“But if the women should question you?” said Harold in English, addressing himself to his wife.
“I am not a bit bound to answer them, even if I could do so,” said Alicia playfully; “for my conversational powers in Urdu will not carry me far into any dangerous subject. I do not know the words for conversion, baptism, or breaking caste. If the women ask me a thousand questions, talking together after their fashion, I shall merely look puzzled after my fashion, and get out of any difficulty by beginning to sing.”
“Let her go!” repeated Robin, laughing. “I only wish that I were small enough to be packed into her bag, that I might see the fun.”
Harold, after consulting his father, gave a rather reluctant consent. Utterly fearless regarding himself, he was anxious regarding his wife.
Alicia again, armed with her bag of books, her fan, and her white-covered umbrella, took her seat in her doli, and started for the fort. She really ran but little risk of annoyance, for, as Kripá Dé had said, his relatives did not know whither he had gone. The Kashmiri’s determination to declare himself openly a Christian was as yet a secret known but to himself and the Hartleys. It would not be at once noised abroad in Talwandi that he had broken his caste; for Mangal, a Mohammedan, and faithful to his salt, was the only native aware of the fact.
Alicia proceeded towards the fort without anything occurring to cause her the slightest alarm. She saw in the narrow streets the people engaged in their usual occupations. The mochi glanced up for a moment as the doli was carried along, then went on with his delicate work of making slippers adorned with thread of gold. The clang of the blacksmith’s hammer was not interrupted, and the sweetmeat-seller, behind his little pile of metai, looked as unconcerned as if the passing of a doli were a thing too ordinary to be noticed. Alicia, to her comfort, saw no sign of any approaching tempest; nor did the lady meet with any inconvenience save from the troops of thin, overladen donkeys which sometimes obstructed the way, notwithstanding the loud warning “Bach!” (Save thyself!) with which the kahars tried to clear a passage for the doli.
The fort was soon reached. There, also, the first feeling of curiosity had passed away. A smaller crowd of dirty, bare-footed children greeted Alicia with loud, shrill cries of “Mem! Mem!” and when the upper terrace was reached, only two or three bibis made their appearance. To Alicia’s disappointment Premi was not amongst them. So little interest was shown in the lady, that Alicia resolved not to visit a zenana again on consecutive days. The bibis’ stock of questions had been exhausted, half of them had been misunderstood or unanswered; the white lady’s dress was the same which she had worn on preceding days, and she was not likely to have anything to communicate but what the Hindus did not care to hear. Sometimes disappointment is experienced by workers when the hearers who crowded round them on their first appearance dwindle away as visits are repeated.
“How different is zenana-visiting from what I had pictured it to be!” thought Alicia, as she saw the women eagerly examining some new purchase which had cost a few coppers, as if it were an object of interest too absorbing to leave any room for care about the soul. “I feel as if I were trying with a small penknife to carve a statue out of granite. It seems hopeless to try to make an impression. Is it possible to make these poor heathen think of anything beyond the trifles of the day?” Alicia showed a few pictures to the children, who were somewhat more attentive than their elders, and she tried to betray no impatience when little brown fingers, just taken from a mouth half-stuffed with metai (sweets), scrabbled dirty marks on her book.
Then Alicia bethought herself of her new song—that might help her to gain some attention. Clear rose her voice in the translation of “Here we suffer grief and pain,” in which the cheerful tone of the melody belies the sadness of the first line. But when Alicia had begun the well-known refrain, which was, of course, in Urdu, to her astonishment a clear “Joyful, joyful, joyful!” in unmistakable English, rang from the upper roof. Alicia, startled, raised her eyes, and saw for a moment, clear against the blue sky, the unveiled head of Premi in the act of eager listening. A most un-Oriental flush was on her cheeks, a bright but bewildered expression in her eyes, as if she listened to some song from dreamland and joined in it by some irresistible impulse. In a moment the voice was silent, the head withdrawn, and Alicia remained gazing upwards, listening and wondering, asking herself whether both her senses could have at once deceived her. Then she turned to the nearest Hindu, who chanced to be Darobti, standing with her fat little boy on her hip.
“Does Premi know English?” asked Alicia eagerly.