Part 5 (1/2)

So, while Khadjee sewed and Noormahal cuddled the sleeping Sa'adut as she crouched on another bed, Khojee dragged out the state carpet--whence all the state and most of the carpet had retired in favour of bare string--set the cus.h.i.+ons, prepared the pipe, the sherbet, and the hand punkah, lest the master should be fatigued by his condescension; for, to her, all these ceremonies were a sort of sacrament to any intercourse between the s.e.xes, without which it was distinctly improper, and with which it was possible to receive even a scapegrace with benefit to yourself.

Having done all this, she crossed to Noormahal, and, crouching beside the bed, began, with a crooning song, to ma.s.sage the long slender limbs tucked up under the long slim body. For her niece, though not half her age, was Nawabin--as such, mistress of the house.

'Nay, auntie,' remonstrated Noormahal in a deep full voice; 'thou also wert up all night with the boy, and art as tired as I.'

'Trra!' retorted Khojeeya; 'old hemp hath fibre, young hemp flower; and 'twill freshen thee against thy man's coming.' The almost pathetic raillery in the old face which had never known a lover's kiss was quite charming, but Noormahal frowned.

'Better prepare the child's food,' she said, shrinking even from the touch of _those_ caressing hands. 'Mayhap his father will be glad if _he_ looks better.'

Her voice, low for her race and s.e.x, suited the fine aquiline face, whose fairness was enhanced by the exceeding darkness of the large melancholy eyes. These in their expression matched the extreme pa.s.sivity of face and figure--a pa.s.sivity which held no trace of supineness. For the rest, there was much ignorance and obstinacy in the face, but n.o.bility in both.

She sate, curiously immovable, until Khojee reappeared with a cup of milk. It was a Jubilee cup, with clasped hands of union upon it, and a portrait of the Queen-Empress surrounded by flags and mottoes. And Noormahal held it to the lips of the little heir to Nothingness or All Things with tender cajoleries.

'Wake up, my heart! Wake! light of mine eyes! Wake! little king!' she murmured, and under her lavish kisses the boy roused to smile, first at her, then at the cup, finally at the old woman who knelt, holding his little bare feet in her wrinkled hand, as if they were a gift. He was a pretty child, despite the ominous scars on the brown velvet of his skin, the hoa.r.s.e pipe in his childish treble. A lively laddie too, and arrogant from kinglike ignorance of denial.

So Khojee limped for more sugar, Noormahal wheedled him into another sip or two, Khadeeja from her tinsels murmured blessings, and even Sobrai (dismissed by the proprieties from the court against the master's visit) giggled from a balcony at Sa'adut's insolence, and called to her girlfriends over the wall that he was a pea of the right pod and no mistake!

Certainly his lordliness was matched by Jehan Aziz when the latter stalked in, without a word of welcome for the three women who stood up _salaaming_ profoundly. Yet even he paid court to the child, and, yielding to the implied command of outstretched arms, took Sa'adut to share the cus.h.i.+on of state on the state carpet.

They were a quaint pair this father and son, dressed alike in wrinkled white calico tights, velvet vests, flimsy gauze overcoats, and round tinsel caps set far back on the white parting of their sleek hair; such a startling white parting, considering the brownness of their skins!

The likeness between the two was, in a way, ghastly; the more so because the man's face bore no trace of the suffering which was written so clearly on the boy's.

Noormahal, watching them with empty arms, noticed this with a fierce unreasoning jealousy for her child. Yet there was a deeper, fiercer jealousy than this in the big brooding eyes which took in every detail of the man who, scented, oiled, was all too perceptibly attired for conquest elsewhere. She hated him, it is true, but in India the marriage-tie is not a sentiment, it is a tangible right. And so, still young, still comely, Noormahal felt none of the pa.s.sionate repulsion which a Western woman would have felt. Her wish, her claim, was to force her husband back to her with contumely. Was he not hers, to be the father of other heirs, if this one found freedom?

