'Where'er you walk,Cool gales shall fan the glade;Trees where you sitShall crowd into a shade;Where'er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise,And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.'
'Where'er you walk,Cool gales shall fan the glade;Trees where you sitShall crowd into a shade;Where'er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise,And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.'
The most passionate, yet the purest, praise a woman ever won from man, perfect in its self-forgetfulness, in its delight in the admiration of the whole world for what is praised, fell from John Ellison's lips in almost perfect style; for he had been taught the song in those early days of surpliced choirs.
And Chris Davenant, as he listened, staring out over the river, clinched his hands on the iron rail in a sudden passion of self-pity.
This is what he had found in the poets of the West! This was what he had sought in the prose of life! It was for this he had forsaken so much--this white-robed woman with the breezes cooling the hot blood, and the trees crowding to shade her from the fierce heat of noon!
And he had found--what?
Something worse?--yes!--for one brief second he admitted the truth that itwasworse; that Naraini, despite her ignorance, would have given him something nearer to that ideal of all men who were worth calling men, than Viva with her cigarettes, her pink ruffles, her strange mixture of refinement and coarseness, of absolute contempt for passion and constant appeal to it. Why had he ever forsaken his people? Why had he ever forsaken her--Naraini?
'I am Brahmin, my hand is pure.'
The memory of her voice, her face, as she spoke the words returned to him, and, with an irresistible rush, all that had swept him from his moorings, swept him from the common current of the lives around him, all the sentimentality, all the intuitive bias towards things spiritual, swept him back again to that life--and to Naraini!
'It's a rippin' song, ain't it, sir?' remarked Jân-Ali-shân, who had been warbling away at the runs and trills like any blackbird, as he watched Chris Davenant's listening face. 'Wraps itself round a feller somehow. Kep' me from a lot o' tommy rot, that song 'as in my time, an' sent me to the flowing bowl instead.'
As he walked over to see if the tank was full, he whistled,
'Let the toast pass, here's to the lass,I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a glass,'
'Let the toast pass, here's to the lass,I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for a glass,'
with jaunty unconcern. He returned in a moment, the coolies behind him carrying the iron ladder back to its hooks on the pier.
'All right, sir,' he reported. 'Give 'er two men an' she'll 'old her own against a thousand.'
Chris, absorbed in his thoughts, made an effort to wrench himself from them by assenting.
'Yes. They'd find it difficult without guns, unless they could manage it by the river.'
Jân-Ali-shân shook his head. 'Not if we'd a rifle or two aboard, sir, to nick 'em off in the boats.'
'Couldn't they get along the spit,' suggested Chris, absolutely at random.
'Might be done, mayhap,' admitted the other, after a reflective pause. 'Leastways, if you was a "Ram Rammer" an' 'ad a right o' way through the 'ouse o' Rimming--beg pardin, sir, though you'avechucked old 'Oneyman an' 'is lot--I mean, if you was a Hindoo an' they'd let you through the temple. But even then we could nick 'em in the water afore they could get ropes slung.'
'There's the ladder, suggested Chris once more. He was not thinking of what he said. He was asking himselfwhathe had not 'chucked' away recklessly? 'It is only about six feet up; they could easily----'
'They could easily do a lot if they was let, sir,' interrupted Jân-Ali-shân, as he turned to go, with a pitying look. 'But we don't let 'em. That's how it is. An we ain't such bally fools as to leave 'em ladders. No, sir? Two men--if theywasmen-'u'd keep that pier a Christian country for a tidy time.'
As the trolly buzzed back stationwards, the group of yellow faces above the faded brocades gave up watching the manœuvres of the drawbridge, and returned to their kite-flying; and on the bathing-steps the men and women returned to the day's work. On the bastion there was a shade more listless doubt and dislike, on the steps a shade more uneasy wonder as to the signs of the times. That was all.
Only Burkut Ali, as he weighted his kite's tail with an extra grain or two of rice, nodded his head, and said with a sinister look--
'Two could play that game, and the first come would be master. "He who sits on the throne is king."'
'And he who sits not is none,' added Jehân's antagonist with a wink. He had quarrelled two days before with the Rightful Heir's pretensions to authority in the matter of a dancing-girl, and so, for the time being, headed the dissentient party which, with ever-shifting numbers and combinations, made the royal house--to the great satisfaction of the authorities--one divided against itself. 'If the Sun of the Universe is ready,' he went on, with mock ceremony, 'his slave waits to begin the match.'
Jehân's face sharpened with anger. He had come there in an evil temper, because, after having virtuously denied himself an over-night orgy for the sake of steadying his hand for the match, Lateefa--on whom he had relied for a superexcellent new kite--had neither turned up nor sent an excuse; consequently the chances of victory were small. And now this ill-conditioned hound was palpably insolent. The fact roused Jehân's pretensions, and made him assert them.
'I fly no kite to-day,' he said haughtily, 'the match will be to-morrow.'
His opponent smiled. 'As my lord chooses!' he replied coolly, 'his slave is ready to give revenge at any time.'
'Revenge!' echoed Jehân sharply, 'wherefore revenge? There is no defeat.'
'His Highness forgets,' said the other, with a pretence of humility scarcely hiding his malice, 'the Most Learned, being member of race-clubs, must know that "scratch" is victory to the antagonist. This day's match therefore is mine. Is not that the rule,meean?'
