Flora Annie Webster Steel

THE KITE-FLYERS

'Bring me more paste, women, and see there be no lumps in it; the last was fit to ruin a body's reputation,' said Lateefa, the kite-maker, as he sate on the ground in one of the arched nooks which surrounded the wide sunlit courtyard of a large native house. It had been a sort of city palace to the dead dynasty, and was now occupied by JehÂn Aziz, the Rightful Heir's, family. It was built of stucco, simulating marble; stucco decayed, fast crumbling to dust, so leaving scars, where once there had been ornaments.

The speaker was an old man, though his sleek oiled hair, square-cut in the royal fashion just below the ear, showed no streak of grey. On one side of him lay the raw material of his craft; on the other a swift-growing pile of the manufactured article ready for sale in the bazaar, after his master, JehÂn Aziz, prince of kite-flyers, should have taken his choice. That Lateefa himself was prince of kite-makers could be judged from the way in which he bent the bamboo slips to a perfect curve, and held them thus by three dabs of paste and a sheet of tissue paper. It was a miracle of dexterity.

There were two women in the courtyard, one a girl about sixteen, who was lounging lazily behind Lateefa, the other a woman of sixty, dressed in ragged dirty garments, who was spinning as for dear life an arch or two farther down. After a pause, during which she looked almost appealingly at the girl, the latter rose and limped towards an inner court, for KhÔjeeya KhÂnum was slightly lame; slightly deformed also, owing to her lameness.

'Keep the lumps to our dinners, Auntie KhÔjee!' called the girl with a pert titter; 'for what with paste and the kites it makes we good women have scarce flour left to fill our stomachs!'

Lateefa, after watching the limp disappear, glanced round at the girl. She was a buxom creature, over-developed for her years, and over-dressed in the cheap finery of Manchester muslin at six pice a yard and German silver earrings at two annas a dozen.

'Thy sort of good woman need never starve, niece Sobrai,' he said (for he was connected by some by way of blood to the Heirs of All Things or Nothing), 'I have told thee that before. There is not a drop of her blood in thee,' he nodded to the inner door. 'I mean no blame; some daughters must favour the father. Indeed, I marvel ever there be so few to do it in this family, since, God knows! we men be debauched enough to outweigh the virtue of the sainted FÂtma herself.' He shook his head and began on a new kite.

'Thou knowest that better than I,' retorted Sobrai sharply; 'though thy memory, Uncle Lateef, can scarce hold the poor souls thou hast injured thereby.'

His deft hands left their work, and the supple fingers spread themselves in emphatic denial. 'Not a one! niece, not a one!' he protested, 'Lateefa makes kites, not souls. I take men and women as they came from their Maker's hands--as I came. For, see you, if my kites fly, as I make them fly, why not His souls?'--he paused for a thin musical laugh which suited his thin acute face--'I say not,' he went on, 'that thou art botched by being built another fashion, but that her life,' he nodded again to the inner or women's court, 'is not for such as thee--that thou hadst best appraise thine own needs betimes.'

'May be I have already,' sneered the girl insolently, 'and without thy help, pander!'

He turned on her swiftly. 'Have a care, girl! have a care! In vice, as in virtue, the old ways are safest. So listen not to that woman from cantonments whom the NawÂb brings hither when he entertains. Ah! think not I have not seen thee stealing down on the sly to have a word with her.'

Sobrai gave a half-abashed titter. 'And to DilarÂm thy friend of the city also! Lo! uncle! What is there to choose between them or their trade either? "If one comes to dance, what matters a veil?" And if the NawÂb would keep his women old-fashioned, why doth he bring Miss Leezie to the house? Ah! say not 'tis only to this outer court where we virtuous need see nothing; for "'tis only the blind cow which hath a separate byre," and my sight is good----'

'And thy heart bad,' added Lateefa dispassionately, as she stood shifting one foot to and fro after the manner of dancing-girls. 'Still, since God made thee, as I make kites, thou wilt doubtless fly thine own way--if thou canst find some one to hold the string! It needs that ever.'

