The Mercy of the Lord Part 20

Truly a sight never to be forgotten; a sight well worth a pilgrimage.

And then some swift remembrance made him glance downwards, and he saw before him the bleached skeleton of a man. Something in the att.i.tude of it, the feet hidden in the lake made him stoop curiously to see what its sapphire surface covered.

What was it?

He stood looking down into the rippling water that whispered and whispered to the flowers ceaselessly, for some time; then he turned and climbed the hill again.

But, even if he had taken anything with him to M[=a]nasa Sarovara, he left it behind him there beside the skeleton of a man with curiously deformed feet. But the blisters had gone.

RETAINING FEES

It is not always on rocks and rapids that the c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.l of human happiness meets with the direst s.h.i.+pwreck. Often in the quietest backwaters, where no current is, where not a ripple disturbs the still surface, disaster so absolute, so overwhelming comes, that the very tragedy of it sinks out of sight also, unrecognised, unrecorded.

Such a backwater was a little square of roof four pair back, in a tall tenement house in Lucknow, where one blazing hot day in June a buxom woman, with a yellow-skinned baby hitched to her hip outside the voluminous veil of dirty crushed calico, which for the present was mostly in folds about her feet, was haranguing three other women who sat working as for dear life in the hard unyielding shadow of the high walls, which were deemed necessary even here to shut out the possibility of prying eyes.

"What you need, honourable ladies," finished Mussumet Jewuni decisively, "is a 'bannister.'"

"A 'bannister!'" echoed the eldest of the three listeners. "And what new-fangled thing is that?"

She did not slacken a second in her deft twirling of her distaff, neither did the others, despite their questioning eyes, relax their swift business. Indeed, as they sat in the shadows, the three might have served as a model for the Fates, since Khulasa Khanum span ceaselessly. Aftaba Khanum wound yarn on a circling bamboo frame, and Lateefa Khanum snipped with a very large pair of scissors at the s.h.i.+rt she was making; for, being many years younger than the others, her eyes were still fit for fine back-st.i.tching. Beautiful hazel eyes they were, too: large, soft, full of suns.h.i.+ne and shadow.

Jewuni dismissed one mouthful of betel nut and began on another ere she replied.

"A 'bannister' is a pleader, who, having been across the black water to London, knows new tricks wherewith to confound the old ones. 'Tis the only chance for justice, ladies. I know of such an one, and could bring him here to receive instruction, and mayhap there would be no need for the honourable ladies to answer in Court."

Khulasa Khanum's hands froze in horror; she glanced anxiously towards Lateefa. "Talk not like that before the child, woman!" she interrupted, almost fiercely. "No strange man, as thou knowest, comes to this virtuous house, and no woman goes out of it."

Both statements were absolutely true; these women, distant relations, yet bound to each other by the tie of a common poverty, a common wrong, had not set foot beyond that square of roof for years and no men--save those whose interest it was to keep them poor--had ever climbed the steep stair hole which showed like a cavernous shadow in the high back wall.

Yet Jewuni Begum laughed. She was a very different stamp of woman. Her oil-beplastered hair narrowing her forehead beyond even Nature's intention, and the soap curls at her silver and gold ta.s.selled ears were of a fas.h.i.+on which left little doubt as to her moral character; but, being a bottomless receptacle for the gossip of the whole town, owing to her husband's position as a paid tout at the Law Courts, the neighbourhood in general, and even that virtuous roof in particular, had left inquiry and condemnation alone for the present.

"Lo! Khanum!" she giggled, "that is true enough, G.o.d knows; yet what avails it for reputation? None. 'Tis a rare joke, and I meant not to tell it thee; still, 'tis too good to be lost. In the Mirza's reply to the last pet.i.tion sent from this house for direct payment of the pension due to honourable ladies, it is written--my man saw it, and there was laughter among the writers, I will go bail--that the pet.i.tioners, being giddy young things, given to wanton ways, it is necessary for the honour of a princely family that they be held under restraint; such money as is due being expended lavishly, aye! and more, in securing the luxury due to gentlewomen of your estate."

Here she herself went off into such chuckles that the yellow baby had to be s.h.i.+fted higher on her shaking side.

The three women ceased working, and looked at each other helplessly, while underneath their curiously fair skins a flush showed distinctly.

