The Potter's Thumb Part 17

She repeated the phrase as if to convince herself of its truth. Yet when, on returning with her commission, Dan seized the opportunity of taking the parcel to kiss the fingers which held it, she felt something of a traitor. Even though, in sending the jewels she had found to be appraised, she told herself she had no other intention beyond, if possible, getting enough money to repay the loan she had so unwisely taken. That was all; and this chance of sending to Delhi by a safe hand had decided her so far--no more.

'Good-bye, dear Dan,' she said; 'I always miss you so much when you go away.'

That night Chandni reported progress to the Diwan. The mem's ayah had let out that the big Huzoor, Fitzgerald sahib, was the greatest friend the mem had. She must be a regular bad one, if all tales were true. And the big sahib was going to Delhi, the most likely place in which jewels would be sold. She would write to her craft, who were good clients of the goldsmiths, and bid them keep a sharp look-out. It would at least do no harm.

'Thy father must have been the devil,' said Zubr-ul-Zaman admiringly; 'yet will I reward thee, as thou hast asked, if all goes well.

'Does not all go well?' laughed the woman. 'The fire, and the fall?'

'And the girl?'

'Oh, naught of the girl!--the lance-player hits not the peg first time.

That part is done, that tune played, for good or evil. The bridegroom, they say, comes next week. 'Tis well; we want no evil eye to change the luck.'

CHAPTER XI

The _diners a la russe_ on the roof had not pa.s.sed unnoticed by the world below. How could they? Over such strange doings curious tongues must need wag, setting other curious eyes to peep and peer; especially in the women's apartments, where life was so empty of novelty and where a crowded squabbling glimpse, from some lattice, of arrival or departure was all the inmates could hope for, beyond, of course, the ceremonial visit which the English ladies paid to a circle of selected wives.

But there, in company dresses and company manners, the chief women of three generations had found it impossible to ask enough questions to throw any light on the one absorbing phenomenon of utter shamelessness in their visitors; and after Colonel Tweedie's departure disputes began to run high in that rabbit-warren of dark rooms and darker pa.s.sages, centred round a bit of roof walled in to the semblance of a tank, which lay to the right of the Diwan's tower.

The elder women, led by the old man's last remaining wife, a still personable woman of forty, upheld the theory which has had so much to do with British supremacy in the past; namely, that the sahib-logue, being barely human, must not be judged by ordinary human standards. As likely as not, their women were not women at all. The younger party, however, consisting largely of Dalel Beg's many matrimonial ventures in the forlorn hope of a son, declared that the true explanation lay the other way; namely, in the excess of frail humanity. Both positions being argued with that absolute want of reserve which is the natural result of herding women together away from the necessity for modest reticence which the presence of even their stranger sisters brings with it. That lack of reserve in the mind by which nature compensates herself for the seclusion of the body, and which makes those who have real experience of the working of the zenana system put their finger on it as the plague-spot of India; a plague-spot which all the women doctors sent to bolster up the system by exotic and mistaken benevolence will never cure.

And to the war of words, Azizan listened listlessly as she crouched for hours beside that slit in the prison wall, whence on tip-toe she could see the flag-stone before the mosque on which she had sat when he was painting her picture. She had ceased to cry, ceased to do anything save mope about in the dark with dull resentful eyes taking in the emptiness and hopelessness of all things; even her desires going no further than a vague wish that she could have seen the flag-stone where the sahib had sat, instead of that dull, uninteresting, unconsecrated one. But in that house of languid, listless, useless women her dejection might have pa.s.sed unnoticed save for the fact that old Zainub, the duenna, began to be troubled with an old enemy--the rheumatism.

Up-stairs on the roof, the connection between Azizan's tears and Zainub's sciatica would have seemed far-fetched, obscure; down-stairs, however, it was self-evident, clear as daylight. Briefly, Aziz had the evil eye, like her grandfather the potter, and she was using it, as her mother had used it. Sixteen years before, after nursing that mother in the damp dungeon, where useless cries could be deadened, Zainub had nearly died of rheumatic fever. Not from the damp, of course; simply from the evil eye. Nothing, in fact, had saved her life then, save a promise to protect the baby. And now for the sake of money, she had brought grief on the child, and unless that grief could be a.s.suaged, the result was certain; she would die. The pains were already upon her, and a dozen times a day she cursed her own folly in helping Chandni; Chandni who, when the ruse failed, had thrown her over with a paltry fee. Yet old Zainub, even while she blamed herself, confessed that no duenna could have foreseen such a coil about nothing; but then the world was full of strange new wickedness. In the old time no girl in her senses would have met the suggestion of carrying on the intrigue on her own account as Azizan had done, with vehement denial and glowering, unhappy eyes. The thought of them sent additional twinges through poor old Zainub's bones. George Keene, who had taken up his quarters in the state-rooms of the palace, so as to be near Lewis Gordon at night, never dreamt how narrowly he escaped the invasion of an old beldame beseeching him to remove a curse from her. He had for the time almost forgotten the Azizan episode; even the surprise which the potter's mention of his daughter's name had aroused he set aside for the present. There would be time enough for inquiry when he was alone once more; when the absorbing interest of the present had gone out of his life.

