Part 10

"Dear Miss! don't look sad; think of the difference you have wrought. Oh, do not cry," she went on passionately, for the mild blue eyes were filling with tears. "Come, we will talk of his return, full of noble resolutions of self-sacrifice to find--oh dear, dear, Miss! I am so happy, so dreadfully happy!" As she buried her face in the gingham dress her voice sank to a murmur of pure content. But some unkind person had poisoned Julia's peace with remarks of the mixing of unknown chemicals. After all, what did she know of this absent husband, save that dear Mrs. Cranston had met him at a conversazione?

"I suppose the Meer is really an enlightened man?" she asked dubiously.

The gingham dress gave up a scared face. "Dear Miss! why, he is a barrister-at-law!"

Her teacher coughed. "But are you sure, dear, that he wanted you to learn?"

"Not everything; because he did not think I could; but he spoke of many things. I have learnt all,--except--"

"Except what?"

Feroza hesitated. "I was not sure,--Inaiyut said he would teach it, but he died-- 'Tis only a game called whist."

"Whist!"

"Do I not say it right? W-h-i-s-t--_wist_. Oh, Miss! is it a wicked game? Is it not fit? Ought I not to learn it?"

The fire of questions reduced Julia Smith's confusion to simple tears. "I don't know," she moaned, "that is the worst! I thought it was the finger of Providence, and--ah, Feroza! If I have done you harm!"

"You have done me no harm," said Feroza, with a kind smile. "You have harmed yourself with cinnamon tea and greasy fritters in the other zenanas, and you shall have some, English fashion, to take away your headache."

So grumbling Mytâb brought an afternoon tea-tray duly supplied with a plate of thin bread-and-butter from within, and Feroza's small brown face beamed over Julia Smith's surprise. "He will think himself back amongst the _mems!_ won't he?" she asked with a happy laugh.

Would he? As she jolted home in her palanquin Julia's head whirled. Old and new, ignorance and wisdom!--here was a jumble. A stronger brain than hers might well have felt confusion. For it was sunset in that heathen town, and from the housetops, in the courtyards, in the very streets, men paused to lay aside their trivial selves and worship an ideal. Not one of the crowd giving place to the mission-lady but had in some way or another, if only by a perfunctory performance of some rite, testified that day to the fact that religion formed a part of his daily round, his common task. And on the other side of the world, whence the missions come?--

Meanwhile Kareema, bewailing the useless cards, found herself backed up by old Mytâben. Such knowledge, the old woman said, would have been more useful than learning to be cleaner than God made you. 'Twas easy to sneer at henna-dyed hands; but was that worse than using scented soaps like a bad one, and living luxurious? Sheets and towels, forsooth! Why, Shah-jehan himself never dreamed of such expenses.

"I like them, for all that," cried Kareema gaily; "and I think the _mems_ are wise to have big looking-glasses. It is hateful only seeing a little bit of one's self at a time. And Feroza and I are going out to be admired like the _mems_, aren't we, Feroza?"

"If the Meer wishes it," replied her sister-in-law gravely.

Mytâb looked from one to the other. "Have a care, players with fire!" she said shrilly. "Have a care! Is the world changed because it reads books and washes? Lo! the customs of the fathers bind the children."

"Mytâb hath been mysterious of late," remarked Kareema, giving a queer look, as the old lady moved away in wrath. "Ah me! if I had but my handsome Inaiyut dicing in the vestibule 'twould be better for all of us, maybe."

Feroza laid her soft hand gently on the other's shoulder. "I am so sorry for thee, dear! but we will love thee always and be a sister and brother--"

Kareema's look was queerer than ever, and she laughed hysterically.

The day came at last when Feroza sat in the sunlit courtyard holding another unopened letter in her hand, knowing that ere a week was over the writer would be prisoned in her kind arms, surrounded by friendly faces, caught in the meshes of familiar custom. She was not afraid, even though his letters gave her small clue to the man himself. Her own convictions were strong enough to supply him with opinions also, and even if she did not come up to his ideal at first, she felt that the sweet satisfaction of a return to home and kindred would count for, and not against her. So she sat idly, delaying to read, and dreaming over the past, much as she had dreamt over the future nearly two years before. Only she sat on a chair now, and her white stockings and patent-leather shoes twisted themselves tortuously about its legs. She thought mostly of the childish time when she, their cousin, had played with Ahmed Ali and Inaiyut; it seemed somehow nearer than those other days, when the studious lad's departure for college had been prefaced by that strange, unreal marriage.

