This is the story of a backwater; one of those still nooks sheltered
by sedges whither the sere and yellow leaves drift and rest, while the
current beyond slips by swift as ever. Why this particular backwater
should have called itself a Technical School of Art-needlework has
nothing to do with the story. Briefly it was a sort of almshouse where
twelve old Mohammedan ladies drew a poor monthly pittance of some few
rupees, and sat contentedly enough year after year twining gold thread
on to fine net. What became of the work when it was done has also
nothing to do with the story. Perhaps it was sold to eke out the funds
of a charity which did its fair share of solacing sorrow in keeping
twelve pairs of small, soft, high-bred hands from the quern-handle;
that last resource of the poor in India now, as it was when the Great
Mogul refused to allow the importation of Western machinery on the
ground that God's best gift to the poor was the millstone about their
necks.
It was in this odd little courtyard, packed away decorously in the
very heart of the loose-living, gambling, gold-worker's quarter, that
Glory-of-Woman found shelter after many years of patient, peaceful
privation; for Fakr-un-nissa (that was how her name ran in the soft
courtly tongue of the most brutal of cities) was a _Syyedani_; in
other words, of the poorest and proudest, too poor to bring a dowry to
a husband of her own rank, too generous to take one without it, too
proud to stoop to a partner beneath her--or rather too gentle, too
conservative. There are hundreds such women in Delhi, and
Fakr-un-nissa had been more fortunate than most, seeing that being
learned in the Koran she had kept body and soul together by
recitations at fast and festival in the _zenanas_, and so been spared
hard labour. Perhaps it was this which made her look younger than her
fifty and odd years; at all events there was scarcely a wrinkle on her
small oval face, and her tall, slender figure showed no sign of age.
She was the youngest of the scholars, and every evening when the gold
thread and the filmy net had been locked away in a queer little carven
coffer, she was the last to slip her small feet into one of those
twelve pairs of curly shoes which all day long had been ranged against
the slip of wall doing duty as a screen at the door, and the last to
use the rickety _dhooli_ which the charity provided for the modest
conveyance of the fair ones to their homes. It provided a chaperone
too, in the shape of a big lump of a girl about twenty, who sat on the
steps all day chattering to the passers-by, giggling at their jokes,
and chewing _pan_. It was a queer arrangement seeing that Khadjiya
Khanum, the eldest of the scholars, was past eighty; but then age had
nothing to do with the fact that she was a _Syyedani_, and Juntu only
a gad-about. There was another pair of shoes, however, placed in a
corner apart from the rest; for it had come to be a recognised custom
in the backwater that there should always be a thirteenth pair of feet
ready to slip into any vacancy made by the sure decay which comes
alike to rest as to unrest. And so, five years before, when
Fakr-un-nissa had stepped into the last pair of shoes left by a
deserted wife who had gone down into the grave leaving one forlorn
daughter behind her, the old ladies had cast about to choose a
suitable aspirant. Not that they really had the right to appoint any
one, but because experience showed them that the claims of a
gratuitous worker were seldom overlooked when opportunity came for
urging them. This time the choice fell, naturally enough, on the
daughter of the dead scholar. Just in her teens, she was hopelessly
alone in the world; for her mother, after estranging her own people by
a marriage with a Mohammedan Rajpoot, had quarrelled with her
husband's family; but not before little Yasmin had been married, and
had, according to the Ranghar custom, become a widow for life by the
death of her childish bridegroom. For race is stronger than religion
and the old Rajpoot ideas have survived conversion. So Yasmin in her
turn waited for a vacancy in the shoes; or rather Noorbanu waited,
since the old ladies would have nothing to do with the flowery,
half-heathen name, and set themselves diligently to transform her into
a "Lady-of-light." It was not altogether a successful attempt, for the
girl's wild Rajpoot blood waxed rebellious sometimes; but as a rule
Fakr-un-nissa's soft voice with its polished periods and careful
intonation would bring her back to obedience.
