In The Permanent Way Part 30

_Amor Vincit Omnia_. Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

THE WINGS OF A DOVE[50]

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.

[Footnote 50: Copyright, 1896, by Macmillan & Co.]

"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 t.i.tle, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.severations, 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. "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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, a.s.suming 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 peac.o.c.k, a peac.o.c.k 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sion in them beyond the occasion; for indeed the pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sionate 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.