A shivering woman in one pannier; in the other, such things as a
breathless fugitive can gather together in one hurried half hour.
Between them the hump of a camel, a camel which every instant seems as
if it must split into halves as its long splay legs slither and slide
in the mud that covers all things.
Such was the method of Chandni's flight from Hodinuggur. Not a
comfortable one, but under the circumstances necessary; nor was she
altogether unprepared for that necessity. People of her trade know what
to expect when they are attached to petty intriguing courts, where one
ruler's meat is invariably the next ruler's poison. Besides, in this
case she had to reckon on Khush-hal Beg's anger at the repulse she had
given him on more than one occasion; given him, of course, with a view
to future possibilities with his son Dalel, but that rather increased
than diminished the offence. And now her patron, old Zubr-ul-Zaman, was
dead, Khush-hal had supreme power, and what was more, three pearls were
amissing from the Hodinuggur necklace; three pearls which could easily
be traced home to her safe keeping, _and no further_, if needs be. So,
at the first hint of inquiry, Chandni had deemed it wiser to seek the
protection of the only man who knew something--if not all--about the
intrigue which had ended so strangely in Providence setting aside the
necessity for any intrigue at all. If Dalel chose to remain at Simla,
where, no doubt, he was amusing himself hugely, she would not interfere
with his amusements; that had never been her plan. She would only
resume her empire over his weak, worn-out wickedness. And yet the
flight entailed horrible discomfort. The splaying camel was to her what
a bad passage across the channel is to a fashionable lady, and as she
clutched wildly at the sides of the pannier, she decided that life was
not long enough for a repetition of such experience. If she returned to
Hodinuggur at all, it must be in a position which would ensure a
different style of locomotion. Even the night journey by rail, cooped
up behind iron bars in the wild-beast-cage-like compartment, labelled
in three languages for 'modest women,' was, in comparison, comfort
itself. Huddled up decently into a shapeless white bundle, she could at
least think over the odd turn affairs had taken, and make up her mind
what had best be done. The first thing, of course, was to bring Dalel
to her heel. That ought not to be difficult, for though--the water
having been procured--he might, like his father, find it convenient to
underrate her services in the matter, she had one or two good cards to
play in her adversary's strong suits which might with care save the
trick. At any rate they ought to prevent any reckless disregard of her
claims. First, they wanted the pearls back, and now that the Diwan was
dead, she was the only person who could tell them the ins and outs of
that transaction. Next, they wanted payment of the heavy _douceur_
promised by the Rajah for good offices in making it possible for the
water to irrigate that basin of alluvial soil to the south. But here
again now that the Diwan was dead, they would find difficulty in
proving that anything had been done--that the flood was not responsible
for all, unless she chose to help them with her evidence.
For the rest, give her Dalel and a bottle of champagne to herself for
one hour. If in that space he did not come back, as he had done a dozen
times before, to her empire of evil, she would have none of him. He
would be dead to all she had to offer in fullest perfection. He would
be beyond her influence, as it were, and so useless for her purpose.
She was not going to marry a fool in order to wear a veil and live with
a lot of women.
By this time two coolies were carrying her up the hill from Solon, in a
thing like a bird-cage slung on poles; so small, so square, that she
had to sit in it cross-legged and bolt upright. But though she could
not sleep, even with the aid of opium, and though the hill-sides, after
the first rush of the rains, were clothed with tinted blossoms, and the
winding valleys green as emeralds with young rice, Chandni never parted
the thick patchwork curtains shrouding her from the public gaze, until
the setting down of the dhooli warned her of an opportunity for a
gossip and a pipe. Then her feet came over the side with a challenging
clash of their silver bells, and a quick stir run round the sleepy,
sun-sodden stage where travellers, and coolies, and sweetmeat sellers
lay huddled together in the shade. Even the cowboy driving his cattle
from the bales of fodder on their way up for the sahib-logue's ponies,
paused to look at her with a grin, while his beasts ate on. The bees
were flitting from flower to flower, a golden oriole flashed through
the green transparency of the walnut-trees, and below the branches the
great emerald hearts of the yam leaves outlined themselves against the
sapphire distance of the valley, which was divided from the sapphire
distance of the sky by the glittering pearly spikelets of the snowy
range. Sapphires and pearls echoed and re-echoed in ever-receding
distance by the white clouds dividing one sea of ether from another.
