A MOTHER'S DIRGE
But little Sa'adut was of a different opinion. He had found that
question as to which of his fingers came nearest to filling the gold
circle of the ring an absolutely entrancing one; the more so because,
from some reason or another, those fingers had suddenly taken to
wasting away. Thus, the two which fitted best one day might not be the
two which fitted best on the next.
'Lo! the ring hath bewitched him!' whimpered Aunt Khâdjee, when the
child could scarcely be distracted from the puzzle to take the food
which only Auntie Khôjee could coax him to eat.
Patient Auntie Khôjee, who would have sate all day and all night beside
the string cot like that other woman's figure, if there had not been so
many things which only she could do, now that they had no servant at
all. So Noormahal alone, her face half hidden in her veil, watched the
child hungrily; since from some reason or another, as mysterious as the
sudden wasting away which had come to the poor little body, a fretful
intolerance of clasping arms and caressing hands had come to the poor
little mind. The child cried when his mother held him, and only lay
content among the cushions of state which Khôjee brought out for daily
use recklessly, so that the little Heir's resting-place should be as
soft as a King's.
There was nothing, indeed, of such care and comfort as these women
could compass, that Sa'adut lacked; nothing, in fact, of any kind which
even richer folk of their sort could have given him; for they too would
not have had the least elementary knowledge of what nursing could or
could not do for such sickness as his. Before that mysterious
slackening of grip on life, these women, the one who watched, the one
who worked, the one who whimpered beside that cot set in the sunshine,
were absolutely helpless. They knew nothing. They could not even tell,
day by day, if the child were worse or better. If he slept a while, or
drank a spoonful of milk, they praised God; and once when they had
propped him up with pillows, and set a gay new cap jauntily on his damp
hair, they almost wept for joy to think he was better. And when the
consequent fatigue made it all too evident that they were mistaken,
they never recognised that the change for the worse was due to the
sitting-up.
It was after this that Khâdjee, with floods of tears, gave the only
jewels she did not wear to be pawned in order that a _hakeem_ might be
called in. And then she cried herself sick over the loss, so that, when
the medicine-man _did_ come, he had two patients instead of one. He was
a smiling old pantaloon who had been court physician, and as such had
attended Sa'adut's great-grandfather; who talked toothlessly of the
_yunâni_ system of medicine, and of things hot and things cold, of
things strong and things weak, to Aunt Khâdjee's great delight. Indeed,
she took up most of the time in detailing her own complaints, so that,
in the end, he reassured them hastily as to the child, by saying that
all he needed was a conserve, a mere conserve! But it proved to be a
conserve of palaces, containing thirty-six ingredients, the cheapest of
which was beaten silver leaf! So what with it and Auntie Khâdjee's
emulsion, poor Khôjee's housekeeping purse was empty after a few doses.
But she sate up o' nights spinning, and so gathered enough to call in
another medicine-man. This one was of a different sort; long-bearded,
solemn, with sonorous Arabic blessings. He had ordered paper pellets
with the attributes of the Almighty inscribed on them.
These, at least, were not expensive; these, at least, were within the
reach of poverty--even the abject, helpless poverty of these high-born
ladies. So Auntie Khâdjee, forsaking her tinsel cap-making, recalled
the teachings of her youth, and by the aid of the smoke-stained Koran,
from which she chanted her portion like a parrot every morning, traced
the words on to tissue paper with difficulty--she suffered from
rheumatic gout, though she did not know it was anything but old
age--and Khôjee rolled them into pills, and covered them with silver
leaf and sugar, and put them in the sweeties, which were the only thing
the child cared for. So he would swallow Mercy, and Truth, and Charity,
and Justice, and Strength, as he lay in the sunshine on the cushions of
state playing with the ring on which was scratched, '_By the Grace of
God, Defender of the Faith_.'
The courtyard was very quiet, very empty, as yet, for the child was not
yet near enough to death to be an attraction to the neighbours. He had
been ill so long, and now was a little worse; that was all those three
women told themselves. They had no means of realising that the disease,
long-sluggish, had roused itself to fierce energy; that the days,
almost the hours, were numbered.
