardines and the marmalade,' she interrupted gravely. This gravity was with her a perfect art, and gave a great charm to her gentle raillery.
Perhaps the food was nasty; if so, George, for one, did not mind except for her sake. He thought of nothing but her comfort; of how he could welcome her to take possession of everything, himself included. Was she not the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most perfect woman he had ever seen? Did she not deserve the best he could give her? So, while she was writing the note for the camel sowar, George slipped away to give instructions to the factotum. The bedroom must be swept and garnished, and the things pitched away anywhere. The drawers must be re-papered, a towel put on the dressing-table, and---- What a beastly hole it was, he thought ruefully as he left the man to his own devices; but half an hour afterwards his face cleared; for the factotum, having been in good services, had risen to the occasion. Not only was there a towel on the dressing-table, but two empty beer-bottles had been modestly draped into candlesticks, with the gilt ends of the pugree he had received from the Diwân, while the remainder of the muslin was festooned about the looking-glass. Azîzan's portrait stood on the mantel-shelf with the Ayôdhya pot in front, and two dinner plates on either side, the arrangement being completed by two of his best ties knotted in bows about his hunting crop, and the kitchen fan. A tinsel veil, borrowed from the compounder ofegg-sarse, did duty as a bed-spread, supported by his Cooper's Hill tennis muffler as an antimacassar. In the middle of the room the factotum still lingered, benign and superior, one hand holding a hammer and tacks, the other a pair of striped silk socks, with the decorative effect of which he was evidently enamoured. In addition, a figure swathed in white sat modestly behind the dressing-room door.
'It is my house,' said the man, with a large smile. 'Since it is not to be tolerated that the abode of princes should lack a female slave, the woman, at my command, takes the part of ayah. The Huzoor may rest satisfied. Azîzan's knowledge of the mems equals this slave's of the sahibs.'
Azîzan! The smile left George's lips at the name; and before leaving the room he thrust the portrait into a cupboard, replacing it by an illuminated text which was lying neglected under a pile of wire cartridges.
'The Huzoor is right,' declared the factotum cheerfully. 'The mems have them ever in their rooms. Lo! nothing is amiss.'
George, as he turned at the door for a last look, felt that the advice, 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together' emblazoned in Gothic characters, holly, and mistletoe, which a maiden aunt had sent him as a Christmas present, did indeed put the finishing touch to the solitude of the wilderness.
'But where are you going?' asked Gwen.
'I? Oh! they'll give me quarters in the palace, I expect. Perhaps I'd better go over now and see about it. Then I've inspection work, and--and a heap of other things. So perhaps I'd better say good-bye. I've told the servants about lunch and all that sort of thing. And your traps will be here before dark.'
A very nice boy, indeed, thought Mrs. Boynton, and showed her thought. So George went over to the palace feeling quite intoxicated because he had been instructed without fail to dine in his own house; and after he had settled about his quarters with Dalel, and had ridden off on his fictitious tour of inspection, he dug the spurs into his pony out of sheer lightness of heart, and went sailing away over the desert, careless even of the direction in which he went.
Dalel meanwhile had repaired to the shadowy arches in a state of boastful superiority. His friend Keene was coming over to stop in the palace. They would play cards, and be jolly, and drink. And the lad always carried the key of the sluice-gate on his watch-chain.
'It is a chance indeed,' said Chândni, with a queer look. Then after a time broke in on Dalel's vapourings by snatching the banjo from the wall and breaking into a respectable and plaintive love-song.
'Lo! thou hast thy way, and I have mine,' she laughed recklessly. 'Let us see who succeeds best.' So slipping on the decent white domino, she set off for the palace, and turned down the dark passage leading to the women's apartments. Doubtless it was a chance which must not be neglected.
Between his desire not to disturb Mrs. Boynton's kindness too early, and his dislike to becoming a prey to Dalel at the palace, George in the end had to gallop his pony the last four miles, and then found himself with but ten minutes in which to dress. But he dashed up the narrow stair leading to the odd little arcaded room placed at his disposal by the Diwân, feeling confident in the factotum's forethought; and, sure enough, on the silk coverlet of the high lacquered bed lay his dress-clothes and white tie complete. Nothing else, except his sleeping-suit; so, choice being denied him, he flung himself into ceremonious black, discovering as he did so that two or three jasmine blossoms and a sprig of maidenhair fern had been pinned into the button-hole of his coat. The factotum was evidently determined he should play the right game. As he ran down the stairs again he wondered whence the man could possibly have procured the fern, and then remembered having seen a few fronds clinging, far down on the masonry of his well, into which the canal water filtered. The seed of this hill-born plant must have filtered with it; just as these strange items of knowledge--the shibboleth of dress-clothes and button-holes--filtered into the brains of these odd people. Life in Hodinuggur was really very amusing, and full of delightful surprises. Yesterday he had been waiting--without a collar!--for a Barmecidal feast, to-day in swallow-tail and a button-hole he was going to dine with the most beautiful woman in the world! and there, like a fairy tale, was the branded bungalow illuminated out of all recognition. And inside were more wonders in a table set out with flowers, and Mrs. Boynton coming forward to greet him with a bouquet of jasmine and maidenhair amid the soft ruffles of her white dress. It was humiliating yet still amusing, having to confess it came, not from his courtesy, but the factotum's sense of duty. Then the very sight of the man himself, in spotless raiment, lording it over Mrs. Boynton's kitmutgâr was pure comedy. In fact when, dinner being over, George was left face to face with three napkin-swathed black bottles hung with foolscap tickets of port, sherry, claret, engrossed in the village schoolmaster's best hand, he gave one look at Mrs. Boynton before exploding into laughter, while she vowed to keep themenuto her dying day, if only to show the folly of allowing facts to interfere with fancy.