She began a retort, but checked herself as KhÔjeeya reappeared with the paste in a green leaf cup.

'Thy work brings quick return, Lateef,' said the old lady, pausing to look wistfully at the growing pile of kites, 'but my wheel twirls for two hours to a farthing tune.' She edged closer and brushed a speck of dirt from the kitemaker's board in wheedling fashion, then went on, 'Couldst not spare me something to-day, Lateef, against the boy's medicine? He needs it sorely, and Noormahal hath not had a cowrie from the NawÂb since the races. Dost know what he lost? He says all, but he lies often.' She spoke without a suspicion of blame, simply as if the fact--being a dispensation of Providence--was neither to be questioned nor resented.

Lateefa laughed airily. 'Lose!' he echoed, 'JehÂn hath naught to lose, not even credit. He sets free of fate! "He who bathes naked has no clothes to wring!" 'Tis Salig RÂm, his usurer, whose fat flesh quivers lest his tame pensioner should die prematurely. So take heart, my good KhÔjee! Things cannot grow worse, or, for that matter, better, since JehÂn's affairs are as a slipped camel in the mud. They can neither go back nor forward. For, see you, he must not die of starvation, lest the pension lapse; nor must he live riotous beyond reason, lest once more the pension lapse through his death by surfeit. Would to God I had such leading-strings to comfortable, clean living myself! But none cares for Lateefa's soul or body. So fret not, KhÔjee, concerning JehÂn. And as for the boy, canst not take the child to the "Duffri'n Hospitar'l" and get physic free? Plenty women go thither, they tell me.'

'Ay! of sorts; but not we,' replied the old lady.

She drew her ragged veil tighter, but Sobrai tittered.

'Hark to her gentility! Yet she goes to the pawnshop, Uncle Lateef, and does the house-marketing to boot--tut! auntie, wouldst pretend it is not so? As if our neighbours did not know us all but servantless! as if they could not tell worshipful KhÔjeeya KhÂnum, king's daughter, below the domino, by the limp!'

The old worn face--it was one of those Providence meant for beauty, then marred--turned in deprecating apology to Lateefa, as representative of outraged propriety and proprietor.

'Some one must, meean,' she said meekly, 'for Ameenan hath but two hands and two feet; yet another set would mean another mouth to feed. Besides, I grow so old, brother; there is no fear.' The faint forlornness and regret of the excuse made Lateefa's sharp face soften.

'Heed not what Sobrai says, sister,' he replied. 'Lo! thy virtue would stand stiff in a brothel; hers grows giddy looking over a wall; so she doth not understand----'

'Not understand!' retorted the girl shrilly. 'Mayhap I understand too much for old folk and old ways. I hold not with lick-spittling men-folk who wander "Englis fassen," yet would keep us in the old path--who say, as their granddads did, that "cattle and women must rub along in their tethers," but claim a long string to their own kites.'

Lateefa interrupted the tirade with a chuckle. 'Since they are able to hold it! but as I told thee, 'tis the mud in the gutter for the gayest of gay petticoats'--he laid his hand on the growing pile of kites-'if they try to soar alone.'

'I will not ask thee to hold mine, anyway,' she retorted, flouncing off in a meditated whirlwind. For Lateefa was right. Sobrai was not born of those who are patient in well-doing. Even without experience, her manners were those of a different model.

