IN THE CITY.
"Come, beauty, rare, divine,
Thy lover like a vine
With tendril arms entwine;
Lay rose red lips to mine,
Bewildering as wine."
The song came in little insistent trills and quaverings, and quaint
recurring cadences, which matched the insistency of the rhymes. The
singer was a young man of about three-and-twenty, and as he sang,
seated on a Persian rug on the top of a roof, he played an elaborate
symphony of trills and cadences to match upon a tinkling _saringi_. He
was small, slight, with a bright, vivacious face, smooth shaven, save
for a thin mustache trimmed into a faint fine fringe. His costume
marked him as a dandy of the first water, and he smelled horribly of
musk.
The roof on which he sat was a secluded roof, protected from view,
even from other roofs, by high latticed walls; its only connection
with the world below it being by a dizzy brick ladder of a stair
climbing down fearlessly from one corner. Across the further end
stretched a sort of veranda, inclosed by lattice and screens. But the
middle arch being open showed a blue and white striped carpet, and a
low reed stool. Nothing more. But a sweet voice came from its unseen
corner.
"Art not ashamed, Abool, to come to my discreet house among godly folk
and sing lewd songs? Will they not think ill of me? And if thou comest
drunken horribly with wine, as thou didst last week, claiming audience
of me, thine aunt, not all that title will save me from aspersion. And
if I lose this calm retreat, whither shall poor Newâsi go?"
"Nay, kind one!" cried Prince Abool-Bukr, "that shall never be." So
saying, he cast away the tinkling _saringi_ and from the litter of
musical instruments around him laid impulsive hands on a long-necked
fiddle with a 'cello tone in it. "I would sing psalms to please mine
aunt," he went on in reckless gayety, "but that I know none. Will
pious Saadi suit your sober neighbors, since lovelorn Hafiz shocks
them? But no! I can never stomach his sentimental sanctity, so back we
go to the wisest of all poets."
The high, thin tenor ran on without a break into a minor key, and a
stanza of the Great Tentmakers. And as it quivered and quavered over
the illusion of life, a woman's figure came to lean against the
central arch, and look down on the singer with kindly eyes.
They were the most beautiful eyes in the world. Such is the consensus
of opinion among all who ever saw them. Judged, indeed, by this
standard, the Princess Farkhoonda Zamâni, alias Newâsi Begum, the
widow of one of the King's younger sons, must have had that mysterious
charm which is beyond beauty. But she was beautiful also, though
smallpox had left its marks upon her. Chiefly, however, by a
thickening of the skin, which brought an opaque pallor, giving her
oval face a look of carved ivory. In truth, this memento of the past
tragedy, which at the age of thirteen had brought her, the half-wedded
bride, to death's door, and sent her fifteen-year-old bridegroom from
the festival to the grave, enhanced, rather than detracted from her
beauty. Her lips were reddened after the fashion of court women, her
short-sighted hazel eyes were heavily blackened with antimony; but she
wore no jewels, and her graceful, sweeping Delhi dress was of deadest,
purest white, embroidered in finest needlework round hems and seams,
and relieved only by the lighter folds of her white, lace-like veil.
For she had forsworn colors when she fled from court-life and its many
intrigues for an alliance with the charming widow; and, on the plea of
a call to a religious and celibate life, had taken up her abode in the
Mufti's Alley. This was a secluded little lane off the bazaar, which
lies to the south of the Jumma Mosque, where a score or two of the
Mohammedan families connected with the late chief magistrate of the
city lived, decently, respectably, respectedly. To do this, having
sometimes to close the gate at the entrance of the alley, and so shut
out the wicked world around them. But that whole quarter of the city
held many such learned, well-born, well-doing folk. Hussan Askari's
house lay within a stone's throw of the Mufti's Alley; Ahsan-Oolah's
not far off, and, all about, rose tall, windowless buildings, standing
sentinel blindly over the naughtiness around them; but they had eyes
within, and ears also. So the hands belonging to them were held up in
horror over the doings of the survival, and--despite race and
religion--an inevitably reluctant, yet inevitably firm adherence was
given to civilization. Even the womenfolk on the high roofs knew
something of the mysterious woman across the sea, who reigned over the
Huzoors and made them pitiful to women. And Farkhoonda Zamâni read the
London news, with great interest, in the newspaper which Abool-Bukr
used to bring her regularly. Hers was the highest roof of all, save
one at the back Of her veranda room; so close to it indeed that the
same _neem_ tree touched both.