So Noormahal watched the child's least movement day and night, and
Khâdjee wrote the attributes of God for the paper pills, while Khôjee
worked her old fingers sore, or tramped about openly to do the
marketing. But no matter how pressed for time she was, no matter how
far from home, her old hands or feet hurried up, so that they should be
free for another task at sunset; a task which, so long as they had had
a servant, had never been omitted, and must not be omitted now--must
never be omitted so long as these crumbling walls and the wide empty
courtyard held the heir to a Kingship. And this task was the sounding
of the _naubut_ from the gateway where the stucco peacocks still spread
their plaster tails.
In the old days, this ceremony of sounding the royal kettledrums as a
sign that majesty lived within, had been quite an imposing one. Then, a
_posse_ of liveried servants and soldiers had gone up into the _naubat
khana_, and whacked away at a whole row of slung kettledrums, and
blared away at the royal _nakârahs_, until all the city knew that
sunset had found the King still on his throne. But for some years back
it had been very different; a half-hearted apologetic drubbing on one
dilapidated drum, a breathless blowing of an uncertain horn had been
all. And now, when only one poor tired old woman limped up the broken
stairs, it was a very feeble claim to royalty, indeed, that echoed into
the courtyard below, though Khôjee drummed valiantly for all she could,
and blew her withered cheeks plump as a cherub's over the _nakârah_.
Feeble as it was, however, it could be heard, and it brought comfort
even to Noormahal's hungry heart; for it meant that the child was still
on his throne at sunset. And that was all the world to those lonely
women, shut up inconceivably, helplessly, from all hope, almost from
all desire for help from that outside world, into which only Aunt
Khôjee ventured at times timorously; and only to return poorer, more
helpless than she went out.
Once, however, when--at the risk of a fit of hysterics, which
might incapacitate Aunt Khâdjee from even the writing of paper
pellets--Khôjee had persuaded her to allow the little knot of silver
earrings without which no court lady could be considered decently
clothed, to pay a temporary visit to the pawnbroker, Khôjee had come
back from that outside world with a new look of hope on her face.
A piece of luck had befallen her. She had met, quite by chance, an old
servant of her mother's, who, when the court had been broken up, had
taken service as _ayah_ with the _mems_. And this old dame happened to
have in her possession a priceless European medicine for just such
delicate children as Sa'adut.
A _mem_ had given it to her, she said, when her child needed it no
more. She did not add that the child, despite the Brand's essence of
beef and the care of three doctors, had wasted away into its grave
quite as quickly as Sa'adut was doing with neither, and that the
unopened tins had been part of her perquisites when the stricken
parents had sought distraction from grief in three months' leave. She
only said that they were worth rupees on rupees, but that Khôjee might
have them for three, because it was for the little Heir. So the patient
bent figure and the limp had come back to that cot set in the sunshine,
with the feeling that now, at last, the child who lay among the faded
cushions of state _must_ pick up strength, since all the world knew
that whatever faults the _Huzoors_ had, they were clever doctors--all
too clever perhaps!
But there could be no danger of poison here. This was the actual
medicine a _mem_ had given her own child. This must be the real thing.
Still, to make sure, they continued the paper pellets, since Mercy and
Truth, and Justice and Charity must counteract any nefarious intent!
Even with this mixed diet of the East and West, of essence of faith and
essence of beef, Sa'adut gained nothing. He continued to lose, though
the women refused to see it.
For the courtyard was still quiet. Perhaps once or twice a day some
gad-about neighbour in passing would look in, and for half an hour or
so after she had left, Noormahal's big brooding black eyes would be on
the door of the women's courtyard, with a fierce fear in them. The fear
lest she should see the shadow of another new-comer on the angled brick
screen before the door; the screen built on purpose to show such
warning shadows. In other words, the fear that those strange eyes
should have thought it worth while to send other eyes to look on a
sight that would not be long seen, either in sunshine or shadow.
But the stillness would remain unbroken, and her gaze would go back to
Sa'adut, ready for her to smile assent when he should smile up at her
and say, 'Look! _Amma-jân_,' because he had managed to jam the ring
hard and fast over some combination of fingers.