"Lo! thou shouldst mind me, Heart's Delight," Glory-of-Woman would say
with a smile. "Do I not stand in Thy mother's shoes? Thou art young
now, Yasmina; so was I once; yet thou wilt be as I am, some day."
And Yasmina would make a face. "Well! that is better than being like
Khadjiya Khanum, or Maimana Begum with her little eyes."
So the years passed bringing no blank to the roll of high-sounding
names, no break in the row of shoes, no vacant place in the semicircle
of old women which chased the sunshine round the court during the cold
months, and the shade during the hot ones. For they felt the stress of
the seasons in their old bones. Otherwise winter and summer were alike
to them; as was the green leaf and the sere since they had never seen
either. But Yasmin felt the spring-time in her blood and began to
weary of being at every one's beck and call.
"She is a Ranghar! Bury a dog's tail for twelve years, and it will
still be crooked," said Maimana Begum. She was full to the brim of
proverbial wisdom, and had a little clique of her own in that
semicircle of flimsy net, glittering gold thread, and withered hands.
Mumtaza Mahul's head, and those of half a dozen Lights, or Desires, or
Ornaments of the Palace, the World, or, of Woman, wagged in assent to
her words. It was easy to change a name but not a nature; and had
every one heard that some one had seen Noor-Banu talking to a woman
with whom she ought not to have been talking?
Glory-of-Woman's thin face grew eager. "'Tis a cousin, Mai Khadjiya.
The girl told me of it and I have inquired. A cousin of the father's,
married--yea! married, indeed, to a trooper, like he is, serving the
_Sirkar_ somewhere. Such folks lose hold on old ways, yet mean no
harm. We must not judge them as ourselves."
"_Wah_, Fakr-un-nissa! Wouldst say the Devil meant no harm next. Thy
heart spoils thy faith. I marvel at thee, thou who dost fast and pray
more than is needful."
The ring of bitterness in old Khadjiya's tones was explained by
the fact that it was nigh the end of the first ten days' fast of
Mohurrum-tide and she had not chosen that any, despite her age, should
exceed her in the observance thereof. And Fakr-un-nissa's zeal had
raised the price of self-complacency beyond reason.
"More than is needful!" echoed Maimana Begum with a like tartness.
"Art not rash to say so, Mai Khadjiya? Sure the virtue of some folk is
situate as the tongue among thirty-two teeth. It needs care to
preserve itself."
The white shrouded figures chuckled. They were not really ill-humoured,
or evilly disposed towards Glory-of-Woman; it was simply that her
excellent example had made all their old bodies rather fretful. "And
as for the girl," continued the acrid voice, "she is a cat on the wall.
God only knows on which side she will jump down."
Fakr-un-nissa's eyes flashed, and her fingers entangled themselves in
the gold thread. "Then, for sure, it is our part to make the right
side more pleasant than the wrong; not to be always finding fault
because she is young. Yea, 'tis so; for look you, it seems ever to me
that we are to blame--that we are in her place. Five long years is it
since she hath waited."
Khadjiya Khanum's hands dropped from her work and flew out in vehement
crackings of every joint against ill-luck. "_Tobah, Tobah!_ (For
shame, for shame!) Mistress Fakr-un-nissa. Die if thou wilt to make
room for the hussy. As for me, I wait on the will of the Lord."
A murmur of assent ran through the semicircle once more.
"Nay, nay! I meant not so," protested Fakr-un-nissa hastily. "Lo,
death comes to all, and goeth not by age. I meant but this,--sure 'tis
hard to put it to words--that the old should make room for the young,
or make the waiting bearable."
"_Tchu!_ If the heart be set on a frog, what doth it care for a
fairy?" insisted the hoarder of other folk's wisdom. "Dost mean to
hint that in this place the girl hath not had virtue set constantly
before her, ay, and preached too? It seems to me that we have it
almost to satiety. Is it not so, sisters?"