He appealed to the most sporting member of the court, but Jehân, without waiting for his verdict, broke into fierce invective, and had passed from the rules to the rulers, when Burkut--who had been listening with that sinister look of his--touched him peremptorily on the arm, and said--
'Have a care, Nawâb-sahib, some one comes.'
Jehân turned quickly, and saw behind him a sergeant of police.
He came with a summons for the Nawâb-sahibJehân Aziz to attend at once at the cantonment police-station.
Still confused by his anger, and scarcely master of himself, Jehân stood looking at the paper put in his hand, and trying to disentangle from the smudge of the lithographed form the few written words which would give him a key to the rest.
The first he saw was 'Sobrai Begum,' the next 'Lateefa.'
They pulled his pride and his cunning together in quick self-defence. Though a fierce longing to have the jade's throat within the grip of his thin fingers surged up in him, the desire to put her away privily was stronger. He folded up the paper with a shrug of his shoulders, and turned on the curious faces around him.
''Tis only Lateefa in trouble with a woman,' he began.
'And they need his master's virtue to get him out of it!' sneered his opponent. ''Tis too bad; were I the Nawâb, I would keep mine for my own use----'
The Rightful Heir glared at the giber, and a vast resentment at his own impotence came to the descendant of kings. Why was he not able, as his fathers had been, to sweep such vermin from his path? Why had he to obey the orders of every jack-in-office? Then for Sobrai herself. Why could he not settle her in the good old fashion without any one's help?
As he drove over to cantonments in the ramshackle wagonette this desire overbore the others, and his cunning centred round the possibility of getting the baggage back to the ruined old house, where screams could be so easily stifled.
The first step, of course, was to see Lateefa in private and hear his version of the story. That meant ten rupees to the constable in charge of the lock-up, but it was better to pay that, at first, than hundreds of rupees of hush-money afterwards if the police went against you.
So the silver key slipped into the sergeant's pocket, and the iron one came out which opened the barred door behind which Lateefa sat like a wild beast in a cage--Sobrai, meanwhile, being accommodated with free lodgings under the charge of an old hag in a discreetly private cell round the corner!
Jehân's face grew more and more savage as he listened to what the kite-maker had to tell; and that was a good deal, for he had gossiped half the night with the sentry on duty!
Miss Leezie--Sobrai singing in the public bazaar to the soldiers--all this was so much gall and wormwood to the Nawâb's pride. It almost made him forget the theft of the pearls; the more so because the idea of the latter was not quite new to him. Mr. Lucanaster's assertion that there were five amissing, joined to the fact that poor Aunt Khôjee, hoping thereby to smooth over the quarrel between him and Noormahal, had brought him one pearl which had been found in a rent in a cushion, had made him suspicious that Sobrai had the rest; that this, indeed, had been at the bottom of her flight. It was only, therefore, when Lateefa pointed out that it would be necessary to prove that these pearls of Sobrai's were not the Lady-sahib'spearls, before the girl--free from the suspicion of theft--could be handed over to her lawful guardians, that he realised it would not be enough to say that they were his, that he had given them to the girl, who--despite her evil doings--he was willing to receive back again into his virtuous house. For the possibility of denying her assertion that she belonged to it, had, he felt, vanished with her unfortunate recognition of Lateefa.
But now there must be proof, and the proof lay in Mr. Lucanaster's hands.
Jehân felt hemmed in, harried on all sides, and he was the poorer by fifty rupees before he bribed his way to an informal interview with the cantonment magistrate, and was able to lay before that official a carefully-concocted admixture of truth and falsehood which should help to secure what he chiefly needed, secrecy and delay.
To this end, by Lateefa's advice, he made it appear that Sobrai had been enticed away by Miss Leezie, and pointed out that such a tale might give rise to trouble--complicated as it was by that fatal blow of No. 34 B Company's--if it became known, especially in these restless times. Much, therefore, as he felt the injury, the disgrace to himself and his house, he was willing to hold his tongue about it providedother people held theirs. As for the pearls, if, after private inquiries, it was necessary for him to prove his words, he would do so. And, in the meantime, it would only cause suspicion if Lateefa, who was known to be a member of his household, were detained.
The cantonment magistrate looked at him doubtfully; he was almost too suave, too sensible. Yet there could be no doubt that the case might be a troublesome one. As the Nawâb said, Miss Leezie might be fined for keeping her house disorderly, Sobrai detained pending inquiries, and Lateefa dismissed without in any way militating against the ordinary course of justice, should the Nawâb's version prove false; and if not, he was, in a way, entitled to consideration. Especially if he would keep the abduction quiet, in view of that possible murder case.
'You had better come up again in two or three days,' said the magistrate finally, 'by which time the police, who will have instructions to conduct their inquiries in strict confidence, will know if they require proofs, and you could produce the remaining pearls, of course. If they do not, the girl shall be handed over to you as her natural guardian, and that will end the matter, unless her evidence is required.'
'Huzoor!' said Jehân, with profusesalaams, 'that would end the matter to my complete satisfaction and eternal gratitude.'
The look about his red betel-stained lips, as they wreathed themselves with obsequious smiles, was that of a carnivorous animal which scents its prey, and there was almost a triumph in his face as he drove back to the city with Lateefa. He felt himself powerful for once; for he knew that if once he could get Sobrai back, he could torture and kill the girl behind the purdah, which none would dare to invade; in which he was still king--as much a king as any of his ancestors.
If he could get her there!