The days and nights were cloudless, the air kindly and warm, and in the
silence which comes with the darkness--even to a large town when there
is no wheeled traffic in it, and the footsteps of men have ceased from
going up and down the city--the only sound which came to disturb the
courtyard was the shriek of the railway whistle,--an almost incredible
sound in that environment.
So the days and nights following on Jehân's vow never to set foot in
the house again, dragged by.
'Were it not best to tell his father?' suggested Khôjee, the
peace-maker, one evening when she came down breathless from that futile
beating of kettledrums and blowing of horns, to find Sa'adut without
his usual smile for her efforts. 'He is fond of his father, and it
might rouse him.'
Noormahal leant forward, and gripped the cot with both hands. 'No!' she
said passionately. 'May I not keep this myself? He is no worse, fool!
Thou didst not sound the _naubut_ well, that is all. I could scarce
hear it myself.'
That might well be, Aunt Khôjee thought humbly, seeing that she was not
used to the beating of drums and the blowing of horns, and that both
were cracked and dilapidated almost past beating and blowing. Still,
even she would not allow the child to be worse, not even in the watches
of the night, when a body's thoughts cannot always stay themselves on
the will of God, when railway whistles and other strange sounds set the
mind questioning what will come, and why it should come.
And this night, just at the turn of twelve, when the night of a past
day turns into the night of a coming one, a voice rose on the darkness
as it sometimes did; the voice of a telegraph _peon_ seeking an unknown
owner for a telegram.
'O Addum! O Addum Khân! dweller in the Place of Sojourners in the
quarter of Palaces! Awake! Arise! O Addum! a message hath come for
thee. Awake! Arise! O Sleepers! awake and say where is Addum Khân for
whom a message to go on a journey hath come.'
So, on and on insistently, the man Addum--quaintly namesake of the man
in whose name all men go on the great journey--was sought; until the
rattle of a door-chain being unhasped brought silence, and the
knowledge that Addum had received his message from the darkness.
'_La illâha--il Ullâho-bism'-illâh-ur-rahmân-ur-raheem_,' murmured
Khôjee under her breath as she sate by the cot trimming the smoky
little rushlight. For the cry on Addum had roused Sa'adut from a
half-doze and brought opportunity for more paper pellets.
'_Bismillah-ur-rahmân-ur-raheem_,' he echoed in his cracked little
voice quite cheerfully; for these words, the assertion that God is a
merciful and a clement God, are the Mohammedan grace before meat as
well as a prayer, and the four years, four months, and four days, at
which age children are taught them as their initiation into the Church,
were still close enough to Sa'adut's sum-total of life, to give the
repetition a pleasurable importance.
'Heart of my heart! Eye of my eye! Life of my life! murmured old Khôjee
again. 'Lo! swallow it down, my uttermost beloved, and sleep.'
She had the child to herself for the moment, since Noormahal at her
earnest entreaty had hidden her face altogether in her veil, and, with
her head on the foot of the bed, had gone off into a brief slumber of
exhaustion. So the old arms and the old lips could show all the
tenderness of the old heart, which for nearly seventy years had beat
true to every womanly sympathy within those four prisoning walls.
By the light of the rushlight Sa'adut's big black eyes showed bright
from the cushions of state. So did the emerald in the ring.
'Why didst not sound the _naubat_ to-day, lazy one?' he said suddenly,
as if the omission had just struck him. 'Go! sound it now--dost hear?
Sa'adut wants it.'
He had not spoken so clearly for days, and Khôjee's smile came swift.
'Nay, sonling, it was sounded,' she answered caressingly. 'Thou didst
sleep, perchance. Sleep again, Comfort of my heart! It will come, as
ever, at sunset.
'But Sa'adut wants it now!--he will have it! he will be asleep at
sunset. Sound it now! Sound it now, I tell thee, thou ugly one. Sound
the King's _naubat_ for Sa'adut.'
The old vehemence, the old imperious whimper brought delight and dismay
in a breath to the listener.
