"Why do you say that, mistress?" he inquired.
"Ah," said she, "I am grieved, my husband, at your treatment of
Keejeepaa. Whenever I say a good word for the gazelle you dislike to
hear it. I pity you that your understanding is gone."
"What do you mean by talking in that manner to me?" he blustered.
"Why, advice is a blessing, if properly taken. A husband should
advise with his wife, and a wife with her husband; then they are
both blessed."
"Oh, stop," said her husband, impatiently; "it's evident you've
lost your senses. You should be chained up." Then he said to the old
woman: "Never mind her talk; and as to this gazelle, tell him to stop
bothering me and putting on style, as if he were the sultan. I can't
eat, I can't drink, I can't sleep, because of that gazelle worrying
me with his messages. First, the gazelle is sick; then, the gazelle
doesn't like what he gets to eat. Confound it! If he likes to eat,
let him eat; if he doesn't like to eat, let him die and be out of the
way. My mother is dead, and my father is dead, and I still live and
eat; shall I be put out of my way by a gazelle, that I bought for a
dime, telling me he wants this thing or that thing? Go and tell him
to learn how to behave himself toward his superiors."
When the old woman went downstairs, she found the gazelle was bleeding
at the mouth, and in a very bad way. All she could say was, "My son,
the good you did is all lost; but be patient."
And the gazelle wept with the old woman when she told him all that
had passed, and he said, "Mother, I am dying, not only from sickness,
but from shame and anger at this man's ingratitude."
After a while Keejeepaa told the old woman to go and tell the
master that he believed he was dying. When she went upstairs she
found Daaraaee chewing sugar-cane, and she said to him, "Master,
the gazelle is worse; we think him nearer to dying than getting well."
To which he answered: "Haven't I told you often enough not to
bother me?"
Then his wife said: "Oh, husband, won't you go down and see the poor
gazelle? If you don't like to go, let me go and see him. He never
gets a single good thing from you."
But he turned to the old woman and said, "Go and tell that nuisance
of a gazelle to die eleven times if he chooses to."
"Now, husband," persisted the lady, "what has Keejeepaa done to
you? Has he done you any wrong? Such words as yours people use to
their enemies only. Surely the gazelle is not your enemy. All the
people who know him, great and lowly, love him dearly, and they will
think it very wrong of you if you neglect him. Now, do be kind to him,
Sultan Daaraaee."
But he only repeated his assertion that she had lost her wits, and
would have nothing further of argument.
So the old woman went down and found the gazelle worse than ever.
In the meantime Sultan Daaraaee's wife managed to give some rice to
a servant to cook for the gazelle, and also sent him a soft shawl to
cover him and a pillow to lie upon. She also sent him a message that
if he wished, she would have her father's best physicians attend him.
All this was too late, however, for just as these good things arrived,
Keejeepaa died.
When the people heard he was dead, they went running around crying
and having an awful time; and when Sultan Daaraaee found out what
all the commotion was about he was very indignant, remarking, "Why,
you are making as much fuss as if I were dead, and all over a gazelle
that I bought for a dime!"
But his wife said: "Husband, it was this gazelle that came to ask
me of my father, it was he who brought me from my father's, and it
was to him I was given by my father. He gave you everything good,
and you do not possess a thing that he did not procure for you. He
did everything he could to help you, and you not only returned him
unkindness, but now he is dead you have ordered people to throw him
into the well. Let us alone, that we may weep."
But the gazelle was taken and thrown into the well.
Then the lady wrote a letter telling her father to come to her
directly, and despatched it by trusty messengers; upon the receipt
of which the sultan and his attendants started hurriedly to visit
his daughter.
When they arrived, and heard that the gazelle was dead and had been
thrown into the well, they wept very much; and the sultan, and the
vizir, and the judges, and the rich chief men, all went down into the
well and brought up the body of Keejeepaa, and took it away with them
and buried it.
Now, that night the lady dreamt that she was at home at her father's
house; and when dawn came she awoke and found she was in her own bed
in her own town again.
And her husband dreamed that he was on the dust heap, scratching;
and when he awoke there he was, with both hands full of dust, looking
for grains of millet. Staring wildly he looked around to the right
and left, saying: "Oh, who has played this trick on me? How did I
get back here, I wonder?"
Just then the children going along, and seeing him, laughed and hooted
at him, calling out: "Hullo, Haamdaanee, where have you been? Where
do you come from? We thought you were dead long ago."
So the sultan's daughter lived in happiness with her people until the
end, and that beggar-man continued to scratch for grains of millet
in the dust heap until he died.
If this story is good, the goodness belongs to all; if it is bad,
the badness belongs only to him who told it.