In The Permanent Way Part 10

Yasmin's reputation was hopelessly hurt by that going bazaar-wards.

"For a _Syyedani_ perchance," retorted Juntu with some acerbity.

"Yet this I say: there is no harm in the girl though she be younger than some folk who need _dhoolis_ to their virtue." She hated the proverb-monger who never from year's end to year's end gave her a _cowrie_ or so much even as a word of thanks. And then being Mohurrum-tide, when in all pious houses the a.s.semblage of Mourning must be held, the work was folded away in the old carved coffer, the desecrated shoes sorted into pairs, and one by one the old ladies were smuggled into the curtained _dhooli_ and trotted away to their homes, with buxom Juntu chattering and laughing alongside.

"Dost recite the _Mursiah_[21] at the Nawab's this year, Fakr-un-nissa?" asked Humeda-banu, wrapping herself carefully in a thick white veil.

[Footnote 21: The dirge in honour of the martyred Hussan and Hussain.]

Glory-of-Woman shook her head. "They have a new one. Last Mohurrum I grew hoa.r.s.e. Perhaps 'twas the fever; it had held me for days."

"Fever!" echoed the other. "Say rather the fasting. Thou hast a dead look in the face even now, and as for me, G.o.d knows whether I feel hungry or sick. Thou shouldst remember that thou art growing old."

"I do remember it," said Fakr-un-nissa half to herself.

In truth she did. As she sate awaiting her turn for the curtained _dhooli_ she felt very cold, very helpless. Yasmin, whom she had loved, had broken loose from all tradition and gone bazaar-wards. The very idea was terrifying. The brain behind that high narrow forehead of Fakr-un-nissa's could barely grasp the situation. For fifty years it had circled round the one central duty of pious seclusion, and Yasmin's choice seemed almost incredible. For there was no harm in the girl; she had always been responsive to kind words. If she, Fakr-un-nissa, could only have had speech with her alone! The thought made her restless and sent her to the door, to peep, closely veiled, round the screen and watch the _dhooli_ containing Humeda-banu disappear from the steps. Yet she had done her best, giving the girl in secret what she could spare of the pittance; and this year there would be no recitation-fees to eke out the remainder. Perhaps the others were right, and this generosity of hers had fostered the girl's independence. Khadjiya and Maimana would say so, for sure, if they knew. Then was she to blame?--she who loved the girl, who had taken the mother's shoes. The mere possibility was a terror to the conscience where the womanhood that was in her had found its only chance of blossoming. It is the same East and West. Glory-of-Woman, as she stood, tall and thin, leaning against the dull brick screen, had as much claim to saints.h.i.+p as any in the canonised calendar; and wherefore not? Had not she spent nearly fifty years in learning the lives of the saints by heart, and chanting the dirge of martyred virtue? It came back to her dimly as she stood there. The sombre dresses of the mourning a.s.semblage, the glittering _Imam-barah_[22]

dressed with such care by reverent hands; and then her own voice above the answering chorus of moaning and sobbing. She had power then, she was helpless now; helpless and old, yet not old enough apparently to die; though when all was said and done, it was not _her_ turn, but Khadjiya Khanum's. Yet she had taken the mother's shoes, and had sat there silent when perhaps a word from her might have saved that awful journey to the bazaar. Then the thought came to her that the saints were never helpless,--not even the blessed Fatima herself--Glory-of-Woman had fasted and prayed for long days and nights; she felt miserably ill in soul and body, in the very mood therefore to slip her feet into the pair of shoes Yasmin's recklessness had spared, and, almost as recklessly, pa.s.s without a pause to the doorstep. The next instant she was back again in shelter, breathless, palpitating. Yet might it not be the voice of G.o.d? And no one would know; she might be back ere Juntu returned, and even if she were not, the gad-about had a kind heart. Besides, another rupee from the pittance would silence her in any case.

[Footnote 22: A model of the martyrs' shrine; a permanent erection, whereas the _tazzias_ used for the procession are afterwards burned.

There is a celebrated Imam-barah at Lucknow, imported from England.]

East and West nothing is impossible to such religious exaltation as changed the slow current in Fakr-un-nissa's veins to a stream of fire scorching and shrivelling every thought save the one,--that she stood in the mother's shoes yet had said no word. She wrapped her thick shroud of a veil tighter round her and stepped deliberately into the alley. The glory of woman, its motherhood, was hers indeed in that instant, though she did not realise it; though the thin breast heaving with her quickened breath had never felt the lip-clasp of a child.

It was a long, low room, opening by arches to a wooden balcony without, into which, half-fainting with pure physical fatigue, she stumbled after Heaven knows what trivial--yet to her sheer ignorance almost awful--difficulties by the way. Yet she was not afraid; indeed as she had pa.s.sed through the crowded streets it had been wonder which had come to her. That this should be a time of fasting and mourning, and yet none seem to care! Had the world no time to bewail dead virtue? Had it forgotten the Faith? And this, too, was no mourning a.s.semblage, though in some of the faces of the lounging men she recognised the features of her own race, the race of the Prophet himself. Had they forgotten also? She shrank back an instant, until--beside a flaunting woman whose profession was writ large enough for even fifty years of pious seclusion to decipher it instinctively--she saw a slender figure crouching half-sullen, half-defiant. The face was still veiled, but she knew it.