The only difficulty in the way of that, Jehân knew and faced instantly.
If proof were needed, Lucanaster would never give up the pearls, never forbear saying that in his opinion they were the Lady-sahib'sand none other, unless he got the emerald in exchange. Well! he, Jehân, must have the emerald ready in case it was wanted. Then the thought that he might have so had it, ready in his own possession, but for little Sa'adut, made him call himself a fool for yielding to the child's tears.
They would have been over and forgotten in a minute; for what could the child want with an emerald ring? A useless bauble, not even fit to be a toy!
But little Sa'adut was of a different opinion. He had found that question as to which of his fingers came nearest to filling the gold circle of the ring an absolutely entrancing one; the more so because, from some reason or another, those fingers had suddenly taken to wasting away. Thus, the two which fitted best one day might not be the two which fitted best on the next.
'Lo! the ring hath bewitched him!' whimpered Aunt Khâdjee, when the child could scarcely be distracted from the puzzle to take the food which only Auntie Khôjee could coax him to eat.
Patient Auntie Khôjee, who would have sate all day and all night beside the string cot like that other woman's figure, if there had not been so many things which only she could do, now that they had no servant at all. So Noormahal alone, her face half hidden in her veil, watched the child hungrily; since from some reason or another, as mysterious as the sudden wasting away which had come to the poor little body, a fretful intolerance of clasping arms and caressing hands had come to the poor little mind. The child cried when his mother held him, and only lay content among the cushions of state which Khôjee brought out for daily use recklessly, so that the little Heir's resting-place should be as soft as a King's.
There was nothing, indeed, of such care and comfort as these women could compass, that Sa'adut lacked; nothing, in fact, of any kind which even richer folk of their sort could have given him; for they too would not have had the least elementary knowledge of what nursing could or could not do for such sickness as his. Before that mysterious slackening of grip on life, these women, the one who watched, the one who worked, the one who whimpered beside that cot set in the sunshine, were absolutely helpless. They knew nothing. They could not even tell, day by day, if the child were worse or better. If he slept a while, or drank a spoonful of milk, they praised God; and once when they had propped him up with pillows, and set a gay new cap jauntily on his damp hair, they almost wept for joy to think he was better. And when the consequent fatigue made it all too evident that they were mistaken, they never recognised that the change for the worse was due to the sitting-up.
It was after this that Khâdjee, with floods of tears, gave the only jewels she did not wear to be pawned in order that ahakeemmight be called in. And then she cried herself sick over the loss, so that, when the medicine-mandidcome, he had two patients instead of one. He was a smiling old pantaloon who had been court physician, and as such had attended Sa'adut's great-grandfather; who talked toothlessly of theyunânisystem of medicine, and of things hot and things cold, of things strong and things weak, to Aunt Khâdjee's great delight. Indeed, she took up most of the time in detailing her own complaints, so that, in the end, he reassured them hastily as to the child, by saying that all he needed was a conserve, a mere conserve! But it proved to be a conserve of palaces, containing thirty-six ingredients, the cheapest of which was beaten silver leaf! So what with it and Auntie Khâdjee's emulsion, poor Khôjee's housekeeping purse was empty after a few doses. But she sate up o' nights spinning, and so gathered enough to call in another medicine-man. This one was of a different sort; long-bearded, solemn, with sonorous Arabic blessings. He had ordered paper pellets with the attributes of the Almighty inscribed on them.
These, at least, were not expensive; these, at least, were within the reach of poverty--even the abject, helpless poverty of these high-born ladies. So Auntie Khâdjee, forsaking her tinsel cap-making, recalled the teachings of her youth, and by the aid of the smoke-stained Koran, from which she chanted her portion like a parrot every morning, traced the words on to tissue paper with difficulty--she suffered from rheumatic gout, though she did not know it was anything but old age--and Khôjee rolled them into pills, and covered them with silver leaf and sugar, and put them in the sweeties, which were the only thing the child cared for. So he would swallow Mercy, and Truth, and Charity, and Justice, and Strength, as he lay in the sunshine on the cushions of state playing with the ring on which was scratched, 'By the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith.'
The courtyard was very quiet, very empty, as yet, for the child was not yet near enough to death to be an attraction to the neighbours. He had been ill so long, and now was a little worse; that was all those three women told themselves. They had no means of realising that the disease, long-sluggish, had roused itself to fierce energy; that the days, almost the hours, were numbered.
So Noormahal watched the child's least movement day and night, and Khâdjee wrote the attributes of God for the paper pills, while Khôjee worked her old fingers sore, or tramped about openly to do the marketing. But no matter how pressed for time she was, no matter how far from home, her old hands or feet hurried up, so that they should be free for another task at sunset; a task which, so long as they had had a servant, had never been omitted, and must not be omitted now--must never be omitted so long as these crumbling walls and the wide empty courtyard held the heir to a Kingship. And this task was the sounding of thenaubutfrom the gateway where the stucco peacocks still spread their plaster tails.