'Yea, yea, sweetest!' she began breathlessly as the old signs of tears
showed themselves--'have patience, pretty. Old Khôjee will surely
obey--no tears, darling--she will sound the _naubat_ even now.'
She glanced round in her consolations hurriedly. Noormahal still slept
at the bed's foot. Khâdjee's snores--she had wept herself into the
physical discomfort of a cold in the head--rose regularly from an
archway. All else was silence. Every one slept! Even the city! Yes! she
would risk it--risk disturbing the neighbours--risk unknown penalties
from the breach of unknown by-laws. The child must be saved from tears.
So, hastily, she caught up the rushlight, and leaving the courtyard to
the moonlight, stumbled, fast as her limp would let her, up the narrow
stairs to the _naubat khana_. The rats scuttled from it as she picked
her way through the fallen kettledrums that had once swung from the
roof, brave in tassels and tinsels; that were now cracked, mouldering,
the parchment rent and gnawed. One still hung dejectedly at the farther
end, and towards it she passed rapidly. Even on it, however, a rat,
driven to extremities in that hungry house, had been attempting to
dine; its eyes showed like specks of light as it ran a little way up
the tarnished tinsel rope on which the drum swung, and awaited her
oncoming.
Now Aunt Khôjee, like many another woman East and West, was desperately
afraid of rats; yet the _naubat_ had to be sounded. She shut her eyes
to give her greater courage, and put all her little strength into her
blow.
It was too much for the rotten rope. The kettledrum clashed to the
ground with hollow reverberations worthy of the old days, and the old
woman's frightened cry did duty as the _nakârah_.
But behind both sounds came a child's laugh, an elfin, uncanny laugh;
and, as she paused--in her flight downwards--at the stair-head, she saw
in the moonlight below an elfin, uncanny figure sitting bolt upright
among the cushions of state, clapping the little hands that held the
glistening signet of royalty, and chuckling to itself gleefully, while
Noormahal, roused, yet still bewildered, looked about her for the
cause, and Aunt Khâdjee from the archway gave pitiful shrieks of alarm.
'The _naubat_! the King's _naubat_! My _naubat_! Sa'adut's _naubat_!'
The cracked, hoarse little voice went on and on till it became
breathless, and after it ceased, the sparkle of the ring still showed
in the little applauding hands.
'What is't?--what didst do?' asked Noormahal reproachfully. 'Thou
hast made him in a sweat. Lo! heart's delight, let me wipe thy
forehead--'tis only _Amma jân_--thy _Amma_,' she added coaxingly. But
there was no need for that. Sa'adut lay cuddled up on his pillows,
smiling, complaisant, both hands clasped over his ring.
'Sa'adut's ring,' he whispered as if it were a great joke, a splendid
childish secret that was his to keep or tell, 'and Sa'adut's _naubut_.
His own. He will keep them himself.'
'Lo! _bibi_,' faltered old Khôjee apologetically--'it will do him no
harm. See! it was of himself he rose, and now he would sleep. He is
better, not worse. _Bismillah!_'
'_Ur-rahmân-ur-raheem_,' came drowsily from the child's lips, finishing
that new-taught grace, asserting that new-found dignity. So, with that
look of possession on his face, he fell asleep again.
He was still sleeping when, an hour or two after dawn, the tailor's
wife from over the alley came in on her way bazaarwards, to see how the
child had fared through the night, and ask what the noise might have
been which had awakened her house. Had more of the old palace fallen?
Khôjee, who was already spinning for dear life, set the question by. A
great fear was in her old heart, because of the evil portent of the
falling drum; but none because of the truth, writ clear on that
sleeping figure, that it would never wake again.
So Khâdjee was still writing out the attributes of God, and Noormahal
scraping out another dose of the wonderful western medicine from the
bottom of a tin of Brand's essence against the wakening that would
never come.
'He is more like his grandfather than his father,' remarked the tailors
wife as she looked at the child, 'If he had been King, he would have
been better than Jehân.'
