In The Permanent Way Part 9

What can be closer chain of convincing proof?"

"We have made every inquiry," said his other friends soothingly, "short of informing the police; and we can find no trace of what you a.s.sert. Human sacrifices in times of great sickness may sometimes, doubtless, be on the _tapis_, but this one we believe is but figment of a still clouded brain. You must have patience. All will come clear in time."

And when he asked for his new friend, the friend in whom he had partly confided his love story, they shook their heads sadly. "He was almost last victim to cholera," they said, "the cause has lost a shining light. All the more need, Ramanund, why thou shouldst shake off these idle fancies, and be our leader to perfect freedom of thought and action."

Perfect freedom of thought and action! Ramanund as he lay slowly recovering of his brain fever wondered if he would ever have the heart to believe in such a thing again. Wondered if he would ever again dare to call himself a representative of India--that India which had killed Anunda. For that the horrible sight he had seen on the slab of stone beneath Kali's clutching arms was no dream or delusion, but a reality, he never for an instant doubted. Why they had done her to death, was the only uncertainty which tortured him as he lay hopelessly silent; silent because there was no use in words when none believed them. Had it been simply a religious sacrifice to stay the plague--a sacrifice known to thousands who would guard the secret as a divine obligation?

The choice falling, naturally enough, on one who was a stranger, and utterly helpless in the hands of her priestly relations? Or was it merely the _jogi's_ revenge for his challenge. Or was it jealousy. Had they discovered the intrigue, and was the man who had drawn the trident of Siva on his forehead also the man of whom poor little Anunda had spoken with such terror? Yet what did it matter, since she was dead? What did anything matter beside the memory of that piteous whisper, "Oh Ramu! it would be better--so----"

Ah! why had he tried to interfere with the old ways?--why had he sought for more--why had he not let her be happy while she could, in her own way?

When he left the hospital he found his mother installed in a new lodging. It would not be good for him, his friends had said, to return to the old environment while his mind was still clouded by delusions, so she had performed the utmost act of self-denial of which an Hindu woman is capable, and removed herself and her belongings from the house where she had lived her life. But she would have done anything for Ramanund at any time; how much more so now, when the G.o.ddess had shown that She still held him as her faithful servant by signs and wonders. Had She not drawn him in his sleep to Her very feet, on Her dark night?--he who would never cross Her threshold! And had he not been found there prostrate amid the blood of sacrifices, with one of Her garlands round his neck?--he who would never wear a flower!

"A garland," faltered Ramanund when she told him this exultantly. Ay!

a garland which she would cherish as her dearest possession since the G.o.ddess Herself must have thrown it around him--a garland which she should show him--if--if he ever again talked foolishness as he had talked that day when he had frightened her so, not knowing that he was already in a fever.

"Show it me now, mother," he said quietly.

So she showed it to him. The _chumpak_ blossoms were but yellow shreds upon a string, scentless, unrecognisable; here and there clogged black with the blood of sacrifice which had stained them as he fell.

"Take it away!" he cried fiercely, thrusting it from him. "Take it away! Oh! curses on the cruelty--curses on the----"

"_Jai Kali ma!_" interrupted his mother as she laid the relic back in the little casket whence she had taken it. "_Jai Kali ma!_ for She stayed the sickness."

Ramanund looked at her in dull dazed wonder. But it was true what she said. The cholera had slackened from that very time when he had been found lying at the G.o.ddess' feet.

GLORY-OF-WOMAN

This is the story of a backwater; one of those still nooks sheltered by sedges whither the sere and yellow leaves drift and rest, while the current beyond slips by swift as ever. Why this particular backwater should have called itself a Technical School of Art-needlework has nothing to do with the story. Briefly it was a sort of almshouse where twelve old Mohammedan ladies drew a poor monthly pittance of some few rupees, and sat contentedly enough year after year twining gold thread on to fine net. What became of the work when it was done has also nothing to do with the story. Perhaps it was sold to eke out the funds of a charity which did its fair share of solacing sorrow in keeping twelve pairs of small, soft, high-bred hands from the quern-handle; that last resource of the poor in India now, as it was when the Great Mogul refused to allow the importation of Western machinery on the ground that G.o.d's best gift to the poor was the millstone about their necks.

It was in this odd little courtyard, packed away decorously in the very heart of the loose-living, gambling, gold-worker's quarter, that Glory-of-Woman found shelter after many years of patient, peaceful privation; for Fakr-un-nissa (that was how her name ran in the soft courtly tongue of the most brutal of cities) was a _Syyedani_; in other words, of the poorest and proudest, too poor to bring a dowry to a husband of her own rank, too generous to take one without it, too proud to stoop to a partner beneath her--or rather too gentle, too conservative. There are hundreds such women in Delhi, and Fakr-un-nissa had been more fortunate than most, seeing that being learned in the Koran she had kept body and soul together by recitations at fast and festival in the _zenanas_, and so been spared hard labour. Perhaps it was this which made her look younger than her fifty and odd years; at all events there was scarcely a wrinkle on her small oval face, and her tall, slender figure showed no sign of age.