In the old days, this ceremony of sounding the royal kettledrums as a sign that majesty lived within, had been quite an imposing one. Then, aposseof liveried servants and soldiers had gone up into thenaubat khana, and whacked away at a whole row of slung kettledrums, and blared away at the royalnakârahs, until all the city knew that sunset had found the King still on his throne. But for some years back it had been very different; a half-hearted apologetic drubbing on one dilapidated drum, a breathless blowing of an uncertain horn had been all. And now, when only one poor tired old woman limped up the broken stairs, it was a very feeble claim to royalty, indeed, that echoed into the courtyard below, though Khôjee drummed valiantly for all she could, and blew her withered cheeks plump as a cherub's over thenakârah. Feeble as it was, however, it could be heard, and it brought comfort even to Noormahal's hungry heart; for it meant that the child was still on his throne at sunset. And that was all the world to those lonely women, shut up inconceivably, helplessly, from all hope, almost from all desire for help from that outside world, into which only Aunt Khôjee ventured at times timorously; and only to return poorer, more helpless than she went out.
Once, however, when--at the risk of a fit of hysterics, which might incapacitate Aunt Khâdjee from even the writing of paper pellets--Khôjee had persuaded her to allow the little knot of silver earrings without which no court lady could be considered decently clothed, to pay a temporary visit to the pawnbroker, Khôjee had come back from that outside world with a new look of hope on her face.
A piece of luck had befallen her. She had met, quite by chance, an old servant of her mother's, who, when the court had been broken up, had taken service asayahwith themems. And this old dame happened to have in her possession a priceless European medicine for just such delicate children as Sa'adut.
Amemhad given it to her, she said, when her child needed it no more. She did not add that the child, despite the Brand's essence of beef and the care of three doctors, had wasted away into its grave quite as quickly as Sa'adut was doing with neither, and that the unopened tins had been part of her perquisites when the stricken parents had sought distraction from grief in three months' leave. She only said that they were worth rupees on rupees, but that Khôjee might have them for three, because it was for the little Heir. So the patient bent figure and the limp had come back to that cot set in the sunshine, with the feeling that now, at last, the child who lay among the faded cushions of statemustpick up strength, since all the world knew that whatever faults theHuzoorshad, they were clever doctors--all too clever perhaps!
But there could be no danger of poison here. This was the actual medicine amemhad given her own child. This must be the real thing. Still, to make sure, they continued the paper pellets, since Mercy and Truth, and Justice and Charity must counteract any nefarious intent!
Even with this mixed diet of the East and West, of essence of faith and essence of beef, Sa'adut gained nothing. He continued to lose, though the women refused to see it.
For the courtyard was still quiet. Perhaps once or twice a day some gad-about neighbour in passing would look in, and for half an hour or so after she had left, Noormahal's big brooding black eyes would be on the door of the women's courtyard, with a fierce fear in them. The fear lest she should see the shadow of another new-comer on the angled brick screen before the door; the screen built on purpose to show such warning shadows. In other words, the fear that those strange eyes should have thought it worth while to send other eyes to look on a sight that would not be long seen, either in sunshine or shadow.
But the stillness would remain unbroken, and her gaze would go back to Sa'adut, ready for her to smile assent when he should smile up at her and say, 'Look!Amma-jân,' because he had managed to jam the ring hard and fast over some combination of fingers.
The days and nights were cloudless, the air kindly and warm, and in the silence which comes with the darkness--even to a large town when there is no wheeled traffic in it, and the footsteps of men have ceased from going up and down the city--the only sound which came to disturb the courtyard was the shriek of the railway whistle,--an almost incredible sound in that environment.
So the days and nights following on Jehân's vow never to set foot in the house again, dragged by.
'Were it not best to tell his father?' suggested Khôjee, the peace-maker, one evening when she came down breathless from that futile beating of kettledrums and blowing of horns, to find Sa'adut without his usual smile for her efforts. 'He is fond of his father, and it might rouse him.'
Noormahal leant forward, and gripped the cot with both hands. 'No!' she said passionately. 'May I not keep this myself? He is no worse, fool! Thou didst not sound thenaubutwell, that is all. I could scarce hear it myself.'
That might well be, Aunt Khôjee thought humbly, seeing that she was not used to the beating of drums and the blowing of horns, and that both were cracked and dilapidated almost past beating and blowing. Still, even she would not allow the child to be worse, not even in the watches of the night, when a body's thoughts cannot always stay themselves on the will of God, when railway whistles and other strange sounds set the mind questioning what will come, and why it should come.
And this night, just at the turn of twelve, when the night of a past day turns into the night of a coming one, a voice rose on the darkness as it sometimes did; the voice of a telegraphpeonseeking an unknown owner for a telegram.
'O Addum! O Addum Khân! dweller in the Place of Sojourners in the quarter of Palaces! Awake! Arise! O Addum! a message hath come for thee. Awake! Arise! O Sleepers! awake and say where is Addum Khân for whom a message to go on a journey hath come.'
So, on and on insistently, the man Addum--quaintly namesake of the man in whose name all men go on the great journey--was sought; until the rattle of a door-chain being unhasped brought silence, and the knowledge that Addum had received his message from the darkness.
'La illâha--il Ullâho-bism'-illâh-ur-rahmân-ur-raheem,' murmured Khôjee under her breath as she sate by the cot trimming the smoky little rushlight. For the cry on Addum had roused Sa'adut from a half-doze and brought opportunity for more paper pellets.
'Bismillah-ur-rahmân-ur-raheem,' he echoed in his cracked little voice quite cheerfully; for these words, the assertion that God is a merciful and a clement God, are the Mohammedan grace before meat as well as a prayer, and the four years, four months, and four days, at which age children are taught them as their initiation into the Church, were still close enough to Sa'adut's sum-total of life, to give the repetition a pleasurable importance.