Aunt KhÔjee looked after her fearfully, then once more turned to representative man in apology. 'Here are ill words, meean,' she began tremulously, 'yet God knows how hard it is to keep girls silent when the world about them hath grown so noisy. In the old days neighbours were of one's own sort; now, if they be ready to pay full rent, that is enough. I say naught against ours--though, good or bad, it was ill done of AlidÂd, our cousin, to let the house his fathers died in. Still they be decent folk enough, though the son is a balister.^[1] But, see you, since he returned from England he hath taken his wife to live as a mem beyond the city. And she hath set his sisters agog to learn, as she learns, of a miss from the missen. So what with all this talk, and the railway whistle so close, and Sobrai gossiping as girls will over the partitions----'

Lateefa's thin laugh positively crackled. 'Said I not her virtue would not withstand a wall? But heed her not, sister. She is right, for Sobrai! Thou art right, for KÔjeeya KhÂnum! Ye are both God-bred, God-fed! Except concerning houses--there thou art wrong,' he added, giving the old lady a shrewd tentative look. 'Dead folk should remain in their graves and leave the letting of houses to the living. I deem AlidÂd wise, for, as the old saw says, "an empty house is the wasp's estate." JehÂn should do the like with this, if the NawÂbin would consent to live elsewhere.'

'Elsewhere?' echoed KhÔjee, aghast. 'Where else should Noormahal live but in her own house?'

'In a smaller one. Look! saw you ever such a wilderness of a place for five women and a child!'

He swept a derisive finger round the wide courtyard, the terraced arcades, the storied vista of the zenan-khana, the half-fortified gateway, where the royal peacocks still spread their broken plaster tails. And as he did so the flood of yellow sunshine, as if in answer, betrayed every cranny in the cracked brickwork, every scar in the mouldering stucco.

'Tis as a stone on the tail of a kite, sister,' he went on, 'a burden not to be borne by frailty that can scarce support itself.' He had, as he spoke, been tying his morning's work together ere taking it to the bazaar, and now he stood balancing a balloon-like bundle, almost as big as himself, upon his hand; but he emphasised his remark by withdrawing that support, then, ere the kites touched ground, catching the bundle again, so holding them suspended. 'It needs some one to keep feather brains from the gutter,' he continued gravely, 'and thou, KhÔjee, art the only body in this house with sense. KhÂdjee, thy sister, hath decorum, Sobrai desires, and Noormahal, poor soul, dreams! So let me speak thee soberly. Thou hast heard of this plague, sister?'

KhÔjee cracked all her fingers wildly, to avert evil, ere quavering, 'Who hath not? Hath it come, Lateefa? Shall we be all sent to hospital and poisoned?'

The crackling laugh echoed again. 'Fools' tales, woman, fools' tales. Why should the Huzoors trouble? Have they not soldiers and guns wherewith to kill?'

'But they have driven out the MimbrÂns^[2]-committee; they have taken possession of all things. HÂfiz Ahmad's wife, who lives as a mem, said so. She said her husband----'

The laugh crackled again. 'Ay! he is mimber, yet he knows which side of the wall to jump. And what be the rights and wrongs of the quarrel, I know not; but, as thou sayest, the Huzoors have taken the reins once more, for the plague is nigh. So they are meddling with God's work, and finding hospitar'ls and who knows what. And HÂfiz Ahmad, for all his grievance, hath recommended his father's--yea! KhÔjee, the neighbouring house--as hospitarl. So, see you, sister, if folk were wise the hospitarl might come to them, and a swinging rent beside; since BehÂri Lai, the town clerk, told me the doctors said they must have both houses or neither--they were so nigh. Here, then, is Noormahal's chance. Let her claim a writing for half-rent, since, having right of occupancy by her marriage-dowry, JehÂn cannot let without her consent. That would stop wheel-spinning for bare bread, sister.'

But KhÔjee's thoughts were not for herself. 'Can the Huzoors make us go,' she quavered; 'can they force her?'

Lateefa shrugged his shoulders. 'Nay! nay! but if she choose.'

'Then is that the end,' interrupted KhÔjee, with a sigh of relief. 'Noormahal will never choose. She hath but two things left of kingship--and it comes closer through her than through JehÂn, mind you, though, being woman she hath no claim like he-two things, the house and the ring! And she will keep both--for her boy.'

