‘He will go back to his own people in time,’ said the mother; ‘but by the blessing of God that time is yet afar off.’
Holden sat silent on the couch thinking of the future, and his thoughts were not pleasant. The drawbacks of a double life are manifold. The Government, with singular care, had ordered him out of the station for a fortnight on special duty in the place of a man who was watching by the bedside of a sick wife. The verbal notification of the transfer had been edged by a cheerful remark that Holden ought to think himself lucky in being a bachelor and a free man. He came to break the news to Ameera.
‘It is not good,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is not all bad. There is my mother here, and no harm will come to me – unless indeed I die of pure joy. Go thou to thy work and think no troublesome thoughts. When the days are done I believe … nay, I am sure. And – and then I shall lay him in thy arms, and thou wilt love me for ever. The train goes to-night, at midnight, is it not? Go now, and do not let thy heart be heavy by cause of me. But thou wilt not delay in returning? Thou wilt not stay on the road to talk to the bold white mem-log? Come back to me swiftly, my life.’
As he left the courtyard to reach his horse that was tethered to the gate-post, Holden spoke to the white-haired old watchman who guarded the house, and bade him under certain contingencies despatch the filled-up telegraph-form that Holden gave him. It was all that could be done, and with the sensations of a man who has attended his own funeral Holden went away by the night mail to his exile. Every hour of the day he dreaded the arrival of the telegram, and every hour of the night he pictured to himself the death of Ameera. In consequence his work for the State was not of first-rate quality, nor was his temper towards his colleagues of the most amiable. The fortnight ended without a sign from his home, and, torn to pieces by his anxieties, Holden returned to be swallowed up for two precious hours by a dinner at the Club, wherein he heard, as a man hears in a swoon, voices telling him how execrably he had performed the other man’s duties, and how he had endeared himself to all his associates. Then he fled on horseback through the night with his heart in his mouth. There was no answer at first to his blows on the gate, and he had just wheeled his horse round to kick it in when Pir Khan appeared with a lantern and held his stirrup.
‘Has aught occurred?’ said Holden.
‘The news does not come from my mouth, Protector of the Poor, but –’ He held out his shaking hand as befitted the bearer of good news who is entitled to a reward.
Holden hurried through the courtyard. A light burned in the upper room. His horse neighed in the gateway, and he heard a shrill little wail that sent all the blood into the apple of his throat. It was a new voice, but it did not prove that Ameera was alive.
‘Who is there?’ he called up the narrow brick stair-case.
There was a cry of delight from Ameera, and then the voice of the mother, tremulous with old age and pride: ‘We be two women and – the – man – thy – son.’
On the threshold of the room Holden stepped on a naked dagger, that was laid there to avert ill-luck, and it broke at the hilt under his impatient heel.
‘God is great!’ cooed Ameera in the half-light. ‘Thou hast taken his misfortunes on thy head.’
‘Ay, but how is it with thee, life of my life? Old woman, how is it with her?’
‘She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the child is born. There is no harm; but speak softly,’ said the mother.
‘It only needed thy presence to make me all well’ said Ameera. ‘My king, thou hast been very long away. What gifts hast thou for me? Ah, ah! It is that bring gifts this time. Look, my life, look. Was there ever such a babe? Nay, I am too weak even to clear my arm from him.’
‘Rest then, and do not talk. I am here, bachari [little woman].’
‘Well said, for there is a bond and a heel-rope [peecharee] between us now that nothing can break. Look – canst thou see in this light? He is without spot or blemish. Never was such a man-child. Ya illah! he shall be a pundit – no, a trooper of the Queen. And, my life, dost thou love me as well as ever, though am faint and sick and worn? Answer truly.’
‘Yea. I love as I have loved, with all my soul. Lie still, pearl, and rest.’
‘Then do not go. Sit by my side here – so. Mother the lord of this house needs a cushion. Bring it.’ There was an almost imperceptible movement on the part of the new life that lay in the hollow of Ameera’s arm. ‘Aho!’ she said, her voice breaking with love. ‘The babe is a champion from his birth. He is kicking me in the side with mighty kicks. Was there ever such a babe! And he is ours to us – thine and mine. Put thy hand on his head, but carefully, for he is very young, and men are unskilled in such matters.’
Very cautiously Holden touched with the tips of his fingers the downy head.