So the tragedy down-stairs was completely hidden from those up-stairs.

It is so often in India. Occasionally we gain a glimpse behind the veil; for instance, when the periodical scare as to the number of human brains required to keep up British prestige seizes on some cantonment.

A scare which it may interest the 'Peace with Dishonour, party to know is apt to follow on any lowering of the Lion's tail. Then there are two simple syllables, known doubtless to many readers of this veracious story as they are to the writer of it, which if uttered casually--say in dinner-table conversation--will of a certainty lead to your servants leaving your service without delay. These things sound unreal, farcical, no doubt; so would George, as he handed their bread and b.u.t.ter to the ladies up-stairs, have deemed the fear which prompted old Zainub's wheedling words as she crouched by Azizan's bed plying her with greasy sweetmeats.

'Eat some, my pigeon--a morsel, beloved! Why wilt not be comforted, child? Say what is in thy heart, and if Zainub's old hands can compa.s.s it, 'tis thine.

'I want nothing. Let me be,' muttered Azizan.

Zainub rocked herself to and fro, partly in despair, partly to allay a sharper twinge of the enemy, and looked round dismally as if for some inspiration of comfort. There was not much to suggest it in those bare walls, inexpressibly squalid, dirty beyond belief; save the cemented floor, which underwent a daily sprinkling from a skin water-bag, and a daily las.h.i.+ng with a reed broom. There was a mark of the pa.s.sage of that skin bag up the narrow stairs in a cleaner streak along the grimy walls, and a mark of that reed broom in the spatter-work dado of slush round the room. The smoke of rushlights blackened the arched niches, their oily dribblings seamed the once whitewashed walk below, and centuries of cobwebs hung on the rough rafters. There was no furniture of any sort or kind, excepting the low stool on which Zainub crouched, and the string cot whereon the girl had flung herself recklessly. Not even resting fairly, but half on, half off, each listless curve showing her indifferent despair; her flimsy veil crushed into a pillow, her unkempt yet braided hair showing she had not thought of it for days. No uncommon sight in the zenana, when so and so's 'const.i.tution is disturbed,' as the phrase runs.

'Would it soothe thee to talk of it?' whined the old lady.

'No! no!' Aziz sat up in sudden anger. 'I hate him. I hate everybody.'

Then, her own confused emotion being strange and new to her, she sought refuge with a whimper in her old sullenness.

'Ari! pretty one,' replied Zainub, relieved at something tangible.

'Thou art right to hate him. Yet grieve not, since he hath gained naught of thee. Thou hast pa.s.sed him by scornfully.'

On the face turned to the dirty wall something like a smile quivered.

'He hath the pot--the Ayodhya pot,' murmured Aziz half to herself. 'He kept that--he liked that.' The duenna beat her shrivelled hands together and laughed shrilly.

'Wah illah! he hath kept it, sure enough, but he will rue it. Look you!

I know not the ins and outs; yet will the pot bring him evil. Yea! even though he hath given it to the mem up-stairs.'

Azizan was on her feet ere the words were finished, her eyes aflame, her whole figure trembling with excitement.

'He hath given it away! Mai Zainub, is it truth? He hath given it to the mems! Ah! how I hate them. It is mine! I will have it back. I will--I will.'

She flung herself once more on the bed, almost choking with her pa.s.sionate cries, wild in her uncontrolled jealousy, while Zainub, mystified and half impatient, deprecated the foolish, impossible desire. Did she not want revenge? Well, the pot was to bring it about.

It would bring money to the treasury also, and before that consideration what mere personal whim could stand? Finally, it was not hers, but the Diwan's, who had a right to let the pot go as he chose.

Azizan's ultimatum came swiftly with a savage gleam in her light eyes.

