He shook his delicate hand in derisive denial. "Why, the Princess Farkhoonda refuses to marry! Nay, Newâsi, we are two fools for our pains. That is God's truth between us. So now for lies in the bazaar."
"Peace go with thee." There was a sudden regret, almost a wistful entreaty in the farewell she sent after him. There was none in his reply, given with a backward look as his gay figure went downward dizzily. "Nay! Peace stays ever with thee."
It was true. Those other women of whom he had spoken gave him kisses galore, but this one? It was a refinement of sensuality, in a way, to go as he had come. But Newâsi went back to her books with a sigh, telling herself that her despondency was due to Abool's hopeless lack of ambition. If he would only show his natural parts, only let these new rulers see that he had the makings of a king in him! As for the other foolishness, if the old King would give his consent--if it were made clear that she was not really---- She pulled herself up with a start, said a prayer or two, and went on with The Mirror of Good Behavior, through which she was wading diligently. The writer of it had not been a beautiful woman, widowed before she was a wife, but his ideals were high.
Abool-Bukr meanwhile was already in a house with a wooden balcony. There were many such in the Thunbi Bazaar, giving it an airiness, a cleanliness, a neatness it would otherwise have lacked. But Gul-anâri's was the biggest, the most patronized; not only for the tired heads which looked out unblushingly from it, but for the news and gossip always to be had there. The lounging crowds looked up and asked for it, as they drifted backward and forward aimlessly, indifferently, among the fighting quails in their hooded cages, the dogs snarling in the filth of the gutters, while a mingled scent of musk, and drains, and humanity steamed through the hot sunshine. Sometimes a corpse lay in the very roadway awaiting burial, but it provoked no more notice than a passing remark that Nargeeza or Yasmeena had been a good one while she lasted. For there was a hideous, horrible lack of humanity about the Thunbi Bazaar; even in the very women themselves, with their foreheads narrowed by plastered hair to a mere wedge above a bar of continuous eyebrow, their lips crimsoned in unnatural curves, their teeth reddened with pân or studded with gold wire, their figures stiffened to artificial prominence. It was as if humanity, tired of its own beauty, sought the lack of it as a stimulant to jaded sensuality.
"Allâh! the old stale stories," yawned Gul-anâri from the broad sheet of native newspaper whence, between the intervals of some of Prince Abool-Bukr's worst songs, she had been reading extracts to her illiterate clients; that being a recognized attraction in her trade. "Persia! Persia! nothing but Persia! Who cares for it? I dare swear none. Not even the woman Zeenut herself, for all her pretense of sympathy with Sheeahs, who----"
"Have a care, mistress!" interrupted an arrogant looking man, who showed the peaked Afghan cap below a regimental turban. He was a sergeant in a Pathan company of the native troops cantoned outside Delhi on the Ridge, and had been bickering all the afternoon with a Rajpoot of the 38th N. I., who had ousted him in his hostess' easy affections, being therefore in an evil temper, ready to take offense at a word. "I am of the north--a Sheeah myself, and care not to hear them miscalled. And I have those who would back me," he continued, glaring at the Rajpoot, who sat in the place of honor beside the stout siren; "for yonder in the corner is another hill-tiger." He pointed to a man who had just thanked one of the girls in Pushtoo for a glass of sherbet she handed him.
"Hill-cat, rather!" giggled Gul-anâri. "He brought me this one, but yesterday, from a caravan new-come to the serai,"--she stroked the long fur of a Persian kitten on her lap,--"and when I asked for news could not give them. He scarce knew enough Urdu for the settling of prices."
A coarse joke from the Rajpoot, suggesting that he had found few difficulties of that sort in the Thunbi Bazaar, made the sergeant scowl still more and swear that he would get Mistress Gul-anâri the news for mere love. Whereat he called over, in Pushtoo, to the man in the corner, who, however, took no notice.
"He is as deaf as a lizard!" giggled Gul-anâri, enjoying the rejected one's discomfiture. "Get my friend the corporal here to yell at him for thee, sergeant. His voice goes further than thine!"
The favored Rajpoot squeezed the fat hand nearest to him. "Go up and pluck him by the beard," he suggested vaingloriously, "then we might see a Pathan fight for once."