‘He is of the Faith,’ said Ameera; ‘for lying here in the night-watches I whispered the call to prayer and the profession of faith into his ears. And it is most marvellous that he was born upon a Friday,2 as I was born. Be careful of him, my life; but he can almost grip with his hands.’
Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there was someone else in the world, but he could not feel that it was a veritable son with a soul. He sat down to think, and Ameera dozed lightly.
‘Get hence, Sahib,’ said her mother under her breath. ‘It is not good that she should find you here on waking. She must be still.’
‘I go,’ said Holden submissively. ‘Here be rupees. See that my baba gets fat and finds all that he needs.’
The chink of the silver roused Ameera. ‘I am his mother, and no hireling,’ she said weakly. ‘Shall I look to him more or less for the sake of money? Mother, give it back. I have borne my lord a son.’
The deep sleep of weakness came upon her almost before the sentence was completed. Holden went down to the courtyard very softly with his heart at ease. Pir Khan, the old watchman, was chuckling with delight. ‘This house is now complete,’ he said, and without further comment thrust into Holden’s hands the hilt of a sabre worn many years ago when he, Pir Khan, served the Queen in the Police. The bleat of a tethered goat came from the well-kerb.
‘There be two,’ said Pir Khan, ‘two goats of the best. I bought them, and they cost much money; and since there is no birth-party assembled their flesh will be all mine. Strike craftily, Sahib! ’Tis an ill-balanced sabre at the best. Wait till they raise their heads from cropping the marigolds.’
‘And why?’ said Holden, bewildered.
‘For the birth-sacrifice. What else? Otherwise the child being unguarded from fate may die. The Protector of the Poor knows the fitting words to be said.’
Holden had learned them once with little thought that he would ever speak them in earnest. The touch of the cold sabre-hilt in his palm turned suddenly to the clinging grip of the child upstairs – the child that was his own son – and a dread of loss filled him.
‘Strike!’ said Pir Khan. ‘Never life came into the world but life was paid for it. See, the goats have raised their heads. Now! With a drawing cut!’
Hardly knowing what he did, Holden cut twice as he muttered the Mohammedan prayer that runs: ‘Almighty! In place of this my son I offer life for life, blood for blood, head for head, bone for bone, hair for hair, skin for skin.’ The waiting horse snorted and bounded in his pickets at the smell of the raw blood that spirted over Holden’s riding-boots.
‘Well smitten!’ said Pir Khan, wiping the sabre. ‘A swordsman was lost in thee. Go with a light heart, Heaven-born. I am thy servant, and the servant of thy son. May the Presence live a thousand years and … the flesh of the goats is all mine?’ Pir Khan drew back richer by a month’s pay. Holden swung himself into the saddle and rode off through the low-hanging wood-smoke of the evening. He was full of riotous exultation, alternating with a vast vague tenderness directed towards no pa
rticular object, that made him choke as he bent over the neck of his uneasy horse. ‘I never felt like this in my life,’ he thought. ‘I’ll go to the Club and pull myself together.’
A game of pool was beginning, and the room was full of men. Holden entered, eager to get to the light and the company of his fellows, singing at the top of his voice:
‘In Baltimore a-woalking, a lady I did meet!’
‘Did you?’ said the Club Secretary from his corner. ‘Did she happen to tell you that your boots were wringing wet? Great goodness, man, it’s blood!’
‘Bosh!’ said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. ‘May I cut in? It’s dew. I’ve been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are in a mess though!
‘And if it be a girl she shall wear a wedding-ring,
And if it be a boy he shall fight for his King,
With his dirk, and his cap, and his little jacket blue,
He shall walk the quarter-deck –’
‘Yellow on blue – green next player,’ said the marker monotonously.
‘He shall walk the quarter-deck, – Am I green, marker? He shall walk the quarter-deck, – eh! that’s a bad shot, – as his daddy used to do!’
‘I don’t see that you have anything to crow about,’ said a zealous junior Civilian acidly. ‘The Government is not exactly pleased with your work when you relieved Sanders.’
‘Does that mean a wigging from headquarters?’ said Holden with an abstracted smile. ‘I think I can stand it.’
The talk beat up round the ever-fresh subject of each man’s work, and steadied Holden till it was time to go to his dark empty bungalow, where his butler received him as one who knew all his affairs. Holden remained awake for the greater part of the night, and his dreams were pleasant ones.
II
‘How old is he now?’
