On the Face of the Waters Part 14

Newasi caught her hand back to another resting place above her heart.

"A--a b.l.o.o.d.y death!" she echoed; "who--who told the lie?"

Prince Abool-Bukr shook his head with a kindly smile. "Oh! heed it not, kind lady. Such is the fas.h.i.+on with soothsayers nowadays. The heavens are black with portents. Someone's cow hath three calves, someone's child hath ten noses and a tail. Fire hath come from heaven--thou thyself didst tell me some such wind-sucker's tale--or from h.e.l.l more likely----"

"Nay! but it is true," she interrupted eagerly; "I had it from the milkwoman, who comes from the village where the _suttee_----"

"The mouse began to gnaw the rope. The rope began to bend the ox. The ox began----" hummed the prince irreverently.

Newasi stamped her foot. "But it is true, scoffer! There is a festival of it to-day in some idol temple--may it be defiled! The widow would have burned, after sinful custom, but was prevented by the Huzoors.

And rightly. Yet, G.o.d knows--seeing the poor soul had to burn sometime through being an idolater--they might have let her burn with her love----"

Abool laughed softly. "And yet thou wilt have naught of Hafiz--Hafiz the love-lorn! Verily, Newasi, thou art true woman."

She ignored the interruption. "So being hindered she went to Benares, and there this fire fell on her through prayer, and burned hands and feet----"

"But not her face," cried Prince Abool, thrumming the muted strings and making them sound like a tom-tom. "I'll wager my best pigeon, not her face, if she be a good-looking wench! And since fire follows on other things besides prayer, she was a fool not to get it, like me, through pleasure instead. To burn a virgin! What a dreary tale! Look not so shocked, Newasi! a man must enjoy these presents, when folk around him waste half the time in dreaming of a future--of something better to come--as thou dost----" He paused, and a soft eager ring came to his voice. "If thou couldst only forget all that--forget who I might be in the years to come--forget what thou wouldst have been had my respected uncle not preferred peace to pleasure--for it never came to pa.s.s, remember, it never came to pa.s.s--then we two, you and I----"

He paused again, perhaps at the sudden shrinking in her eyes, and gave a restless laugh. "As 'tis, the present must suffice," he added lightly, "and even so thou dost mourn for what I might be if the grace of G.o.d took me unawares. Thou hast caught the dreaming trick, mayhap, from the Prince of Dreamers yonder."

He moved over to the outer parapet and waved his hand toward Hussan Askuri's house. Then his vagrant attention turned swiftly to something which he could see in a peep of bazaar visible from this new point of view.

"Three, four, five trays of sweetstuffs! and one of milk and b.u.t.ter,"

he cried eagerly, "and by my corn-merchant's bill--which I must pay soon or starve--the carriers are palace folk! Is there, by chance, a marriage in the clan? Why didst not tell me before, Newasi? then I could have gone as musician and earned a few rupees."

He gave a flourish of his bow, so drawing forth a lugubrious wail from the long-necked fiddle.

"No marriage that I wot of," she replied, smiling fondly over his heedless gayety. "The trays will be going to the _Pir_-sahib's house.

They have gone every Thursday these few weeks past, ever since the Queen took ill on hearing the answer about the heirs.h.i.+p. She vowed it then every week, so that the holy man's prayer might bring success to our cousin of Persia in this war. G.o.d save the very dust of it from the winds of misfortune so long as dust and wind exist," she added piously.

Prince Abool-Bukr turned round on her sharply with anxiety in his face.

"So! Thou too canst quote the proclamation like other fools--a fool's message to other fools. Where didst thou see it?"

Newasi looked at him disdainfully. "Can I not read, nephew, and are there many in Delhi as heedless as thou? Why, even the Mufti's people discuss such things."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Ay! they will talk. Gossip hath a double tongue and wings too, nowadays. In old time the first tellers of a tale had half forgot it, ere the last hearer heard it; now the whole world is agog in half an hour. But it means naught. Even his heirs.h.i.+p.

Who cares in Delhi? None!--out of the palace, none! Not even I. Yet mischief may come of it; so have naught to do with dreamings, Newasi, if only for my sake. Remember the old saw, 'Weevils are ground with the corn.'"

"Thou canst scarce call thyself that, Abool, and thou so near the throne," she said, still more coldly.