'Heart of my heart! Eye of my eye! Life of my life! murmured old Khôjee again. 'Lo! swallow it down, my uttermost beloved, and sleep.'
She had the child to herself for the moment, since Noormahal at her earnest entreaty had hidden her face altogether in her veil, and, with her head on the foot of the bed, had gone off into a brief slumber of exhaustion. So the old arms and the old lips could show all the tenderness of the old heart, which for nearly seventy years had beat true to every womanly sympathy within those four prisoning walls.
By the light of the rushlight Sa'adut's big black eyes showed bright from the cushions of state. So did the emerald in the ring.
'Why didst not sound thenaubatto-day, lazy one?' he said suddenly, as if the omission had just struck him. 'Go! sound it now--dost hear? Sa'adut wants it.'
He had not spoken so clearly for days, and Khôjee's smile came swift.
'Nay, sonling, it was sounded,' she answered caressingly. 'Thou didst sleep, perchance. Sleep again, Comfort of my heart! It will come, as ever, at sunset.
'But Sa'adut wants it now!--he will have it! he will be asleep at sunset. Sound it now! Sound it now, I tell thee, thou ugly one. Sound the King'snaubatfor Sa'adut.'
The old vehemence, the old imperious whimper brought delight and dismay in a breath to the listener.
'Yea, yea, sweetest!' she began breathlessly as the old signs of tears showed themselves--'have patience, pretty. Old Khôjee will surely obey--no tears, darling--she will sound thenaubateven now.'
She glanced round in her consolations hurriedly. Noormahal still slept at the bed's foot. Khâdjee's snores--she had wept herself into the physical discomfort of a cold in the head--rose regularly from an archway. All else was silence. Every one slept! Even the city! Yes! she would risk it--risk disturbing the neighbours--risk unknown penalties from the breach of unknown by-laws. The child must be saved from tears.
So, hastily, she caught up the rushlight, and leaving the courtyard to the moonlight, stumbled, fast as her limp would let her, up the narrow stairs to thenaubat khana. The rats scuttled from it as she picked her way through the fallen kettledrums that had once swung from the roof, brave in tassels and tinsels; that were now cracked, mouldering, the parchment rent and gnawed. One still hung dejectedly at the farther end, and towards it she passed rapidly. Even on it, however, a rat, driven to extremities in that hungry house, had been attempting to dine; its eyes showed like specks of light as it ran a little way up the tarnished tinsel rope on which the drum swung, and awaited her oncoming.
Now Aunt Khôjee, like many another woman East and West, was desperately afraid of rats; yet thenaubathad to be sounded. She shut her eyes to give her greater courage, and put all her little strength into her blow.
It was too much for the rotten rope. The kettledrum clashed to the ground with hollow reverberations worthy of the old days, and the old woman's frightened cry did duty as thenakârah.
But behind both sounds came a child's laugh, an elfin, uncanny laugh; and, as she paused--in her flight downwards--at the stair-head, she saw in the moonlight below an elfin, uncanny figure sitting bolt upright among the cushions of state, clapping the little hands that held the glistening signet of royalty, and chuckling to itself gleefully, while Noormahal, roused, yet still bewildered, looked about her for the cause, and Aunt Khâdjee from the archway gave pitiful shrieks of alarm.
'Thenaubat! the King'snaubat! Mynaubat! Sa'adut'snaubat!'
The cracked, hoarse little voice went on and on till it became breathless, and after it ceased, the sparkle of the ring still showed in the little applauding hands.
'What is't?--what didst do?' asked Noormahal reproachfully. 'Thou hast made him in a sweat. Lo! heart's delight, let me wipe thy forehead--'tis onlyAmma jân--thyAmma,' she added coaxingly. But there was no need for that. Sa'adut lay cuddled up on his pillows, smiling, complaisant, both hands clasped over his ring.
'Sa'adut's ring,' he whispered as if it were a great joke, a splendid childish secret that was his to keep or tell, 'and Sa'adut'snaubut. His own. He will keep them himself.'
'Lo!bibi,' faltered old Khôjee apologetically--'it will do him no harm. See! it was of himself he rose, and now he would sleep. He is better, not worse.Bismillah!'
'Ur-rahmân-ur-raheem,' came drowsily from the child's lips, finishing that new-taught grace, asserting that new-found dignity. So, with that look of possession on his face, he fell asleep again.
He was still sleeping when, an hour or two after dawn, the tailor's wife from over the alley came in on her way bazaarwards, to see how the child had fared through the night, and ask what the noise might have been which had awakened her house. Had more of the old palace fallen?
Khôjee, who was already spinning for dear life, set the question by. A great fear was in her old heart, because of the evil portent of the falling drum; but none because of the truth, writ clear on that sleeping figure, that it would never wake again.
So Khâdjee was still writing out the attributes of God, and Noormahal scraping out another dose of the wonderful western medicine from the bottom of a tin of Brand's essence against the wakening that would never come.
'He is more like his grandfather than his father,' remarked the tailors wife as she looked at the child, 'If he had been King, he would have been better than Jehân.'
She made the assertion calmly, and though Aunt Khôjee looked up, doubtful of its ambiguity, no one denied or contradicted it. So the tailor's wife passed out of these four walls, leaving them empty of all things strange.
