Voices in the Night Part 40

And the next night Khojee would have no help at all. How she managed was a marvel, but she did manage. Even Khadeeja Khanum herself, had she been able to make comments, could scarcely have found fault with any lack of ceremony. And she would certainly have been gratified by her dead-clothes; for Khojee, with that terrible remorse at her heart, spared nothing from the costume of ceremony. The green satin trousers should deal no more death. And even the silver earrings, the few trumpery silver bracelets, parting from which would have been worse than death to the dead woman, she replaced with facsimiles in 'German.'

For silver could be purified by fire, and the living had need of it; while who knew whether the corpse could tell the difference? Not likely, since G.o.d was good, and therefore there was no need to be on one's guard against cheating in His Paradise! So, in a way, 'German'

was as good as silver there! For poor Khojee's white soul arrived at right conclusions by curious methods; she worked by them also, and, when that second dawn came, it was a very tired old woman who crept to the string bed set against the door.

But she rose again early, and telling Noormahal that, since there was now no one in the house but herself while marketings were going on, she had better keep the inner door closed, went off to the bazaar. She limped more than ever because of her tiredness, yet she sped through the streets quicker than usual, since, for the first time in her life, she went with her face uncovered. There was a breathlessness in that old face, and the old hands that held the knotted corner of her veil, wherein she had tied every available morsel of silver, every sc.r.a.p of gold lace or ornament for which even a farthing could be got, were clasped on each other with almost painful tension.

'Lo, brother!' she said mildly to the goldsmith, 'what matters a _ruthi_ or two. Weigh it quick, and give what is just. What is just!

that is all I ask.'

It was not much, that bare justice, but it was something; and there was still a rupee or two over from the 'Essence of Happiness,' from the unavoidable expenses of that secret burial. So she pa.s.sed hurriedly to a grain-merchant's shop.

Here she felt lost for a moment, lost, in the magnitude of what she needed to one whose purchases for many years had been a bare day's supply.

'It is for a wedding, likely?' asked the grain-dealer curiously.

'Likely,' she echoed softly. Her very brain felt tired, and it seemed to her confusedly as if, after all, it might be a wedding. The Lord-_sahib_ might send help, Noormahal might be saved, Jehan might come back to her. All things were possible to patience; and she, Khojee, was patient enough, surely?

'Thou must send it in an hour's time,' she said to the corn-dealer, her head being still clear enough for that one single purpose of hers, 'then I shall be back. And, look you! I have paid coolie hire. There must be no asking for more.'

That was a necessary warning, since, when she reached home, every farthing would have been spent.

All but one was spent, when she paused beside the public scribe who had set up his desk at a corner where two bazaars met.

'Is it a letter, mother?' he asked of the old woman who put out a hand against the wooden pillar of the neighbouring shop as if for support.

'To the house-master, likely.'

She shook her head this time. 'Nay, _meean_! There is no house-master,'

she said softly, as before, 'and it is not even a letter. But a _pice_-worth of words on a sc.r.a.p of paper. Listen! "_There is food enough. Tarry the Lord's coming without fear or noise. I have locked the door_." Canst do that for a pice, _meean_? And write clear, 'tis for a woman's eyes.' As she repeated the message, swaying to and fro as if she were reciting the Koran, the scribe smiled at a bystander and touched his forehead significantly.

'If beauty lie behind the door, the locking of it is a _pice_-worth in itself,' he said with a grin, 'and I give the rest!'

'_If beauty lay behind it!_' she thought as she went on, with the paper folded in her hands. Yes! it was beauty, for the safety of which her ugliness was responsible. Had she done all? Had she forgotten nothing?

Nothing that would ensure Noormahal from intrusion until she, Khojee the plague-stricken, had died in the streets. For that was her plan.

When death came close, as it surely must come soon, as it had done to Khojee, she would unbolt the doors and wander away--like a tailor-bird luring a snake from its nest--into the outskirts of the city, right away from the old house. And then what stranger was to know that Khadjee had died of plague, and was buried by the _naubut khana_ stairs?

When death came close! but not till then. Surely there was no need till then to face the world--surely she might claim that much!

And when she was dead no one would know the lame old woman was Khojeeya Khanum, Daughter of Kings. Not even Lateefa.

The thought of him brought her a sudden fear. He was the only one who, having the right to claim it, might, by chance, seek entrance to the courtyard in the next day or two. She might on her way home see him, or leave a message to rea.s.sure him, at the house next Dilaram's, whither she had fled with the news of Sobrai's escape.

There was no one in the house, no one in the little yard behind it; but Lateefa had been there not long ago, for the clippings of his trade littered one corner, and two draggled kites, their strings still fastened to wooden pegs in the wall, lay huddled in another.

