I
A tall lanky boy of about seventeen sat halfway down the great
flight of steps at the eastern entrance of the Jumma Mosque at Delhi,
looking anxiously at a cage full of avitovats, twinkling little brown
birds with a suspicion of red amid their brown; flitting, slender,
silent little birds, never still for a second. He looked at them
half-satisfied, half-doubtful, and as he looked he turned a four-anna
bit over and over in his brown fingers. For though he was dressed as a
European his complexion was as dark as that of most high-caste
natives, and darker by a good bit than that of a girl some one or two
years his junior, who sat fondling a pigeon on a higher step, and
looking askance, also, at the avitovats.
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[Footnote 50: Copyright, 1896, by Macmillan & Co.]
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"The _Huzoor_ can have them for five annas if he chooses," said
the evil-looking bird-catcher who was squatting among his wares.
Though he used the honorific title, his manner was absolutely
devoid of courtesy, and he turned without the least change in it to
address a friend in the parrot line, who sat with his cages on the
step above. For this particular flight of steps is set apart to the
selling of birds, especially after prayer-time on Fridays, when the
pigeon-racers and quail-fighters buy and bet in the wide portico of
rosy stone and pale marble. The avitovats--having no value to the
sportsman--commanded but a slack sale, so the boy had plenty of time
in which to make up his mind; to judge by appearances a difficult
task, for his face was undeniably weak, though handsome, kindly, and
soft. He wore a white drill suit, clean, but sadly frayed; and his
grey wide-awake was many sizes too large for his small head. Perhaps
it was the knowledge of this, combined with a vague suspicion that the
hat knew quite as much about bird-fancying as the head within it,
which made him, in his perplexity, take it off, place it on his slack
knees and drop the four-anna piece into it, as if it had better decide
the question. Sitting so, with bare head, he looked handsomer than
ever, for its shape was that of a young Adonis. It was, in fact, the
only thing about him, or his life, which corresponded with his name,
Agamemnon Menelaus. The surname, Gibbs, used after those eight
resounding syllables to come as a shock to the various chaplains who
at various times had undertaken to look after young Gibbs' spiritual
welfare. Some of them, the more experienced ones, acquiesced in that
and many another anomaly after their first glance at his soft gentle
face; for it was typical of that class of Eurasian which makes the
soul of a chaplain sink within him. Others reached the same conclusion
after a reference to the mother, Mrs. Gibbs. She was a very dark,
pious woman, tearfully uncertain of all things save that she, being a
widow, must be supported by charity; by the offertory for preference.
She, however, made the problem of his name less intrusive by calling
him Aggie as if he had been a girl.
"They are young birds, as the _Huzoor_ could see for himself if he had
eyes," went on the bird-catcher with a yawn. "Next moulting they will
be as red as a _rutti_ seed. But it is five annas, not four."
Aggie had no lack of eyes outwardly; they were large and soft as
velvet, and as they looked down at the avitovats showed a thick
fringe of curling lashes. But there was an almost pathetic
guilelessness in them, and one brown hand hesitated about his
breast-pocket. He had another anna there, part of a monthly stipend of
one rupee for attending the choir, which he had intended to spend on
sweets--preserved pumpkins for choice; but the avitovats, with their
promise of scarlet plumage, cozened his indolent, colour-loving eyes
almost as much as the thought of the sweets did his palate. Should he,
should he not? The mere sight of the birds was a strong point in their
favour, and his hand had sought the inside of his pocket when a
whisper met his ear.
"Hens!"
It was unmistakable, and he turned to look at the girl behind him. She
was sitting on her heels, crunched up chin and knees, holding her
pigeon close to her face as if to hide it. And as he turned she sidled
further away along the step with the curious gliding shuffle peculiar
to native girls and pigeons. "_Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri_,"
gurgled the pigeon, as if pleased at the motion. It was a blue-rock,
showing a purple and green iridescence on the breast, and the girl's
dress matched its colourings exactly; for her ragged cotton skirt had
washed and worn to a dark neutral tint, and the shot-silk bodice,
tattered and torn, with tarnished gold embroidery on its front, took
gleams of a past glory from the sunlight. Her veil had faded in its
folds to a sort of cinnamon brown, touched with blue, and both it and
the bodice were many sizes too large for her slight childish figure.
"If the _Huzoor_ is not to buy, let him give place to those who will,"
suggested the bird-catcher cavalierly. He had been too far to catch
the whisper, and thought to clinch the bargain by a threat.
Agamemnon Menelaus looked at him nervously. "Are you sure they are
young birds?" he suggested timidly. "They might,--they might be hens,
you know." There was a half-perceptible quiver of his handsome head as
if to watch the girl. The bird-catcher broke out into violent
asseverations, and Aggie's hand, out of sheer trepidation, went into
his pocket again.