For the very shadows they threw were familiar. All her life long, Noormahal's big black eyes had watched the purple one of the eastern wall lessen and lessen before the rising of the sun, and the purple one of the western wall grow behind the setting of the sun. Only on the angled screen at the door the shadows were sometimes new; these shadows of some one coming from outside.
There was one on it now; clear, unmistakable. No! not one; there were two! The shadows of two strange women muffled in their veils, coming in as if they had the right to enter.
A quick terror flew to Noormahal's eyes at the sight!
The tailor's wife had not been long in spreading her news.
In an instant Noormahal was on her feet fighting the air wildly with her hands.
'It is not true!' she cried passionately; 'it is not true!' And then the mockery of her own denial, the certainty that it was so, came to her even without a look at the child, and her voice rose piercingly in the mother's dirge--
'O child! who taught thee to deceive?O child! who taught thee thus to leave?'
'O child! who taught thee to deceive?O child! who taught thee thus to leave?'
Old Khôjee was at her side in a second, beating down her hands. 'Not yet! Not yet! Noormahal! Oh! wait a while. It cannot be yet! He sleeps--he is not dead.'
True, he slept still, cuddled into the cushions of state. But the look of possession had gone from the childish face, though the signet of royalty had found its proper place; for it hung loose on the forefinger of his right hand.
'Some one must call his father,' whimpered Khâdeeja Khânum; even amid the tempest of grief she was mindful, as ever, of etiquette. 'He must be here to receive the last breath.'
So it came to pass that when Jehân returned with Lateefa from cantonments to the evil-smelling courtyard in which his bachelor quarters jostled Dilarâm's balcony, he found the call awaiting him. It had come two hours before, the messenger said, so it might be too late. But it was not.
Jehân entering, found the courtyard half full of women. The sun was pouring down into it, showing the stolid yet watchful faces of the circle of those--unveiled by reason of their lower rank--who were gathered round the bed set in the centre. Khôjee and Khâdjee--the former with the tears chasing each other down her cheeks forlornly as she shaded the child with the royal fan and said 'Ameen' to the old mullah who was chanting the death chapter of the Koran, the latter with unreserved sobbings--crouched at the head.
But Noormahal neither sobbed nor said 'Ameen.' Half on the ground, half on the low bed, she lay still, her face hidden about the child's feet.
She did not stir even when Jehân's voice rose in unrestrained--and for the time being sincere--lamentation, in piteous upbraidings of all and everything. Why had he not been told? Why had he not been sent for sooner?
Lateefa, who had entered with him, gave a quick look of absolute dislike and contempt at his principal. 'Best thank God they sent for thee at all,' he muttered as he passed to the head of the cot. He had gibed and laughed at the tragedy till then, treating it--as he treated his kites--as a mere nothingness. But this--above all, old Khôjee's forlorn face--struck home.
'Best thank God they let thee be in time to claim thy son,' he muttered again, adding, as he bent his keen face closer to the child's, 'and thou art but just in time!'
But just in time! Even as he spoke one of the stolid watching women nodded and looked at her neighbour interrogatively. The neighbour looked at the face on the cushions, and nodded also.
So, as if by common consent, the first faint whimper which heralds the true wailing began.
Khôjee paused in an 'Ameen' with a gasp, Khâdjee let her sobs grow into a cry.
But Noormahal neither stirred, nor uttered sound. Only as she lay over the child's feet a little shiver ran through her limbs as if she, too, were passing from the cold world.
An hour afterwards she was still lying so, face downwards, unrewarding, though they had moved her to the bed where Khâdeeja Khânum had spent so many hours in making tinsel caps.
One of them, which she had made for Sa'adut's four years, four months, and four days' reception into the church of the Clement and Merciful, was on the child's head now; for the tenders of the dead had prepared him for his burial.
Khôjee had brought out the few treasures of faded brocade the ruined palace still held, to fold about him softly, and with a sob which seemed to rend her heart, had bidden the signet of royalty be left on the little Heir's forefinger against the time when his mother should rouse herself to take her last look at him.
The wailers had departed to return later on. Khâdjee had succumbed to sorrow, and sought seclusion. Even Jehân had gone; the last to go, save Lateefa, who lingered half-indifferent, half-compassionate, impatient of poor Khôjee's tears over a loss that had been inevitable for months, yet not liking to leave them to be shed in absolute solitude.
'Thou art kind, Lateef,' she said at last. ''Tis woman's work, not man's: yet without thee, brother----' Her soft old eyes met his, and the tears in them seemed to find their way into his heart and melt it.
'Thou art welcome, sister,' he said gravely. 'I think all is as it should be now--I see naught amiss.'
His eyes, as he stood at the foot of the bed whereon the dead child lay, travelled approvingly upwards, and Khôjee's followed suit. But hers went no further than the little waxen hands resting so straightly, so demurely on the brocade; for the lack of something on them made her start forward incredulously, search in wild haste in the folds beneath the still fingers, and then fall with a cry at Lateefa's feet, clasping them, kissing them.
'Give it back--it was there but now! If thou hast it--if he bade thee take it--gave it back!'
He stood looking down at her with a curious expression of shame on his face. 'It,' he echoed. 'What is it?'
'Thou knowest,' she pled piteously. 'The ring--she will die if it is not there. She cannot lose both, she cannot lose all. Give it back for these first days--give it for comfort, if for naught else, or she will die. O Lateef! do this for old Khôjee--ugly Khôjee! Lo! I have asked naught of men, nor husband, nor child; for I had naught to give. Yet I ask this--have pity--brother!'