"Yasmin!" she cried breathlessly. "Come back! Come back to us!"

The girl sprang to her feet with a fierce cry, and was beside the tall white form in an instant, screening it with swift arms that strove to force it back. "Go! I say go! Why art thou here? Thou shouldst not have come hither! Go! See, I will come also if thou wilt not go without me."

"Not so fast, my pigeon," t.i.ttered the flaunting woman, answering the half-surprised looks of the men with nods and winks. "Thou art in my charge now, since thou hast left the saints. Who is this woman? Let her speak her claim."

Yasmin's hand flew to Fakr-un-nissa's mouth. "Not a word, _Amma_,[23]

not a word. See, I will go; quick, let us go."

[Footnote 23: A pet name for mother or nurse.]

The surprise had lessened, and a man's voice rose with a laugh. "What, let thee go for nothing, with an unknown? Nay, Mistress Chambele, that were unwise. She is thy cousin; the claims of kins.h.i.+p must be considered."

"The claims of numbers, too," put in another. "Let the veiled one unveil since she has come among us."

"Nay, brothers," interrupted a third hastily in a lower voice, "mayhap she is one of the saintly women, and----"

A laugh checked the speech. "So much the better. What doth a saint here?"

Some one had barred the doorway with thrust-out arm, and half a dozen others with jeering faces lounged against the wall crying languidly, "Unveil, unveil." But Yasmin's arms clasped close. "I _will_ go," she panted. "I will go with her. She,--she is my mother."

Chambele's t.i.tter rang high and shrill. "_Wah!_ That is a tale! See you, friends; her mother hath been dead five years. Enough of this, little fool! Thou hast made thy choice already; there is no place for thee yonder with the saints."

"She hath her mother's," cried Fakr-un-nissa, freeing herself from Yasmin's hold with new strength, born of the girl's words. "Lo, she speaks truth, my sister! I stand in her mother's shoes. Let her go in peace, and she shall have them surely."

Something in the urbane polish of her speech awoke memory in the men, and one, older than the rest, said with a frown, "Yea, 'tis enough, Chambele; let the woman go, and the child also if she wish it. She will come back another day if she be of this sort; if not, there are others."

"But not without a ransom," interrupted one with an evil face and evil eyes which had seen enough of Yasmin's figure beneath the veil to think her presence gave unwonted piquancy to the business.

"Yea, a ransom, a ransom for coming here, and spoiling pleasure! Let the saint pay the price of the sinner; unveil! unveil!" cried half a dozen jeering voices.

The suns.h.i.+ne without streamed through the arches in broad bands upon the floor, but Fakr-un-nissa's tall m.u.f.fled figure stood in shadow by the door. A fighting quail was calling boastfully from a shrouded cage over the way; the cries of the noisy bazaar floated up to the balcony, a harmonious background to Chambele's noisier laugh. Then, suddenly, came a step forward into the sunlight, and the heavy white veil fell in billowy curves like a cloud about Fakr-un-nissa's feet. For the first time in her life Glory-of-Woman stood unsheltered from the gaze of men's eyes. And those eyes saw something worth seeing, despite her fifty and odd years: a woman beautiful in her age, graceful as ever in the sweeping white draperies of the graceful Delhi dress; but a woman forgetful utterly of the womanhood, even of the motherhood in her, as with one swift outspreading of the arms she broke into the opening lines of the _Mursiah_, that dirge of martyred virtue which is as closely interwoven with all that is best in the life of a Mussulman as "Hark, the herald angels sing!" is with the Christian's tender memories of home; a dirge sacred to the day and the hour; a dirge forgotten by this new world. Fakr-un-nissa remembered nothing else.

Many and many a time listless indifferent hearts had responded to the fervour of her declamation; women's hearts, it is true, and that was a woman's derisive laugh! But above it rose a man's swift curse commanding silence for all save that skilful voice; and not silence only--for that was a sigh! So the cadences rang truer and stronger out into the sunlight making the pa.s.sers-by pause to listen.

"An a.s.semblage at Chambele's house!" sneered some one. "That is a sinner's ransom indeed."

But Glory-of-Woman heard nothing save those responsive sighs, saw nothing but the orthodox beatings of the breast with which one or two of the elder men gave in to custom.

The last _ameen_ left her still blind, still deaf. Then came a laugh.

"With half her years I'd take the saint before the sinner," said the man with the evil face.

Glory-of-Woman stood for a second as if turned to stone. Then she threw up her hands with a cry and sank in a huddled heap upon the white curves of her fallen veil.

"G.o.d smite your soul to eternal d.a.m.nation!" cried a man's voice.

But Glory-of-Woman was to hear no man's voice again. She had kept her promise, and the last pair of curly shoes behind the screen was vacant. In due time Noor-banu slipped into them, for the eleven old ladies and Juntu made peace with her for the sake of Fakr-un-nissa.

"Lo! the ways of Providence are not our ways," said Khadjiya Khanum piously over her horn spectacles. "And she was ever in a hurry. For my part I wait on the will of the Lord."

Maimana Begum cackled under her breath. "Hair-oil is wasted on a bald head," she said in a whisper to Humeda-banu. "Her time is near, hurry or no hurry. Who comes, must go."

AT THE GREAT DURBAR