earshot of a whisper, since walls, especially in an Indian palace, have ears. That was why Diwân's chair was set out in the open under the star-gemmed dome of the sky which paled to its circled setting of plain that, seen from the height, seemed in its turn to curve, cup-like, to meet the sky. The decent domino she had worn on her way was cast aside out of sheer coquetry, so that her supple figure, unadorned save for the heavy chaplets of jasmine flowers shrouding the filmy muslin, might stand outlined above the low parapet among the stars. For Chândni was shrewd. The ordinary jewels of her class might have aroused memories in the old man, and she wished to impress him with her individuality.
'Nay, daughter,' he said approvingly, 'I well believe failure was not thy fault. As for thy plan--speak.'
She drew her lips closer to his ear, and laid one hand on his knee, as if to hold his attention.
'Father! all men care for something. He cares not for what he has been given. Let us try others. If they fail, well and good. Now there is one thing such as he favour--God knows why?--but I have seen them myself in the bazaar at Delhi--sahibs who have come over the black water to buy ragged rugs and battered brass pots. Why? Because, forsooth, they are old! The crazy potter would say it was because they remember them. I know not. But this boy pokes about the old things--questions of the old tales.'
Zubr-ul-Zamân nodded approval. 'True, he favoured the Ayôdhya pot; but he returned it.'
Chândni's eyes sparkled, then fell. 'So! that is one thing to begin with. Then he is of those who watch flowers grow and birds build their nests; who paint colour an paper for the love of it. Again, when the fowler fails in all else he baits the snare with pity, and sets a decoy-bird a-fluttering within the net. This boy gives quinine to the old wives, and fish-oil to the babes born with the Potter's thumb-mark.' Her laughter crackled joylessly.
'Words--words,' muttered the old man impatiently. What wouldest thou do?'
She drew closer, and the movement sent a wave of perfume from the jasmine chaplets into the air.
'Lend me Azîzan for a week, and thou shalt see.'
Scent, so people say, is the most powerful stimulant to bygone memories; perhaps that was the reason why her words brought such a pulse of fierce life to the old face. 'Azîz! Nay! she is of the house.'
'Why not say of the race, father?' retorted Chândni coolly. 'Nay! in such talk as ours truth is best. Thinkest thou I am a fool when I go to dance and sing in the women's quarter? Is it not sixteen years since the potter's daughter disappeared on the night of the great storm'--hath not this fifteen-year-old the potter's eyes--Heaven shield us from them!' Her hand went out in the two-fingered gesture used to avert the evil eye in West as well as East.
Zubr-ul-Zamân scowled at her.
'There be other girls and plenty; take them,' he began. 'Besides, she is betrothed. I will not lose the dower.'
'Wherefore shouldest lose it? I said a week, and Zainub, the duenna, will see to safety. He will but paint her picture.'
The Diwân spat piously. 'And what good will such accursed idol-making do?' he asked more calmly.
''Twill bring the quarry within reach; he lives too far away now. Give me the girl, my lord, else will I know that the Diwân Zubr-ul-Zamân Julâl-i-dowla Mustukkul-i-jung is afraid of the potter's eyes.'
'As thou art, daughter of the bazaars,' he retorted fiercely. 'Shall I set them on thee and thine?'
Chândni essayed an uneasy laugh. 'I will do her no harm,' she muttered sullenly. 'I will not even speak to her if thou wilt. Zainub shall do all.'
Half-an-hour afterwards Chândni, wrapped in her white domino, paused on her way home at the door leading to the women's quarters and knocked. After a while an old woman appeared at the latticed shutter. The courtesan whispered a word or two, the door opened, and the two disappeared down a dark passage.
''Tis Chândni come to dance.' The whisper ran through the airless, squalid rooms, causing a flutter among the caged inhabitants. Out of their beds they came, yawning and stretching, to sit squatted in a circle on the bare floor, and watch Chândni give a spirited imitation of the way the mem-sahibs waltzed with the sahib-logue. It was not an edifying spectacle, but it afforded infinite satisfaction to the audience. An audience which has to take its world at second-hand, and in the process has grown careless as to abstract truth. The young women tittered, the old ones called Heaven to witness their horror, and then they all sat without winking an eye while the courtesan sang the songs of her profession.
But little Azîzan's light eyes saw nothing at which to smile or to cry in either performance. She was young for her years, and very sleepy; besides, she was betrothed to an old man whom she had never seen, because, as all the other girls took care to tell her, she really was too ugly to be kept in the family. And that sort of thing takes the zest from life.
When the entertainment was over, Chândni sat and talked with Zainub, the duenna, until dawn, with that careless disregard of bed-time, which makes it quite impossible to foretell at what hour of the day or night a native of India will be asleep or awake.
But George Keene, over the way in the branded bungalow, was safely tucked up in sheets and blankets, whence nothing short of an earthquake would have roused him.
An earthquake, or else a prescience of the hideous caricature Chândni had been making of the trois temps over in the palace.
CHAPTER IV
George Keene was trying to translate the cloth-of-gold sunlight into cadmium yellow, with the result that the blue of the tiles in his sketch grew green, and the opal on the pigeon's breasts as they sidled along the cornice, was dimmed to dust colour.
The courtyard with its blind arcades of Saracenic arches surrounding the mosque, lay bare and empty, as it always did save at the hours of prayer. He looked across it with a dissatisfied expression, noting the intense colour of certain tiles which were mixed up with those more modern ones bearing the Arabic letterings. The former reminded him of the Ayôdhya pot, and set him a-wondering if he should ever have an honest chance of procuring one like his first bribe. The old potter, his authority in such matters, had told him they were still to be found, more or less broken, in the digging of graves, or the sinking of wells. Hitherto, however, he had failed to hear of one. Yet, the possibility remained, since those tiles, which must be centuries older than the café chantant sort of proscenium on which they were inlaid, had survived. The latter he saw clearly, now he came to draw it, had been added on to an older building behind; probably a Hindu temple. So, when all was said and done, that figure of a grave and reverend Mohammedan moulvie, which he had intended to put in the foreground, might not have so much right to be there as a priest of Baal. It was a confusing country!
When he looked up again from his work, he gave a start; for a totally unexpected model was squatting on the flags of his foreground. A mere slip of a village girl; and yet was she of the village? More likely a stranger--perhaps one of the southern tribes of whom the potter told tales--since her dress was odd.
It consisted of a reddish purple drapery, more tike wool than cotton in texture, with a stitched border in browns and creams such as the desert folk embroider on their camel trappings. It was an admirable piece of colouring against that blue background, and he began