It was not a quarter, therefore, in which the leader of the fastest
set in the palace might have been expected to be a constant visitor.
But he was. And the decorous alley put up with his songs patiently.
Partly, no doubt, for his aunt's sake; more for his own charm of
manner, which always gained him a consideration better men might have
lacked. Being the late heir-apparent's eldest son, he was certain of
succeeding to the throne if he outlived all his uncles; for the claims
of the elder generation are, by Moghul law, paramount over those of
the younger. Now, the inevitable harking back to the eldest branch,
after years of power enjoyed by the junior ones, which this plan
necessitates, being responsible for half the wars and murders which
mark an Indian succession, some of these learned progressive folk
admitted tentatively that the Western plan was better; and that if
Prince Abool-Bukr were only other than he was, he might as well
succeed now as later on.
The idea roused a like ambition in the young idler, now and again, but
as a rule he was content to be the best musician in Delhi, the boldest
gambler, the fastest liver. Yet through all, he kept his hold on one
kind woman's hand; and those who knew the prince and princess have
never a word to say against the friendship which led to that singing
of Omar Khayyam upon the latticed roof.
"Life could be better than that for thee, nephew, didst thou but
choose," said her soft voice, interrupting the cynicism, while her
delicate fingers, touching the singer's shoulder as if in reproof,
lingered there tenderly. He bent his smooth cheek impulsively to
caress the hand so close to it, with a frank, boyish action. The next
moment, however, he had started to his feet; the minor tone changed to
a dance measure, then ended in a wild discord, and a wilder laugh. Her
use of the word nephew was apt to rouse his recklessness, for she was
but a month or two older than he.
"Thou canst not make me other than I was born----" he began; but she
interrupted him quickly.
"Thou wast born of good parts enough, God knows."
"But my father deemed me fool, therefore I was brought up in a stable,
mine aunt; and sang in brothels ere I knew what the word meant. So
'tis sheer waste time to interview my scandalized relations as thou
dost, and beg them to take me serious. By all the courtesans in the
Thunbi Bazaar, Newâsi, I take not myself so. Nor am I worse than the
holy, pious aunt: I take paradise now, and leave hell to the last.
They choose the other way. And make a better bargain for pleasure than
I, seeing that the astrologers give me a short life, a bloody death."
Newâsi caught her hand back to another resting place above her heart.
"A--a bloody 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 fashion 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 hell 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.
Newâsi 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, God 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, Newâsi, 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, Newâsi! 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 pass, remember, it never came to pass--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 God 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 butter,"
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, Newâsi? 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 heirship. She vowed it
then every week, so that the holy man's prayer might bring success to
our cousin of Persia in this war. God 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?"
Newâsi 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 heirship.
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, Newâsi,
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, Newâsi, 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, Newâsi."
"For the bazaar?" she asked reproachfully.
"For life and laughter. Lo! Newâsi, thou thyself wouldst laugh at
those new-come Bunjârah 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?"
Newâsi, 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 passion 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, Newâsi; so thou canst keep me company in
imagining them languishing 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, Newâsi?"
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 God'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--God 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, Newâsi, we are two fools for our
pains. That is God'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 Newâsi 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-anâri's was the biggest, the most patronized; not only for the
tired heads which looked out unblushingly 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 sunshine.
Sometimes a corpse lay in the very roadway awaiting burial, but it
provoked no more notice than a passing 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 _pân_ 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.
"Allâh! the old stale stories," yawned Gul-anâri 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 glass of
sherbet she handed him.
"Hill-cat, rather!" giggled Gul-anâri. "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 coarse 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-anâri 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-anâri, 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.