"Hens!"
This time there was a ring almost of command in the tone, and
Agamemnon obeyed it instinctively by rising to go. "_Ka-boo-tri,
ka-boo-tri_," came the gurgle of the pigeon; or was it partly a
chuckle from the girl as she sidled still further along the step?
"So! that is good riddance," said the bird-catcher to the
parrot-seller, angrily. "God made the rainbow, but the devil made the
dye-pot! Yet I thought I had sold them at last. He looked not so sharp
as that."
The parrot-seller yawned. "'Twas Kabootri did it," he remarked with
bland indifference. "She said 'hens.'"
The bird-catcher stared at him incredulously, then passed the look on
to the girl who still sat with the crooning pigeon held close to her
face.
"Kabootri?" he echoed with an uneasy laugh. "Nay, neighbour, 'twas she
who told me but an hour ago that if I sold not something this Friday
she would kill herself. 'Tis a trick of words she hath learned of her
trade," he went on with a curious mixture of anger and approbation.
"But it means something to a man who hath cursed luck and a daughter
who has a rare knack of getting her own way."
The parrot-seller gave a pull at a bulbul-seller's pipe as if it were
his own. "Thou wilt be disgraced if thou give it her much longer,
friend," he said calmly. "'Tis time she were limed and netted. And
with no mother either to whack her!"
The uneasy laugh came again. "If the Nawab's pigeon wins we may see to
a son-in-law; but she is a child still, neighbour, and a good daughter
too, helping her father more than he helps her." There was a touch of
real pride in his tone.
"She said 'hens,'" retorted the parrot-seller. "Ask her if she did
not."
"Kabootri! Kabootri!"
The call was a trifle tremulous, but the girl rose with alacrity,
throwing the pigeon into the air with the deft hand of a practised
racer as she did so. The bird was practised also, and without a
flutter flew off into the blue like an arrow from a bow; then, as if
confused by finding itself without a rival, wheeled circling round the
rose-red pile till it settled on one of the marble cupolas.
"What is't, father?" she asked, standing on the upper steps and
looking down on the two men. She was wonderfully fair, with a little
pointed chin, and a wide firm mouth curiously at variance with it, as
were the big, broad, black eyebrows with the liquid softness of her
eyes.
"Why didst say 'hens,' Kabootri?" replied her father, assuming the
fact as the best way of discovering the truth, since her anger at
unjust suspicion was always prompt.
"Why?" she echoed absently. "Why?" Then suddenly she smiled. "I don't
know, father; but I did!"
The bird-catcher broke out into useless oaths. His daughter had the
dove's name, but was no better than a peacock, a peacock in a thief's
house; she had lost him five annas for nothing.
Kabootri's eyebrows looked ominous. "Five annas! Fret not for five
annas!" she echoed scornfully, turning on her heels towards the
gateway; and flinging out her arms she began the pigeon's note--the
pigeon's name and her own--"_Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri!_" It
was as if a bird were calling to its mate, and the answer came quickly
in the soft whir of many wings as the blue-rocks, which live among the
rose-red battlements and marble cupolas, wheeled down in lessening
circles.
"Lo! there is Kabootri calling the pigeons," remarked an old
gentleman, who was crossing citywards from the Fort; a stoutish
gentleman, clothed immaculately in filmy white muslin with a pale pink
inner turban folded across his forehead and showing triangularly
beneath the white outer one. He was one of the richest bankers in
Delhi; by religion a Jain, the sect to whom the destruction of life is
the one unpardonable sin, and he gave a nervous glance at the distant
figure on the steps.
"Nay! partner, she was in our street last week," put in his companion,
who was dressed in similar fashion; "and Kabootri is not as the boys,
who are ever at one, with sparrows, for a _pice_ or two. She hath
business in her, and a right feeling. She takes once and hath done
with it till the value is paid. The gift of the old bodice and shawl,
which my house gave her, kept us free for six months. Still, if thou
art afraid, we can go round a bit."
Kabootri from her coign of vantage saw them sneaking off the main
road, and smiled at their caution contemptuously; but what they had
said was true, she had business in her, and right feeling. It was not
their turn to pay; so, cuddling a captured pigeon to her breast, she
set off in an opposite direction, threading the bazaars and alleys
unerringly, and every now and again crooning her own name softly to
the bird which, without a struggle, watched her with its onyx eyes,
and called to her again.
"There is Kabootri with a pigeon," remarked the drug-seller at the
corner to his clients, the leisurely folk with ailments who sit and
suggest sherbets to each other, and go away finally to consult a
soothsayer for a suitable day on which to take their little screw or
phial of medicine. "She will be going to Sri Parasnath's. It is a
while since she was there, and Kabootri is just, for a bird-slayer."