Lateefa had his gay balloon balanced afresh on his palm.

'If she can keep the boy,' he said sardonically; 'but even kites are ill to hold with a rotten string.' So, balancing his burden of nothingness from one hand to another, as jugglers play with a ball, he passed out under the broken plaster peacocks, singing significantly, in his high reedy voice, the dirge of motherhood which so often echoes out into the Indian sunshine from behind closed doors--

'O child! who taught thee to deceive!

O child! who taught thee thus to leave
My throning arms? Didst thou not say
Thou wert their king for aye!
So soon dost thou deceive?
So soon hast learnt to leave
Thy sonship's crown?
To fling it down.
Thy throne
Is lone.
Ah, me! ah, me!'

It fell on KhÔjeeya KhÂnum's ears, making her heart sink with its implied warning; for a child doomed to disease, like little Sa'adut, the heir to the Heirship of Nothingness, was but faint hold on the soaring honours of royalty. And JehÂn Aziz, his father, was a fainter one still. Rumours had come, even to the wide ruined courtyard, of official reprimands, of threats. What wonder, when even the more reputable members of the royal family looked askance at his doings?

Still he was master in that house, and as that was his day for the weekly visit of ceremony he vouchsafed to his lawful wife, it behoved KhÔjee to prepare for it after established rule.

KhÂdeeja KhÂnum, KhÔjee's twin sister, had already done her share of preparation. She had put on her best pink satin trousers and a spangled green veil, in which she sate, squatted on a string bed set in the women's court, and sewed at a tinsel cap for the head of the house--that being the correct etiquette on such occasions.

And KhÂdeeja was far more correct than KhÔjeeya. In fact, her position in the household was quite different, seeing that she had been betrothed in her youth to an ancient suitor who died before she was old enough to be claimed, while no one had ever made a bid for KhÔjee's limp. So, while the latter's few trinkets had a trick of remaining with the pawnbroker, KhÂdjee's never paid even a temporary visit to that official.

Then her clothes, from that decorous sitting on string beds instead of breathless spinning in the dust, remained so spick and span, that Noormahal, poor soul! when money ran scarce for the heir's medicine, would accuse the general scapegoat of extravagance in providing them. On these occasions KhÔjee never retorted that the white muslin in which the NawÂbin denied herself was, in the end, more expensive. Neither did she meet KhÂdjee's demand for more tinsel with the brutal truth that the caps were too old-fashioned for JehÂn Aziz to wear. Family facts of this sort she did not even divulge in her prayers; for KhÔjeeya KhÂnum's religion, like her life, was strictly impersonal. It could be nothing else, since it was barely decent for a woman to intrude even her own salvation on a Creator whose attributes were distinctly masculine!

So, while KhÂdjee sewed and Noormahal cuddled the sleeping Sa'adut as she crouched on another bed, KhÔjee dragged out the state carpet--whence all the state and most of the carpet had retired in favour of bare string--set the cushions, 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 sexes, 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 massage the long slender limbs tucked up under the long slim body. For her niece, though not half her age, was NawÂbin--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 KhÔjeeya; '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 sex, 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 passivity of face and figure--a passivity which held no trace of supineness. For the rest, there was much ignorance and obstinacy in the face, but nobility in both.

She sate, curiously immovable, until KhÔjee 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 hoarse pipe in his childish treble. A lively laddie too, and arrogant from kinglike ignorance of denial.

So KhÔjee limped for more sugar, Noormahal wheedled him into another sip or two, KhÂdeeja 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 JehÂn 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 cushion 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 passionate 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. JehÂn Aziz still had the green gleam of the kingly emerald on his finger. That must first come back to her safe hoarding, 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 JehÂn said he had lost all. All the more reason the ring should come quickly. So, when Sobrai, from above, challenged JehÂn's leer by peeping and nodding, there was no need for Aunt KhÔjee 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 pass unnoticed. She sate passive, brooding, wondering when JehÂn would begin on the subject. And all around the group the still sunshine burdened the half-ruined courtyard with a cruel light.

