II

"So, seest thou, Kabootri, thou wilt turn Christian and then I will

marry thee." Aggie's outlook on the future went so far, and left the

rest to Providence; the girl's went further.

"_Trra!_" she commented. "That is fool's talk. I am a bird-slayer: how

could we live without the pigeons and the mosque? Thou hast no money."

They were sitting on the flight of steps once more, with a cage full

of scarlet avitovats between them, so that the passers-by could not

see the hands that were locked in each other behind the cage.

"Then I will marry thee, and become a heathen," amended Agamemnon,

giving a squeeze to what he held. She smiled, and the soft curves of

her chin seemed to melt into those of her long throat, as she hung her

head and looked at him as if he were the most beautiful thing in her

world. "That is wiser," she said, "and if thou dost not marry me I

will kill myself. So that is settled." He gave another squeeze to her

hand, and she smiled again. Then they sat gazing at each other across

the avitovats, hand in hand like a couple of children; for there was

guilelessness in his eyes and innocence in hers.

"Lo!" she said suddenly. "I know not now why I said 'hens.'" She

paused, failing to find her own meaning, and so came back to more

practical matters. "Thou hadst best be buying the birds, Aga-Meean[51]

[for so, to suit her estimate of him, she had chosen to amend his

name], or folk will wonder. And if thou wilt leave them in the old

place in the Queen's Gardens I will fetch them away, and thou canst

buy them of me again next Friday."

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[Footnote 51: _Aga_, noble; _Meean_, prince.]

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There was no cunning in her manner, only a solid grasp on the

exigencies of the position. Had he not a mother living in a house with

a verandah, and was not her father a bird-seller? Was he not at that

moment betting on the Nawab's coming pigeon-race on the platform above

them? Despite these exigencies, however, the past three weeks had been

pleasant; if Aggie was still rather hazy as to the difference between

young cocks and old hens, it was from no lack of experience in the

buying of avitovats. Kabootri used to give him the money wherewith to

buy them, and leave it again in the hiding-place where she found the

birds; so it was not an expensive amusement to either of them. And if

Agamemnon Menelaus had not grasped the determination which underlay

the girl's threats of taking life it was from no lack of hearing them,

ay, and of shivering at them. The savage, reckless young figure,

startling the sunshine and shadow of the narrow lanes with its shrill

cry, "I will kill, I will kill, yea, I will take life!" had filled him

with a sort of proud bewilderment, a sacred admiration. And other

things had brought the same dizzy content with them. That same figure,

sidling along the rose-red copings like any pigeon, to gain the marble

cupolas where the young birds were to be found,--those young birds

which must be taught betimes to play her game of Life and Death, as

all her world must be taught to play it,--was fascinating. It was

disturbing when it sat close to him in the Queen's Gardens, eating

rose comfits bought out of the blood-money, and cooing to him like any

dove, while the pigeons in the trees above it called "_Ka-boo-tri,

ka-boo-tri_," as if they were jealous.

The outcome of it all, however, was, as yet, no more than the

discarding of boots in favour of native shoes, and the supplanting of

the grey wide-awake by a white and gold saucer-cap which only cost

four annas, and lay on the dark waves of the lad's small head as if it

had been made for it. Kabootri clasped her hands tight in sheer

admiration as she watched him go down the steps with the cage of

scarlet avitovats; but Mrs. Gibbs, while admitting the superlative

beauty of the combination, burst into floods of lamentation at the

sight, for it was a symptom she had seen often in lads of Aggie's age.

His elder brother had begun that way; that elder brother who was now a

thorn in the side of every chaplain from Peshawur to Calcutta by

reason of his disconcerting desire to live as a heathen and be saved

as a Christian.

So, when Aggie, with a spark of unusual spirit, had refused to put on

the boots which she had made the servant (for, of course, there had to

be a servant in a house with a verandah) black with the greatest care;

in other words, when he had refused to go to church, since native

shoes and a Delhi cap are manifestly incompatible with a surplice, she

went over to a bosom friend and wept again. But Mrs. Rosario was of a

different type altogether. She seldom wept, taking life with a pure

philosophy, and making her living out of her handsome daughters by

marrying them off to the first comer on the chance of his doing well.