Apparently he was right as to her purpose; for at the turn leading to
Sri Parasnath's place of business, she sat down on a step, and after a
preliminary caress fastened a string deftly to one of the pigeon's
feet. Then she caressed it again, stroking its head and crooning to
it. Finally with a bound she started to her feet, flung it from her
to flutter forlornly in the air, her level black eyebrows bent
themselves downwards into a portentous frown, and her young voice
rang out shrilly, almost savagely, "_Yahee, choori-yah-mar. Aihee,
choori-yah-mar!_ (Hillo! the bird-slayer! Hullo! the bird-slayer!)"
"Look out, brother," said a fat old merchant in spectacles, who was
poring over a ledger in the wooden balcony of an old house. "Look out
and see who 'tis. If 'tis Kabootri, thou canst take eight annas from
the box. She will not loose the bird for less; but if 'tis a boy with
sparrows, wait and bargain."
It was Kabootri, no doubt. Who else but she came like a young
tiger-cat down the lane, startling the shadowy silence with strange
savage threats? Who but she came like a young Bacchante, dancing with
fury, showing her small white teeth, and, apparently, dragging her
poor victim by one leg, or whirling it cruelly round her on a string,
so that its fluttering wings seemed like her fluttering veil? "Give!
_Ai_, followers of Rishaba, give, or I kill! _Ai_, Jain people, give,
or I take life!"
Sri Parasnath put his turbanless bald head with its odd little tuft of
a pigtail over the balcony, and concealing his certainty under a very
creditable show of dismay, called down curses solemnly on her head. He
would send for the police; he would have her locked up and fined. She
might take the bird and kill it before his very eyes if she chose, but
he would not pay a _pice_ for its freedom. To all of which Kabootri
replied with a fresh method of doing the victim to death. She played
her part with infinite spirit, but her antagonist was in a hurry to
get some orders for Manchester goods off in time for the English mail,
so his performance was but half-hearted, and ere she had well begun
her list of horrors, the eight-anna bit came clinking down on the
brick pavement, and she, as in duty bound, had to squat beside it and
loosen the string from the pigeon's leg. As usual she had to drive it
from settling on her head or shoulders by wild antics, until it
fluttered to a neighbouring roof, where it sidled along the copings
with bright eyes watching her and soft cooings of "_ka-boo-tri,
ka-boo-tri!_"
Once beyond Jain eyes, she always gave back the call so as to assure
herself that no harm had been done. This time by some mischance there
happened to be a broken feather in the wing, and her lips set
themselves over the task of pulling it out; that being a necessity to
even flight. After which, came renewed caresses with a passion in them
beyond the occasion; for indeed the passion in Kabootri was altogether
beyond the necessities of her life--as yet. True, it was not always
such plain sailing as it had been with Sri Parasnath. Newcomers there
were, even old customers striving in modern fashion to shake
themselves free from such deliberate blackmailing, who needed to be
reminded of her methods; methods ending in passionate tears over her
own cruelty in the first quiet spot she could reach. But of late years
she had grown cunning in the avoidance of irretrievable injury. A
dexterous slipping of the cord would leave her captive free, and she
herself at liberty to go round to some poultry-seller and borrow a
poor fowl under sentence of death, with which she would return to
unflinching execution. These things had to be, and her young face
would be like a Medea's as she did the deed. But even this was of the
past, since folk had begun to recognise the uselessness of driving the
girl to extremities. Thus her threat, "I will kill, I will kill!"
brought at most but a broken feather in a dove's wing, and a
passionate cuddling of the victim to her breast.
This one was interrupted brusquely by a question:
"Why did you say hens?"
It was Aggie. He happened to live close by in a tumble-down tenement
with two square yards of verandah, which were the mainstay of Mrs.
Gibbs' position. They, and the necessity for blacking Agamemnon
Menelaus' boots when he went to the choir, separated her effectually
and irrevocably from her native neighbours. He did not sing now,--his
voice had begun to crack,--but he looked well in a surplice, and the
chaplain knew he would have to pay the monthly stipend in any case.
So, this being Friday, Aggie was on his way to evensong, polished boots
and all; they were really the strongest barrier between him and the
tall girl with her pretty bare feet who stood up to face him, with a
soft, perplexed look in the eyes which were so like his in all but
expression; and even that merged into his in its softness and
perplexity.
"Because,--because they _were_ hens," she said with an odd little
tremble in her voice.
So the two young things stood looking at each other, while the pigeon
gurgled and cooed: "_Kaboo-tri, ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri_."