It was one of KhÂdeeja'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 asserted, 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 sunshine keen as a sword-thrust; with all her desire for diplomacy she could not help it coming. JehÂn glared at her furiously for a second; but irritation at a wife soon passes 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, JehÂn, had as yet seriously considered sale; but even so, if Salig RÂm, 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 shield and his weapon in the fight which was bound to come between himself and the passionate 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 KhÔjee sidled again in deprecation of such a tone towards the master. JehÂn 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 shield, 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 hoarse 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 KhÔjee on her knees attempting pacification, while KhÂdjee from her tinsels implored immediate gratification.

'Give it him, NawÂb-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.'

'Yea! give it him, meean,' pleaded KhÔjee, all of a tremble. '"A child's cry in a house is ill-luck"; thou canst take it back when he sleeps.'

The suggestion struck the keynote of another resentment in Noormahal, making her forget the vague opposition which the child's claim had raised. She caught Sa'adut to her sharply, making that claim her own; for now, thinking only of his helplessness, his cries hurt her physically, making prudence impossible.

'Yea, give it him, JehÂn Aziz, Son of Kings!--give it him in jest for a while. It is easy for a father to steal his son's right from him while he sleeps!'

JehÂn sprang to his feet with a fearful curse; for the tempest of ungovernable anger which had come to that elemental group in the still sunshine, had brought with it the usual sense of personal outrage on personal virtue which alone makes quarrel possible.

'Steal--didst say steal?' he echoed. 'Ay, but 'tis as easy for a wife to steal from her husband when he wakes! Fool! When I wrung the betrothal pearls from thee last year, didst think I did not know there was a string short? Didst think I could not count them round my mother's neck when she held me, a child----'

Noormahal paled, yet faced him with a scornful laugh. 'Thou didst forget to count the string she sold when thy father refused her bread; it runs in the blood, NawÂb-jee!'

His look was fiendish now. 'That is a lie, woman! and thou knowest it. The English took them, as they take all things. Besides, have I not dallied with them round thy neck since then, at my pleasure? What! are they there still?' he went on mockingly, as Noormahal's hand all unconsciously found the slim throat hidden by the folds of her veil. 'Didst keep them against the chance of my return?'

She glared at him helplessly, yet almost forgetful of the brutality of his insult in a greater wrong. 'It was for the child, thou knowest,' she said, in a muffled voice; 'for his bride--as it was for thine, JehÂn; as it hath been ever for every bride in the king's house.'

Her words which came, not from meekness but red-hot rage, made even JehÂn Aziz flinch, so that he had to bolster himself up with fresh anger ere replying.

'And I let thee think me a fool. I took no notice for the boy's sake too.' This new reading of his own cowardice restored his sense of virtue, and with it his courage. 'But now, thief!' he went on, 'since thou hast dared to even me to thyself, as well as think me fool, give me my pearls! Dost hear?--the pearls!'

She drew herself up superbly. 'I called thee traitor,' she cried; 'that is enough for thee.'

'And thief for thee. Well, traitor and thief are fitting mates! Let us kiss and make friends on that comradeship!

She returned his insolent leer with a cold stare for one second; then, in the headlong repulsion from the least tie to him, tore the pearls from their hiding-place and flung them on the ground. They fell; the string snapping, to scatter a few of its milk-white beads about the worn carpet of state.

Even JehÂn hesitated; then the sight of what meant money overcame his dignity, and he stooped to gather up the prize. The action gave him time for quick thought. This windfall might serve a double purpose. By selling it cheap to Lucanaster-sahib he could stave off the bigger question of the emerald for a bit, and at the same time raise enough to pay his more pressing debts. Both these considerations brought such a flavour of pure piety to his task, that by the time he had finished it he turned magnificently to his heir who, silenced from all save sobs by his elder's passion, was being comforted by KhÔjee, while KhÂdjee whimpered like a puppy on her string bed.

