From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"One and one make two--oo--oo,
Two and two make four--or--or."

"That is enough, my daughters," said Fâtma, royally. "Miream and Anna will play with Mohammed Ali; Janet and Kareem will take Ahmad Hassan for a walk down the alley and back again. The rest of you will sit still and think how good you are going to be to-morrow."

The little, large-eyed, gentle mites, ranged solemnly behind a row of ink-pots, primers, and writing-boards, did as they were bid decorously--for the organization of Mussamat Fâtma's school was excellent, its discipline first class. The cleanliness, too, of its primers, its pens, and its writing-boards was quite abnormal. Not because of abnormal neatness, but because none of these things were ever used. They were there because that was part of the game of school, and Fâtma's school was emphatically a school with the learning left out. To be sure, the pupils chanted their letters, and asserted the gospel that one and one make two all the world over; but, after that, education went down the by-path of learning how to sit still and do as you were bid. Yet somehow the wee girlies liked it well, and their busy mothers liked it better still. In that crowded quarter of evil repute it was something to have a crêche, where for a few hours the little ones with a tempting jewel or two were safe from the avarice of any passer-by. And then Fâtma's pupils gave no trouble at home. So the school throve, and though educationally, of course, it was a miserable sham, it gave great satisfaction to all concerned; Fâtma finding sufficient payment in the general good-will of her neighbours, and the constant relays of nurse-maids she secured. She had plenty of time now for the golden stars; and since Lâlu, the cripple's grandmother, had died, Fâtma not only got full price for the work she did for him, but earned something besides by cooking his bread and doing his marketing when she did her own. An excellent plan, said the neighbours, since Mussumat Fâtma, aged fourteen, was as sedate as a great-grandmother, and poor Lâlu, for all his kind face and clever hands, was not to be reckoned as a possible husband for any one. The only thing over which the women shook their heads was this lack of a husband for the girl, who, though she was a little crooked perhaps, with hauling those big children up and down stairs, had not, like Lâlu, lost her right to be married. What excuse could that rascal Peru offer to his conscience for his neglect of the natural guardian's first duty? He, and Chundoo, and Hoshiaribi flaunting away in the Badâmi bazar, were no better than pigs of infidels. It would serve them right if Fâtma were to appeal modestly to the elders, and let herself go to a husband for the beggarly five dumris the law demands. Then Peru would have to support his boys, and would not even get compensation in the price of the bride. But Fâtma herself scouted the idea. She had seen enough of husbands, and would never marry. She had her babies and her school; and then there was always Lâlu, who was as wise as any saint, and as good as any father to the boys. She used to leave them in his charge when she did her marketing; for this was after hours, when her little school-maidens had gone home. And as for Hassan Ahmad, the yellow-legged baby of two years past, if ever he went a-missing, Fâtma knew she would find him cuddled up among Lâlu's helpless legs, watching the gold thread loop itself into dainty patterns very different from her coarse, crooked stars, and listening contentedly to Lâlu's musical voice intoning some versicle of the Koran. He knew as many as a Moulvi, she used to say proudly; for all that she repulsed with scorn his suggestion that she should teach some to her pupils.

"Ai tobak, Mian Lâl Khan! Dost forget mine is 'primary girls' school'? It is not a 'missen' or an 'indigenous school.' We do not teach such things. Only letters and tables, and such like."

She did not care to confess that she herself knew none of the versicles which even the poorest girl ought to know.

"Well, well, perhaps thou art right, Mussumat Fâtma," he replied. "All learning is good." As he sat at his work he used often to pause and listen with a smile to the chorus of children's voices, insisting on the fact that one and one make two. After all, it did not differ much from the creed he had somehow extracted from the sonorous Arabic phrases which were so constantly on his lips. What was, was; what would be, would be.

Meanwhile life was brighter for him because of Fâtma and the baby, Hassan Ahmad cuddling close to him, and the children's chorus echoing up the stairs. It was easier for Fâtma also. When she had closed the door at ten o'clock one night, nearly two years ago, and counted out the money in order to buy a "Maw," she had thought of nothing but the immediate morrow. Now, when she barred it, she closed it deliberately against all interference. Peru, at first, had come prowling round to see how matters went, and Hoshiaribi had sent inquiries from the Badami bazar. Fâtma had given both a cool reception. She was quite happy, quite content. The babies did not belong to those budzarts; they belonged to her. So, by degrees, they had left her to her own devices, and for the last year she had seen or heard nothing of them.

It was a stifling afternoon in August. The dry heat which had baked into the bricks with the June sun, had boiled out of them again with the scanty rain of July into a sort of sodden vapour, like the hot breath of some evil creature. The alley smelled horribly. Even the inhabitants spat as they emerged from the dark drain of a tenement stair, which all the sweeping in the world could not keep clean. The very water spilled on it, as the woman carried the chatties full to their rooms, seemed to dissolve the dirt and give it greater freedom. When those on the ground-floor sprinkled the entry for the sake of coolness, the stench rose to the roof. And in and out the highways and byways of the city cholera played pranks with the people--here to-day, gone tomorrow; biding its time, till on some steamy, dull morning folk would wake to find it in earnest.

"The sickness was at Haiyatun's yesterday," Râjjun would say to Fâjjan; "it took the cousin who came from Umritsur. The police were burning clothes and sulphur as I went by this morning. It is tyranny when the Lord is over all."

"Yea, and they carried Mai Jeswant's man to the hospital, and the doctors never left him, but he died all the same. Look you, 'tis God's will."