He stooped to unclasp her hands with an almost tender look.
'Thy like has more to give mine than thou dost think, sister,' he said; 'God knows even Lateef----' He broke off with a half-impatient gesture. 'But this is past hoping for. If Jehân wishes----' He paused again, and shook his head. 'Tell her thou hast put it by for safety--she will be too full of grief to prove thy words--that will give time, see you----'
Khôjee, still on her knees, looked up doubtfully. 'Time,' she echoed, and then her face lit up with hope. 'Time--then thou wilt try! thou wilt speak to Jehân! thou wilt bring it back if thou canst! Yea, I will tell her--I will tell the lie if thou wilt promise. Lateef! this much thouwiltdo, promise to try. On the Koran, on thy head, thou wilt swear, if thoucanstdo this thing.'--Her old lips were on his feet, kissing them passionately, and he gave an uneasy, almost bitter laugh.
'Not on the Koran, sister,' he said evasively, 'nor on my head. Those be God's work. Lateef had naught to do with the making of either. He hath no hold on them, or their vagaries, and I swear by naught that is not sure.'
'Then swear by what thou likest,' she put in swiftly. 'Lo! it is not much I ask--not even that thou wilt bring it back, but that thou wilt try--for me who cannot try, for helpless Khôjee shut in these four walls. Promise, Lateef, that if thouhastthe chance--nay! I will not let thee go till thou dost promise.'
There was a pause, and then he laughed--his own contemptuous, musical laugh. 'If the chance comes! Yea! I will promise that. On my kites I promise, since they be my creatures to fly or fail as I choose. Let be, good Khôjee. If I am to do aught, thou must let me go.'
She rose reluctantly. 'On thy kites, Lateef? That is a light oath.' She spoke in vague wonder.
'Heavy for me, sister,' he replied gaily, 'since they be all Lateef has for children--all of his own fashioning to leave behind him when he dies!'
So, with a nod towards the dead child, he passed out of the courtyard where the shadows were lengthening for sunset.
But there would be nonaubatto sound that evening, so Khôjee crouched down between the two beds where the mother and the child lay both silent, both unheeding, and covering her face with her veil, thought how best to tell the lie when Noormahal should rouse to ask the question.
'What am I? Why, a mutiny lady, of course. Don't you see my crinoline; I suppose I am the first to arrive, but there are a lot of us coming in the dress. We are going to have a sixteen mutiny Lancers; perhaps two, and all sorts of fun. Rather a jolly idea, isn't it?'
The speaker was Mrs. Chris Davenant as she stood buttoning her white gloves in the anteroom of the club which was all decorated and illuminated for the Service ball. She was daintiness itself in a widespread pink tarlatane frilled to the very waist. A wreath of full-blown pink roses headed the fall of white lace that lay low down on the white sloping shoulders, which seemed as if, at the least movement, they would slip up from their nest of flowers to meet the fair shining hair that slipped downwards in a loose coil from the wreath of pink roses round her head.
The steward who had been told off to record the costumes, and see that no one evaded the rule of fancy dress without permission, raised his eyebrows slightly as he bowed.
'And admirably carried out in your case,' he replied politely, ere turning to Chris, who stood beside the pink tarlatane in the garments of civilisation which had been rescued from Sri Hunumân. He was looking, for him, moody, ill-humoured.
'And you, I suppose, have permission,' began the steward, when Mrs. Chris with a hasty look-half of appeal--at her husband, interrupted gaily--
'Oh, he is mutiny too. The fashion in dress-clothes has not changed.'
'Excuse me,' said Chris in a loud voice. 'I come as an English gentleman of the nineteenth century. It is fancy dress for me, sir. Are you ready, Viva?'
The white shoulders did slip from the lace and the roses with the half-petulant, half-tolerant shrug they gave, and which expressed, as plain as words could have done, the owner's mental position. If Chris chose to take that line and make a fool of himself, it did not concern her. She meant to enjoy herself.
'Execrable taste!' remarked the steward at the other door whose business was with the ball programmes.
'Which?' asked his neighbour pointedly.
'Oh, both. But the mutiny idea is the worst. Who the deuce started it?'
'Lucanaster's lot, I believe. We couldn't exactly stop it, if they chose.'
'Well, I hope to goodness Filthy Lucre won't come as John Ellison, or I shall feel it my duty to knock him down.'
'Oh, we barred that sort of thing, of course. And it is really rather a jolly dress'--the speaker gave a glance after the pink tarlatane--'at least, she looks ripping in it.'
She certainly looked her best; and had caught the sweetly feminine suggestion of the style better than any other of the score or so of women belonging to the smart set, who, by degrees, came to make up the mutiny Lancers. A fact which the men belonging to it were not slow to recognise, so that a group of stiff-stocked uniforms soon gathered round her, while Mr. Lucanaster--who looked his best, also, in the gorgeous array which Hodson of Hodson's Horse in the middle of all the strain and stress of the mutiny, evolved from his inner consciousness for his 'Ring-tailed Roarers'--could not take his eyes off her gleaming pink and white. He even risked the resentment of more important ladies by rearranging the whole set so as to secure her being next to him in it.