'Lo! Sa'adut,' he said, 'take thy ring, sonling! but give it not to thy mother to hoard if thou wouldst grow to wear it, since thou mayst starve the while! But that is her doing, not mine, who would let this house--where I was called thief, and found one--and give thee proper care, if I had my choice. So, I take my leave of it for ever!'

KhÔjee, still on her knees beside the child, turned in swift alarm. 'Peace go with my lord,' she said, her head at his very feet; 'the outer courtyard will be ready as ever for the entertainment----'

He interrupted her mockingly. 'I must learn to take my pleasure elsewhere, noble aunt; 'twill be an easier task than finding it here.' So, with an insolent stare at his wife, he strutted out jauntily.

'Didst hear?' quavered Aunt KhÔjee. KhÂdeeja KhÂnum's answering whimper was almost a howl; but Noormahal said nothing. She was thinking of her tormentor's words about the child. Was it true that the price of the ring might save her darling?

For the present, however, the ring itself satisfied him. Appeased even from sobs, he was engrossed in finding out which of his tiny fingers went nearest to filling up its gold circlet. As he did so the green gleam of the emerald shone broadly, unbrokenly; for, as Mr. Lucanaster had often told his Paris principals, the legend scratched on it was so faint that a turn of the wheel would obliterate it. Yet there it was as yet.

'Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-deen.'

Which, being translated, is, 'By the Grace of God Defender of the Faith.'

Words which have caused much shedding of blood and tears.

But Sobrai Begum found laughter in the storm they had provoked.

''Twas only JehÂn and Noormahal squabbling over the old ring,' she tittered over the wall in answer to a query. 'In the end, she gave him the last of the pearls to pacify him. I would have used them to better purpose had I had the luck to have my hand on them!' And as she sullenly obeyed Aunt KhÔjee's call to help, she told herself that two or three even of the pearls would have brought her freedom; would have given her, as Uncle Lateef had expressed it, that some one to hold the string of her kite, without which aid independence was impossible. For Sobrai had no mind for the gutter.

So the pearls, if she had them----

She gave a little gasp; in folding up the state carpet, four milk-white beads rolled out from its worn strings.

She glanced round her hastily.

KhÂdjee was wiping the dimness of past tears from her spectacles, KhÔjee was replacing the cushions, Noormahal was brooding over Sa'adut, who had fallen asleep with both his thumbs thrust into the ring, as they thrust the fingers of a corpse which might otherwise come back to disturb the living with what should be buried and forgotten.

There was no one to see. And no one to know; for JehÂn would sell or pawn the remainder, none the wiser. Even if he suspected anything he would make no inquiries, since these sales were done in secret.

She had no pocket, and to tie her prize in the corner of her veil would attract attention. So she slipped the pearls into her mouth, and held her tongue even when Aunt KhÔjee scolded at her for not being quicker. Such silence paid better than any retort, and it also gave her time to mature her plans. One thing was certain, she must make her push for freedom before there was any chance of discovery, for it was just possible JehÂn might know the number of the pearls. The sooner the better, as far as she was concerned, since she had long made up her mind to accept Miss Leezie's offer--with a suitable fee--of educating her to that walk in life. She could not remain dowerless, unwed, within four walls all her life! And if one had to amuse oneself, was it not better to do it openly, in a recognised, almost respectable fashion, which was countenanced even by the Huzoors?

As she made her plans, JehÂn on his way to his bachelor quarters in the worst bazaar in Nushapore was making his, and settling that he would certainly lead that pig of an infidel, Lucanaster, to think he would in the end yield the emerald, by letting him have the pearls cheap, under promise of silence.

This was imperative, partly for the sake of honour; mostly because Salig RÂm, the usurer, might object to any one else getting them.