Dilaram might know; a message might be left with her.

As Khojee stumbled up the dark stairs to a balcony for the first time in her life, she tried to straighten her veil, but her hands trembled; it would not fold decorously.

There were three or four drowsy women lounging in the room at the door of which she stood, beset by a sudden shyness, and three of them t.i.ttered at the unusual sight; but the fourth said severely--

'What dost here, sister? This is no place for thy sort.'

'I--I seek Lateefa,' she faltered, and the others t.i.ttered louder.

'Peace, fools!' said Dilaram angrily. 'Dost mean Lateefa the kitemaker?'

But Khojee had found her dignity. 'Yea! Lateef of the House of the Nawab Jehan Aziz, on whom be peace. Tell him, courtesan, that Khojeeya Khanum----' She paused, doubtful of her message, and, in the pause, the jingles on Dilaram's feet clashed once more as she rose to do honour to a different life.

'Let the _Bibi sahiba_ speak,' she said in her most mellifluous tones.

'We in the freedom of vice are slaves to the prisoners of virtue.'

'Tell him,' said Khojeeya Khanum, 'that it is well with the prison and the prisoners. That they need no service.'

As she stumbled down the stairs again there was no sound of t.i.ttering.

It was nearly an hour after this, and the noonday sun was flooding the courtyards, when Khojee, having completed her preparations, closed the door between them softly, so as not to disturb Noormahal--who had already retired for the usual midday sleep--and slipped a paper through the c.h.i.n.k of the lintel ere drawing it close and padlocking the hasp.

Noormahal could not fail to see the rea.s.suring message there when she woke, and began to wonder where Auntie Khojee had gone.

As she straightened herself from stooping to the padlock, she felt, giddily, that she had locked herself out of life. She had but a few hours left of seclusion, and then--the streets.

But those few hours she might surely claim. So she closed and barred the wicket in the outer door, and dragging a string bed into the scant shade cast by the _naubut khana_, found rest for her aching limbs. And there she lay silent, taking no heed of Noormahal's knockings and appeals which, after a time, rose cautiously. When they ceased the old woman gave a sigh of relief.

Thus far all had gone well. Now she had only to wait till she felt she dare wait no more.

So she lay, watching the shadows of the broken-tailed plaster peac.o.c.ks of royalty above the gateway creep over the courtyard, up the walls, and disappear into thin air.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PEN AND THE SWORD

Jehan Aziz was meanwhile repenting at leisure in Oriental fashion. That is, he had succ.u.mbed to the perpetual temptation of a string bed set either in shade or sunshine, to which it is always possible to retire without, as it were, quite throwing up the sponge. An Englishman who seeks his bed and turns his face to the wall gives himself away; the native who does the same thing is not even committed to discouragement.

And Jehan, though he had a racking headache from an attempt to drown care in a debauch, was not exactly discouraged. His anger, though impotent, was too strong for that. Indeed, his whole force of character lay in his fierce arrogance; for he was neither clever nor cunning, like Burkut Ali. And so when, the day after the disappearance of the ring, the latter walked coolly in as if nothing had happened, and sat down on the end of the string bed, Jehan only sat up at the other end and glowered at the man, without whom he knew himself to be lost.

'Thou hadst best tell the truth, Lord of the Universe,' said Burkut, with a fine sarcasm, 'for I have heard many lies from the police. My head whirls with women, and pearls, and G.o.d knows what! Is there so much as foothold anywhere, whence we may deal a blow?'

Jehan felt comforted by that plural, though it roused curiosity to know what Burkut would be at. In truth, the latter's first desire for vengeance on Jehan only, had shifted as he had listened to the tales he bribed the police to tell. Here, it had seemed to him, was the possibility of greater mischief; mischief which, it was true, could have no immediate or definite object, but which would add something fresh to that rock of offence, that stumbling-block in the way of the alien master, on which it was the duty of the disloyal to cast every stone they could.

It took five cigarettes, and two whisky-pegs sent for from the liquor-shop next door, ere Jehan--in the absolute undress which seems to afford comfort to all Indians in time of trouble--had finished his tale.

'There is much in it,' remarked Burkut slowly. 'As for the ring, Lateef hath it. There is none else. And he is a friend of thy house. He worked there; is it not so? Bethink thee, is there no woman in it who hath a hold on him?'

Jehan frowned horribly at the indecent suggestion; but even this insult, he felt, had to be faced. 'None,' he said shortly, 'unless the jade who escaped.'

Burkut grinned cunningly and shook his head. 'My lord doth not understand women. Lateef hath kept the ring for the honour, not the dishonour, of the house. It will go back, if it hath not already gone, to the safe keeping which hath secured it all these years.'

Jehan winced again under the innuendo. 'Think you it is there already?'