But in all this world there was nothing worth a look, apparently, save
Chandni, the courtesan, swinging her silver anklets over the edge of a
dhooli; to judge at any rate by those human eyes.
She did not go straight to her destination, but paused at a house in
the bazaar where such as she were all too welcome. There was never any
mincing of words or thoughts with Chandni. To one end she had been born
a courtesan, and to this end she lived to the best of her ability. So
she paused to clothe herself in clean clear muslins, and hang great
garlands of tuberose and jasmine about the column of her massive
throat; to redden her lips, and give a deeper shadow to her eyes;
looking at herself the while in the thumb-mirror worn on her left hand.
No more, no less intent upon appearing at her best than many a person
who has not been born to that end; many a decent, respectable person,
who would be dreadfully shocked at having her innocent half hour before
the cheval-glass evened to Chandni's most reprehensible occupation.
Perhaps the difference lies in the size of the mirrors; at any rate it
is not palpably apparent elsewhere.
Mirza Dalel Beg was living, she knew, in a European house, as the upper
ten of natives love to do. Why, is, in five cases out of six, a
mystery. The sixth, no doubt, has acquired exotic tastes; the remaining
five, no doubt, consider it good style to pretend them. So, after
paying roundly for the privilege of toilet-sets and dinner-services,
they prefer the water-carrier with his skin bag to a lavatory, and a
big platter on the floor to all the neatly-laid dining-tables in
creation.
A curious example of the fascination which useless comforts have for
some people came to light during one of the many Embassies from Cabul
which British diplomacy, or the want of it, has inveigled into India.
During its stay there, district-officers were instructed to provide the
whole horde of barbarians with house-room in European fashion so as to
avoid invidious distinctions. As a rule, the local Parsee was invited
to furnish a requisite number of empty houses with the necessary repp
curtains, French clocks, Britannia-metal teapots, and German prints,
needed for the night's hospitality. Next day, so runs the tale, there
never was a soup-plate to be found. Occasionally the guests packed up a
French clock; once, it is affirmed, a sponge-bath went amissing, but
unless they ate them, that Embassy must have gone back to Cabul with
some hundreds of dozens of soup-plates stowed away among the official
presents of watches that won't go, and guns that won't fire; and soup
is not a national dish in Afghanistan.
So Dalel Beg had rented a house which he got cheap, because three of
its previous tenants had died of typhoid fever. It was a pretty place
enough, shut in somewhat by the ravines which furrow the lower part of
the ridge, but with an outlook beautiful beyond belief over the plains.
The single dahlias--refuse run wild from many a garden above--found
foothold in every cranny of the rocks, and great sheets of morning
glories climbed over the broken rails fencing the narrow path from the
steep declivity, which seemed to leap at one bound to the pale blue of
the valley below. Chandni, stepping out of her dhooli, looked at it all
distastefully, reached forth a strong, ring-bedecked hand, appropriated
a yellow dahlia, which she stuck behind her ear, and called. Then the
bells clashed again as she walked with a free step over to the verandah
of the house, raised the chick, and looked in, while the dhooli-bearers
squatted down beside the railings, and apparently resumed a
conversation begun in the bazaar. For the rest, sunshine and silence.
Chandni, dazzled by the glare outside, could at first see nothing
clearly; the room, though to her unaccustomed eyes crammed full of
useless things, seemed empty of what she sought. Then suddenly there
came a shrill, unformed voice--
'Go away! We don't want you. Mam-ma, send her away. Go, I tell you! The
Mirza is married now; I am his wife.'
The girl who came forward was not more than fifteen by the look of her,
with a frizz of hot-pressed light hair over her forehead, and a skin
which gave one the impression of being bleached, perhaps because of the
coal-black eyes set in the narrow sharp face; yet with a certain
attractiveness about the figure, dressed as it was in the height of
fashion, with sleeves to the ears, and a waist requiring the surgical
bandage of folded silk to prevent it from breaking in two.
His wife! Chandni, from her full height and magnificent development,
looked at her as distastefully as she had looked at the view from the
terrace. Neither were to her liking: they both appealed too much to the
imagination. This other woman who came in answer to the call was
better, though past her prime and pulpy; drowsy, too, from the snooze
she had been enjoying on the sofa. Still with a torrent of capable,
tell-tale abuse for the intruder.