By and by, when coffee came in--the factotum diffident over the breakfast cups but triumphant over the under-footman with hot milk and sugar on a dinner-plate--they laughed again; yet the laughter brought a moisture to George Keene's merry grey eyes. In a vague way the boy knew what had happened, knew that the most beautiful woman in the world had not only taken possession of house and home, but of body and soul; and he was glad of it, despite the moisture in his eyes--glad to the heart's core as he chattered away confidentially, while she listened graciously, thinking what a charming boy he was, and what an excellent husband he would make by-and-bye for any girl. What an admirable son-in-law, in short, he would have made if she had had a daughter and he had had money; for women of her sort view mankind chiefly from the matrimonial point of view, and seek to give variety to the question by importing into it all their female friends.
'That reminds me,' she said, as she listened to the hope that she was fairly comfortable which George tacked on to his good-night. 'You have the most fascinating blue pot on your mantelpiece. Where did you get it?'
'Do you really like it?' he asked eagerly; 'if so, you can have it.'
'My dear boy!' she laughed, 'I don't mean to appropriateeverythingyou possess.'
He looked at her with shining happy eyes. 'But it isn't mine as yet; it belongs to some one, though, who wants to sell it, and if you would give it to me, now, I'd finish the bargain to-morrow morning and you shall have it back by breakfast-time if it is to be had for love or money.'
Love or money! The old formula came carelessly to his lips.
Azîzan meanwhile, crouching behind one of the palace arcades, and wondering when she would hear his foot on the stairs, was echoing the thought in another language. She was trembling all over from excitement, and fear, and hope; of what, she scarcely knew, she did not understand. They had dressed her in her best beneath the flimsy white veil which pretended to conceal the finery it really enhanced, and surely, she thought, if he had deemed her pretty when in that dreadful old shroud, he would be still kinder now. They had bidden her ask for the Ayôdhya pot, and take him to settle the price with her mother. But of doing this she was not sure; she was sure of nothing save that she must see him again--must see him to make certain that he was not vexed. And then she would tell him that traps were being laid for him--at least she might tell him--but come what might she must see him; ay! and he must see her as she ought to be seen.
It was not a very safe interruption for George to have found awaiting him in the long moonlit shadows of the arcades had he been in the same mood as the girl; not even though all the plotting and scheming would have seemed incredibly absurd to him at any time, and in any mood. Indeed, even by the dim light of the cook-room, where the factotum was putting away a copy of themenuamong his certificates as proof positive of his acquaintance with the appetites of the ruling race, Chândni's snare would have met with the derision it deserved; but in the dark intricacies of palace politics it seemed simple enough, especially to one of her vile experiences.
But as it so happened George never went near the palace. He sat on the canal bridge till dawn, smoking one pipe after another, and looking aimlessly, dreamily at the dark windows of the bungalow. No one could have foreseen this, not even the lad himself. He had no intention of out-watching the stars when the balmy air and a feeling of measureless content first tempted him to pause and set aside the forgetfulness of sleep for a time--or would it have been sleep whenshewas in the desert alone, with God knows what ruffians about? A rage grew up in him at the thought of Dalel and his kind, until the palace itself became distasteful. So, almost before he realised that he was on the watch, the gurglings of many camels and the thud of a mallet told him that the advanced guard of the big camp had arrived, and sent him across to the camping ground to warn the tent pitchers to be as quiet as possible. 'May the angels of the Lord pitch their tents around us this night, used to be the favourite bidding prayer of a certain Scotch divine when he ministered to a volunteer congregation, until one day a veteran happening to be there said audibly, 'Then I'm hopin, they'll no mak muckle noise wi' the tent-pegs.' A tale which shows the danger of imperfect local colouring; a fact which was to be brought home that night both to Dalel and Chândni, for even then George did not return to the champagne and the snares. That incomprehensible love of the picturesque on which the latter had counted, kept him engrossed in the novel sight of a canvas city rising like magic from the bare sand. First came an autocrat with measuring tape and pegs mapping the ground into squares; then, one by one, in its appointed place, a great ghost of a thing, flapping white wings against the purple sky, to rise stiff and square above? fringe of even silvery ropes.
It was not until a saffron-coloured glint in the east startled him into the thought that he was a confounded ass, that George, out of sheer lightheartedness, ran all the way back to the palace, stumbled up the steep stairs, and threw himself into the high lacquered bed to fall asleep before the saffron had faded into daylight. Perhaps it was as well, since even the Hodinuggur sun, which had been at work since the beginning of all things, might have stared to see a masher in dress clothes knocking into a Moghul palace with the milk. It stared instead at a more familiar sight; at a girl, face down on a bare string bed in the women's quarters, sobbing as if her heart would break.