From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Peru! Why, I tell thee, Hoshiaribi, he will marry the widow Chundoo. Tchut! what matters it if thou art not a fool, slaving away to no purpose? Look you, they wanted me to keep school. Not I! Come, Hoshiaribi, 'twill do thy head good. I have to buy new tinsel for a kurta, and the bazar is worth seeing. A fair for noise, with the criers selling sugar-cane and fresh fritters. The shops full of jewels, the people crowding, the soldiers marching up and down, the mem-sahibas in their carriages, and, above all, the wooden balconies with the girls in white nodding and smiling; but the great ones like Chandni, of Delhi, stand up and salaam as the big folk go by. Yet she is naught to look at. Thou wouldst be twice her match for looks wert thou not so pale."

Half an hour afterwards Fâtma was alone in the room. The babies were asleep, so she had taken out a sort of lapstone, and was busy punching gilt thread into stars through the front of a shoe upper. That, by rights, was Peru's hereditary trade, which he had deserted in favour of dhooli bearing and a fixed salary of five rupees a month. It came, therefore, more naturally than anything else to Fâtma, and so, when the babies left leisure, she earned a pice or two by sweating for an old woman and her crippled grandson who lived up the same stair and were employed by a big shop. But for these odd earnings life could not have gone on at all, what with Hoshiaribi's tea, and Peru's inroads for dinner or supper when he was short himself.

There he was, even now, coming up the stair lazily. Fâtma had put away her lapstone ere he arrived, and was ready to greet him with calm contumely, even while she set two cakes a toasting in the embers, and brought out the green leaf of curds. If the one was his right, as master of the house, the other was hers as mistress; and she exercised it fully, Hoshiaribi being away with Mai Rajjun, who had a new baby; for Fâtma had no scruples about abstract truth when face to face with the absence of a wife and the presence of an inquiring husband. With that same unconscious knowledge that it was the right thing to do which had made her jog the baby's cerebellum to keep it quiet, she lied cheerfully to avoid possible disturbance. Peru accepted the explanation with a like indifference to its truth. To begin with, that same indifference to all save appearance is a common feature among husbands; and then Peru would not have been exactly sorry to feel cause of complaint. It would have balanced his own indiscretion. Briefly, he had married Chundoo two days before, and had come to break the fact to his first wife. There must be something painfully bald about such a statement to European readers. When fully one half of harrowing modern fiction is based upon the axiom that Thingumbob, having married So-and-So, cannot possibly marry What's-his-name also, it takes the starch out of a story when a hero can have as many wives as he likes, and his religion counsels four.

The facts in this case were extremely bald. Chundoo, the chaperone, an elderly widow, had taken a fancy to the handsome young scamp; and having been appointed doorkeeper to a new female hospital, thought it more respectable to have a man of her own. Then, dhooli-bearers got six rupees at the hospital, instead of five at the school. That, sordid as it may seem, was why Peru had news to tell. The reason for his telling it was this: he knew perfectly well that Hoshiaribi would never consent to live in the same house as Chundoo, and so his responsibility for her maintenance would cease, as he could plead poverty against any claim for separate alimony. As for her pay as a teacher, that, if Central school gossip said true, would not be for long; but Fâtma would look after the babies somehow. Such were his thoughts as he sat watching the child's odd little figure busy over the cakes, which he did not want, seeing that his new bride had given him kababs and bakkharkana for breakfast. He had a sort of affection for Fâtma, who was the only relation he had in that part of the world. He did not mean her to starve, and, if she could not manage, it would be easy to give a rupee or two on the sly. What he did want was to keep Chundoo in a good temper, by showing conclusively that Hoshiaribi had no hold on his affections.

To be sure, he had shown this illegally for some months back, but now law and order demanded something legitimate; so he would respectfully command her to come and live with Chundoo, and, when she refused, be quit of responsibility: for polygamy is made for the virtuous, not for the vicious.

Suddenly Fâtma looked at him, sniffed, and looked at him again.

"Thou hast been to a wedding--whose?" she asked, suspiciously. In truth, an odour of orange blossom and attar began to be apparent in the close room. Peru coughed, hesitated; it was a good beginning, and might save him a scene with his wife; so he began.

"H'm!" commented Fâtma; "then that's an end of bread for your stomach. God be praised!" That is how it struck her.

"Little imp of sin!" cried Peru, seizing her half roughly, half jestingly, by the shoulder. "Keep a quieter tongue in thy head, or I'll find a husband to gag thee."

She gave a shrill laugh of scorn, and twisted herself from his hold.