Flora Annie Webster Steel

“ Till the snake's kiss!
One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--eleven!
The clasp of a snake is cold, but the clasp of death is colder; and coldest of all, the warm clinging clasp of a rose, holding him tighter and tighter when the knife flashed out of the dark. "Let me go," he shrieked in his terror, but the thorns of the rose held fast, the warm blood staining her bosom as she waited for death in her turn. Then lights and an uproar, and, lo! instead of the stranger the Rani's own lover was dead.
Dead! who grieves when a snake is dead? ”

“ Through the stillness and the moonshine a man's voice petulant, almost peevish.
"Lo! I told thee from the beginning it must be so. There is time yet. Have patience awhile, Durga; when there is no escape Parbutti will yield--that is woman's way. Thou knowest that I love thee; were it not so why should I have sought thee?" Durga's clasped hands fell from their hold upon his arm listlessly.
"Yea! thou didst love me; that is true. And I? Knowest thou, Gopâl, why my heart sinks now as it never did when first I yielded to thy plan for peace? ”

“ Money hath ten heads to think out evil-doing;
Money hath twenty hands to mete out pain.
Money! money! money! money!
Money steals the heart's love from our life.
Money I have not--say! art thou hungry, wife?"
If anything was possessed of a devil it was that four-anna bit. It buzzed, and hummed, and jigged infernally, as the boy's finger on the strings struck more firmly.
"I'll tell you what it is, Râmchunderji," said I uneasily, "that vina is enough to ruin Orpheus. As you don't care for my money, I'll give you another instrument instead. ”

“ Chink-a-chink-a-chink came the brass jingles of a banghy, making Smith-Jones lay down The Whole Duty of Man restlessly, and move towards the door. Along that broad white shining path from west to east came a strange sight,--an old mummy of a woman wrapped in a shroud-like veil and balanced by the ashes of the village. Swaying, bobbing, dancing, mummy and ashes alike, as the pliant bamboo lever on Dittu's shoulder made the jingles chink and the eyes on the worn peacock's plume at either end look as if they were alive. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, bob, bob, bob, came Dittu and his burden. ”

“ The land is good enough for you and for me. There is no fault in the land!"
"Ay! it is good enough for me and for you," echoed the usurer slowly. He inverted the pronouns--that was all.
So Jaimul, as he had done ever since he could remember, walked over the bare plain with noiseless feet, and watched the sun flash on the golden grain as it flew from his thin brown fingers. And once again the guttural chant kept time to his silent steps.
"Wheat grains grow to wheat,
And the seed of a tare to tare;
Who knows if man's soul will meet
Man's body to wear. ”

“ The duenna folded her sheet round her with great dignity. "Thy wit is sharp, Kareema! 'Tis as well; for thou wilt need it to protect thy nose! The mems have many clothes; God knows how many, or how they bear them when even the skin He gives is too hot. They are sad-coloured, these mems, with green spectacles serving as veils. Not that they need them, for they are virtuous and keep their eyes from men truck. Not like bad bold hussies who dance--"
"'Tis not true," cried Kareema shrilly. "Thou sayest it to please Feroza. Inaiyut holds they are houris for beauty, and he knows." ”

“ The effect of these words surprised him into taking off his spectacles, as if this new departure of quiet Feroza's could be better seen by the naked eye.
"So thou thinkest to learn all the Meer has learnt?" he asked scornfully, when her eloquence abated. "Wah illah! What? Euclidus and Algebra, Political Economy and Justinian?"
The desire of the girl's heart was not this, but jealousy and shame combined prevented her declaring the real standard of her aims, so she replied defiantly, "Why not? I can learn the Koran fast--oh, ever so fast." ”

“ As he turned his closed eyes towards me with a grave obeisance which did not match the jaunty content of his mask, he looked--sitting in the centre of his swept circle--ludicrously like one of those penwipers young ladies make for charity bazaars.
"The Presence mistakes," he replied. "Those who come from the town have empty wallets. 'Tis those who come from the wilderness who give."
"But you never beg of me, whether I go or come. Why is that?"
"I take no money, Huzoor; it is of no use to me. The sahibs carry no food with them; not even tobacco, only cheroots." ”

“ For polygamy is not altogether tragic; it is often comic--at times almost farcical.
The clangour of metal upon metal rose with the sun, and all through the long hot day the beat and the burr filled the courtyards where those two women went about their daily tasks. When evening came it brought Gopâl an unusual display of platters at supper time--an unusual sweetness both in the viands and in Parbutti's voice.
"Lo! 'tis like a wedding feast, wife," he said, well pleased.
She gave an odd little hysterical laugh. "Perhaps 'tis time there was a wedding, O Gopâl!" Then she grew grave. ”

“ Her piteous, surprised tears roused Kareema's scornful wonder.
"I can't think why thou shouldst weep; it thickens the nose, and thine is over-broad as it is. Inaiyut offered once to teach me, but when I asked him if learning would make him love me better, he kissed me with a laugh. So I let it alone."
"Thou dost not understand," sobbed Feroza; "no one does. The Meer is wise, and I am different."
"Wah! Thou art but a woman at best, and life is over for us with the first wrinkle, no matter what we learn. Ah, Feroz! let's enjoy youth whilst we have it. ”

“ Slowly, uncertainly, as the confused tints of a child's magic lantern focus into some horrid monster, or as the ebbing tide discloses the drowned face of a victim, the half-heard assertions, denials, protestations of the pleasure-seeking crowd, gave up their individual form and colour, and were lost in the one unchangeable, indestructible characteristic of humanity--its selfishness. On every face an interest, a smile, a frown, a thought; below these, the one source of all. Inevitable, no doubt, but depressing in the masks are men and women claiming to be the cream of culture and civilisation. ”