"Have me what pleaseth thee, kind one," he replied, a trifle impatiently; "but remember also that 'the body is slapped in the killing of mosquitoes.'" Then, suddenly, an odd change came to his mobile face. It grew strained, haggard; his voice had a growing tremor in it. "Lo! I tell thee, Newasi, that Sheeah woman, Zeenut Maihl, in her plots for that young fool, her son, will hang the lot of us. I swear I feel a rope around my neck each time I think of her. I who only want to be let live as I like--not to die before my time--die and lose all the love and the laughter; die mayhap in the sunlight; die when there is no need; I seem to see it--the sunlight--and I helpless--helpless!"

He hid his face in his shuddering hands as if to shut out some sight before his very eyes.

"Abool! Abool! What is't, dear? Look not so strange," she cried, stretching out her hand toward him, yet standing aloof as if in vague alarm. Her voice seemed to bring him back to realities; he looked up with a reckless laugh.

"'Tis the wine does it," he said. "If I lived sober--with thee, mine aunt--these terrors would not come. Nay! be not frightened. Hanging is a bloodless death, and that would confound the soothsayer; so it cuts both ways. And now, since I must have more wine or weep, I will leave thee, Newasi."

"For the bazaar?" she asked reproachfully.

"For life and laughter. Lo! Newasi, thou thyself wouldst laugh at those new-come Bunjarah folk I told thee of, who imitate the sahibs so well. But for their eyes," here he nodded gayly to someone below, "they should get one of Mufti's folk to play," he added, his attention as usual following the first lead. "Saw you ever such blue ones as the boy has yonder?"

Newasi, drawing her veil tighter, stepped close to his side and peered gingerly.

"His sister's are as blue, his cousin's also. It runs in the blood, they say. I cannot like them. Dost thou not prefer the dark also?"

She raised hers to his innocently enough, then shrank back from the sudden pa.s.sion of admiration she saw blazing in them. Shrank so that her arm touched his no longer. The action checked him, made him savage.

"I like black ones best," he said insolently; "big, black, staring eyes such as my mother swears my betrothed has to perfection. Thou hast not seen her yet, Newasi; so thou canst keep me company in imagining them languis.h.i.+ng with love. They will not have to languish long for--hast thou heard it? The King hath fixed the wedding." He paused, then added in a low, cruel voice, "Art glad, Newasi?"

But her temper could be roused too, and her heart had beat in answer to his look in a way which ended calm. "Ay! It will stop this farce of coming thither for study and learning--as to-day--without a line scanned."

"Thou dost study enough for both, as thou art virtuous enough for both," he retorted. "I am but flesh and blood, and my small brain will hold no more than it can gather from bazaar tongues."

"Of lies, doubtless."

"Lies if thou wilt. But they fill the mind as easily as truth, and fit facts better. As the lie the courtesans tell of my coming hither fits fact better than thy reason. Dost know it? Shall I tell it thee?"

"Yea! tell it me," she answered swiftly, her whole face ablaze with anger, pride, resentment. His matched it, but with a vast affection and admiration added which increased his excitement. "The lie, did I say?" he echoed, "nay, the truth. For why do I come? Why dost let me come? Answer me in truth?" There was an instant's silence, then he went on recklessly: "What need to ask? We both know. And why, in G.o.d's name, having come--come to see thy soft eyes, hear thy soft voice, know thy soft heart, do I go away again like a fool? I who take pleasure elsewhere as I choose. I will be a fool no longer. Nay! do not struggle. I will but force thee to the truth. I will not even kiss thee--G.o.d knows there are women and to spare for that--there is but one woman whom Abool-Bukr cares to----" he broke off, flung the hands he had seized away from him with a muttered curse, and stepped back from her, calming himself with an effort. "That comes of making Abool-Bukr in earnest for once. Did I not warn thee it was not wise?"

he said, looking at her almost reproachfully, as she stood trying to be calm also, trying to hide the beating of her heart.

"'Tis not wise, for sure, to speak foolishness," she murmured, attempting unconsciousness. "Yet do I not understand----"

He shook his delicate hand in derisive denial. "Why, the Princess Farkhoonda refuses to marry! Nay, Newasi, we are two fools for our pains. That is G.o.d's truth between us. So now for lies in the bazaar."