But contumely was out of the question. Jehan Aziz still had the green gleam of the kingly emerald on his finger. That must first come back to her safe h.o.a.rding, as, by solemn agreement, it always came after the rare occasions--such as the race meeting--when it had to blazon its claims before the world. And now the races were over, where Jehan said he had lost all. All the more reason the ring should come quickly. So, when Sobrai, from above, challenged Jehan's leer by peeping and nodding, there was no need for Aunt Khojee to sidle between the mistress of the house and the flagrant impropriety, like a hen between her ducklings and the water. Noormahal would have allowed more insult than that to pa.s.s unnoticed. She sate pa.s.sive, brooding, wondering when Jehan would begin on the subject. And all around the group the still suns.h.i.+ne burdened the half-ruined courtyard with a cruel light.

It was one of Khadeeja's pious benedictions with which she embroidered truth as she embroidered her tinsel caps, which drove the stillness from that elemental group of man, woman, and child, that Trinity for Good or Evil in which the veriest agnostic must believe.

The sight, she a.s.serted, of such a father and such a son filled her soul with certainty that a Merciful Creator would preserve the child to take his father's place.

'And wear the signet of his kingly ancestors,' put in Noormahal, seizing her opportunity. Her challenge smote the suns.h.i.+ne keen as a sword-thrust; with all her desire for diplomacy she could not help it coming. Jehan glared at her furiously for a second; but irritation at a wife soon pa.s.ses when, as in India, she is no tie--unless she is beloved, and Noormahal was not. Besides, the broaching of the subject was a relief, since it had to be broached somehow; even though the negotiations with Mr. Lucanaster had gone no further than a promise of first refusal should the ring be sold. Not that he, Jehan, had as yet seriously considered sale; but even so, if Salig Ram, the usurer, were to be persuaded to loan money on the ring's security, it must not be returned to Noormahal's keeping.

Therefore, seeing that little Sa'adut would be at once his s.h.i.+eld and his weapon in the fight which was bound to come between himself and the pa.s.sionate woman whose eyes blazed at him, he turned to the child with a laugh and a caress. 'Yea, Sa'adut! thou shalt wear the ring; father will keep it for thee.'

The answer came swift. 'And why not mother, as heretofore?' Auntie Khojee sidled again in deprecation of such a tone towards the master.

Jehan himself would have given his fighting quail (source of his only steady income) to answer this woman as he answered other women; but he could not. The child, the only child which had come to his reprobate life, was her s.h.i.+eld, her weapon also. He looked at this tie between them almost resentfully, and thrust it once more to the van of fight.

'Because, Sa'adut, mother hath had it long enough. Hath she not, sonling? It is father's turn now, is it not?'

Sa'adut's big black eyes--they had all his mother's melancholy, with a childish wistfulness superadded to their velvet depths--looked from the woman's face to the man's, from his mother's face to his father's; and a vague perplexity, a still vaguer consciousness of a hidden meaning, came to his childish mind. What did they want, these big people who always took so much upon themselves? Unless _he_ expressed a wish, when theirs had to give way.

Suddenly he rose to his feet, a mite of mankind between those two imperious, undisciplined natures which had so thoughtlessly called his into being. The veriest atom of humanity, and yet, by reason of its frailty, its inexperience, more imperious, more undisciplined than that from which it sprung.

'Give it to me, myself!' came his hoa.r.s.e pipe arrogantly; 'give it to Sa'adut! He will keep it himself. Give it, I say? Give it!'

The claim to individual life in a thing to which you have given life, startled even this father and mother. They paused, uncertain.

So in a second, ear-piercing shrieks of amazed disappointment rent the air, and there was Khojee on her knees attempting pacification, while Khadjee from her tinsels implored immediate gratification.

'Give it him, Nawab-_sahib_!' she fluttered. 'Lo! he will die in a fit; it is ill denying a child; thou canst take it back when he tires of the plaything.'