"Not dead? This is a tale! A prisoner no doubt. Inshallah! my blood scents something worth words. Here, Fâtma, take the child; or, stay, it's best he should hear too. Such things sink through the skin and strengthen the heart. And bring food, woman, what thou hast, and no excuses. A brave man stomachs all save insult."
So, with the child on his knee, the old soldier listened to Afzul Khân's story, while in the dark room beyond the women positively shed tears of shame over the poor appearance which the plain bajra,[[6]] cakes, unsweetened, unbuttered, presented on the big brass platter.
"There is the boy's curdled milk," suggested his sad-faced mother. "He will not mind for a day."
"Peace, unnatural!" scolded the grandmother. "The boy's milk, forsooth! What next? Women nowadays have no heart. A strange man, and the boy's milk forsooth!"
Haiyât bibi blushed under her brown skin. Hers was a hard life with her husband far over the black water, and this stern old man and woman for gaolers. But the boy was hers; she hugged that knowledge to her heart and it comforted her.
The evening drew in, the child dozed off to sleep, but not one jot or tittle of adventure was to be passed over in silence. "Inshallah! but thou didst well!" "God send the traitors to hell!" "Ay! Marsden sahib was ever the bravest of the brave!" These and many another exclamation testified to the old campaigner's keen interest. But when Afzul began tentatively to question him about the blue envelope, the light died from the hollow eyes. Raby sahib? Nay, he knew nought, save that the people said it was the mem-sahib's money he was spending in this new talk of indigo and what not. He wished them no ill, but Murghub Ahmad, far away in the Andamans, had saved the mem from insult,--perhaps worse--and she had given evidence against him in the trial. He wished no man ill, but if what the people said was true, and Raby sahib's new dam would prevent the river from doing its duty, then it would be a different matter. Ay! the new factory was but ten miles up the river, but no one lived there as yet.
Now the matter of the blue envelope became more and more oppressive to Afzul Khân the more he thought of it. Easy enough to send it anonymously to Raby sahib's mem, and so be quit of it once for all; but what if she had taken the Major's money, as Shunker asserted, in order to buy a new husband? And what if this paper of Eshmitt sahib's meant more loot? Afzul was, all unconsciously, jealous of this white-faced mem, and but for a strange sort of loyalty to the boy he had betrayed would have liked to put the letter in the fire, shake himself loose of all ties, and return to his people.
"Nay! thou askest more than I have to give," replied Mahomed Lateef to his questioning. "I know 'tis on paper they leave their moneys, for, as I said, the Colonel sahib once asked me--'twas in China, during the war--to set my name as witness to something."
"Was it long-shaped, in a blue cover?" asked Afzul, eagerly.
"There was no cover, but it was long, like the summons from the courts. Stay! if thy mind be really set on such knowledge there is a friend of my poor Murghub's--one who pleads in the courts--even now resting in his father's village but a space from here. He must know more than thou canst want to hear."