"What has that idiot to do with my land?" cried the fakeerni, indignantly. "Lo, there is no drop of saint's blood in him. He is of the second marriage."
The policeman sniggered. "I know not, mother! But this I hear, that Hussan saith otherwise, and the Kâzi is with him. And births and marriages are ticklish things to date, if the Kâzi be not friendly."
Suttu's heart throbbed. If the Kâzi were indeed her only refuge, she might have to face the storm in the open.
"O thou with the yellow trousers on thy legs, and wisdom in head and heart," moaned Shâhbâsh, "dost mean that these dates--Deen Ali's famous dates--are to be food for parrots? while I----" He sat in the sand, clasping his stomach, rocking backwards and forwards, a ludicrous spectacle of woe; yet there was tragedy in the comedy.
That evening, when supper consisted of a few millet-cakes and a tray of watery pilu-berries, which Suttu had gathered from the jungles, he looked at the ripe dates overhead and felt that the hour of apostasy had come. After the barmecidal feast he took his mattock and went to the graveyard--not to dig, but solemnly to consider which of Suttu's two enemies should have his services. Dawn found him returning from the Kâzi's house, with the black bottle full of rum, and the remains of a perfect feast of bakkar khana tied up in a handkerchief--both of which he hid carefully. All that day he did nothing but vaunt the delights of a sheltered home combined with rich food; especially to a woman--more especially to a woman who had nothing to eat but pilu-berries and millet cakes! Suttu smiled at him indulgently.
"Lo, God did not make me all stomach," she said. "I eat the air and the sunshine; and I like to see the parrot people and the squirrel people eat my dates, even if I can't."
Shâhbâsh gave a rumble of despair, and bolstered up his uneasy conscience by telling himself such views were unnatural, accursed.
"Is a grave ordered?" asked Suttu, in surprise, when, that evening after supper, the dwarf shouldered his mattock. "Who is dead?"
"The saddler's son. Leastways he was so nigh his end to-day that his people gave me warning it might be wanted. And like as not they would eat oaths had it been bespoke in form, for they are keen to quarrel. Aye, aye, if lies were satisfying, my belly wouldn't be empty."
He disappeared into the soft, balmy darkness, grumbling and muttering--to come back circuitously to the hiding-place of the black bottle. He would need that for consolation, aye, for forgetfulness, before midnight brought the bribed watchmen to guard the date-grove. Then sooner or later after that some one's cries---- Well, why not? Suttu would not be the first woman who had been carried off to a rich marriage, and had lived to tell the tale cheerfully. Still, the thought of those cries when the Kâzi and his friends came was disturbing. Shâhbâsh took a great pull at the bottle. It would bring the fairy, and the fairy was unfailing consolation.