And Kareema watched her furtively from the far corner where she and Mytâb were making preserves.

Suddenly a loud call, fiercely imperative, made them come sheepishly forward to where Feroza stood at bay, one hand at her throat, the other crushing her husband's letter. "What is this? What have you all been keeping from me? What does he mean?--this talk of duty and custom. Ah-h-h--!"

Her voice, steady till then, broke into a ringing cry as a trivial detail in Kareema's reluctant figure caught her eye. The palms and nails of those delicate hands were no longer stained with henna. They were as her own, as nature made them, as the Meer _sahib_ said he liked them! She seized both wrists fiercely, turning the accusing palms to heaven, while a tempest of sheer animal jealousy beat the wretched girl down from each new-won foothold, down, down, to the inherited nature underneath.

"Then it is true," she gasped. "I see! I know! Holy Prophet! what infamy to talk of duty. He is to marry,--and I who have slaved--He is mine, mine, I say! Thou shalt not have him!"

Mytâb's chill old hand fell on the girl's straining arm like the touch of Death. "_Allah akhbâr wa Mohammed rasul!_[19] Hast forgotten the faith, Feroza Begum, Moguli? Thine? Since when has the wife a right to claim all? Since when hast thou become a _mem?_"

The girl glared at her with wild passion, and Kareema gave a whimper as the grip bit into her tender wrists. "Don't; you hurt me!"

Feroza flung them from her in contemptuous loathing. "Fool! coward! as if he would touch you. I will tell him all. He will know--Ah God! my head! my head!--" She was in the dust at their feet stunned by her own passion.

"I warned the Moulvie to break it by degrees," grumbled Mytâb, dragging the girl to some matting; "but he said 'twould make no more to her than to the Meer. Books don't seem to change a man, but women are different."

"It's not my fault," whimpered Kareema. "I don't want to marry the Meer; he was ever a noodle. Prating of its being a duty, forsooth!"

"So it is! a bounden duty. Never hath childless widow had to leave this house, and never shall, till God makes us pigs of unbelievers."

"I wish my handsome Inaiyut had lived for all that," muttered the girl, as Feroza showed signs of recovery. She resisted all attempts at explanation or comfort, however, and made her way alone, a solitary resolute figure, to her windowless room, where, when she shut the door, all was dark. There she lay tearless while the others, sitting in the sunlight, talked in whispers as if the dead were within.

"The Moulvie must bid her repeat the creed," was old Mytâb's ultimatum. "God send the Miss has not made a Christian of her, with all those soapings and washings!" She had no spark of pity. Such was woman's lot, and to rebel was sacrilege.

"Don't make sure of my consent," pouted Kareema, her pretty face swollen with easy tears. "If he is really the noodle Feroza deems, I'd rather be a religious. 'Twould be just as amusing."

Mytâb laughed derisively. "Thou a religious! The gossips would have tired tongues. Besides, choice is over. Had the child lived, perhaps; but now the Moulvie hath a right to see Inaiyut's children on his knee."

The sunshine had given place to shadow before Feroza appeared.

"Bring me a _burka_;[20] I am going to see the Miss. Follow if thou wilt," she said; and though her voice had lost its ring, the tone warned Mytâb to raise no objection. Ere she left the sheltering walls she stood a moment before her sister-in-law, all the character, and grief, and passion blotted out by the formless white domino she wore. "I could kill you for being pretty," she said in a hard whisper, as she turned away.

She had never been to the mission-house since that eventful night, and the sight of its familiar unfamiliarity renewed the sense of injury with which she had last seen it. "Miss _Eshsmitt sahib_," they told her, was ill; but she would take no denial, and so, for the first time in her life, Feroza entered an English lady's bedroom. Simple, almost poor as this one was in its appointments, the sight sent a throb of fear to the girl's heart. What! Was not Kareema's beauty odds enough, that she must fight also against this undreamed-of comfort? She flung up her arms with the old cry, "_Dohai! Dohai!_" The fever-flushed face on the frilled pillows turned fearfully. "What is it, Feroza? Oh! what is it?"

