Whereat Maimana Begum remarked sagely that whether the knife fell on
the melon or the melon on the knife was all one; the melon suffered.
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 Assemblage 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 hoarse. 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, God 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 saintship 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 assemblage, 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, pass 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 God? 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 passed 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
assemblage, 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," tittered 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 kinship 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 titter 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 sunshine without streamed through the arches in broad bands upon
the floor, but Fakr-un-nissa's tall muffled 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 passers-by pause to listen.
"An Assemblage 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.
"God smite your soul to eternal damnation!" 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."