She made the assertion calmly, and though Aunt Khôjee looked up,
doubtful of its ambiguity, no one denied or contradicted it. So the
tailor's wife passed out of these four walls, leaving them empty of all
things strange.
For the very shadows they threw were familiar. All her life long,
Noormahal's big black eyes had watched the purple one of the eastern
wall lessen and lessen before the rising of the sun, and the purple one
of the western wall grow behind the setting of the sun. Only on the
angled screen at the door the shadows were sometimes new; these shadows
of some one coming from outside.
There was one on it now; clear, unmistakable. No! not one; there were
two! The shadows of two strange women muffled in their veils, coming in
as if they had the right to enter.
A quick terror flew to Noormahal's eyes at the sight!
The tailor's wife had not been long in spreading her news.
In an instant Noormahal was on her feet fighting the air wildly with
her hands.
'It is not true!' she cried passionately; 'it is not true!' And then
the mockery of her own denial, the certainty that it was so, came to
her even without a look at the child, and her voice rose piercingly in
the mother's dirge--
'O child! who taught thee to deceive?
O child! who taught thee thus to leave?'
Old Khôjee was at her side in a second, beating down her hands. 'Not
yet! Not yet! Noormahal! Oh! wait a while. It cannot be yet! He
sleeps--he is not dead.'
True, he slept still, cuddled into the cushions of state. But the look
of possession had gone from the childish face, though the signet of
royalty had found its proper place; for it hung loose on the forefinger
of his right hand.
'Some one must call his father,' whimpered Khâdeeja Khânum; even amid
the tempest of grief she was mindful, as ever, of etiquette. 'He must
be here to receive the last breath.'
So it came to pass that when Jehân returned with Lateefa from
cantonments to the evil-smelling courtyard in which his bachelor
quarters jostled Dilarâm's balcony, he found the call awaiting him. It
had come two hours before, the messenger said, so it might be too late.
But it was not.
Jehân entering, found the courtyard half full of women. The sun was
pouring down into it, showing the stolid yet watchful faces of the
circle of those--unveiled by reason of their lower rank--who were
gathered round the bed set in the centre. Khôjee and Khâdjee--the
former with the tears chasing each other down her cheeks forlornly as
she shaded the child with the royal fan and said '_Ameen_' to the old
mullah who was chanting the death chapter of the Koran, the latter with
unreserved sobbings--crouched at the head.
But Noormahal neither sobbed nor said '_Ameen_.' Half on the ground,
half on the low bed, she lay still, her face hidden about the child's
feet.
She did not stir even when Jehân's voice rose in unrestrained--and for
the time being sincere--lamentation, in piteous upbraidings of all and
everything. Why had he not been told? Why had he not been sent for
sooner?
Lateefa, who had entered with him, gave a quick look of absolute
dislike and contempt at his principal. 'Best thank God they sent for
thee at all,' he muttered as he passed to the head of the cot. He had
gibed and laughed at the tragedy till then, treating it--as he treated
his kites--as a mere nothingness. But this--above all, old Khôjee's
forlorn face--struck home.
'Best thank God they let thee be in time to claim thy son,' he muttered
again, adding, as he bent his keen face closer to the child's, 'and
thou art but just in time!'
But just in time! Even as he spoke one of the stolid watching women
nodded and looked at her neighbour interrogatively. The neighbour
looked at the face on the cushions, and nodded also.
So, as if by common consent, the first faint whimper which heralds the
true wailing began.
Khôjee paused in an '_Ameen_' with a gasp, Khâdjee let her sobs grow
into a cry.
But Noormahal neither stirred, nor uttered sound. Only as she lay over
the child's feet a little shiver ran through her limbs as if she, too,
were passing from the cold world.
An hour afterwards she was still lying so, face downwards, unrewarding,
though they had moved her to the bed where Khâdeeja Khânum had spent so
many hours in making tinsel caps.
One of them, which she had made for Sa'adut's four years, four months,
and four days' reception into the church of the Clement and Merciful,
was on the child's head now; for the tenders of the dead had prepared
him for his burial.