The question was hard to solve even in the calm sessions of thought, well-nigh impossible here. Why had she been lured from the old life in some ways and not in all? Was their boasted influence all words? Then why had they prated of higher things? Why had they _lied_ to her?

Poor Julia buried her face in a pocket-handkerchief drenched in _eau-de-Cologne_, and sobbed, "Ah, take her away! Please take her away!"

So they led her gently to the text-hung drawing-room with a cottage piano in one corner, and shook their heads over her passionate appeals. They could do nothing, they said,--nothing at all,--unless she cast in her lot with them absolutely; so she turned and left them with a sombre fire in her eyes.

She never knew how the days passed until, as she watched the sunlight creep up the eastern wall of the court, it came home to her that on the next evening Meer Ahmed Ali would watch it also. She seemed not to have thought, and it was Kareema, and not she, who had shed tears. On that last night the latter came to where her cousin lay still, but sleepless. "Why wilt be so foolish, Feroza?" she said petulantly. "Nothing is settled. If he is a noodle, I will none of him, I tell thee. If not, thou art too much of one thyself to care. God knows he may not look at either, through being enamoured of the _mems_. And oh, Feroza," she added, her sympathy overborne by curiosity, "think you he will wear the strange dress of the Miss _sahib's_ sun-pictures? If so I shall laugh of a surety."

A gleam of consolation shot through poor Feroza's brain. Men disliked ridicule. "Of course the Meer dresses Europe-fashion," she replied stiffly. "Thou seemest to forget that my husband is a man of culture."

A man of culture! undoubtedly, if by culture we mean dutiful self-improvement. That had been Meer Ahmed Ali's occupation for years, and his gentle, high-bred face bore unmistakably the look of one stowing away knowledge for future use. He was really an excellent young man; and, during his three years at a boarding-house in Notting Hill, had behaved himself as few young men do when first turned loose in London. He spoke English perfectly, and it would be difficult to say what he had not learnt that could be learnt by an adaptive nature in the space of thirty-six calendar months spent in diligent polishing of the surface of things. He learnt, for instance, that people looking at his handsome, intelligent face, said it made them sad to think of his being married as a boy to a girl he did not love. Thence the idea that he was a martyr took root and flourished, and he acquiesced proudly in his own sacrifice on the altar of progress. For him the love of the poets was not, and even in his desire for Feroza's education he told himself that he was more actuated by a sense of duty than by any hope of greater happiness for himself. The natural suggestion that he should marry his brother's widow he looked on merely as a further development of previous bondage; and he told himself again that, not having swerved a hair's breadth from his faith, he was bound to set his own views aside in favour of a custom desired by those chiefly concerned. Besides, in the atmosphere of surprised sympathy in which he lived it was hard, indeed, not to pose as a victim.

And so, just as poor Feroza was confidently asserting his culture, he, having given his English fellow-passengers the slip, was once more putting on the clothes of an orthodox Mohammedan. Feroza, on the other hand, had adopted the dress of the advanced Indian lady, which, with surprisingly little change, manages to destroy all the grace of the original costume. The lack of braided hair and clustering jewels degrades the veil to an unnecessary wrap; the propriety of the bodice intensifies its shapelessness; the very face suffers by the unconcealed holes in ears and nose.

Kareema stared with a smile akin to tears. "There is time," she pleaded. "Come! I can make you look twice as well."

Their eyes met with something of the old affection, but Feroza shook her head. "I must find out--"

"If he is a noodle?" The interrupting giggle was almost a whimper. "You mean if he is blind! Ah, Feroza! look at me."

No need to say that; the puzzled eyes had taken in the sight already. Gleams of jewelled hair under the gold threaded veil; a figure revealed by the net bodice worn over a scantier one of flowered muslin; bare feet tucked away in shells of shoes; long gauze draperies showing a shadow of silk-clad limbs; above it all that dimpling, smiling face. She shook her head again.

In the long minutes of waiting she lost herself in counting the bricks on the familiar wall until the sight of a tall man at the door dressed as a Mohammedan startled her into drawing the veil to her face in fear of intrusion.