"There is no--need--to cry," she said comfortably, in the curious

half-_staccato_, half-_legato_ intonation of her race. "Your boy

is--no--worse than all boys. If they do not get--on--a place or get

married they fall--into mischief. God made them--so, and we must

bow to--His will, as we are Christians and not heathen. And girls

are--like--that too. If they--do--not--get--married they will give

trouble. So, if you ask my--advice, I say that if--you--cannot--get

your poor boy on--a--place you had better get--him--a--wife, or the

bad black woman in the bazaar will--lead--him--to bad ways; for he is

a handsome boy, almost as handsome as my Lily. He is too young,

perhaps, and she--is--too--young--too, but if you like he can beau my

Lily. You can ask some--one--for--clothes, and then he can beau Lily

to the choir. And give a little hop in your place, Mrs. Gibbs. When

my girls try me I give hops. It makes them all--right, and your

boy--will--be--all--right--too. You live too quiet, Mrs. Gibbs, for

young folk; they will have some pleasure. So get your son nice new

clothes, and I--will--give--a--hop at my place, and send my cook to

help yours."

This solid sense caused Mrs. Gibbs to lie in wait for the chaplain in

his verandah, armed with a coarse cotton handkerchief soaked in

patchouli, and an assertion that Aggie's absence from the choir was

due to unsuitable clothes. And both tears and scent being unbearable,

she went back with quite a large bundle of garments which had belonged

to a merry English boy who had come out to join his parents, only to

die of enteric fever. "Give them away in charity, my dear," the father

had said in a hard voice, "the boy would have liked it so best

himself." So the mother, with hopeless tears over the scarce-worn

things, had sent them over to the chaplain for his poor.

Thus it happened that before Kabootri had recovered from her intense

delight at the cap, Mrs. Gibbs was laying out a beautiful suit, cut to

the latest fashion, to await Aggie's return from one of those absences

which had become so alarmingly frequent. There was a brand-new red

tie, also a pair of lavender gloves, striped socks, and patent-leather

pumps. To crown all, there was a note on highly scented paper with an

L on it in lilies of the valley, in which Mrs. Rosario and her

daughters requested the pleasure of Mr. Agamemnon Menelaus Gibbs'

company at a hop that evening. What more could a young man like Aggie

want for his regeneration? Nothing apparently: it was impossible, for

instance, to think of sitting on the steps with Kabootri in a suit

made by an English tailor, a tall hat, and a pair of lavender kid

gloves. Yet the fine feathers had to be worn when, in obedience to the

R.S.V.P. in the corner of the scented note, he had to take over a

reply in which Mr. Agamemnon Menelaus Gibbs accepted with pleasure,

etc., etc.

"Oh, mamma!" said Miss Lily, who received the note in person with a

giggle of admiration, "I do like him; he is quite the gentleman." The

remark, being made before its object had left the tiny courtyard,

which the Rosarios dignified by the name of compound, was quite

audible, and a shy smile of conscious vanity overspread the lad's

handsome face.

About the same time, that is to say when the sinking sun, still

gloriously bright, had hidden itself behind the vast pile of the

mosque so that it stood out in pale purple shadow against a background

of sheer sunlight, Kabootri was curled up on a cornice with her back

to one of the carven pilasters of a cupola, dreaming idly of Aga-Meean

in his white and gold cap. He had not been to the steps that day, so

from her airy perch she was keeping a watch for him; and as she

watched, her clasp on the pigeon she was caressing tightened

unconsciously, till with a croon and a flutter it struggled for

freedom. The sound brought other wings to wheel round the girl

expectantly, for it was near the time for the birds' evening meal.

Sharafat-Nissa, the old canoness who lived on the roof below the

marble cupolas, had charge of the store of grain set apart for the

purpose by the guardians of the mosque; but as a rule Kabootri fed the

pigeons. She did many such an odd job for the queer little cripple,

half pensioner, half saint, who kept a Koran class for poor girls and

combined it with a sort of matrimonial agency; for the due providing

of suitable husbands to girls who have no relations to see after such

things is a meritorious act of piety; a lucrative one also, when, as

in Sharafat-Nissa's case you belong to a good family, and have a large

connection in houses where a good-looking maiden is always in request

as an extra wife. So, as she taught the Holy Book, her keen little

eyes were always on the alert for a possible bride. They had been on

Kabootri for a long time; hitherto, however, that idle, disreputable

father downstairs had managed to evade the old canoness. But now that

the great pigeon-race of the year was being decided on the grassy

plain between the mosque and the Fort, his last excuse would be gone;

for he had all but promised that, if he lost, Sharafat-Nissa should

arrange the sale of the girl into some rich house, while if he won he

had promised himself to give Kabootri, who in his way he really liked,

a strapping young husband fit to please any girl; one who, being of

her own caste, would allow her the freedom which she loved even as the

birds loved it.