“ I protested. "I heard it but now."
"Of a truth there is an echo. That is not a dream. For the rest it is well. The time has passed swiftly, the Huzoor is rested, his servant has returned, the boat has come--all in contentment. The Shelter of the World can proceed on his journey in peace, and return in peace."
"Unless the Footstep of Death overtakes me meanwhile," said I, but half satisfied.
"Huzoor! It never overtakes the just. Death and the righteous look at each other in the face as friends. ”

“ The blue sky was on the side of labour this time, and, during the next month or so, Târadevi's young soldiers made mud pies, and crowed more lustily than ever over the bunniah's boys.
Then the silvery beard began to show in the wheat, and old Jaimul laughed aloud in the fulness of his heart.
"That is an end of the new seal," he said boastfully, as he smoked his pipe in the village square. "It is a poor man's harvest, and no mistake."
But Anunt Râm was silent. The April sun had given some of its sunshine to the yellowing crops before he spoke. ”

“ Singers and players, and better story-tellers than Cheytu the sweeper. It was but fair, for look you, her man had many more wives to amuse him. I used to hear the rustle of her long silk garments, the tinkle of her ornaments, and the cadence of her laughter. Girls ought to laugh, Huzoor, and it was spring time; what we natives call spring, when the rain turns dry sand to grass and the roses race the jasmin for the first blossom. The tree your honour called magnolia grew in the women's court, and some of the branches spread over the marble summerhouse almost hiding it from below. ”

“ The first time I heard of Lâl was on a bright spring morning, one of those mornings when the plains of Northern India glitter with dew-drops; when a purple haze of cloud-mountain bounds the pale wheat-fields to the north, and a golden glow strikes skywards from the sand-hills in the south. I was in a tamarisk jungle on the banks of the Indus, engaged in the decorous record of all the thefts and restitutions made during the year by that most grasping and generous of rivers. ”

“ Who knows--for the vague wonder is stilled by a whispering hush! growing louder and louder as if both worlds were waiting, finger on lip, for a decision. Then, as a rule, comes a kindly, familiar voice or touch to settle the question in favour of this earth; perhaps some day it may come to summon us to another. Again, who knows?
Smith-Jones, however, felt something so distinctly unfamiliar that he opened his eyes in a fright, relieved to find himself in that unmistakable flood of sunshine which does not exist out of India. Briefly he felt, or thought he felt, a kiss upon his lips. ”

“ Yet as the days passed a new jealousy came like seven devils to possess poor Feroza utterly.
What was this wisdom which inspired so many well-turned periods in the Meer's somewhat prosy letters? Beauty was beyond her, but women even of her race had been wise; passionate Nurjehan, and even pious Fâtma--God forgive her for evening her chances with that saintly woman's! The thought led to such earnest study of the Koran that old Mytâb's wrath was mollified into a hope of permanent penitence. ”

“ Feroza had come back to those familiar walls. She lay beside the well, and the water from her clinging garments crept in dark stains through the dust. She had wrapped her veil round her to stifle useless cries, and so the dead face, as in life, was decently hidden from the eyes of men. She lay alone under the cloudless sky, for her friends, shrinking from the defilement of death, stood apart: Kareema sobbing on Mytâb's breast, with Ahmed Ali, dazed yet indignant, holding her hand ”

“ Faizullah, standing at the open door, through which the yellow sunshine streamed in a broad bar of light, looked across the mud roof of the lower story, past the sandy stretches and broken rocky distance to where a low line of serrated blue mountains blocked the horizon. They were the Takt-i-Suleiman, and beyond their peaks and passes lay Beloochistan.
"There are no sahibs yonder," he said, stretching his right hand towards the hills; "no one to come between a man and his right of faithful wife. God knows I am ready for my father's house again; 'tis only thy beauty, Skin of my Soul! ”

“ When he had gone, and the sound of Parbutti's shrill welcoming rose over the high partition wall, Durga crouched down beside the fireplace, and blew softly at the smouldering embers under the pot of lentils. It was woman's work to fan a flame if--if it were not fierce enough to do its duty to the hearth. Easy work also: a woman could do it with no more exertion than would make the bosom rise and fall a trifle quicker, or send a tremble through the arm supporting the bowed shoulder. ”

“ By and by, when opportunity occurred, Gopâl would creep out, as he had crept out many a time before, and seek to soothe her. There need be no scandal, no open turning into the streets, if she would promise to make no fuss. Perhaps, once the marriage were accomplished he might even be induced to acknowledge the child. And at this thought something that was not shame, nor anger, nor horror, but sheer animal jealousy, leapt up within her; for she had learnt to care, as women do learn, even when they know that he for whom they care is not worth it. ”

“ No! He should never have the land. How could he? The very idea was absurd. Jaimul, thinking thus, held his head erect and his hands relaxed their grip. He was close on the rider now; and just before him, clear in the moonlight, rose the boundary mark of his fields--a loose pile of sunbaked clods, hardened by many a dry year of famine to the endurance of stone. Beside it, the shallow whence they had been dug, showing a gleam of water still held in the stiff clay. The mare paused, straining at the bridle for a drink, and Jaimul almost at her heels paused also, involuntarily, mechanically. ”

“ I looked up, and behind a fringe of diminutive vipers sat Râmchunderji and the bundle he called Seeta. On his bare right arm he wore a much betasselled floss silk bracelet bound with tinsel.
"I am glad to see the greed is in your heart again," said I, pointing to the ornament.
"The Râm-rucki is not bought, but given, as in the days before the flood," replied the boy. "Every one wears the Râm-rucki still, every one!" ”