As the man withdrew quickly Kareema's laugh rang out. "To think, Feroza! thou shouldest be _purdah_ to him after all thy big talk."

"The Meer! Was that the Meer?" faltered Feroza. "I did not--the dress--"

"Bah! I knew the likeness to my poor Inaiyut. See! yonder he comes again ushered by father-in-law. Now, quick, Feroza!"

The voice quavering over the prepared phrases of thanks to the Great Giver of home-coming was infinitely pathetic; and yet, as Ahmed Ali took the outstretched hand, he was conscious above all things of a regret, almost a sense of outrage; for the bondage of custom was upon him already. Kareema, catching his look, came forward with ready tact. "We welcome my lord," she said in the rounded tone of ceremony, "as one who, having travelled far, returns to those who have naught worthy his acceptance save the memory of kinship. My sister and I greet you, _as sisters_. Nay, more," she added lightly; "I too shake hands English-fashion, and if I do it wrong forgive us both, since learned Feroza is teacher."

"You make me very happy," answered the Meer heartily. "How well you are all looking!"

No need to say where his eyes were.

"You mistake, Meer _sahib_," cried Kareema swiftly, "Feroza looks ill. 'Tis your blame, since she worked over-hard to please you."

The forbidden frown came too late to prevent Ahmed Ali's glance finding it on his wife's face. It was not becoming. "Was it so hard to learn?" he asked with a patronising smile. "But your handwriting improved immensely of late."

The tips of Feroza's fingers showed bloodless under their nervous clasp, but she said nothing. Indeed, she scarcely opened her lips as they sat talking over the morning meal. Even when the Meer refused tea and toast in favour of _chupatties_ and _koftas_[21] it was Kareema who supplied surprise. Feroza was all eyes and ears, and not till the sun tipping over the high walls glared down on them did she lose patience enough to ask, vaguely, what he thought about it all.

"_Wah illah_," cried the Moulvie, "Feroza hits the mark! What thinkest thou, my son? But I fear not, for thou hast the faithful air, and canst doubtless repeat thy creed purely."

The young man looked round the familiar scene, every detail of which fitted so closely to memory that no room remained for the seven years' absence. A rush of glad recognition surged to heart and brain, making him stand up and give the _Kalma_.[22]

"I am content, oh, my father!" he cried in ringing tones, as the sonorous echoes died away to silence. "I am content to come back to the old life, to the old duties."

"The sun makes my head ache," said Feroza, rising abruptly, "I will go into the dark and rest."

"Don't go, Feroza! Thou hast not told the Meer about thyself," pleaded Kareema, rising in her turn. "She hath worked so hard," she added petulantly to the young man. "No one is worth it, no one."

The Meer looked from one to the other. "Learning is hard for women," he began. Then something in his wife's face roused the new man in him, making him say in a totally different tone and manner, "I am afraid I hardly understand."

"That is what Kareema says of me," replied Feroza icily.

Her cousin, as she sat down once more to listen, shrugged her shoulders. "And she counted herself as something better than a woman," was her inward comment amid her smiles.

Feroza saw nothing of her husband for the rest of the day. The men's court was crowded with visitors, and she herself had to bear the brunt of many feminine congratulations. Only at sunset, before starting to attend a feast given in his honour, he found time for five minutes' speech with her; but, almost to her relief, he was far too content, far too excited by his own pleasure to be able to distinguish any other feeling in her mind. Yet a momentary hesitation on his part as he was leaving made her heart bound, and a distinct pause brought her to his side with wistful eyes, only to see Kareema nodding and smiling to him from the roof, whither she had gone for fresher air. "What is it?" he asked kindly, though his looks were elsewhere.

"Nothing," she answered, "nothing at all. Go in peace!"

The moon, rising ere the sun set, stole the twilight. So she sat gazing at the hard square outlines of the walls till far on into the night, her mind filled with but one thought. The thought that by and by Ahmed Ali, flushed with content at things which she had taught herself for his sake to despise, would come home to her--to his wife. The little room she had travestied into a pitiful caricature of foreign fashions seemed to mock her foolish hopes, so she crept away to the lattice whence she had had her first glimpse of wisdom. Even on that brilliant night the vestibule itself was dark; but through the door she could see the empty arcades of the men's court surrounding the well where she and her cousins used to play.