Once more the chuckle ran round the circle, and Glory-of-Woman sat
still more upright. "Amongst thy other proverbs, canst not recollect
the one which says, 'Between the two priests the fowl killed for
dinner became unlawful to eat'?" Then the temper died from her face
and she went on in a softer tone: "I find no harm in the girl, and
what wrong hath she done this day more than another?"
"No more, for sure," put in Mumtaza Mahul, "since she is late at work
every day; that is no new thing, is it, sisters?"
"Yet she finishes her task as quick as any,--as I, anyhow," persisted
Yasmina's advocate, who having come to the gold thread late in life
found it apt to knot.
"_Wah-illah!_ What a fuss about a wilful girl," put in a new voice.
"She is no worse than others, and needs restraint no more. She hath
grown saucy since we gave her money instead of broken victuals. Put
her back to the old footing, say I, when she had nought of her own."
Khadjiya Khanum's veiled head nodded sagely. "Thou hast it,
Hameda-banu. Lo, I, for one, know not why the girl was ever given such
freedom, save indeed that it tallies with Fakr-un-nissa's indecent
hastening of Providence. I am for the old plan."
"And I,"--"And I,"--"And I,"--assented a chorus of set, certain
voices.
Glory-of-Woman's fingers flew faster. "Then will ye drive the girl
from us altogether. I know it, I feel it. Yea, I, Fakr-un-nissa,
singer of the Koran till my tone failed me, remember it;--those days
when some other song seemed better and one must needs sing it! Think,
sisters, remember! The eyes of the body are two; the eye of the soul
is one." The work had dropped from her hands which were stretched out
in eager entreaty. "'Tis but patience for a year or two. Then, since
there is no harm in her, she will settle down as--as I--as I did. 'Tis
but the youth in her veins, and God knows that is soon past for a
woman; yet one's glory remains." Her voice regaining some of its past
strength, recollecting all its old skill under the stimulus of both
memory and hope, filled the little courtyard,--and availed nothing.
Half an hour afterwards, struck dumb, as sensitive natures are, by the
stress of passion around her, she was watching with stupid inaction
Yasmin's final vengeance on that decorous row of curly shoes behind
the screening wall. To right and left, to this corner and that, they
sped before the reckless young feet while the reckless young voice
rose in mockery. "Lo, I wait no longer for old women's shoes. I will
have new ones of my own. Khujju, and Mujju, and the rest of ye can
sort them for yourselves, or go down to the grave one foot at a time
as seemeth to ye best. I care not; I wait no longer."
One pair flew full in Maimana Begum's face, and then came a pause
before the last pair, an odd sound between a laugh and a sob, a sudden
sweep of the net veil over the shoulder, and a half-defiant nod to the
old white fingers. "These shall stay, because they were my mother's,
and because----"
The next moment she was gone, leaving the twelve old women sitting in
the sunshine, breathless, silenced by her youth, her unreason, her
fire. Even Fakr-un-nissa had no word of defence. But after a time,
when Juntu, full of smiles and winks, came from the steps to aid the
cackle which arose as the silencing effect of the shock wore away,
Glory-of-Woman began to feel the old pain at her heart once more.
"Because they were my mother's, and because----" She could fill up the
pause in two ways: "Because they are yours, and you have been kinder
than the others"; "Because they should by rights be mine." Both
answers were disturbing. She leaned back against the wall, pressing
her thin hands to the thin breast which had known so little of a
woman's life, save only that craving for another song.
"Towards the bazaar, sayest thou?" came Khadjiya's wrathfully
satisfied voice. "To the bazaar, and in Mohurrum-tide, too! That means
the worst, and we were none too soon in getting rid of her, Heaven be
praised!"
"The cousin lives close to the _Chowk_," put in Fakr-un-nissa faintly.
"Mayhap the girl goes there."