Читать книгу Voices in the Night - Flora Annie Webster Steel - Страница 9

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The noonday sun lay shadowless in every nook of the narrow evil-smelling courtyard which formed a common exit to Jehân Aziz's bachelor quarters and three or four other houses whose fronts faced the most disreputable bazaar in Nushapore. One of these belonged to Dilarâm, the dancer, and the remaining ones were tenanted by folk of similar tastes, such as Burkut Ali, the Delhi pensioner, whom Jack Raymond had styled the biggest brute in Asia; but he had a double reasoning for choosing the courtyard, in that it enabled him better to play his part of Buckingham to the Rightful Heir.

Despite its character, however, the courtyard was peace and propriety itself in the perpendicular glare of noon; peaceful and proper with a dreamy drugged peace, a satiated propriety that was in keeping with the heavy yellow sunshine.

And Dilarâm herself matched the general drowsiness as she sate, muffled in a creased shawl, yawning, blowsy, ill-kempt, upon a wooden balcony overlooking the courtyard. She matched the squalor of the scene also; a squalor which seemed to put the pleasure that has its marketable value out of possibility in such surroundings.

Jehân Aziz, who sate on a string bed below, looked a trifle less dilapidated than Dilarâm, for his morning toilet had extended to the making of that white parting down the middle of his oiled hair, and a due shaving into line of his thin moustache. Not that these results were due to any energy on his part. They were the work of the barber, who was now occupied, nearer the door, in paring Burkut Ali's nails, while the Heir to Nothingness, in no hurry to proceed, chewed betel thoughtfully, and looked at a caged quail which he meant to fight against a rival's so soon as he could rouse himself sufficiently to dress; for he had got no further in the way of clothing than the wrinkled white calico trousers which, by reason of their tightness, have to be tenant's fixtures during the term of occupation.

'So Sobrai Begum hath flitted at last!' yawned Dilarâm (who was within an aside of Jehân) with a sudden causeless access of indifference and malice. 'And Nawâb Jehân Aziz, Rukn-ud-dowla-Hâfiz-ul-Mulk, hath in consequence one less mouth to feed! Peace be with him!'

'Speak lower, fool, or the barber will hear, and the tale be spread over the town,' muttered Jehân savagely, scowling at the sarcasm of the titles.

A day and a night had passed since Aunt Khôjee, veiled to her finger-tips and fluttering like any pigeon, had fled through the bazaars to tell the head of her house that--not three hours after he had left it in wrath--Sobrai had disappeared. Jehân Aziz, after established custom, had kept the scandalous secret to himself and his immediate family, with the exception of Dilarâm, to whom he had gone at once, as the most likely person to have an inkling of the girl's intentions. For the only way to deal with such cases is to get the truant back as speedily as possible, and ensure a virtuous silence in the future. The silence, as a rule, of the grave. So the chance of the barber having extra long ears was horrible.

Dilarâm, however, glanced idly at the group by the door, which gave unreservedly on the gutters of a cramped alley, and yawned again. 'Not he! Burkut hath him gaping over signs and wonders that will be God's truth ere the whole of Nushapore be shaved! They are more to the barber's trade than a girl's flight; though that also goes far nowadays, what with all the talk about such things. And this would go far indeed, if set agoing--with a head of lie, and sparks of truth in its tail, like the powder in an E'ed^[3] squib.'

'The truth!' echoed Jehân, in swift suspicion; 'then thou dost know somewhat, after all?'

She yawned again, smiling. 'Not I! Had none but my sort danced, as in old days, in kings' houses, Dilarâm would have known who else sought to flutter in her footsteps. But with new pleasures, Nawâb-sahib, come new pains. She is not of us in the city; that is sure. But there are baggages with bleached hair and powdered faces outside it. Ask Miss Leezie! I heard her say she lacked apprentices.' Her lazy spitefulness was effective, and Jehân clenched his fine hands viciously. He did not particularly desire to get Sobrai back--except for punishment--provided scandal could be avoided. He was, indeed, well quit of a girl for whom no suitor could be found, and who was not to his own personal taste; but the suggestion of Dilarâm's words stung horribly.

'God smite their souls to the nethermost hell!' he muttered, making the dancer flick her fingers with a giggle.

'Lo! hearken to virtue! "Not a rag for the child and a coat for the cat!" Men be no worse in cantonments than here in the city! Nevertheless the tale, as I said, could be told to a purpose by a clever tongue. It would rouse the common folk more than Burkut's lies about portents, or the baboo's about the plague, if they only knew it!'