A rustle in the alley made her peer through the fret-work, for the veriest trifle swayed her; but it was only a dog seeking garbage in the gutter. Then a door creaked and she started, wondering if Ahmed Ali could be home already. Silence brought her a dim suspicion that, but for this wisdom of hers, she might have waited his return calmly enough. Footsteps now! She cowered to the shadow at the sight of Kareema followed by Mytâb bearing something.

"He mayn't be back till late," came the familiar giggle; "and a soft pillow will please him."

The pair were back again before she recovered her surprise, and Kareema paused ere re-entering the women's door. "Poor Feroza! She will get accustomed to it, I suppose."

"Of what hath she to complain?" retorted the old voice; "he is a properer man than I deemed. Say, heart's desire, what said he when I saw thee--?"

"Mytâb! thou mean spy! Bah! he told me he would change a letter and call me Carina, since it meant dearest in some heathen tongue. They begin thus over the black water likely; 'tis not bad, and new at any rate."

Feroza scarcely waited for distance to deaden the answering giggle. She was on her feet, pacing to and fro like a mad creature. Ah! to get away from it all--from that name, from the look he must have given--to get something cold and still to quench the raging fire in her veins! Suddenly, without a waver, she walked to the well and leant over its low parapet. Her hands sought the cool damp stones, her eyes rested themselves on the faint glimmer far down--ever, oh, ever so far away! Hark! some one in the alley. If it were he? Ah! then she must go away, ever so far away--

Meer Ahmed Ali found his pillow comfortable, and only woke in the dawn to see Mytâb standing beside him.

"Feroza!" she cried. "Where is Feroza?"

A dull remorse came to his drowsy brain. "It was so late--I--"

"Holy Prophet, she is not here! Thou hast not seen her! Then she hath gone to the _Missen_ to be baptised. Why didst turn her brain with books? Fool! Idiot!"

"The Mission!" Meer Ahmed Ali was awake now, and the peaceful party, gathered in the verandah for early tea, stared as the young man burst in on it with imperious demands for his wife. Then his surroundings recalled his acquired courtesy, and he stammered an apologetic explanation.

"She has gone away?" cried Julia, with a queer catch in her breath. "Oh, Meer _sahib!_ what a mistake we have all made. It was too late to write, and then I got ill; but, indeed! I was going down this very morning to try and make you understand."

"Understand what?" asked the Meer, helplessly confused, adding hurriedly, "but I can't stay now. She must be found. I will not have her run away. I will have her back--yes! I _will_ have her back."

Half-an-hour later Julia Smith, driven to the Moulvie's house by remorseful anxiety, found the wicket-gate ajar. She entered silently upon a scene framed like a picture by the dark doorway of the men's court.

Feroza had come back to those familiar walls. She lay beside the well, and the water from her clinging garments crept in dark stains through the dust. She had wrapped her veil round her to stifle useless cries, and so the dead face, as in life, was decently hidden from the eyes of men. She lay alone under the cloudless sky, for her friends, shrinking from the defilement of death, stood apart: Kareema sobbing on Mytâb's breast, with Ahmed Ali, dazed yet indignant, holding her hand; the Moulvie, repeating a prayer; the servants still breathless from their ghastly toil. Julia Smith saw it all with her bodily eyes; yet nothing seemed worth seeing save that veiled figure in the dust. She knelt beside it and took the slender cold hand in hers. "My dear, my dear!" she whispered through her sobs. "Surely you need not have gone so far, so very far--for help."

But the dead face was hidden even from her tears.

IN THE HOUSE OF A COPPERSMITH.

I.

The clangour of metal upon metal filling the low, dark workshop, pulsating out into the hot sunshine of the courtyards behind, and the hot shadow of the narrow street in front. Pulsating musically, yet with an undercurrent of jarring vibration like a north-country burr on a woman's tongue. The whole best described, perchance, in the native name for the copper which the workmen were hammering and welding into pots and pans--_tambur_.

_Tâm bur, tâm-burr-urr-ur_.