But that gleam of pink and white was responsible for more than the setting of Mr. Lucanaster's blood on fire. It made Chris, for the first time, fiercely jealous. Ever since he had allowed himself, for that minute on the bridge, to compare his wife with his ideal, and his ideal with the little cousin whose familiar beauty had so disturbed him, he had been far more exigeant as a husband than he had ever been before. And now, as he watched his wife's success, it was with clouded eyes that followed her wherever she went; even when, just before supper--the night being marvellously warm for the time of year--some one's suggestion that it would be infinitely jollier to have the mutiny Lancers outside in the gardens, sent the whole party of dancing feet trooping out, amid laughter and chatter, to the lawns and flower-beds which forty years ago had lain bare and bloodstained under the weary feet of those defenders of the flag.
The verdict of execrable taste given by the steward had been endorsed by many; by none more fully than by the Government House party which had come over late. But even Lesley felt bound to admit that, taste or no taste, there was a certain uncanniness in the look of these men and women who might indeed be ghosts from that gay Nushapore life of forty years back.
So, many a one might have been dressed, so they might have danced, and flirted, and chattered, on the very night when John Ellison ended that gay life and called them to death, with a brief order to close in on the Garden Mound and defend the flag that floated from its central tower. And Grace, more imaginative, more fanciful than Lesley, found her thoughts wandering more than once in a wonder whether some call to show themselves worthy of that past might not come again, come there in the midst of the lights and the laughter. There is always an atmosphere of unreality in a fancy dress ball when the masqueraders mean to enjoy themselves; but it was more marked that night than Grace Arbuthnot had ever seen it.
There was a fascination in it--in the uncertainty of it.
But there was one small soul for whom the sight had fascination, not from its unreality, but its reality. This was Jerry, who in consequence of a special invitation from the ball committee of which Jack Raymond was secretary, that the little lad might be allowed to see the show till supper-time, had been brought over for an hour or two.
'He isn't weally Hodson of Hodson's Horse, is he, mum?' he said, squeezing his mother's hand tight, as, in his little Eton suit, his wide white collar seeming to stare like his wide grey eyes, he watched the couples passing out into the garden, 'coshewas bigger. It's only pwetence, weally, isn't it?'
'Of course, it is pretence, Jerry,' she answered almost carelessly; then something in the child's expression made her stoop to smooth his hair, and look in his freckled face with a smile. 'You would like to go and see them in the garden, wouldn't you? Well, wait a bit, and Lesley, when she comes back from her dance, shall take you, and then you must be off to bed. It is getting late.'
'Let me take him, Lady Arbuthnot,' said Jack Raymond's voice. 'I am engaged to Miss Drummond for these Lancers, and I am sure she would prefer not to dance them with me, even if she hasn't forgotten the fact.'
He had come up behind her from the supper-room where he had been busy, and Grace, who had not seen him before that evening, felt a sudden pang at the sight of him. For he was dressed in the political uniform which, except on such frivolous occasions as these, had not seen the light for ten years. She told herself that he looked well in it,as he had always done; and then the reminiscence annoyed her, for she had been taking herself to task somewhat for the persistency of such recollections.
'Thanks so much,' she replied. 'I can see her coming back now, so you can combine the two. That will do nicely.'
It would, in fact, fit in very nicely with her plans; for in consequence of that taking to task shehadbeen making plans, as women of her sort do when they feel an interest in a man which they cannot classify. And Grace Arbuthnot could not classify hers for Jack Raymond; though she went so far as to acknowledge that she could not, even now, treat him as she treated all other men with the exception of her husband.
He made her feel moody and restless. This was intolerable, even though the cause was, clearly, nothing more than a regret at his wasted life. It could, indeed, be nothing else. Had she not at the very beginning sought him out solely in the hope of rousing him to better things? He had repulsed her by saying that hers was not the hand to win his back to the plough; and she had resented this at first--had refused to believe that the past could interfere with the present. But she had been reasoning the matter out with herself during the last few days. There had been many links and also manylacunæin the chain of that reasoning; yet she had been quite satisfied with the result of it, namely--a conviction that Lesley Drummond would be the very person to compass regeneration! For women like Grace Arbuthnot are never more inconsequent than they are in regard to Love with a big L; since in one breath they call it Heaven-sent, and the next set springes to catch it as if it were a woodcock or a hedge-sparrow!
Having arrived at this conviction with a curious mixture of shrewdness and sentiment, Grace had gone on to be practical. She herself was debarred by her position from any more becoming dress than the latest Paris fashion, but that was no reason why Lesley should not have the advantage of clever wits and clever fingers. For the girl herself was of that large modern type which, without in the least despising dress, being, in fact, curiously sensitive to its charm, are personally quite helpless concerning it.
The result of this being, that as Lesley approached, Jack Raymond stared at the transformation, took in its details, and finally gave in to the perfection of the dress by saying, with a laugh-=
'God prosper thee, my Lady Greensleeves!'
'My Lady Greensleeves!' echoed Lesley. 'Yes, of course it is! How stupid of me, Lady Arbuthnot, not to have guessed before. Oh! I'm sorry; I promised not to tell who made my dress, didn't I?'
The cat was out of the bag, and Grace flushed up with vexation. She had not thought any one would recognise the source whence she had taken Lesley's 'smock o' silk' and 'gown of grassy green,' her 'pearl and gold girdle' and 'gay gilt knives,' the 'crimson stockings all o' silk,' and 'pumps as white as was the milk.' She had not even told the girl herself, partly from the love of such fanciful little mysteries which is inherent in such as she; partly because she feared to injure the unconscious indifference which made Lesley look the character to perfection.