She was the youngest of the scholars, and every evening when the gold thread and the filmy net had been locked away in a queer little carven coffer, she was the last to slip her small feet into one of those twelve pairs of curly shoes which all day long had been ranged against the slip of wall doing duty as a screen at the door, and the last to use the rickety _dhooli_ which the charity provided for the modest conveyance of the fair ones to their homes. It provided a chaperone too, in the shape of a big lump of a girl about twenty, who sat on the steps all day chattering to the pa.s.sers-by, giggling at their jokes, and chewing _pan_. It was a queer arrangement seeing that Khadjiya Khanum, the eldest of the scholars, was past eighty; but then age had nothing to do with the fact that she was a _Syyedani_, and Juntu only a gad-about. There was another pair of shoes, however, placed in a corner apart from the rest; for it had come to be a recognised custom in the backwater that there should always be a thirteenth pair of feet ready to slip into any vacancy made by the sure decay which comes alike to rest as to unrest. And so, five years before, when Fakr-un-nissa had stepped into the last pair of shoes left by a deserted wife who had gone down into the grave leaving one forlorn daughter behind her, the old ladies had cast about to choose a suitable aspirant. Not that they really had the right to appoint any one, but because experience showed them that the claims of a gratuitous worker were seldom overlooked when opportunity came for urging them. This time the choice fell, naturally enough, on the daughter of the dead scholar. Just in her teens, she was hopelessly alone in the world; for her mother, after estranging her own people by a marriage with a Mohammedan Rajpoot, had quarrelled with her husband's family; but not before little Yasmin had been married, and had, according to the Ranghar custom, become a widow for life by the death of her childish bridegroom. For race is stronger than religion and the old Rajpoot ideas have survived conversion. So Yasmin in her turn waited for a vacancy in the shoes; or rather Noorbanu waited, since the old ladies would have nothing to do with the flowery, half-heathen name, and set themselves diligently to transform her into a "Lady-of-light." It was not altogether a successful attempt, for the girl's wild Rajpoot blood waxed rebellious sometimes; but as a rule Fakr-un-nissa's soft voice with its polished periods and careful intonation would bring her back to obedience.

"Lo! thou shouldst mind me, Heart's Delight," Glory-of-Woman would say with a smile. "Do I not stand in Thy mother's shoes? Thou art young now, Yasmina; so was I once; yet thou wilt be as I am, some day."

And Yasmina would make a face. "Well! that is better than being like Khadjiya Khanum, or Maimana Begum with her little eyes."

So the years pa.s.sed bringing no blank to the roll of high-sounding names, no break in the row of shoes, no vacant place in the semicircle of old women which chased the sunshine round the court during the cold months, and the shade during the hot ones. For they felt the stress of the seasons in their old bones. Otherwise winter and summer were alike to them; as was the green leaf and the sere since they had never seen either. But Yasmin felt the spring-time in her blood and began to weary of being at every one's beck and call.

"She is a Ranghar! Bury a dog's tail for twelve years, and it will still be crooked," said Maimana Begum. She was full to the brim of proverbial wisdom, and had a little clique of her own in that semicircle of flimsy net, glittering gold thread, and withered hands.

Mumtaza Mahul's head, and those of half a dozen Lights, or Desires, or Ornaments of the Palace, the World, or, of Woman, wagged in a.s.sent to her words. It was easy to change a name but not a nature; and had every one heard that some one had seen Noor-Banu talking to a woman with whom she ought not to have been talking?

Glory-of-Woman's thin face grew eager. "'Tis a cousin, Mai Khadjiya.

The girl told me of it and I have inquired. A cousin of the father's, married--yea! married, indeed, to a trooper, like he is, serving the _Sirkar_ somewhere. Such folks lose hold on old ways, yet mean no harm. We must not judge them as ourselves."

"_Wah_, Fakr-un-nissa! Wouldst say the Devil meant no harm next. Thy heart spoils thy faith. I marvel at thee, thou who dost fast and pray more than is needful."

The ring of bitterness in old Khadjiya's tones was explained by the fact that it was nigh the end of the first ten days' fast of Mohurrum-tide and she had not chosen that any, despite her age, should exceed her in the observance thereof. And Fakr-un-nissa's zeal had raised the price of self-complacency beyond reason.

"More than is needful!" echoed Maimana Begum with a like tartness.

"Art not rash to say so, Mai Khadjiya? Sure the virtue of some folk is situate as the tongue among thirty-two teeth. It needs care to preserve itself."

The white shrouded figures chuckled. They were not really ill-humoured, or evilly disposed towards Glory-of-Woman; it was simply that her excellent example had made all their old bodies rather fretful. "And as for the girl," continued the acrid voice, "she is a cat on the wall.

G.o.d only knows on which side she will jump down."