"The future?" echoed a graybeard who had been drinking cinnamon tea
calmly. "God knows there will be wars enough in it. Didst hear,
_Meean_ sahib? I have it on authority--that Jarn Larnce is to give
Peshawur to Dost Mohammed and take Rajpootana instead. Take it as Oude
was taken and Sambalpore, and Jhansi, and all the others."
"Even so," assented a quiet looking man in spectacles. "When the last
_Lât_-sahib went, he got much praise for having taken five kingdoms
and given them to the Queen. The new one was told he must give more.
This begins it."
"Let us see what we Rajpoots say first," cried the corporal fiercely.
"'Tis we have fought the _Sirkar's_ battles, and we are not sheep to
be driven against our own."
Gul-anâri leered admiringly at her new lover. "Nay! the Rajpoots are
men! and 'twas his regiment, my masters, who refused to fight over the
sea, saying it was not in the bond. Ay! and gained their point."
"That drop has gone over the sea itself," sneered a third soldier.
"The bond is altered now. Go we must, or be dismissed. The
Thakoor-_jee_ would not be so bold now, I warrant."
The Rajpoot twirled his mustache to his very eyes and cocked his
turban awry.
"Ay, would I! and more, if they dare touch our privilege."
Gul-anâri leered again, rousing the Pathan sergeant to mutter curses,
and--as if to change the subject--cross over to the man in the corner,
lay insolent hands on his shoulder, and shout a question in his ear.
The man turned, met the arrogant eyes bent on him calmly, and with
both hands salaamed profusely but slowly with a sort of measured
rhythm. Apparently he had not caught the words and was deprecating
impatience. His hands were fine hands, slender, well-shaped, and he
wore a metal ring on the seal-finger. It caught the light as he
salaamed.
"Louder, man, louder!" gibed the corporal. But the sergeant did not
repeat the question; he stood looking at the upturned face awaiting an
answer.
"Maybe he is Belooch, his speech not mine," he said suddenly, yet with
a strange lack of curiosity in his tone. There was a faint quiver, as
if some strain were over in the face below, and the silence was broken
by a rapid sentence.
"Yea! Belooch!" he went on in a still more satisfied tone, "I know it
by the twang. So there is small use in bursting my lungs."
Here Prince Abool-Bukr, who had been dozing tipsily, his head against
his fiddle, woke, and caught the last words. "Ay, burst! burst like
the royal kettle-drums of mine ancestors. Yet will I do my poor best
to amuse the company and--and instruct them in virtue." Whereupon,
with much maudlin emotion, he thrummed and thrilled through a lament
on the fallen fortunes of the Moghuls written by that King of Poets
his Grandpapa. Being diffuse and didactic, it was met with
acclamations, and Abool, being beyond the stage of discrimination, was
going on to give an encore of a very different nature, when a wild
clashing of cymbals and hooting of conches in the bazaar below sent
everyone to the balcony. Everyone save Abool, who, deprived of his
audience, dozed off against his fiddle again, and the man from the
corner who, as he took advantage of the diversion to escape, looked
down at the handsome drunken face as he passed it and muttered, "Poor
devil! He rode honest enough always." Then the Rajpoot's arrogant
voice rising from the crush on the balcony, he paused a second in
order to listen--that being his trade.
"'Tis the holy Hindu widow to whom God sent fire on her way to the
festival. A saint indeed! I know her brother, one Soma, a Yadubansi
Rajpoot in the 11th, new-come to Meerut."