'Then I will die; and others shall die, too.' The girl was no fool; she could see through the secret of Zainub's docility by the light of many a covert allusion of her companions to her strange eyes. Well, if the power was hers she would use it, so give her back the Ayodhya pot or take the chance. Zainub crept away disconsolate; even with her life-long experience of the vagaries in which hysterical girls indulged she demanded shrilly of High Heaven if there had ever been contrariety equal to Azizan's. To set aside the possibility of revenge! Still she must do her best, and if the mem had the Ayodhya pot in the palace there was always a chance of being able to steal it. As a beginning she spent some of Chandni's rupees on sweetmeats, and, hiding the tray under her domino, set off to pay her respects to Mrs. Boynton's ayah.

'The _burka_ is certainly a most mysterious garment,' remarked Gwen, as she lent over the balcony just as Zainub shuffled through the courtyard on her errand. 'Did I ever mention the fright I had one morning? I woke thinking that a pair of those latticed goggles were glaring at me; but it was only Fuzli looking in to see if I was awake. Still it alarmed me.'

'Women have a hard time of it,' said Lewis languidly from the arm-chair at her side, where he was playing the part of interesting invalid after four days of unwelcome fever. 'How I should hate to have nerves!'

'We are not a whole army of martyrs, however,' objected Rose swiftly.

'I, for one, decline to be credited with them.'

As she sat pouring out the tea with George Keene's help her face rather belied her words. She looked fine-drawn and eager, her eyes bright, yet tired. Gwen smiled confidentially at her companion.

'People in good times never have nerves, so you and Mr. Keene have no excuse for them at present. By the way, you must have been successful with the partridges today, for I a.s.sure you, Lewis, they were not in to breakfast till past twelve.'

Not much in the words--much in the manner. It made Rose bring her cup of tea to the balcony and stand looking with a satirical smile at the pair seated there before she turned to George.

'We think Mr. Gordon is in a good time also! don't we, Mr. Keene? You should break something too; Mrs. Boynton would be quite equal to another patient.'

The crudeness, not to say rudeness, of her own words startled her into adding hastily, 'For she is a good nurse; isn't she, Mr. Gordon?

'First-cla.s.s for one,' he replied coolly; 'but I doubt her managing three. Therefore, if Keene is going to break something, as you suggest, it would be as well if, for a change, you took some care of yourself.

At present you look miserably ill.'

Rose flushed into health at once.

'I? Rubbis.h.!.+ If you have quite finished tea, Mr. Keene, let us go on with that match at tennis.'

'There they go, supremely happy,' commented Gwen from her post of vantage after a pause. 'I'm a shockingly bad chaperon, but that is your fault, Lewis, for getting fever. Do you think _monsieur le pere_ will be very angry?'

He s.h.i.+fted irritably. 'My dear Gwen, don't overdo it, for goodness sake. I'm grateful; you know that quite well. But if you want me to believe that Keene is in love with Miss Tweedie, I must decline to agree. The lad is palpably in love with you; as we all are. As for Miss Tweedie, I decline to have any opinion at all. Girls of her type are beyond me. She looks ill, of course, but no woman can stand half-a-dozen hours in the saddle before breakfast and half-a-dozen singles before dinner, with, I suppose, half-a-dozen problems before lunch and half-a-dozen books before bed. The thing's absurd, and as you don't seem able to stop it, it is as well we are leaving Hodinuggur so soon.'

His distinct loss of temper made Gwen change the subject outwardly, but retain it inwardly as a justification of her tactics. They had been very simple. A word to George of grat.i.tude for his care of Rose, a playful remark to the latter on her marked anxiety for the patient's comfort had left the elder woman mistress of the situation. She was in no hurry, however, to bring it to a crisis. Time enough for that when they should nave returned to civilisation, and she had that letter from the jewellers which might even now be waiting for a certain Mrs.

Arbuthnot at the post-office at Rajpore.

Perhaps she might not have found Rose so ready to acquiesce in plans through which the young girl saw perfectly if they had not fallen in with the latter's convenience. It was easier that Lewis Gordon should believe her occupied with George, and better for the boy than dangling after Gwen all day; _he_ was too good for that sort of thing. She told herself this savagely, many times a day; even when, with a worldly wisdom beyond her years, she was playing the part of elder sister and confidant to the lad's ardent admiration. As for him, he was supremely happy between the occupations of wors.h.i.+pping the most perfect woman in the world and being companion to the jolliest girl he had ever known.