"Did they say that--of us?" asked Aftaba Khanum at last, in a faltering voice. Perhaps it was her occupation of winding hanks without tangle which made her always so keen to have all things clear.

"And of me?" echoed Khulasa faintly. Her old face had grown very grey, her hands, though they had ceased working, were no longer frozen; they trembled visibly.

Only Lateefa sat silent, a swift yet sullen anger on her still young face.

Jewuni giggled again. "There was no distinction of decency, Khanum. But 'tis too bad, and that is why I spoke of a 'bannister' to confound such old tricks with new ones. However, 'tis no business of mine, only," she paused in her conversation, and, going beside Lateefa, she lowered her voice, "there is no need for st.i.tching s.h.i.+rts till shroud-time comes.

There be other ways, as I have told thee before, of earning money, aye!

enough even to pay a 'bannister's' fee, and get the truth made known.

So, if thou preferest to be as a hooded falcon, seeing nothing of the sport in life, sit and st.i.tch. If not, come to me and claim freedom--in all things."

When she and the yellow baby had gone, silence fell on the desecrated little square of virtuous roof.

Truly it was hard! After a life-time of patient propriety, long years of self-denial involving silence and seclusion even from scant justice, to have all these virtues reft from them in order that wantonness and giddiness and youth might serve as an excuse for withholding their rights! That these rights should be traversed was to their experience no new thing, though to Western ears it may seem inconceivable that even under British rule it is the easiest thing in the world to treat secluded women as these three had been treated. Briefly, for the male head of the family, as guardian, to leave them to starve, while he made merry over their poor pittances of pensions granted to them by Government in consideration of their race, or its good services. No wonder, then, that Khulasa sat helpless, resorting for comfort to the little rosary she always carried, that Aftaba's tears ran silently down her withered cheeks, or that Lateefa's sullen anger gave a dangerous look to her still handsome face. So dangerous that fear pierced Aftaba's soft self-pity at last, making her ask anxiously:

"What was it she said to thee privately, Lateefa? Naught worse, surely?"

The darkening of the handsome face was not all anger now. Lateefa rose with a bitter laugh.

"Nay! she but spoke of 'fees' for justice, as if we had aught to pay.

Yet something must be done."

"We have done too much already," came Khulasa's shaking voice. "If we had trusted in the Lord instead of sending pet.i.tions there would have been no need for them to tell the lie. If we had waited----"

"Lo! we had waited," put in Aftaba, "and pet.i.tions are no new thing.

Our fathers made them. They are not like 'bannisters' and strange men.

These----"

There was no need for her to explain what these were to that virtuous roof, for at the moment a tentative cough from the stair-hole accompanied by the rhythmic squelching of water in a skin-bag announced the daily visitation of old Shamira, the _bhisti_, who had filled their earthen pots for them for years and years; and in an instant veils were hastily drawn close, faces turned to the wall.

"_Bismillah!_" came the orthodox greeting, for old Shamira knew all about the honourable ladies, and in a way loved them, though he had never once seen them in all the long years.

"_Bismillah! irruhman, niruheem!_" returned the virtuous ones decorously. Only Lateefa, standing in the corner, felt that there was but half a truth in the words. G.o.d might be clement in the next world, but he was far from merciful in this. Yet it was not the fault of the world itself; that was fair enough. There was a displaced brick in the corner where she stood, and, profiting by the temporary blindness of her veiled companions, she did what she had done several times on the sly, during the past few weeks--she took advantage of the brick-hole and tip-toe to gain a glimpse of that outside world. It was the veriest glimpse indeed, of purpling shadowy roofs huddled against a flare of sunset sky, but the dust haze through which she saw it seemed a golden halo of transfiguration, and in a second she had made her choice. She would pay a retaining fee for bare justice to her own womanhood. Jewuni was right! Times had changed. Why should she waste her life clinging to old ways when new freedom was within reach.

Yet there was a startled, half-frightened look both in the suns.h.i.+ne and shadow of her hazel eyes, as she waited, face towards the wall, till the cool sound of pouring water have ceased, she was free to resume her limited life. Limited, indeed! How strange those limitations seemed in the light of her new decision!

But those brief minutes of arrest, due to old Shamira's entry into the feminine cosmogony, had, curiously enough, brought decision to the other two women, for, in truth, Jewuni's story, Jewuni's giggle at the joke, had been the last straw to their patience, the final goad rousing them to action of which, each in her own way, they had been dreaming for long.

