The Potter's Thumb Part 12

So the balcony was left to the sunlight, and some one who had been watching it from an archway in the bazaar, withdrew to the shadow where she rolled the little pellets of opium in her soft palms and prepared for her midday sleep. The burning of the tents had been a real piece of luck, the mem--that was she no doubt in the native dress--would be in the palace for two or three days, and women were women whether fair or dark. This one, too, looked of the right sort. Chandni's dreams that day were of a time when she would have the upper hand in Hodinuggur and become virtuous, for it paid to be virtuous under the present Government. Dalel should start a women's hospital. Then the Sirkar would give him the water every year, and the necessity for scheming would disappear. In the meantime they must not be n.i.g.g.ardly. That did not pay with women, since, if they were of the sort to take bribes, they were of the sort not easily satisfied.

CHAPTER VIII

'Come and see our mad potter before you go home, Miss Tweedie,' pleaded George Keene, 'he really is one of the shows, isn't he, Fitzgerald?'

They had been doing the sights of Hodinuggur as an afternoon's amus.e.m.e.nt; tennis in a riding-habit having no attractions for Rose.

Mrs. Boynton, however, on the plea of being a zenana lady, had elected to remain on the roof, Colonel Tweedie keeping her company until the time came for his return visit of state to the Diwan on his tower.

Lewis might have made the same choice had he been given it; but he was not. So he had preferred loafing round the ruins to toiling after problematical black buck with the sporting party, and made a pleasant companion, as even Rose admitted; being ready with information on most points, and between the references talking affably with Dan regarding the respective merit of Schultze _versus_ brown powder; thus leaving the younger couple to themselves. So his change of manner stood out with unusual distinctness as Rose turned to him for consent to George Keene's invitation.

'As you please, Miss Tweedie; we are your slaves. A mad potter sounds cheerful; he is the man, I suppose, who made that jolly little pot Keene sacrificed to my cousin's greed this morning. When you are as old as I am, my dear fellow, you will really keep the pretty things out of the sight of ladies. I always do, nowadays. There was a little woman at Peshawur, I remember--she had blue eyes--who wheedled----'

'Mrs. Boynton was most welcome to the Ayodhya pot,' blurted out George hastily.

'_Cela va sans dire!_ It is just because we love to give the pretty things to the pretty creatures that it becomes unwise to let the pretty creatures see the pretty things.'

'Then it is your fault, to begin with,' interrupted Rose hotly.

'Exactly so. I'm sure, Miss Tweedie, you have heard me say a dozen times that we men are to blame for all the weaknesses of women. They are simply the outcome of our likes and dislikes; and they will remain so until there is a perpetual leap-year.'

'For heaven's sake, Keene,' said Dan, laughing, 'lead the way to the potter's or there will be murder done on the King's Highway! Don't mind him, Miss Rose! He "only says it to annoy because he knows it teases."

He doesn't really believe anything of the kind.'

Lewis, his eye-gla.s.s more aggressive than ever, murmured something under his breath about the inevitable courses of nature, as Rose, with her head held very high, followed George Keene into the potter's yard.

It was a scene strangely at variance with the party entering it.

Indeed, old Fuzl Elahi, who had never before set eyes on an Englishwoman, would have started from his work had not George detained him with rea.s.suring words:

'He tells his yarns best when he is at the wheel,' he explained as he dragged forward a low string stool for Rose. 'And I want you to hear an awfully queer one called "The Wrestlers." You know enough of the language to understand him at any rate.'

'Miss Tweedie is a better scholar than most of us,' remarked Lewis Gordon curtly from the seat he had found beside Dan on a great log of wood; one of those logs so often to be seen in such courtyards--relics, perhaps, of some ineffectual intention of repair long since forgotten.

This one might, to all appearance, have fallen where it lay in those bygone days of which the potter told tales, when the now treeless desert had been a swampy jungle on the borders of an inland sea.

The afternoon sun, slanting over the gra.s.s palisades, played havoc with the humanity it found gathered round the wheel by sending their shadows distorted to long lengths across the yard, and tilting them at odd angles against the irregular wall of the mud hut beyond. Altogether a conglomerate pyramid of shadows, with the potter's high turban dominating it as he sat silent, spinning his wheel. And as the clay curved and hollowed beneath his moulding hand a puzzled look came to the light eyes, which, usually so shifty, were now fixed with a sort of fascination upon that strange figure in the riding-habit.

'It is not there,' he muttered uneasily, 'I cannot find a clew.'

George gave Rose the triumphant glance of a child displaying a mechanical toy when it behaves as it ought to behave. The potter was evidently in a mad mood, and might be trusted for a good performance.

'Now, Fuzl Elahi, we want "The Wrestlers," please. The Miss sahiba has never heard it.'

'How could she?' broke in the old man sharply. 'She does not belong to that old time. She is new. I cannot even tell the old tale if she sits there in the listener's place. I shall forget, the old will be lost in the new; as it is ever.'

'Change places with me, Miss Tweedie,' put in Lewis with a bored look.

'I am not regenerate out of the old Adam, am I, potter-ji?'

But as he rose the pliant hand went out in a gesture of denial. 'There is room on the log for both, and crows roost with crows, pigeons with pigeons. The big Huzoor can sit on the stool if he likes. I know him. I have seen him many and many a time.'

'Only once, potter-ji,' protested Dan, as he and Rose changed places and the wheel began to hum.

'The post is going from Logborough junction to St. Potter's burgh,'

murmured Lewis discontentedly. 'If we are going to play round games I shall go home.'

'Do be quiet, Gordon!' put in George eagerly; 'he is just beginning, and it really is worth hearing.

But Lewis was incorrigible. '_Proxime accessit_,' he went on, to Rose, 'what crime in your past incarnation is responsible for your being bracketed with me in this?'

'Oh, do listen,' protested George again.

'Listen! Who could help listening to that infernal noise?--I beg your pardon, Miss Tweedie, but it is infernal.'

It was startling, certainly. A shrill moan coming from the racing, rocking, galloping wheel as the worker's body swayed to and fro like a pendulum. It seemed to rouse a vague sense of unrest in the hearers, a dim discomfort like the remembrance of past pain. Then suddenly the story began in a high-pitched persistent voice, round which that racing, galloping rush of the wheel seemed to circle, hurrying it, pushing at it, every now and again sweeping it along recklessly.

'It was a woman seeking something, _Over hill and dale, through night and day, she sought for something_.

The wrestlers who own the world wrestled for her, On the palm of her right hand wrestling for her, "She is mine, she is mine," said one and the other, _While over hill and dale, through night and day, she sought for something_.

"O flies? you tickle the palm of my hand, Be off and wrestle down in your world."

So they brought flowers and gra.s.s as a carpet, Wrestling on as she sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something_.

"Your carpet is hot, be off, you flies."

So they brought her trees and water for cooling, Wrestling on as she sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something_.

"The gra.s.s grows long with the water," she cried, "Be off, O flies, and tickle your world."

So they brought her flocks to devour the gra.s.s, Wrestling on as she sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through day and night, seeking for something_.

"They have trodden my palm as hard as a cake."

So they caught up a plough and ploughed her hand, Wrestling on while she sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through day and night, seeking for something_.

"You have furrowed my palm; it tickles and smarts."

So they brought a weaver and wove her lint, Wrestling on while she sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something_.

"Foul play! Foul play! Look down and decide,"

"Not I, poor flies, I must search for something."

So they caught up a town to watch the game.

"He is right! He is wrong!" cried old and young.

"He is wrong! He is right!" And so war began.

While they wrestled away and she sought for something, _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something_.