Fakr-un-nissa's eyes flashed, and her fingers entangled themselves in the gold thread. "Then, for sure, it is our part to make the right side more pleasant than the wrong; not to be always finding fault because she is young. Yea, 'tis so; for look you, it seems ever to me that we are to blame--that we are in her place. Five long years is it since she hath waited."

Khadjiya Khanum's hands dropped from her work and flew out in vehement crackings of every joint against ill-luck. "_Tobah, Tobah!_ (For shame, for shame!) Mistress Fakr-un-nissa. Die if thou wilt to make room for the hussy. As for me, I wait on the will of the Lord."

A murmur of a.s.sent ran through the semicircle once more.

"Nay, nay! I meant not so," protested Fakr-un-nissa hastily. "Lo, death comes to all, and goeth not by age. I meant but this,--sure 'tis hard to put it to words--that the old should make room for the young, or make the waiting bearable."

"_Tchu!_ If the heart be set on a frog, what doth it care for a fairy?" insisted the h.o.a.rder of other folk's wisdom. "Dost mean to hint that in this place the girl hath not had virtue set constantly before her, ay, and preached too? It seems to me that we have it almost to satiety. Is it not so, sisters?"

Once more the chuckle ran round the circle, and Glory-of-Woman sat still more upright. "Amongst thy other proverbs, canst not recollect the one which says, 'Between the two priests the fowl killed for dinner became unlawful to eat'?" Then the temper died from her face and she went on in a softer tone: "I find no harm in the girl, and what wrong hath she done this day more than another?"

"No more, for sure," put in Mumtaza Mahul, "since she is late at work every day; that is no new thing, is it, sisters?"

"Yet she finishes her task as quick as any,--as I, anyhow," persisted Yasmina's advocate, who having come to the gold thread late in life found it apt to knot.

"_Wah-illah!_ What a fuss about a wilful girl," put in a new voice.

"She is no worse than others, and needs restraint no more. She hath grown saucy since we gave her money instead of broken victuals. Put her back to the old footing, say I, when she had nought of her own."

Khadjiya Khanum's veiled head nodded sagely. "Thou hast it, Hameda-banu. Lo, I, for one, know not why the girl was ever given such freedom, save indeed that it tallies with Fakr-un-nissa's indecent hastening of Providence. I am for the old plan."

"And I,"--"And I,"--"And I,"--a.s.sented a chorus of set, certain voices.

Glory-of-Woman's fingers flew faster. "Then will ye drive the girl from us altogether. I know it, I feel it. Yea, I, Fakr-un-nissa, singer of the Koran till my tone failed me, remember it;--those days when some other song seemed better and one must needs sing it! Think, sisters, remember! The eyes of the body are two; the eye of the soul is one." The work had dropped from her hands which were stretched out in eager entreaty. "'Tis but patience for a year or two. Then, since there is no harm in her, she will settle down as--as I--as I did. 'Tis but the youth in her veins, and G.o.d knows that is soon past for a woman; yet one's glory remains." Her voice regaining some of its past strength, recollecting all its old skill under the stimulus of both memory and hope, filled the little courtyard,--and availed nothing.

Half an hour afterwards, struck dumb, as sensitive natures are, by the stress of pa.s.sion around her, she was watching with stupid inaction Yasmin's final vengeance on that decorous row of curly shoes behind the screening wall. To right and left, to this corner and that, they sped before the reckless young feet while the reckless young voice rose in mockery. "Lo, I wait no longer for old women's shoes. I will have new ones of my own. Khujju, and Mujju, and the rest of ye can sort them for yourselves, or go down to the grave one foot at a time as seemeth to ye best. I care not; I wait no longer."

One pair flew full in Maimana Begum's face, and then came a pause before the last pair, an odd sound between a laugh and a sob, a sudden sweep of the net veil over the shoulder, and a half-defiant nod to the old white fingers. "These shall stay, because they were my mother's, and because----"

The next moment she was gone, leaving the twelve old women sitting in the sunshine, breathless, silenced by her youth, her unreason, her fire. Even Fakr-un-nissa had no word of defence. But after a time, when Juntu, full of smiles and winks, came from the steps to aid the cackle which arose as the silencing effect of the shock wore away, Glory-of-Woman began to feel the old pain at her heart once more.

"Because they were my mother's, and because----" She could fill up the pause in two ways: "Because they are yours, and you have been kinder than the others"; "Because they should by rights be mine." Both answers were disturbing. She leaned back against the wall, pressing her thin hands to the thin breast which had known so little of a woman's life, save only that craving for another song.

"Towards the bazaar, sayest thou?" came Khadjiya's wrathfully satisfied voice. "To the bazaar, and in Mohurrum-tide, too! That means the worst, and we were none too soon in getting rid of her, Heaven be praised!"

"The cousin lives close to the _Chowk_," put in Fakr-un-nissa faintly.

"Mayhap the girl goes there."

Juntu laughed. "The cousin is a bad one; no better."

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.