Flora Annie Webster Steel

“ The parrot-seller gave a pull at a bulbul-seller's pipe as if it were his own. "Thou wilt be disgraced if thou give it her much longer, friend," he said calmly. "'Tis time she were limed and netted. And with no mother either to whack her!"
The uneasy laugh came again. "If the Nawab's pigeon wins we may see to a son-in-law; but she is a child still, neighbour, and a good daughter too, helping her father more than he helps her." There was a touch of real pride in his tone.
"She said 'hens,'" retorted the parrot-seller. "Ask her if she did not."
"Kabootri! Kabootri!" ”

“ That same evening he lingered awhile in the big bazaar on his way homewards from the sandy stretch of desert land beyond the city walls, where he had left a new anthill of a grave among the cluster belonging to his people; lingered not for pleasure but for business, since the events of the day had made it necessary that he should spend yet a few more annas from the five rupees he gained by wearing a sword, a badge, and chiming the church-gong. For it was Shub'rât; the night--the one night of all the long year--when the souls of the dead are permitted to visit the ancestral home. ”

“ The moonlit nights which had so often shown two ghost-like figures amid the shadows of Kâli's shrine had given place to dark ones. And now, save for a whisper, there was no sign of life beneath the dim arches, since, as a rule, those two--Ramanund and the woman Fate had sent him--shunned the smoky flare of the lamps, and the half-seen watchfulness of that hideous figure within the closed fretwork doors. Yet sometimes little Anunda would insist on their sitting right in the very threshold of the Mother who, she said, would be angry if they distrusted Her. ”

“ Though, even then, a virtuous woman for her husband's sake ought----
Uma-devi, down by the water-edge, as if to escape from her own thoughts, turned hastily to spread the corner of her veil over the wide mouth of the brazen pot and with a smaller cup began to ladle the muddy water on to the strainer. But the thought was passionate, insistent. Ought! What was the use of prating about ought? She could not, she would not let Shivo take another woman by the hand. How could they ask her, still young, still beautiful, still beloved, to give him another bride? ”

“ There, in the shadow, a man looked and listened till pity and passion set his brain and heart on fire.
The girl had risen to her feet again in her last hopeless appeal, and now stood once more looking upwards at the silent bell, her hands, empty of their chaplets, clenched in angry despair, and a world of baffled life and youth in her childish face.
"She will not listen! She will not wake!" The whisper, with its note of fear in it, ended in a booming clang which forced a vibrating response from the dim arches as Ramanund's nervous hand smote the big bell full and fair. ”

“ That night, when the moon still shone in the cloudless sky, Saraswati, her veil wrapped closely round her, stole softly from the homestead. Past the resting oxen, out among the serried battalions of maize and millet, where the tall sheaves, lying prone on the ground, looked like the bodies of those who had fallen in the day's fight; down on the sun-cracked borders of the tank, whence the water was sinking swiftly, now the rain had ceased; by the ghostly peepul trees, shorn of their branches which the camels love, and looking weird and human with great arms stretched skywards ”

“ I asked of Sambo, pointing to the peaks, as I stood settling my tackle.
For the first time a slow smile showed on the man's fine delicate face. "No, Huzoor. I live everywhere. Wherever there are things to kill, and that is in most places. But not here, sahib," he continued hastily, turning to Bannerman, who was about to launch his minnow into a likely spot. "This pool is sacred to the god yonder."
And sure enough, close to the water's edge, beneath the shade of a banyan tree, stood a crowned image of Maha-deo, with his eight arms, his necklace of snakes, and chaplet of skulls. ”

“ Her veil had faded in its folds to a sort of cinnamon brown, touched with blue, and both it and the bodice were many sizes too large for her slight childish figure.
"If the Huzoor is not to buy, let him give place to those who will," suggested the bird-catcher cavalierly. He had been too far to catch the whisper, and thought to clinch the bargain by a threat.
Agamemnon Menelaus looked at him nervously. "Are you sure they are young birds?" he suggested timidly. "They might,--they might be hens, you know." There was a half-perceptible quiver of his handsome head as if to watch the girl. ”

“ It was a woman's voice that was beginning to lose its fulness and sweetness, in other words, its womanliness, which called up from the courtyard, where the hum of the quern grinding the yellow Indian corn deadened all other sounds.
"It is naught, mother! Only Hussan and Husayn once more." It was a woman's voice also from the roof where the Indian corn was drying to a richer gold in the sunlight; but it was a voice which had hardly come as yet to its full roundness, in other words, to its perfect womanliness.
"Hussan and Husayn! What makes them be for ever fighting like young cocks?" ”

“ But Raheem, despite his green turban of the Passed Pilgrim, despite the three rupees given scrupulously in charity to his neighbour, felt glad to escape, when prayers were over, to his work. And yet the sight was one to stir most hearts: the long lines of men, women, and children,--thousands and thousands and thousands of them,--half-seen amid the shading trees; the boom of the firework-signal from the eastern gate echoing like a cannon from the wide walls, and ending in a silence like the grave; fifty thousand living, breathing beings shoulder to shoulder, and not a sound, not a quiver ”