The clashings and brayings were luckily loud enough to hide an
irrepressible exclamation from the man behind. The next instant he was
halfway down the dark stairs, tearing off cap, turban, beard, and
pausing at the darkest corner to roll his baggy northern drawers out
of sight, and turn his woolen green shawl inside out, thus disclosing
a cotton lining of ascetic ochre tint. It was the work of a second,
for Jim Douglas had been an apt pupil. So, with a smear of ashes from
one pocket, a dab of turmeric and vermilion from another--put on as he
finished the stairs--he emerged into the street disguised as a
mendicant; the refuge of fools, as Tiddu had called it. The easiest,
however, to assume at an instant's notice; and in this case the best
for the procession Jim Douglas meant to join. Careless and hurried
though his get-up was, he set the very thought of detection from him
as he edged his way among the streaming crowd. For in that, so he told
himself, lay the Mysterious Gift. To be, even in your inmost thoughts,
the personality you assumed was the secret. Somehow or another it
impressed those around you, and even if a challenge came there was no
danger if the challenger could be isolated--brought close, as it were,
to your own certainty. To this, so it seemed to him--the many-faced
one vehemently protesting--came all Tiddu's mysterious instructions,
which nevertheless he followed religiously. For, be they what they
might, they had never failed him during the six months, save once,
when, watching a horse-race, he had lost or rather recovered himself
in the keen interest it awakened. Then his neighbors had edged from
him and stared, and he had been forced into slipping away and changing
his personality; for it was one of Tiddu's maxims that you should
always carry that with you which made such change possible. To be
many-faced, he said, made all faces more secure by taking from any the
right of permanence. Jim Douglas therefore joined the procession and
forced his way to the very front of it, where the red-splashed figure
of Durga Devi was being carried shoulders high. It was garlanded with
flowers and censed by swinging censers, and behind it with widespread
arms to show her sacred scars walked Tara. She was naked to the waist,
and the scanty ochre-tinted cloth folded about her middle was raised
so as to show the scars upon her lower limbs. The sunlight gleaming on
the magnificent bronze curves showed a seam or two upon her breast
also. No more. As Abool-Bukr had prophesied, her face, full of wild
spiritual exaltation, was unmarred and, with the shaven head, stood
out bold and clear as a cameo.
_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_ (Victory to Mother Durga).
The cry came incessantly from her lips, and was echoed not only by the
procession, but by the spectators. So from many a fierce throat
besides the corporal's, who from Gul-anâri's balcony shouted it
frantically, that appeal to the Great Death Mother--implacable,
athirst for blood--came to light the sordid life of the bazaar with a
savage fire for something unknown--horribly unknown, that lay beyond
life. Even the Mohammedans, though they spat in the gutter at the
idol, felt their hearts stir; felt that if miracles were indeed abroad
their God, the only true One, would not shorten His Hand either.
_Jai! Jai! Durga mai ke jai_.
The cry met with a sudden increase of volume as, the procession
passing into the wider space before the big mosque, it was joined by a
band of widows, who in rapturous adoration flung themselves before
Tara's feet so that she might walk over them if need be, yet somehow
touch them.
"Pigs of idolators!" muttered one of a group standing on the mosque
steps; a group of men unmistakable in their flowing robes and beards.
"Peace, _Kazi_-sahib!" came a mellow voice. "Let God judge when the
work is done. 'The clay is base, and the potter mean, yet the pot
helps man to wash and be clean.'"
The speaker, a tall, gaunt man, rose a full head above the others, and
Jim Douglas' keen eyes, taking in everything as they passed,
recognized him instantly. It was the Moulvie of Fyzabad. It was partly
to hear what he had to say when he was preaching, partly to find out
how the people viewed the question of the heirship, which had brought
Jim Douglas to Delhi, so he was not surprised.
And now the procession, reaching the Dareeba, that narrowest of lanes
hedged by high houses, received a momentary check. For down it,
preceded by grooms with waving yak tails, came the Resident's buggy.
He was taking a lady to see the picturesque sights of the city. This
was one, with a vengeance, as the red-splashed figure of the
Death-Goddess jammed itself in the gutter to let the aliens pass, so
getting mixed up with a Mohammedan sign-board. And the crowd following
it,--an ignorant crowd agape for wonders,--stood for a minute, hemmed
in, as it were, between the buggy in front and the mosque behind, with
that group of Moulvies on its steps.
"Fire worship for a hundred years,
A century of Christ and tears,
Then the True God shall come again
And every infidel be slain,"
quoted he of Fyzabad under his breath, and the others nodded. They
knew the prophecy of Shah N'amut-Oolah well. It was being bandied from
mouth to mouth in those days; for the Mohammedan crowd was also agape
for wonders.