The Potter's Thumb Part 31

Perhaps she might be able to kill both, and yet have some strength left for Chandni--Chandni who had told her so many lies. For there was a fire now in Azizan's light eyes, which quite accounted for the consideration which the courtesan had shown the girl when, more than once, Chandni had awakened to find them looking at her. Of course, by and by a stop must be put to this masquerading through the village, but at present it would be unsafe, when so much depended on good luck, and thus Azizan had hitherto been unmolested. Indeed, Chandni herself had taken malicious pleasure in countenancing current tales of the return of the potter's dead daughter; and once when Khush-hal Beg, during his son's absence, had deemed it well to single her out for favour, she had sent the h.o.a.ry old sinner back to his swinging cradle like a quaking jelly from abject fear of what he might meet by the way. Still it was only when she was on the roof with the old Diwan that she ventured to speak in whispers of a time when this mad girl should be taught her own impotence for good or evil.

So in the meantime, the freedom from interruption, and the dread which the mere thought of her existence roused in the simple village folk, conspired to increase Azizan's faith in her own supernatural power, and as she sat in the growing dusk no doubt of her own success a.s.sailed her; for the little sahib had returned--during the night. At least so said the old man, who, with all his craziness, was to be trusted.

Therefore, in less than an hour, he would know all, since the day was dying down quickly; smothered in a hot haze-like smoke. There was not a shadow anywhere; only a dull darkness growing momentarily as the dull darkness had grown upon her mind day by day. For all that she had the power; the potter might mould the clay, the palace folk might plot and plan, but she, the woman with the evil eye, was stronger than they!

'Aziz! Oh! thou art there still, Heaven be praised!' The cry roused her from a sort of dream to find the old man beside her, breathless as from running, his mild face, seen dimly in the darkness, full of piteous entreaty. 'Go not from me this night, oh Heart's-joy! Leave me not again in the storm!'

'The storm! What storm, poor fool!' she asked indifferently.

He laid his trembling hand on her arm. 'Listen! Thou canst hear the noise of many waters. They came before, so the fathers sang, and made a new world. Down yonder at the palace, where thou goest, 'twill run like the race of a river, and the stones of the old wall where thou liest will be crumbling into it. Go not there to-night, oh, Light of mine Eyes! It is safe here on the heights.'

'There is no water,' she answered, with a short laugh, 'there will be none; save in the ca.n.a.l. The sahib will see to that now he hath returned.'

'How can he see when he is dead----'

'Dead,' she echoed. 'Bah! thou liest! He is not dead. There is no water, and there is no death----'

She broke off suddenly, silenced by his look as he stood with one hand raised as if listening. In the breathless air a strange whispering reached her ear, and like an arrow from a bow, she flew to the gap in the palisade, whence she could see the dip between the ruins and the ca.n.a.l bank, and beyond that silver streak again to the bungalow dotted down upon the level plain.

'_Dohai! Dohai!_'

The Great Cry--the blind human cry of her race for justice burst from her instinctively. The next moment found her bare-faced in the open on her way to prove if the old man spoke truth in death also.

'Azizan! go not! Leave not the House of Safety! It is the Flood of the Most High! Go not, oh! go not!'

His unavailing plea came back to him unanswered from the night which had fallen suddenly, as the dust from below sprang electrically up to meet the dust above and hide everything from sight. But through the thick veil that rush of water rose louder and louder as the girl sped on her way. It was true what the old man had said, and she had seen it.

There was a river by the old palace. Was the other thing true also? Was the sahib dead? Had they killed him? The darkness lightened a little as she ran over the bridge so that she could see a great swirl of yellow water shooting past the piers not three inches below the keystone of the arch. Lower down it had found the open sluice-gates, hurled them from their foundations and carried them with it as it burst through the embankment weakened by the new-made cuttings of the villagers, and had raced in a mad river to fling itself against the mound of Hodinuggur, tearing down yard after yard of crumbling sand as it turned abruptly from the collision, to try conclusions by a flank movement. Azizan saw none of this; nothing but the dim white arches where she had waited once before.

'Sahib! Sahib!'

No answer, and in her eagerness she crouched down at the closed door, tapping softly.

'Sahib! Sahib!'

There was only a quarter-inch planking between them, that was all, for they had left him as he fell till some other white-face should come to accept the responsibility of interference. Yet it did the work as effectually as all the barriers of custom and culture which had divided them in life.

'Sahib! Sahib!'

Could it be true? It must be true that he was dead; otherwise he would surely hear her cry!

'Sahib! Sahib!'

As she crouched she might have put out her hand and taken his, but for that trivial quarter-inch of wood between them; but he did not hear.

Because he was dead? Perhaps, yet even in life he had not heard, he had not known. The light in the potter's yard, lit by her pa.s.sionate love and care, had only served to arouse his contempt. Better darkness, he had thought, than such a light as that.

'Sahib! Sahib!'

At last she rose and stumbled across to the servants' quarters, seeking the certainty which she must gain somehow. A light glimmered behind the gra.s.s palisades, sacred to her namesake's modesty, and from within came the eager yet subdued tones of gossiping women. Azizan crept close, and crouching in on herself held her breath to listen.

'Lo! I content myself with goodwill towards all men,' came the widow's voice self-complacently. 'Yet, O Motiya! wife of Ganesha the groom, I make bold to aver that this is no more or less than a judgment on----'

'What! Dost think it to be really the Flood of Destruction?' broke in Motiya, whimpering.