“ Govind Sahai's face was no exception to the rule; it was young, yet old; high-featured, yet gentle; the ascetic hollows in the temples belied by the long sweeping curves in the mouth, and both these features neutralised by the feminine oval of the cheek. He was the only son of a widow, who, thanks to his existence, led a busy and contented life in her father-in-law's otherwise childless house; for the honours of motherhood in India are great. Yet she was poor beyond belief to Western ears. ”

“ When I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the verandah, his face full of a great content; and the desire to murder him, which rose up in me with the thought of the twenty-nine nights yet to come, faded before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many, but apparently it was his. He salaamed down to the ground. "Huzoor," he said, "the great joy in me created a disturbance last night. It will not occur again. The Protector of the Poor shall sleep in peace, even though his slave praises God for him all night long. The Almighty does not require a loud drum." ”

“ The ring of bitterness in old Khâdjiya's tones was explained by the fact that it was nigh the end of the first ten days' fast of Mohurrum-tide and she had not chosen that any, despite her age, should exceed her in the observance thereof. And Fakr-un-nissa's zeal had raised the price of self-complacency beyond reason.
"More than is needful!" echoed Maimâna Begum with a like tartness. "Art not rash to say so, Mai Khâdjiya? Sure the virtue of some folk is situate as the tongue among thirty-two teeth. It needs care to preserve itself." ”

“ For when so many years have been spent watching the present furrow cling to the curves of the past one, in sure and certain hope of similar furrows in the future, or in listening to the endless lamentations of a water-wheel ceasing not by day or night to proclaim an eternity of toil and harvest, both eyes and ears are apt to grow dull towards new sights and sounds. Nânuk's had, at any rate, even though the old familiar ones no longer occupied them; fate having decreed that in his old age the peasant farmer should have neither furrows nor water-wheel of his own. ”

“ But I was up again in a second unhurt, save, perhaps, for that scratch on my forehead, whence I could feel the blood flowing as I dashed into the shadow of the banyan tree. Merciful heaven! what was this? A glare as of noonday, and two radiant forms with a cowering woman between them! between the chaplets of skulls and the chaplets of flowers. And behind them was an empty plinth! Before I had time to realise what I saw, came shouts and cries, a mêlée and a scuffle. Armed men ran out of the shadows, and then Sambo's voice was insistent, "Run, sahib, run! 'Tis your only chance. ”

“ The Englishman stood for a moment looking down on the wizened monkey-like face, the truthful finger, the accusing white spot. "I think he has," he said at last. "Go home, Tulsi, and colour it blue. I'll pass it as a bit of Paradise."
So that year there was a blue patch, like a tank where no tank should be, upon the village map, and the old putwari's conscience found peace in the correct total of the columns of figures which he added together; while the Three-Legged-One, released from durance vile at his special request, stood in the corner garlanded with the marigolds of thanksgiving. ”

“ The big man was dimly dissatisfied with affairs; he felt a vague desire to behave better towards the woman who had been his faithful companion for so many years. But for her, he knew well, things would go but ill in the little homestead by the well. Yet Maya was so pretty. What man, still undulled by age, would not do as he did? For all that, the little capricious thing might be more friendly with Saraswati; there was no need for her to snatch Chujju in her arms whenever the latter looked at the child. But then women--and Maya was a thorough woman--were always so fearful of the evil eye. ”

“ Kabootri! I swear that if thou likest not this one I will let thee go and seek another. I swear it, child."
The sidling feet edged nearer along the coping, for this respite would at least give time. "Swear it on the Holy Book. So--in thy right hand and in thy left. Let me see it." She stretched her own hands out over the depths, and at the sight the expectant pigeons came wheeling round her.
"I swear by God and His prophet," began the old canoness, gabbling as fast as she could over the oath; but above her breathless mumble came a little shriek, a little giggle, and a girl's voice from below. ”

“ Saraswati drew her veil tighter and sped faster as she passed through the more recent ashes, as yet uncovered, but swept into little heaps; and there--horrible sight!--still scattered, with the uncalcined bones gleaming in the moonlight, and a faint line of smoke still circling upwards, lay the most recent of all. That must be old Anant Ram, the khuttri (merchant) who had died that morning: an evil man, come to his end.
She was trembling ere she reached the hut where Dhun Devi, the wise woman, kept watch and ward over the ashes. ”

“ And that night, while her grandfather slept in the red-hot furnace to avoid the dullness of dawn, the moon found something else on the wide waste of sand, beside the crematorium and the regulation barrier, to yield her the tribute of a shadow. It was Dhunni on all fours seeking high and low for the chunk of chocolate, and when she found it she sat up with it in her little brown paws and nibbled away at it for all the world like a squirrel. ”

“ I shall laugh for ever."
"And--and Gunga?" faltered the armourer.
"Gunga's brain is not addled," retorted her sister-in-law sharply. "Who bruises a plum before taking it to market? What's done is done. We must cook the wedding feast without delay, have in the barber, and keep a still tongue."
So, ere many days were over, Pertâbi and Nânuk, as bride and bridegroom, watched the fire-balloons go up into the cloudless depths of purple sky. The boy watching them shyly, yet with absorbing interest; for did not their course denote the favour or disfavour of the gods? ”