Voices in the Night Part 28

To this end, by Lateefa's advice, he made it appear that Sobrai had been enticed away by Miss Leezie, and pointed out that such a tale might give rise to trouble--complicated as it was by that fatal blow of No. 34 B Company's--if it became known, especially in these restless times. Much, therefore, as he felt the injury, the disgrace to himself and his house, he was willing to hold his tongue about it provided _other people held theirs_. As for the pearls, if, after private inquiries, it was necessary for him to prove his words, he would do so.

And, in the meantime, it would only cause suspicion if Lateefa, who was known to be a member of his household, were detained.

The cantonment magistrate looked at him doubtfully; he was almost too suave, too sensible. Yet there could be no doubt that the case might be a troublesome one. As the Nawab said, Miss Leezie might be fined for keeping her house disorderly, Sobrai detained pending inquiries, and Lateefa dismissed without in any way militating against the ordinary course of justice, should the Nawab's version prove false; and if not, he was, in a way, ent.i.tled to consideration. Especially if he would keep the abduction quiet, in view of that possible murder case.

'You had better come up again in two or three days,' said the magistrate finally, 'by which time the police, who will have instructions to conduct their inquiries in strict confidence, will know if they require proofs, and you could produce the remaining pearls, of course. If they do not, the girl shall be handed over to you as her natural guardian, and that will end the matter, unless her evidence is required.'

'_Huzoor!_' said Jehan, with profuse _salaams_, 'that would end the matter to my complete satisfaction and eternal grat.i.tude.'

The look about his red betel-stained lips, as they wreathed themselves with obsequious smiles, was that of a carnivorous animal which scents its prey, and there was almost a triumph in his face as he drove back to the city with Lateefa. He felt himself powerful for once; for he knew that if once he could get Sobrai back, he could torture and kill the girl behind the purdah, which none would dare to invade; in which he was still king--as much a king as any of his ancestors.

If he could get her there!

The only difficulty in the way of that, Jehan knew and faced instantly.

If proof were needed, Lucanaster would never give up the pearls, never forbear saying that in his opinion they were the Lady-_sahib's_ and none other, unless he got the emerald in exchange. Well! he, Jehan, must have the emerald ready in case it was wanted. Then the thought that he might have so had it, ready in his own possession, but for little Sa'adut, made him call himself a fool for yielding to the child's tears.

They would have been over and forgotten in a minute; for what could the child want with an emerald ring? A useless bauble, not even fit to be a toy!

CHAPTER XII

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 Khadjee, when the child could scarcely be distracted from the puzzle to take the food which only Auntie Khojee could coax him to eat.

Patient Auntie Khojee, 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 Khojee 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 compa.s.s, 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 G.o.d; 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 Khadjee, with floods of tears, gave the only jewels she did not wear to be p.a.w.ned 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 _yunani_ system of medicine, and of things hot and things cold, of things strong and things weak, to Aunt Khadjee's great delight. Indeed, she took up most of the time in detailing her own complaints, so that, in the end, he rea.s.sured 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 Khadjee's emulsion, poor Khojee'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 Khadjee, 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 Khojee 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 G.o.d, 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 Khadjee wrote the attributes of G.o.d for the paper pills, while Khojee 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 peac.o.c.ks 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 _nakarahs_, 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 Khojee drummed valiantly for all she could, and blew her withered cheeks plump as a cherub's over the _nakarah_.

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 Khojee 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 Khadjee from even the writing of paper pellets--Khojee 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 p.a.w.nbroker, Khojee 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 Khojee 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sent when he should smile up at her and say, 'Look! _Amma-jan_,' 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 Jehan's vow never to set foot in the house again, dragged by.

'Were it not best to tell his father?' suggested Khojee, 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 pa.s.sionately. '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 Khojee 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 G.o.d, 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 Khan! 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 Khan 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 illaha--il Ullaho-bism'-illah-ur-rahman-ur-raheem_,' murmured Khojee under her breath as she sate by the cot tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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-rahman-ur-raheem_,' he echoed in his cracked little voice quite cheerfully; for these words, the a.s.sertion that G.o.d is a merciful and a clement G.o.d, 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 repet.i.tion a pleasurable importance.

'Heart of my heart! Eye of my eye! Life of my life! murmured old Khojee 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 Khojee'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.