In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Amor Vincit Omnia. Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

[THE WINGS OF A DOVE][^[50]]

I

A tall lanky boy of about seventeen sat halfway down the great flight of steps at the eastern entrance of the Jumma Mosque at Delhi, looking anxiously at a cage full of avitovats, twinkling little brown birds with a suspicion of red amid their brown; flitting, slender, silent little birds, never still for a second. He looked at them half-satisfied, half-doubtful, and as he looked he turned a four-anna bit over and over in his brown fingers. For though he was dressed as a European his complexion was as dark as that of most high-caste natives, and darker by a good bit than that of a girl some one or two years his junior, who sat fondling a pigeon on a higher step, and looking askance, also, at the avitovats.

"The Huzoor can have them for five annas if he chooses," said the evil-looking bird-catcher who was squatting among his wares. Though he used the honorific title, his manner was absolutely devoid of courtesy, and he turned without the least change in it to address a friend in the parrot line, who sat with his cages on the step above. For this particular flight of steps is set apart to the selling of birds, especially after prayer-time on Fridays, when the pigeon-racers and quail-fighters buy and bet in the wide portico of rosy stone and pale marble. The avitovats--having no value to the sportsman--commanded but a slack sale, so the boy had plenty of time in which to make up his mind; to judge by appearances a difficult task, for his face was undeniably weak, though handsome, kindly, and soft. He wore a white drill suit, clean, but sadly frayed; and his grey wide-awake was many sizes too large for his small head. Perhaps it was the knowledge of this, combined with a vague suspicion that the hat knew quite as much about bird-fancying as the head within it, which made him, in his perplexity, take it off, place it on his slack knees and drop the four-anna piece into it, as if it had better decide the question. Sitting so, with bare head, he looked handsomer than ever, for its shape was that of a young Adonis. It was, in fact, the only thing about him, or his life, which corresponded with his name, Agamemnon Menelaus. The surname, Gibbs, used after those eight resounding syllables to come as a shock to the various chaplains who at various times had undertaken to look after young Gibbs' spiritual welfare. Some of them, the more experienced ones, acquiesced in that and many another anomaly after their first glance at his soft gentle face; for it was typical of that class of Eurasian which makes the soul of a chaplain sink within him. Others reached the same conclusion after a reference to the mother, Mrs. Gibbs. She was a very dark, pious woman, tearfully uncertain of all things save that she, being a widow, must be supported by charity; by the offertory for preference. She, however, made the problem of his name less intrusive by calling him Aggie as if he had been a girl.

"They are young birds, as the Huzoor could see for himself if he had eyes," went on the bird-catcher with a yawn. "Next moulting they will be as red as a rutti seed. But it is five annas, not four."

Aggie had no lack of eyes outwardly; they were large and soft as velvet, and as they looked down at the avitovats showed a thick fringe of curling lashes. But there was an almost pathetic guilelessness in them, and one brown hand hesitated about his breast-pocket. He had another anna there, part of a monthly stipend of one rupee for attending the choir, which he had intended to spend on sweets--preserved pumpkins for choice; but the avitovats, with their promise of scarlet plumage, cozened his indolent, colour-loving eyes almost as much as the thought of the sweets did his palate. Should he, should he not? The mere sight of the birds was a strong point in their favour, and his hand had sought the inside of his pocket when a whisper met his ear.

"Hens!"

It was unmistakable, and he turned to look at the girl behind him. She was sitting on her heels, crunched up chin and knees, holding her pigeon close to her face as if to hide it. And as he turned she sidled further away along the step with the curious gliding shuffle peculiar to native girls and pigeons. "Ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri, ka-boo-tri," gurgled the pigeon, as if pleased at the motion. It was a blue-rock, showing a purple and green iridescence on the breast, and the girl's dress matched its colourings exactly; for her ragged cotton skirt had washed and worn to a dark neutral tint, and the shot-silk bodice, tattered and torn, with tarnished gold embroidery on its front, took gleams of a past glory from the sunlight. Her veil had faded in its folds to a sort of cinnamon brown, touched with blue, and both it and the bodice were many sizes too large for her slight childish figure.

"If the Huzoor is not to buy, let him give place to those who will," suggested the bird-catcher cavalierly. He had been too far to catch the whisper, and thought to clinch the bargain by a threat.