Jehân Aziz turned on her like a snake, sleepy yet swift, ready for dreams or death.

'If thou dost dare to tell----'

She held out her bare brown arm in a quick gesture of silence, and rising, swept him a salaam that set the hidden anklets beneath her dirty draperies a-jingling, and proclaimed her what she was--a passed mistress in the oldest of professions for women.

'There is no need, my lord, she said superbly, 'to teach Dilarâm her duty to the virtuous women who sit free of shame in the noble houses where she dances. We learn that first of all.'

There was an indescribable grace in her attitude, a cadence in her utterance, which proved her claim. She was of the old school, educated to her craft.

The jingle of anklets brought a man's face to a neighbouring balcony. A face hollow-cheeked, haggard, with dissipation written on it. Brought thither by curiosity, it remained in approval of the studiously-posed figure in the creased shawl. Jehân's face, too, showed a like attraction, and Burkut Ali, the nail-paring over, lounged up with a savage sort of discontent at his own inward admiration--a regret, as it were, for the vices of his ancestors. As a rule, Dilarâm and her dancing did not amuse him in the very least. He had passed from the old style to the new, and, indeed, was chiefly responsible for the introduction of Miss Leezie and her like to the nobility and gentry of Nushapore. But now he was conscious that this, in its way, was better; and the fact formed a fresh item in his general grievance against those who, having taken the reins of government from such as he, had driven India into change--even in its wickedness!

The secret cherishing of this general grievance of his own in the minds of others was Burkut Ali's whole occupation in life. The dilatory disaffection of his neighbours, a disaffection inevitable in a society which this change had literally ruined, could, he had discovered, be turned to his own profit in two ways. First, because, as confidant to seditious utterances, he gained a hold on the utterer; secondly, because, as the repeater of them to persons in high places, he gained a hold on the hearer. For the rest his manners were perfection, his Persian a pure pleasure to the ear. And both these were at their best when--his present part in the farce of vague conspirings being that of general backer-up of Jehân's spasmodic belief in his own claims to royalty--he paused before the heir in the most elaborately courtly fashion and began mellifluously--

'Hath it, perchance, found place in the memory of the Most High that this, being the death-day of the sainted lady ancestress Hâfiz Begum, the dirge for her soul will be intoned by the appointed canons at the family mausoleum? And as this will be the last time----'

'The last time?' echoed Jehân haughtily, 'how so?'

The man's face in the balcony sharpened with sudden interest. Between his dissipations he was editor of the vilest broadsheet in the town, a broadsheet which existed simply by virtue of its unfailing basis of firm falsehoods.

Burkut knew this, and had cast his fly dexterously. Now, feeling the rise, he allowed grave concern to overlay the yellow mask of his face--it was one of those which never change except by an effort of will. 'Because, sire,' he replied, in tones to be heard of all, 'it is known, beyond doubt, that the English Government, being hard pressed by reason of famines and the yearly tribute to the City of London, which the low value of the rupee causes to be greater every year, hath an eye on the endowment of the mausoleum.'

Govind the editor stifled a yawn of disappointment. 'That tale is old,' he put in contemptuously, 'I heard it a week past from the Secretariat Office. My cousin is clerk--as I should have been but for injustice--and saw the papers. It is true; for see you, they closed the mints so as to make the poor folk sell their silver hoards cheap, and now the rupees are scarce.'

He nodded sagely over his own political economy, and as he spoke in Urdu, the barber, as newsmonger of an older type, paused in the sharpening of a razor to listen.

'Impossible!' interrupted Jehân angrily. 'The Government is bound to uphold the shrines and services by strict promises. My fathers only lent them the money on those conditions. The interest was to be spent----'

Govind burst into boisterous laughter; for his head was muddled, his nerves unstrung by an overnight debauch.

'Ay! Nawâb-jee. Crores and crores of rupees lent in the old days, and the interest spent now in gardens for the mems to play games in, and statues to their own Queen! But it is no new thing, I tell you. I am no ignoramus--I am middle fail.^[4] I have read their histories, and I know. They took all the religious endowments in their own land, and'--he added louder, as an ash-smeared naked figure which had been passing along the alley with the beggar's cry of 'Alâkh Alâkh' paused to listen--'would have killed the religious also but for those among them like Gladstone and Caine-sahib who say, as we do, that the others are tyrants and have no right to India.'