Khôjee had brought out the few treasures of faded brocade the ruined
palace still held, to fold about him softly, and with a sob which
seemed to rend her heart, had bidden the signet of royalty be left on
the little Heir's forefinger against the time when his mother should
rouse herself to take her last look at him.
The wailers had departed to return later on. Khâdjee had succumbed to
sorrow, and sought seclusion. Even Jehân had gone; the last to go, save
Lateefa, who lingered half-indifferent, half-compassionate, impatient
of poor Khôjee's tears over a loss that had been inevitable for months,
yet not liking to leave them to be shed in absolute solitude.
'Thou art kind, Lateef,' she said at last. ''Tis woman's work, not
man's: yet without thee, brother----' Her soft old eyes met his, and
the tears in them seemed to find their way into his heart and melt it.
'Thou art welcome, sister,' he said gravely. 'I think all is as it
should be now--I see naught amiss.'
His eyes, as he stood at the foot of the bed whereon the dead child
lay, travelled approvingly upwards, and Khôjee's followed suit. But
hers went no further than the little waxen hands resting so straightly,
so demurely on the brocade; for the lack of something on them made her
start forward incredulously, search in wild haste in the folds beneath
the still fingers, and then fall with a cry at Lateefa's feet, clasping
them, kissing them.
'Give it back--it was there but now! If thou hast it--if he bade thee
take it--gave it back!'
He stood looking down at her with a curious expression of shame on his
face. 'It,' he echoed. 'What is it?'
'Thou knowest,' she pled piteously. 'The ring--she will die if it is
not there. She cannot lose both, she cannot lose all. Give it back for
these first days--give it for comfort, if for naught else, or she will
die. O Lateef! do this for old Khôjee--ugly Khôjee! Lo! I have asked
naught of men, nor husband, nor child; for I had naught to give. Yet I
ask this--have pity--brother!'
He stooped to unclasp her hands with an almost tender look.
'Thy like has more to give mine than thou dost think, sister,' he said;
'God knows even Lateef----' He broke off with a half-impatient gesture.
'But this is past hoping for. If Jehân wishes----' He paused again, and
shook his head. 'Tell her thou hast put it by for safety--she will be
too full of grief to prove thy words--that will give time, see you----'
Khôjee, still on her knees, looked up doubtfully. 'Time,' she echoed,
and then her face lit up with hope. 'Time--then thou wilt try! thou
wilt speak to Jehân! thou wilt bring it back if thou canst! Yea, I will
tell her--I will tell the lie if thou wilt promise. Lateef! this much
thou _wilt_ do, promise to try. On the Koran, on thy head, thou wilt
swear, if thou _canst_ do this thing.'--Her old lips were on his feet,
kissing them passionately, and he gave an uneasy, almost bitter laugh.
'Not on the Koran, sister,' he said evasively, 'nor on my head. Those
be God's work. Lateef had naught to do with the making of either. He
hath no hold on them, or their vagaries, and I swear by naught that is
not sure.'
'Then swear by what thou likest,' she put in swiftly. 'Lo! it is not
much I ask--not even that thou wilt bring it back, but that thou wilt
try--for me who cannot try, for helpless Khôjee shut in these four
walls. Promise, Lateef, that if thou _hast_ the chance--nay! I will not
let thee go till thou dost promise.'
There was a pause, and then he laughed--his own contemptuous, musical
laugh. 'If the chance comes! Yea! I will promise that. On my kites I
promise, since they be my creatures to fly or fail as I choose. Let be,
good Khôjee. If I am to do aught, thou must let me go.'
She rose reluctantly. 'On thy kites, Lateef? That is a light oath.' She
spoke in vague wonder.
'Heavy for me, sister,' he replied gaily, 'since they be all Lateef has
for children--all of his own fashioning to leave behind him when he
dies!'
So, with a nod towards the dead child, he passed out of the courtyard
where the shadows were lengthening for sunset.
But there would be no _naubat_ to sound that evening, so Khôjee
crouched down between the two beds where the mother and the child lay
both silent, both unheeding, and covering her face with her veil,
thought how best to tell the lie when Noormahal should rouse to ask the
question.