She pointed to the upper step leading to the plinth, where, as on an altar, lay all her worldly treasures, arranged carefully with a view to effect. The crimson scarf she had always worn was folded--with due regard to the display of its embroidered edge--as a cloth, and at either end of it lay a pile of trumpery personal adornments, each topped and redeemed from triviality by a gold wristlet and anklet. In the center, set round by fallen orange-blossoms, rose a great heap of black hair, snakelike in glistening coils. The simple pomposity of the arrangement was provocative of smiles, the wistful eagerness of the face watching its effect on the master was provocative of tears. Jim Douglas, feeling inclined for both, chose the former deliberately; he even managed a derisive laugh as he stepped up to the altar and laid sacrilegious hands on the hair. Tara gave a cry of dismay, but he was too quick for her, and dangled a long lock before her very eyes, in jesting, but stern decision.
"That settles it, Tara. You can go to Gunga now if you like, and bathe and be as holy as you like. But there will be no Fire or Water. Do you understand?"
She looked at the hand holding the hair with the oddest expression, though she said obstinately, "I shall drown if I choose."
"Why should you choose?" he asked. "You know as well as I that it is too late for any good to you or others. The Fire and Water should have come twelve years ago. The priests won't say so of course. They want fools to help them in this fuss about the new law. Ah! I thought so! They have been at you, have they? Well, be a fool if you like, and bring them pennies at Benares as a show. You cannot do anything else. You can't even sacrifice your hair really, so long as I have this bit." He began to roll the lock round his finger, neatly.
"What is the Huzoor going to do with it?" she asked, and the oddness had invaded her voice.
"Keep it," he retorted. "And by all, these thirty thousand and odd gods of yours, I'll say it was a love-token if I choose. And I will if you are a fool." He drew out a small gold locket attached to the Brahminical thread he always wore, and began methodically to fit the curl into it, wondering if this cantrip of his--for it was nothing more--would impress Tara. Possibly. He had found such suggestions of ritual had an immense effect, especially with the womenkind who were for ever inventing new shackles for themselves; but her next remark startled him considerably.
"Is the bibi's hair in there too?" she asked. There was a real anxiety in her tone, and he looked at her sharply, wondering what she would be at.
"No," he answered. In truth it was empty; and had been empty ever since he had taken a fair curl from it many years before; a curl which had ruined his life. The memory making him impatient of all feminine subtleties, he added roughly, "It will stay there for the present; but if you try suttee nonsense I swear I'll tie it up in a cowskin bag, and give it to a sweeper to make broth of."
The grotesque threat, which suggested itself to his sardonic humor as one suitable to the occasion, and which in sober earnest was terrible to one of her race, involving as it did eternal damnation, seemed to pass her by. There was even, he fancied, a certain relief in the face watching him complete his task; almost a smile quivering about her lips. But when he closed the locket with a snap, and was about to slip it back to its place, the full meaning of the threat, of the loss--or of something beyond these--seemed to overtake her; an unmistakable terror, horror, and despair swept through her. She flung herself at his feet, clasping them with both hands.
"Give it me back, master," she pleaded wildly. "Hinder me not again! Before God I am suttee! I am suttee!"