They, too, felt that the time was past for temporising, for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g their sails to suit each other's opinions.

So Khulasa Khanum's pallid, high-featured face was more like that of one new-dead than ever, when Shamira gone, she returned to work. And, in truth, she had in those few seconds died for ever to this world and its works.

Delicate from her babyhood, saintly from pure suffering, joy had had small part even in her desire, and her resistance to pain had been always half-hearted. For what was even the justice of man worth in comparison with the justice of G.o.d? Naturally enough, then, Jewuni's tale of the sorry jest had been more a horror to her than to either of the others, making her turn to the hidden meaning of her thwarted life for comfort. Her retaining fee for justice should be paid where there was no fear of a miscarriage. And in the meantime, while the tyranny of life lasted, she must work--work to the end.

For on her work, practically, those others lived. In all the town no hands could spin a finer thread than old Khulasa Khanum's. The very spinning jennies of Bombay could not compete with her ceaseless industry; and there still remained n.o.ble folk who clung to the spider's-web muslin of the old times. So her hands twirled faster, more deftly. The rest was with G.o.d.

Aftaba Khanum, on the contrary, had decided for the world; not, as Lateefa had done, for the world as it was in these latter days, but for the world as it ought to be, as it used to be. She had a very different strain in her from those other two; from Khulasa in her spirituality Lateefa in her emotionality. Aftaba, even when things were at their worst, smiled, consoling herself and the roof generally with some unexpected and perhaps extravagant sc.r.a.p of amus.e.m.e.nt. A mouthful of pillau concocted out of nothing to season a dry bread dinner, a ridiculous toy made out of rubbish, whereat all laughed. Courtier-born, she loved even the old etiquettes by instinct, while her keen wit could find a clue of an intrigue as deftly as her fingers could disentangle Khulasa's cobwebs. And, of all three, she kept in closer touch with a world with which she had not quarrelled, despite its injustice towards her. There was, indeed, a certain Uncle Chiragh who still came to see her, and her only, once or twice a year. A blue-beard dodderer, with a twinkling eye, and a still mellow voice, who sometimes brought quails with him, and spices, so that Aftaba might regale him with one of her best curries; for she was a great cook.

So the spur of Jewuni's retailed insult came as a challenge to Aftaba's sense of propriety. The world might be diseased by novelty, but the foundations were sure. She had been a fool all these years to acquiesce in impersonal pet.i.tions with purposeless stamps to them, instead of some graceful tribute, after the older, approved method. True, she had once broached the subject to Jewuni. She had even gone so far as to bring out a certain faded brocaded bag, which was her greatest treasure, and produce therefrom a medal or two, a dozen or more worn letters. Quaint, old-world informations to the reader, that the bearer, Futteh, or Iman, or Ha.s.san, was such and such a worthy person--a gold-spangled record of thanks for service in the Mutiny--the intimation of one Rissildar Tez Khan's death in action; which latter had indeed been the cause of Aftaba's loneliness. Even (curious survival of friendly days gone, never to return) a few English words, in sprawling, irresponsible, boyish handwriting, to say that the self-same Tez Khan knew the whereabouts of every living creature fit to shoot in the whole countryside!

But Jewuni had scorned the suggestion of sending these to the bigwig with, say, a basket of Aftaba's famous pumpkin preserve, since, alas, oranges stuffed with rupees were out of the question. Indeed, she had said succinctly:

"Keep them till the Day of Judgment. The Lord may look at them, the law will not. For, see, they are not even stamped, and without stamps is no justice possible."

Even then old Aftaba had felt, with dim obstinacy, that it was not law or justice she sought: it was favour! Favour such as the great had to give in a well-ordered world!

And so she, in her turn, came back to the limitations of her life with a decision. Uncle Chiragh had told her but a week or two before--as luck would have it!--that the whole town was to be in an uproar the very next day over the unveiling of a statue of Malika Victoria. The anniversary of a great day in the heroic annals of the Defence of the Residency--for which, by the way, that gold-spangled grat.i.tude had been given--had been chosen as fitting for the ceremonial. The grounds were to be lit up, fireworks let off, and special messages sent to and from the Queen herself, while the statue would be covered with offerings.