'Ari!' laughed Chandni contemptuously, when the fat lady paused for
breath. 'So thou too hast been of the bazaar? But I want not thee, or
that half-fledged thing who calls herself a wife. I want Dalel--where
is he?'
'Mamma!' cried the unformed voice in English, breaking down over its
own feeble passion. 'Send her away, I tell you! The Mirza will be back
soon, and she must not be here. Don't fool with words. Call the
servants. _Ai! budzart!_ (base-born). I will throw you down the _khud_!
(hill-side).'
Chandni laughed again--laughed louder as, in response to the girl's
cry, a face showed itself behind her.
'Salaam, oh _bhai_! (brother),' she said, nodding her head at the
new-comer. 'Ah! 'tis thou, Mohammed? look you, this image saith she
will fling me down the _khud_. If it came to force, my pigeon, I know
which would have the Mirza; but I will not fight for him thus, he is
not worth it. So, he fancies thee? God help him. Sure, thy mother is
the better woman.'
'Come, come, mother Chandni,' urged the servant in response to shrill
commands. 'This is no place for thee now. These are mem's. And he hath
married her,' he went on fast and low. 'Yea! 'tis true, the _nikka_
hath been read, so abuse is vain. Come, thou canst see him elsewhere.'
'Nay! I will see him here--here with his mem,' retorted Chandni airily.
Then she turned swiftly on the elder woman, who, going to the door, was
about to call for further assistance. 'What harm shall I do thee, fool,
who art as I am with a piebald skin, or as this one, who would be as I
am had God made her a woman. Lo! ask thy servants who Chandni the
courtesan is, and what she has been, ay! and will be--if she chooses.'
It was an odd scene. The room decorated into bastard civilisation; the
girl depending on a lack of pigment in her skin for all her claims to
mem-ship, that being the only trace of her unknown European father; the
mother without even this distinction, yet clinging to her taint of
'Western blood, as to a patent of nobility; clinging to it farcically,
in fringe and furbelow, in fashion generally. Before them, as it were,
against them, stood Chandni, in her trailing white Delhi draperies and
massive garlands, a figure which might have served as model for some of
those strange solemn-eyed statues, half Greek, half Indian, which are
found buried in the sand-hills of the frontier. There was a little
crowd of dark expectant faces at the door now, towards which she nodded
familiarly.
'Go back! oh brothers! I do no harm. 'Tis not my way with women folk. I
wait the Mirza's return. Then, if I am not wanted, I will go. Lo!
Chandni the courtesan hath no need to keep a man in a leash; she hath
no need to have the _nikka_ read, my little pigeon, as thou hast. Ari!
so the pictures in the papers Dalel used to bring me are true, and 'tis
a beauty to have no body and a big head.
Beatrice Norma Elflida D'Eremao, presently her Highness Mrs. Dalel Beg,
gave a little scream of rage, and stamped her tiny high-heeled shoes
upon the floor. Mrs. Lily Violet D'Eremao, her mother, known in her
time by many a _sobriquet_ until she settled down to sobriety and the
education of a fair daughter, screamed too, in voluble abuse; but they
were both quite helpless before the white-robed figure standing between
them and the sunlight with a laugh on its red lips, which did not leave
them when into the midst of the scene came Dalel Beg, got up in his
dandy riding gear; only the folded pugree remaining to tell the tale of
his birth. Perhaps because the ideas within the head it covered needed
some such excuse for their existence. His face was hideous in its sheer
malice, livid, not with passion or fear, but from that hatred of
opposition which belonged to his race. And Chandni, recognising this,
swept him a low salaam, graceful to the uttermost curve of each finger,
a salaam which would have made Turveydrop die of envy, a salaam such as
one sees once or twice in a lifetime. A minute before she might have
given it in derision; now she yielded it to the lingering majesty in
this pitiful representative of a long line of tyrants.
'Long life attend my lord,' she said, in those liquid tones of set
ceremony, which her class pride themselves on acquiring. And even among
them Chandni had a silver tongue: none near her, so the report ran.
Dalel Beg's eyes saw, his ears heard. They would not refuse their
wonted office, and yet as he took a step nearer, he raised the hunting
crop he held.
