Part 14 (1/2)

Newasi caught her hand back to another resting place above her heart.

”A--a b.l.o.o.d.y death!” she echoed; ”who--who told the lie?”

Prince Abool-Bukr shook his head with a kindly smile. ”Oh! heed it not, kind lady. Such is the fas.h.i.+on with soothsayers nowadays. The heavens are black with portents. Someone's cow hath three calves, someone's child hath ten noses and a tail. Fire hath come from heaven--thou thyself didst tell me some such wind-sucker's tale--or from h.e.l.l more likely----”

”Nay! but it is true,” she interrupted eagerly; ”I had it from the milkwoman, who comes from the village where the _suttee_----”

”The mouse began to gnaw the rope. The rope began to bend the ox. The ox began----” hummed the prince irreverently.

Newasi stamped her foot. ”But it is true, scoffer! There is a festival of it to-day in some idol temple--may it be defiled! The widow would have burned, after sinful custom, but was prevented by the Huzoors.

And rightly. Yet, G.o.d knows--seeing the poor soul had to burn sometime through being an idolater--they might have let her burn with her love----”

Abool laughed softly. ”And yet thou wilt have naught of Hafiz--Hafiz the love-lorn! Verily, Newasi, thou art true woman.”

She ignored the interruption. ”So being hindered she went to Benares, and there this fire fell on her through prayer, and burned hands and feet----”

”But not her face,” cried Prince Abool, thrumming the muted strings and making them sound like a tom-tom. ”I'll wager my best pigeon, not her face, if she be a good-looking wench! And since fire follows on other things besides prayer, she was a fool not to get it, like me, through pleasure instead. To burn a virgin! What a dreary tale! Look not so shocked, Newasi! a man must enjoy these presents, when folk around him waste half the time in dreaming of a future--of something better to come--as thou dost----” He paused, and a soft eager ring came to his voice. ”If thou couldst only forget all that--forget who I might be in the years to come--forget what thou wouldst have been had my respected uncle not preferred peace to pleasure--for it never came to pa.s.s, remember, it never came to pa.s.s--then we two, you and I----”

He paused again, perhaps at the sudden shrinking in her eyes, and gave a restless laugh. ”As 'tis, the present must suffice,” he added lightly, ”and even so thou dost mourn for what I might be if the grace of G.o.d took me unawares. Thou hast caught the dreaming trick, mayhap, from the Prince of Dreamers yonder.”

He moved over to the outer parapet and waved his hand toward Hussan Askuri's house. Then his vagrant attention turned swiftly to something which he could see in a peep of bazaar visible from this new point of view.

”Three, four, five trays of sweetstuffs! and one of milk and b.u.t.ter,”

he cried eagerly, ”and by my corn-merchant's bill--which I must pay soon or starve--the carriers are palace folk! Is there, by chance, a marriage in the clan? Why didst not tell me before, Newasi? then I could have gone as musician and earned a few rupees.”

He gave a flourish of his bow, so drawing forth a lugubrious wail from the long-necked fiddle.

”No marriage that I wot of,” she replied, smiling fondly over his heedless gayety. ”The trays will be going to the _Pir_-sahib's house.

They have gone every Thursday these few weeks past, ever since the Queen took ill on hearing the answer about the heirs.h.i.+p. She vowed it then every week, so that the holy man's prayer might bring success to our cousin of Persia in this war. G.o.d save the very dust of it from the winds of misfortune so long as dust and wind exist,” she added piously.

Prince Abool-Bukr turned round on her sharply with anxiety in his face.

”So! Thou too canst quote the proclamation like other fools--a fool's message to other fools. Where didst thou see it?”

Newasi looked at him disdainfully. ”Can I not read, nephew, and are there many in Delhi as heedless as thou? Why, even the Mufti's people discuss such things.”

He shrugged his shoulders. ”Ay! they will talk. Gossip hath a double tongue and wings too, nowadays. In old time the first tellers of a tale had half forgot it, ere the last hearer heard it; now the whole world is agog in half an hour. But it means naught. Even his heirs.h.i.+p.

Who cares in Delhi? None!--out of the palace, none! Not even I. Yet mischief may come of it; so have naught to do with dreamings, Newasi, if only for my sake. Remember the old saw, 'Weevils are ground with the corn.'”

”Thou canst scarce call thyself that, Abool, and thou so near the throne,” she said, still more coldly.

”Have me what pleaseth thee, kind one,” he replied, a trifle impatiently; ”but remember also that 'the body is slapped in the killing of mosquitoes.'” Then, suddenly, an odd change came to his mobile face. It grew strained, haggard; his voice had a growing tremor in it. ”Lo! I tell thee, Newasi, that Sheeah woman, Zeenut Maihl, in her plots for that young fool, her son, will hang the lot of us. I swear I feel a rope around my neck each time I think of her. I who only want to be let live as I like--not to die before my time--die and lose all the love and the laughter; die mayhap in the sunlight; die when there is no need; I seem to see it--the sunlight--and I helpless--helpless!”

He hid his face in his shuddering hands as if to shut out some sight before his very eyes.

”Abool! Abool! What is't, dear? Look not so strange,” she cried, stretching out her hand toward him, yet standing aloof as if in vague alarm. Her voice seemed to bring him back to realities; he looked up with a reckless laugh.

”'Tis the wine does it,” he said. ”If I lived sober--with thee, mine aunt--these terrors would not come. Nay! be not frightened. Hanging is a bloodless death, and that would confound the soothsayer; so it cuts both ways. And now, since I must have more wine or weep, I will leave thee, Newasi.”

”For the bazaar?” she asked reproachfully.