The hotch-potch of history was interrupted by Dilarâm's yawn. 'Hai! Hai! brother!' she said, 'keep that dreary stuff for Burkut or the barber--they can spread it over folk's hot imaginings like butter on a hearth cake! Or give it to jogi-jee yonder,' she swept her fingers to the weird figure at the door; a figure whose right hand and arm, withered in the ceaseless task of appealing to high heaven for righteousness, showed like a dry stick pointing upwards, 'though he and his like are never at a loss for lies. Hast a new one to-day, Gopi? Or is it still the old wonder of the golden paper which fell from the sky into one of Mother Kali's many embraces!'

'Jest not of Her, sister,' said the jogi in a theatrically hollow voice, as he thrust his left arm--lean as a lath, yet round in comparison with that raised claim to virtue--towards her in menace. 'Thou art Hers, even in thy denial of Her. Woman as She, spreading disease and death. Mother of Pain, embracing the world, biding thy time to slay.'

Despite the palpable striving for effect, something in the words thrilled the woman beneath the courtesan; and though she flicked all her supple fingers in derision, there was a note of triumph in her voice.

'Talk not to me, saint, as to thy Hindoo widows who believe in golden papers and gods. Yet 'tis true! We of the bazaar lead the world by the nose! Govind may blacken what he likes with ink. Burkut's craft may spend itself in spider's webs. The plague may come. Yea! even the sniffing out of other folk's smells--ay! and the payment for silence!--may be taken from the Mimbrâns-committee, and yet the world will wag peaceful. But touch us and it is different. Let none meddle with the men's women or with our will, or they meddle to their cost!'

She tucked the creased shawl closer around her, and squatted down once more in the sunshine; the heavy sunshine in which those others sate also with a sudden fierce approval in their hearts.

It was highest noon, and the sky was a blaze of molten light; so that the shadow from a wheeling kite overhead, as it sought with keen eyes amid the refuse of the city for some prize, circled in sharp outline about the squalid courtyard, falling on one figure, flitting to another, linking them together, as it were, by its hungry restless desire.

So, for a space, there was a drowsy silence, on which the beggar's cry for alms, as he went on his way pausing at every door in the cramped alley, rose monotonously.

After which, Burkut, stifling a yawn, suggested that if the Heir to all Things wished to receive his due recognition as head of the family at the mausoleum, it was time to commence dressing; whereupon Jehân yawned also, and demanded his shoes from Lateefa, who had just come in with a selected bundle of kites for choice against the evening flight.

'I shall need none to-day,' said Jehân sulkily. 'My good time hath to be wasted in dirges and prayers for a dead old woman who is naught to me. Then,' he added aside, half to himself, with a frown, 'I must see Lucanaster--may he roast with fire!'

'If it please God!' assented Burkut piously. Then he added, 'If it is aught I can do--the hell-doomed being in my debt for some things--I might drive a better bargain, perhaps.'

Jehân had not breathed a word to any one of his windfall of pearls, but certain evidences during the last two days that he had, or expected to have cash, had raised Burkut's curiosity.

But Jehân had no intention of having any witness to his interview, least of all one to whom he owed money, so he turned on Burkut insolently.

'I need no man's offices, so keep thy right hand to wash thy left!'

If there was resentment behind Burkut Ali's yellow mask, the latter hid it successfully. 'Then I will but accompany the Nawâb to the mausoleum,' he said deferentially. 'Its owner cannot go unattended!'

It was a motley cargo which the rickety, red-flannel-lined wagonette (which Jehân's usurer allowed him as part of the stock-in-trade necessary for a pension-earner) carried to the stucco tombs of dead kings--for everything, including the dynasty itself, had been stucco at Nushapore! First there was the Heir in his second-best coatee of flowered green satin, then Burkut, burly in a yellow one to match, and Lateefa, despite his calico, gayer than either by reason of his inevitable kites. Finally there was the coachman in ragged livery, and three attendants in rags without the livery; literal hangers-on, clinging to the great scraper-like steps which seemed the only reliable portions of the vehicle.

It had not far to go, however, over the white road and through the clouds of dust; for the mausoleum stood just outside the city in a garden that was irresistibly suggestive of a café chantant by reason of its stucco statuary, its preparations for nightly illumination, and a generally meretricious scheme of decoration.

The tomb itself--squat, and bulging with inconsequent domes--stood on a plinth towards one end of the garden, and from it, as the wagonette discharged its load at the gates, came the sound of monotonous chanting. But this hesitated, paused, ceased in a murmur of 'the Nawâb!' as Jehân, with a new dignity in his manner, passed up the steps, and so--with a posse of cringing officials who had hurried to meet him buzzing round like bees--entered the wide hall; for despite the domes, despite the minarets outside, this tomb of dead kings was nothing else within. It was just a vast oblong hall hung throughout its length with huge, dusty, cobwebbed, glass chandeliers which, taken in conjunction with the empty polished floor, were suggestive of a ballroom; the dancing-saloon of the café chantant!