‘Ya illah! What a man’s question! He is all but six weeks old; and on this night I go up to the house-top with thee; my life, to count the stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both and get wealth. Can we wish for aught better, beloved?’
‘There is nothing better. Let us go up to the roof, and thou shalt count the stars – but a few only, for the sky is heavy with cloud.’
‘The winter rains are late, and maybe they come out of season. Come, before all the stars are hid. I have put on my richest jewels.’
‘Thou hast forgotten the best of all.’
‘Ai! Ours. He comes also. He has never yet seen the skies.’
Ameera climbed the narrow staircase that led to the flat roof. The child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm, gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin with a small skull-cap on his head. Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the pure metal, and the chinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low over the rosy anklebone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin as befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with floss silk, frail glass bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand, and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country’s ornaments, but, since they were Holden’s gift and fastened with a cunning European snap, delighted her immensely.
They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the city and its lights.
‘They are happy down there,’ said Ameera. ‘But I do not think that they are as happy as we. Nor do I think the white mem-log are as happy. And thou?’
‘I know they are not.’
‘How dost thou know?’
‘They give their children over to the nurses.’
‘I have never seen that,’ said Ameera with a sigh, ‘nor do I wish to see. Ahi!’ – she dropped her head on Holden’s shoulder – ‘I have counted forty stars, and I am tired. Look at the child, love of my life, he is counting too.’
The baby was staring with round eyes at the dark of the heavens. Ameera placed him in Holden’s arms, and he lay there without a cry.
‘What shall we call him among ourselves?’ she said. ‘Look! Art thou ever tired of looking? He carries thy very eyes. But the mouth –’
‘Is thine, most dear. Who should know better than I?’
‘’Tis such a feeble mouth. Oh, so small! And yet it holds my heart between its lips. Give him to me now. He has been too long away.’
‘Nay, let him lie; he has not yet begun to cry.’
‘When he cries thou wilt give him back – eh? What a man of mankind thou art! If he cried he were only the dearer to me. But, my life, what little name shall we give him?’
The small body lay close to Holden’s heart. It was utterly helpless and very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it. The caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian-spirit in most native households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy wing.
‘There is the answer,’ said Holden. ‘Mian Mittu has spoken. He shall be The Parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run about. Mian Mittu is The Parrot in thy – in the Mussulman tongue, is it not?’
‘Why put me so far off?’ said Ameera fretfully. ‘Let it be like unto some English name – but not wholly. For he is mine.’
‘Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.’
‘Ay, Tota, and that is still The Parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for a minute ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of Mian Mittu for name. He shall be Tota – our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O small one? Littlest, thou art Tota.’ She touched the child’s cheek, and he waking wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother, who soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of Aré koko, Jaré koko!3 which says:
‘Oh, crow! Go, crow! Baby’s sleeping sound,
And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound.
Only a penny a pound, baba, only a penny a pound.’
Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled himself down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden’s horse, his Police sabre across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera’s mother sat spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon.
‘I have prayed,’ said Ameera after a long pause, ‘I have prayed for two things. First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and in the second, that I may die in the place of the child. I have prayed to the Prophet and to Bibi Miriam [the Virgin Mary]. Thinkest thou either will hear?’
‘From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?’
‘I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will my prayers be heard?’
‘How can I say? God is very good.’
‘Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies, what is thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for kind calls to kind.’
‘Not always.’
‘With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this life, later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure, for I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a strange place and a Paradise that I do not know.’
‘Will it be Paradise?’
‘Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two – I and the child – shall be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us. In the old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things; but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.’
>
‘It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and love we know well. Surely we are happy now.’
‘So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy Bibi Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then she would envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.’
Holden laughed aloud at Ameera’s little spasm of jealousy.
‘Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee, then?’
‘Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words, well I know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet. And I would not have it otherwise. See!’
Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his feet; recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to her bosom. Then, almost savagely: –
‘Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length of my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before they are old women?’
‘They marry as do others – when they are women.’
‘That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?’
‘That is true.’
‘Ya illah!4 At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife even of eighteen? She is a woman – ageing every hour. Twenty-five! I shall be an old woman at that age, and – Those mem-log remain young forever. How I hate them!’
‘What have they to do with us?’
‘I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten years after I am an old woman, grey-headed, and the nurse of Tota’s son. That is unjust and evil. They should die too.’