'_Ai fool!_ Who cares for the water? It flows south, not north; so we are safe. No! 'tis the sahib's death. Mayhap 'twill teach other folks'

relations not to be in such a hurry to thrust themselves into other folks' service against the custom----'

'But----'

'_Ai teri!_ wouldest deny my right--the widow's right? _Ai! mere adme_, thy sahib is dead, and there is none to see justice done and employ thy relations! _Ai! mere dil murgya! murgya!_'

As the renewed sense of her wrongs rose in the familiar wail, the women from within joined in it dutifully. Without, the girl, with her hands clenched and her wild eyes straining into the shadows, seemed to be caught and carried away by it also, and her shrill voice echoed theirs instinctively.

'_Ai! mere sahib murgya. Ai! mere dil murgya! murgya!_'

The women, scared to death at the unexpected aid, stopped suddenly, and the young voice rose alone.

'_Ai! mere dil murgya! murgya!_'

The sound of her own wailing brought home to her the truth, rousing her pa.s.sion, her grief, her anger, to madness; and in one swift desire for revenge she turned and ran.

'_Mere sahib murgya!_'

The wail echoed over the wild swirl of the flood-water as she crossed the bridge once more. It was trembling now before its doom as the water rose inch by inch. And could that be rain? that large warm drop upon her hand, so large that it ran down between her fingers? Another on her upturned face, blinding her. If those were raindrops, and many of them came, it might, indeed, be the deluge of the Most High. And if it were?

Had not the end of all things come to her already? Yet as she ran she looked curiously into the sky. Not a cloud was visible; only an even haze of grey vapour, through which now and again a great drop splashed down upon her, warm and soft.

'_Ai! mere sahib! mere sahib!_'

No more than a sob now; yet even that she hushed as the Mori gate showed black before her. Should it be Chandni? No, not yet; but for Dalel and the hopes of him, the woman would have cared nothing for water or no water. So she pa.s.sed on through the causeway. One or two villagers, hurrying, like her, through the darkness, talking in scared whispers of the strange flood, fell back from her path terrified. A knot of men in the bazaar huddled aside as she slipped by like a shadow; even in the courtyard of the palace the watchmen, gathered round one pipe for the comfort of companionship in such uncanny times, gave no more than an uneasy glance at the half-seen figure which they did not care to challenge.

Should it be Khush-hal Beg in his swinging cradle? He had betrayed her mother, and the knife she carried was long enough to reach through the fat to his heart, long enough to do the mischief, when held in reckless hands, even if aid came to the unwieldy body. No! it should not be Khush-hal either. Let him wait a while since he had done little to harm the sahib. The true quarry lay higher in the old man up yonder in his nest like a bird of prey; seeing all things with his keen old eyes, plotting and planning with his wise old brain. But for him, the others had not been; but for him the sahib would have been alive, and now he was dead. Each step of the stairs as she laboured up them seemed to need that cry of 'dead! dead!' to help her on her way; and they left her breathless on the first platform of the roof, where those huge drops of rain were falling in audible thuds upon the hard plaster.

Faster and faster. This was not rain. Something must have given way in the sky, and, as the old man had said, it was '_Tofhan Ehlai_.' So much the better for her purpose. In the arcades on either side faint figures glimmering white in the shadows showed where some of the servants were sheltering. So much the better, also, since she might find the old man alone; not that she cared for that either, save in its greater a.s.surance of success. He would not be in the pavilions at this time, but in the room to the north end of the tower, of which she had heard the women speak. The room with the big jutting balcony whence you could see north, east, and west, everything except Hodinuggur itself.

By this time the raindrops, falling faster and faster, had become a sheet of water streaming down straight with such curious force that she staggered under it. A little sun-baked fireplace against which she stumbled dissolved to sheer mud ere she had recovered her balance, and a loosened brick on the last step upwards rolled down, beaten from its place ere her foot touched it. It was the Great Flood indeed, though every moment the sky grew lighter and she could now see her way clearly.

'_Mere sahib murgya! murgya!_'

She kept the wild fire glowing in heart and eyes by the murmur, until through an open door she saw what she sought--an old man seated at a chess-table, still as a statue. With a cry she darted forward, s.n.a.t.c.hing at the knife in her girdle, then paused abruptly. Where was the hurry? he could not move. So with a half laugh of exultation she turned back deliberately to bolt the door--a strong door, as befitted one giving on the favourite sleeping-place of despotism. It would need time to force an entry there; more time than she would need to do her work. Meanwhile she must look at this arbiter of her fate ever since she was born--this tyrant whom she had never seen. What! was that all?

that wreck of a man, with his head upon his breast? but as she came nearer, the light, such as it was, from the wide-arched balcony, aided by a cresset smoking in a niche, showed her something of the youth in his eyes. Perhaps it showed him something of the age in hers, for the Diwan paused in his first haughty challenge, then began again.

'Hast come to frighten me, as thou frightenest the villagers, oh!

Azizan, daughter of the potter's daughter?' he asked coldly. He was defenceless, and he knew it, save for craft of the brain.

'Nay! I have come to kill thee, Zubr-ul-Zaman, Diwan of Hodinuggur,'

she replied; 'to kill thee as thou hast killed the sahib.'

A sound which might have been a laugh reached her as she took a step nearer, brandishing the knife; perhaps it was that which made her pause again in her turn; for laughter was hardly what she expected.

'I did not kill the sahib, fool. He killed himself for love of the mem sahib: the fair mem who took the Ayodhya pot.'

The girl fell back the step she had taken, and the hand bearing the knife went up to her forehead in a gesture matching her sharp cry of pain. The truth struck home; yet she caught at denial desperately.