In the very centre, however, of the emptiness was a low roly-poly tomb, above which rose a musty-fusty baldequin which had once been stately in velvet and pearls. But the moth had fretted new patterns on the curtains, and the cobwebs lay like torn lace on the canopy. Nevertheless, two faintly-smouldering silver censers, standing at the foot of the tomb, showed it not all neglected. And something else, witness to memory, lay between the censers, under a common glass shade such as covers the marble-and-gilt timepiece of a bogus auction, or the dusty waxen flowers of a cheap lodging.

It was the last Nawâb's turban of state.

For the rest, the hall lay empty save for its officials; the minor canons as it were, who still received the stipends set apart by the deceased kings for due daily chantings of dirges, and so clustered round Jehân with courtier-like salaams.

But not for long; since almost before they had conducted him to the royal pew--an inlaid square of flooring close to the baldequin--a fresh arrival sent them cringing and fluttering to greet it, with greed in their hungry faces; the faces of custodians to whom strangers give tips.

And this party of English tourists looked promising, if only from the reluctant way in which, in obedience to a notice on the door, they took off their hats, and then glanced round with the 'Thank-the-goodness-and-the-grace-which-on-my-birth-hath-smiled' expression which our race learns in the nursery. For this is a frame of mind which leads to a contemptuous tipping of inferior races.

'Guide says that's the last Johnnie's cap--beastly dirty, isn't it?' said one in a churchy whisper, and the others nodded in churchy silence. So, decorously--barring a faint desire to try the waltzing capabilities of the floor on the part of a brother and sister in one corner--they hesitated round the building with the half-shy, half-defiant, 'thus far I will go but no further' reluctance to admit any interest in strange places of worship, which is also a sign of race.

And Jehân from his royal square watched them, oblivious of his prayers, until quite calmly, innocently, they included him as part of the show.

Then he rose and said to Burkut, who was praying to perfection behind----

'I stay not for this. And we are too soon, for all thy fuss of being late. 'Twill be a good half-hour ere the dirge begins. So I go to Lucanaster's.--Nay!' he added hastily, as Burkut began to rise also, 'thou canst stay here, and if any of note come in my absence, tell them I return.'

So with a cunning smile leavening his scowl at the tourists, he passed out. In truth he was glad of the excuse which made it possible to take no one but Lateefa, who was to be trusted--who indeed had to be trusted in all things, since he knew all things--with him to Mr. Lucanaster's house; for even if he had left Burkut outside during his interview, there was no saying what the latter might not have discovered, or say he had discovered, which would answer his purpose of pressure quite as well! For Jehân, like most of Burkut's acquaintances, was quite aware of the latter's method.

Five minutes after, therefore (since Mr. Lucanaster's house lay conveniently close to the city and his numerous clients there), Jehân found himself tête-à-tête with a shrewd commercial face intent on the scientific counting of a string of pearls with a paper-knife.

'Three, six, nine, twelve,' came Mr. Lucanaster's voice as the ivory slipped between the triplets of pearls.

'Fifty and five,' he said finally, and Jehân nodded.

'Fifty and five,' he assented. 'What will you give me for them, Huzoor?'

Mr. Lucanaster drew a despatch-box towards him, opened it, looked at a paper, and smiled lavishly.

'Nothing, Nawâb-sahib,' he said calmly; 'for, to begin with, there are five short on the string. There were sixty on it when it was stolen.'

Jehân nearly jumped from his chair. 'Stolen!' he echoed. 'It is a lie--they are mine--they were my mother's.'

The lavish smile continued. 'Exactly, Nawâb-sahib, the description says so; and they were stolen from Government House two nights ago.'

'But I tell you it is impossible--my house was wearing them----'

'Excuse me; but you sold your mother's pearls last year! I happen to know, because Gunga Mull, who bought them, was acting for me. You had refused my direct offer, if you remember, and you lost a thousand rupees in consequence. It is safer to trust me in the end, Nawâb-sahib,' put in Mr. Lucanaster suavely.

'But not one string,' protested Jehân, trying to be haughty. 'This one I kept, and if the Huzoor does not wish to buy, I can sell it elsewhere, as I did before.'