'Go!' he cried. 'Go! Mohammed! Fuggu--turn this scum of the bazaars
from the door.'
'Which scum of the bazaars?' she asked coolly. 'This--or that?'
It was not scorn exactly, it was an indifferent contempt which seemed
to leave no denial possible, and which held action arrested.
'Which is it to be, Mirza sahib?' she asked again, crossing swiftly to
where the girl stood as if to measure her height against that small
insignificant figure. 'There is not much to choose between us, except
in the outside--and thou hast eyes!'
'Fuggu! Mohammed! Dittu! Scoundrels, turn her out! call the Kotwal!
Turn her out, I say!' shrieked the Mirza, fast loosing all dignity in a
sort of animal admiration for this woman, who, he knew, would come back
to him at a word. A word he dare not give,--which he did not wish to
give, as yet.
'Softly! softly! oh, my brothers,' came that liquid voice. 'There is no
need to touch Chandni the courtesan. The master hath his right, and I
will go. I only ask a word, and sure my words are better for the ear
than theirs.'
It was incontestably true, for mother and daughter were now at the
highest pitch of the Eurasian accent aggravated by hysterics, and the
men stood uncertain, siding, every one of them, with that which was
familiar.
'The word is this,' she went on boldly, 'I have done my part. Is there
to be payment?'
Dalel's face lost its last trace of dignity and settled down into mere
spite.
'So! it is payment. Lo! mother-in-law, hold thy peace! 'Tis nothing but
a bad debt, a debt without a bond! Payment! Go, fool, and ask it of the
old man--the old devil who was drowned. Ask not here--here we need all
the money we can get.'
Then in his delight and content in this opportunity for malice, he
forgot a suspicion of fear which had been with him hitherto, and
turned to the girl with a leer and a laugh: 'Aha! we want the _oof_
ourself, don't we, Tricks? Lo! I give you gold watch and chain to-day.
I give you gold bangle to-morrow, if you're good girl. But that
one--nothing--nothing.'
He echoed the last words jeeringly in Hindustani, cutting with his whip
towards Chandni as one cuts at a dog to frighten it from the room.
Perhaps he was nearer than he thought; anyhow, the uttermost end of
lash touching the silver bells on her ankle set them jingling. A slight
thing to make two women cease their cries, and half a dozen men or more
hold their breath involuntarily; yet it did, commanding silence for
that clear voice.
'Lo! thou hast given me something, oh Mizra Dalel Beg! which no man
hath given before to Chandni the courtesan. It is enough. I go.'
So far dignity went with her. But at the door she turned to give the
women back in kind and with interest the abuse which they had given to
her. Even with a despicable cheat like the Mirza, there was a
reputation to keep up--he was at least the descendant of worthy men who
had done their best for such as she; but with those two women, even as
herself, but without her claims, why should she be silent?
Yet ere she was half-way back to the bazaar she had forgotten them and
their abuse; forgotten everything save that clash of the silver bells.
That was an end--an end for ever to Dalel. In a way she was glad, for
he was unendurable when sober, and not much better when he was drunk.
Now nothing remained save the necessity for compensation and revenge.
If the Moghuls would not pay, there were others who would. The mem, for
instance, who had taken the pearls. And those who had spread it abroad
that the little sahib had died in his bed, they would not care to have
their truth impugned. They had bribed the servants no doubt, the Diwan
was dead, and they had held the water sufficient inducement for the
others. But she? She had had nothing, and she meant to have something.
And then when she had got her money's worth for silence, she would go
and sell that silence to the Rajah, unless indeed by that time the
Moghuls had bidden higher for her speech. Without her evidence the
question as to whether the bribe were honestly due for favours done
could not be settled. She would begin with the mem; not by demanding
money, but the pearls, since most likely they had been disposed of and
the difficulty of getting hold of them again would, as it were,
increase her power of screw. If at the end of a month the sahib-logues
defied her, she would offer her silence or her speech to the highest
bidder, and give her evidence for either. After that, a merry life,
even if it had to be a short one; for the mere taste of comparative
freedom she had had that morning in the wooden house in the Simla
bazaar, had aroused the old reckless instincts, and before the evening
was over the news that Chandni, singer and dancer from Delhi, had come
to the place, was on the tip of every native's tongue.