Part 14 (2/2)
”For life and laughter. Lo! Newasi, thou thyself wouldst laugh at those new-come Bunjarah folk I told thee of, who imitate the sahibs so well. But for their eyes,” here he nodded gayly to someone below, ”they should get one of Mufti's folk to play,” he added, his attention as usual following the first lead. ”Saw you ever such blue ones as the boy has yonder?”
Newasi, drawing her veil tighter, stepped close to his side and peered gingerly.
”His sister's are as blue, his cousin's also. It runs in the blood, they say. I cannot like them. Dost thou not prefer the dark also?”
She raised hers to his innocently enough, then shrank back from the sudden pa.s.sion of admiration she saw blazing in them. Shrank so that her arm touched his no longer. The action checked him, made him savage.
”I like black ones best,” he said insolently; ”big, black, staring eyes such as my mother swears my betrothed has to perfection. Thou hast not seen her yet, Newasi; so thou canst keep me company in imagining them languis.h.i.+ng with love. They will not have to languish long for--hast thou heard it? The King hath fixed the wedding.” He paused, then added in a low, cruel voice, ”Art glad, Newasi?”
But her temper could be roused too, and her heart had beat in answer to his look in a way which ended calm. ”Ay! It will stop this farce of coming thither for study and learning--as to-day--without a line scanned.”
”Thou dost study enough for both, as thou art virtuous enough for both,” he retorted. ”I am but flesh and blood, and my small brain will hold no more than it can gather from bazaar tongues.”
”Of lies, doubtless.”
”Lies if thou wilt. But they fill the mind as easily as truth, and fit facts better. As the lie the courtesans tell of my coming hither fits fact better than thy reason. Dost know it? Shall I tell it thee?”
”Yea! tell it me,” she answered swiftly, her whole face ablaze with anger, pride, resentment. His matched it, but with a vast affection and admiration added which increased his excitement. ”The lie, did I say?” he echoed, ”nay, the truth. For why do I come? Why dost let me come? Answer me in truth?” There was an instant's silence, then he went on recklessly: ”What need to ask? We both know. And why, in G.o.d's name, having come--come to see thy soft eyes, hear thy soft voice, know thy soft heart, do I go away again like a fool? I who take pleasure elsewhere as I choose. I will be a fool no longer. Nay! do not struggle. I will but force thee to the truth. I will not even kiss thee--G.o.d knows there are women and to spare for that--there is but one woman whom Abool-Bukr cares to----” he broke off, flung the hands he had seized away from him with a muttered curse, and stepped back from her, calming himself with an effort. ”That comes of making Abool-Bukr in earnest for once. Did I not warn thee it was not wise?”
he said, looking at her almost reproachfully, as she stood trying to be calm also, trying to hide the beating of her heart.
”'Tis not wise, for sure, to speak foolishness,” she murmured, attempting unconsciousness. ”Yet do I not understand----”
He shook his delicate hand in derisive denial. ”Why, the Princess Farkhoonda refuses to marry! Nay, Newasi, we are two fools for our pains. That is G.o.d's truth between us. So now for lies in the bazaar.”
”Peace go with thee.” There was a sudden regret, almost a wistful entreaty in the farewell she sent after him. There was none in his reply, given with a backward look as his gay figure went downward dizzily. ”Nay! Peace stays ever with thee.”
It was true. Those other women of whom he had spoken gave him kisses galore, but this one? It was a refinement of sensuality, in a way, to go as he had come. But Newasi went back to her books with a sigh, telling herself that her despondency was due to Abool's hopeless lack of ambition. If he would only show his natural parts, only let these new rulers see that he had the makings of a king in him! As for the other foolishness, if the old King would give his consent--if it were made clear that she was not really---- She pulled herself up with a start, said a prayer or two, and went on with _The Mirror of Good Behavior_, through which she was wading diligently. The writer of it had not been a beautiful woman, widowed before she was a wife, but his ideals were high.
Abool-Bukr meanwhile was already in a house with a wooden balcony.
There were many such in the Thunbi Bazaar, giving it an airiness, a cleanliness, a neatness it would otherwise have lacked. But Gul-anari's was the biggest, the most patronized; not only for the tired heads which looked out unblus.h.i.+ngly from it, but for the news and gossip always to be had there. The lounging crowds looked up and asked for it, as they drifted backward and forward aimlessly, indifferently, among the fighting quails in their hooded cages, the dogs snarling in the filth of the gutters, while a mingled scent of musk, and drains, and humanity steamed through the hot suns.h.i.+ne.
Sometimes a corpse lay in the very roadway awaiting burial, but it provoked no more notice than a pa.s.sing remark that Nargeeza or Yasmeena had been a good one while she lasted. For there was a hideous, horrible lack of humanity about the Thunbi Bazaar; even in the very women themselves, with their foreheads narrowed by plastered hair to a mere wedge above a bar of continuous eyebrow, their lips crimsoned in unnatural curves, their teeth reddened with _pan_ or studded with gold wire, their figures stiffened to artificial prominence. It was as if humanity, tired of its own beauty, sought the lack of it as a stimulant to jaded sensuality.
”Allah! the old stale stories,” yawned Gul-anari from the broad sheet of native newspaper whence, between the intervals of some of Prince Abool-Bukr's worst songs, she had been reading extracts to her illiterate clients; that being a recognized attraction in her trade.
”Persia! Persia! nothing but Persia! Who cares for it? I dare swear none. Not even the woman Zeenut herself, for all her pretense of sympathy with Sheeahs, who----”
”Have a care, mistress!” interrupted an arrogant looking man, who showed the peaked Afghan cap below a regimental turban. He was a sergeant in a Pathan company of the native troops cantoned outside Delhi on the Ridge, and had been bickering all the afternoon with a Rajpoot of the 38th N. I., who had ousted him in his hostess' easy affections, being therefore in an evil temper, ready to take offense at a word. ”I am of the north--a Sheeah myself, and care not to hear them miscalled. And I have those who would back me,” he continued, glaring at the Rajpoot, who sat in the place of honor beside the stout siren; ”for yonder in the corner is another hill-tiger.” He pointed to a man who had just thanked one of the girls in Pushtoo for a gla.s.s of sherbet she handed him.
”Hill-cat, rather!” giggled Gul-anari. ”He brought me this one, but yesterday, from a caravan new-come to the serai,”--she stroked the long fur of a Persian kitten on her lap,--”and when I asked for news could not give them. He scarce knew enough Urdu for the settling of prices.”
A coa.r.s.e joke from the Rajpoot, suggesting that he had found few difficulties of that sort in the Thunbi Bazaar, made the sergeant scowl still more and swear that he would get Mistress Gul-anari the news for mere love. Whereat he called over, in Pushtoo, to the man in the corner, who, however, took no notice.
”He is as deaf as a lizard!” giggled Gul-anari, enjoying the rejected one's discomfiture. ”Get my friend the corporal here to yell at him for thee, sergeant. His voice goes further than thine!”
The favored Rajpoot squeezed the fat hand nearest to him. ”Go up and pluck him by the beard,” he suggested vaingloriously, ”then we might see a Pathan fight for once.”
”Thou wouldst see a fair one, which is more than thou canst among thine own people.”
”Peace! Peace!” cried the courtesan, smiling to see both men look round for a weapon. ”I'll have no bloodshed here. Keep that for the future.” She dwelt on the last word meaningly, and it seemed to have a soothing effect, for the sepoys contented themselves with scowls again.
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