He stretched his hand for the string, but Mr. Lucanaster sate back in his chair dangling the pearls, and looked at the Rightful Heir as a spider looks at a fly.

'I wouldn't try if I were you, Nawâb-sahib,' he said slowly. 'It might lead to--to difficulties. And the coincidence is not very--very credible. But if you are really in need of money'--he spoke still more slowly--'there is always the emerald. Let me see! I offered you six thousand, didn't I?--well, let us say eight; and--and nothing to be said about--about these----' He passed the pearls deftly through his fingers as if appraising them, and added, 'They are really very fine pearls, Nawâb-sahib, quite noticeable pearls. I haven't seen better for a long time, so it is a pity they are unsaleable at present. By and by, perhaps, or in some other place----'

'Does the Huzoor mean----' began Jehân blusteringly.

Mr. Lucanaster looked up suddenly, sharply, drew the open despatch-box closer, dropped the pearls into it, and closed the box with a snap. 'I mean nothing, Nawâb-sahib, except that, for your own sake, those pearls had better stay there for the present. You will only be tempted to raise money on them in the bazaar, and as I--if I were asked my opinion, as I certainly should be--would say they were the stolen pearls, it is better not to run the risk of my having to give evidence.'

'I--I will complain--I will go to the commissioner,' stammered Jehân, completely taken aback.

'I wouldn't if I were you; a police inquiry would be the devil to a man of your character; and meanwhile--until you let me have the emerald--here's something for current expenses.'

Jehân looked for a moment as if he would dearly have liked to fling the notes which Mr. Lucanaster pushed over the table to him back in the donor's face; but he refrained. Money was always something, and some of it might even go to pay the poisoning of this hell-doomed infidel, who dared to pretend he thought the pearls were stolen; for Jehân was shrewd enough to see the other's game. Not that it mattered whether he pretended to think, or really thought. The pinch lay in that threat of a police inquiry; and neither the truth nor the falsehood of a charge mitigated or increased the sheer terror of that possibility.

So Jehân, minus his pearls, but with five hundred rupees in his pocket, drove back to the tomb of his dead ancestors in a tumult of impotent anger. He felt himself closer in the toils than he had been, and--naturally enough in a man of his sort--the utmost of his rage was expended on the person over whom he had most power of retaliation--that is, on Noormahal.

Why, he asked himself, had he been fool enough to let her get hold of the emerald again? It had been within his reach, and now it was gone again--hoarded by a foolish woman for the sake of a barren honour.

Barren? No! not altogether barren! As he stood once more in the arched doorway of the mausoleum, this feeling came to assuage the sting of his treatment by Mr. Lucanaster, and yet to make its smart more poignant.

For the assemblage had gathered. The chandeliers were lit, and the myriad-hued flash of their prisms hid the dust, hid the cobwebs, and gave a new brilliance to the mourners gathered in their appointed places. The tourists were gone now. These were his own people. They were waiting for him.

As he paused, a new arrival entering by a side door paused also--paused right in front of him before the glass case containing the last king's turban of state. So, after salaam-ing to it profoundly, sought the square belonging to his rank.

Jehân gave a low savage laugh of satisfaction, and passed on to his.

Here it was the first! Here, at any rate, honour was his!

Burkut, watching him swagger over to his prayers, smiled. If this sort of thing went on, he would have his choice of fostering a real conspiracy or denouncing it. That was the best of having an open mind; at least two courses were always open to one.

So, when the dirge was sung, he went and paid his respects to one or two officials, and then, the time for gossip and kite-flying having arrived, joined the worst company in Nushapore, where he talked sedition and backed the paper nothingnesses as they dipped and rose an inch or two, only to fall again, until the dusk blotted their gay colours from the sky. But below the bastioned river wall abutting on the railway bridge, which was the favourite meeting-place of kite-flyers, the dusk brought out other colours to take their place; close at hand and farther off, half-way across the river, and right upon its farther shore, came red and green lights, steady as stars. Until, in the far distance, a red changed to green, the signals which had stood against the evening express dropped, and it showed upon the bridge like some huge glowworm, slackening speed as it came; for the station lay not two hundred yards from where the bridge ended in a semi-fortified gateway.

So the train slid past below the bastioned wall almost at a foot's pace, and half a dozen or more English lads, part of a fresh draft from England just up from Bombay, thrust their heads out of the window curious to see what this strange place, what this strange race with which they were to have so much to do, were like.

'Well! I am blowed if they aren't flyin' kites like Christians,' said one in a hushed voice, an' I thought they was all 'eathen, I did----'