"Peace go with thee." There was a sudden regret, almost a wistful entreaty in the farewell she sent after him. There was none in his reply, given with a backward look as his gay figure went downward dizzily. "Nay! Peace stays ever with thee."

It was true. Those other women of whom he had spoken gave him kisses galore, but this one? It was a refinement of sensuality, in a way, to go as he had come. But Newasi went back to her books with a sigh, telling herself that her despondency was due to Abool's hopeless lack of ambition. If he would only show his natural parts, only let these new rulers see that he had the makings of a king in him! As for the other foolishness, if the old King would give his consent--if it were made clear that she was not really---- She pulled herself up with a start, said a prayer or two, and went on with _The Mirror of Good Behavior_, through which she was wading diligently. The writer of it had not been a beautiful woman, widowed before she was a wife, but his ideals were high.

Abool-Bukr meanwhile was already in a house with a wooden balcony.

There were many such in the Thunbi Bazaar, giving it an airiness, a cleanliness, a neatness it would otherwise have lacked. But Gul-anari's was the biggest, the most patronized; not only for the tired heads which looked out unblus.h.i.+ngly from it, but for the news and gossip always to be had there. The lounging crowds looked up and asked for it, as they drifted backward and forward aimlessly, indifferently, among the fighting quails in their hooded cages, the dogs snarling in the filth of the gutters, while a mingled scent of musk, and drains, and humanity steamed through the hot suns.h.i.+ne.

Sometimes a corpse lay in the very roadway awaiting burial, but it provoked no more notice than a pa.s.sing remark that Nargeeza or Yasmeena had been a good one while she lasted. For there was a hideous, horrible lack of humanity about the Thunbi Bazaar; even in the very women themselves, with their foreheads narrowed by plastered hair to a mere wedge above a bar of continuous eyebrow, their lips crimsoned in unnatural curves, their teeth reddened with _pan_ or studded with gold wire, their figures stiffened to artificial prominence. It was as if humanity, tired of its own beauty, sought the lack of it as a stimulant to jaded sensuality.

"Allah! the old stale stories," yawned Gul-anari from the broad sheet of native newspaper whence, between the intervals of some of Prince Abool-Bukr's worst songs, she had been reading extracts to her illiterate clients; that being a recognized attraction in her trade.

"Persia! Persia! nothing but Persia! Who cares for it? I dare swear none. Not even the woman Zeenut herself, for all her pretense of sympathy with Sheeahs, who----"

"Have a care, mistress!" interrupted an arrogant looking man, who showed the peaked Afghan cap below a regimental turban. He was a sergeant in a Pathan company of the native troops cantoned outside Delhi on the Ridge, and had been bickering all the afternoon with a Rajpoot of the 38th N. I., who had ousted him in his hostess' easy affections, being therefore in an evil temper, ready to take offense at a word. "I am of the north--a Sheeah myself, and care not to hear them miscalled. And I have those who would back me," he continued, glaring at the Rajpoot, who sat in the place of honor beside the stout siren; "for yonder in the corner is another hill-tiger." He pointed to a man who had just thanked one of the girls in Pushtoo for a gla.s.s of sherbet she handed him.

"Hill-cat, rather!" giggled Gul-anari. "He brought me this one, but yesterday, from a caravan new-come to the serai,"--she stroked the long fur of a Persian kitten on her lap,--"and when I asked for news could not give them. He scarce knew enough Urdu for the settling of prices."

A coa.r.s.e joke from the Rajpoot, suggesting that he had found few difficulties of that sort in the Thunbi Bazaar, made the sergeant scowl still more and swear that he would get Mistress Gul-anari the news for mere love. Whereat he called over, in Pushtoo, to the man in the corner, who, however, took no notice.

"He is as deaf as a lizard!" giggled Gul-anari, enjoying the rejected one's discomfiture. "Get my friend the corporal here to yell at him for thee, sergeant. His voice goes further than thine!"

The favored Rajpoot squeezed the fat hand nearest to him. "Go up and pluck him by the beard," he suggested vaingloriously, "then we might see a Pathan fight for once."

"Thou wouldst see a fair one, which is more than thou canst among thine own people."

"Peace! Peace!" cried the courtesan, smiling to see both men look round for a weapon. "I'll have no bloodshed here. Keep that for the future." She dwelt on the last word meaningly, and it seemed to have a soothing effect, for the sepoys contented themselves with scowls again.