She, however, knew nothing of this compact. So when the great shout

telling of victory went up from the packed multitude on the plain, she

only wondered with a smile if her father would be swaggering about

with money to jingle in his pocket, or if she would have to cry, "I

will kill, I will kill," a little oftener than usual. Sharafat-Nissa

heard the shout also, and, as she rocked backwards and forwards over

her evening chant of the Holy Book, gave a covetous upward glance at

the slender figure she could just see among the wings of the doves.

Downstairs among the packed multitudes, the shout which told him of

defeat made the bird-catcher also, reprobate as he was, look up

swiftly to the great gateway which was fast deepening to purple as the

sun behind it dipped closer to the horizon; for one could always tell

where Kabootri was by the wheeling wings.

"Have a care!" he said fiercely to the discreetly-veiled figure that

evening as it sat behind the narrow slit of a door blocking the narrow

stair, which Kabootri trod so often on her way to and from the roof.

"Have a care, sister! She is not easily limed or netted." A sort of

giggle came from the veil. "Yea, brother! Girls are all so, but if the

cage is gilt----"

It was just a week after this, and the sunlight behind the shadow of

the mosque was revelling in sheeny iridescence of her tattered silk

bodice, that Kabootri's figure showed clear and defiant against the

sky, as she stood on the uppermost, outermost coping of the gateway.

There was a sheer fall beneath her to the platform below. She had just

escaped from the room where she had been caged like any bird for three

whole days, and the canoness on the roof below was looking up at her

prisoner helplessly.

"Listen, my pigeon, my beloved!" she wheedled breathlessly. "Come

down, and let us talk it over together."

"Open the door, I say," came the shrill young voice. "Open, or I kill

myself! Open, or I kill!"

"Heart's blood! Listen! He shall be a young man, a handsome man."

Handsome, young! Was not Aga-Meean young? Was he not handsome? The

thought made her voice shriller, clearer. "Open the door, or I kill!

Open, or I take life!" The words were the words of the young tiger-cat

that had been wont to startle the sunshine and the shadow, making Sri

Parasnath seek his cash-box incontinently; but there was a new note of

appeal in their determination; for if it was but three days since she

had been caged, it was six since she had seen Aga-Meean. What had

become of him? Had he sought and missed her? Had he not?

"Listen, my bird," came the wheedling voice; "come down and listen.

Kabootri! I swear that if thou likest not this one I will let thee go

and seek another. I swear it, child."

The sidling feet edged nearer along the coping, for this respite would

at least give time. "Swear it on the Holy Book. So--in thy right hand

and in thy left. Let me see it." She stretched her own hands out over

the depths, and at the sight the expectant pigeons came wheeling round

her.

"I swear by God and His prophet," began the old canoness, gabbling as

fast as she could over the oath; but above her breathless mumble came

a little shriek, a little giggle, and a girl's voice from below. "Ah,

Mr. Gibbs! You are so naughty, so very naughty!"

Kabootri could not understand the words, but the giggle belongs to all

tongues, and it jarred upon her passion, her despair. She looked down,

and saw a well-known figure, changed utterly by a familiar, yet

unfamiliar, dress. She saw two girls about her own age, with tiny

waists, huge sleeves, and hats. It was Aga-Meean, escorting the two

Miss Rosarios, who had expressed a desire to see the mosque. And she

saw something else; she saw the look which the prettiest of the two

girls gave to Aga-Meean; she saw the look he gave in return. Her

sidling feet paused; she swayed giddily.

"Kabootri! Kabootri!" called the woman on the roof, eagerly,

anxiously, "I have sworn it. Come down, my pigeon, come down, my dove!

It makes me dizzy."

So that was Aga-Meean! The mistress said sooth; the wings made one

dizzy, the wings,--the wings of a dove!

She had them! For the wind caught the wide folds of her veil, and

claimed a place in the wide, fluttering sheen of her bodice, as she

fell, and fell, and fell, down from the marble cupolas, past the

purple shadow of the great gateway, to the wide platform where the

doves are bought and sold. And some of the pigeons followed her, and

some sat sidling on the coping, calling "_Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri_."

But those of them who knew her best fled affrighted into the golden

halo of sunshine behind the rose-red pile.