The day came at last when Feroza sat in the sunlit courtyard holding another unopened letter in her hand, knowing that ere a week was over the writer would be prisoned in her kind arms, surrounded by friendly faces, caught in the meshes of familiar custom. She was not afraid, even though his letters gave her small clue to the man himself. Her own convictions were strong enough to supply him with opinions also, and even if she did not come up to his ideal at first, she felt that the sweet satisfaction of a return to home and kindred would count for, and not against her. So she sat idly, delaying to read, and dreaming over the past, much as she had dreamt over the future nearly two years before. Only she sat on a chair now, and her white stockings and patent-leather shoes twisted themselves tortuously about its legs. She thought mostly of the childish time when she, their cousin, had played with Ahmed Ali and Inaiyut; it seemed somehow nearer than those other days, when the studious lad's departure for college had been prefaced by that strange, unreal marriage.
And Kareema watched her furtively from the far corner where she and Mytâb were making preserves.
Suddenly a loud call, fiercely imperative, made them come sheepishly forward to where Feroza stood at bay, one hand at her throat, the other crushing her husband's letter. "What is this? What have you all been keeping from me? What does he mean?--this talk of duty and custom. Ah-h-h--!"
Her voice, steady till then, broke into a ringing cry as a trivial detail in Kareema's reluctant figure caught her eye. The palms and nails of those delicate hands were no longer stained with henna. They were as her own, as nature made them, as the Meer sahib said he liked them! She seized both wrists fiercely, turning the accusing palms to heaven, while a tempest of sheer animal jealousy beat the wretched girl down from each new-won foothold, down, down, to the inherited nature underneath.
"Then it is true," she gasped. "I see! I know! Holy Prophet! what infamy to talk of duty. He is to marry,--and I who have slaved--He is mine, mine, I say! Thou shalt not have him!"
Mytâb's chill old hand fell on the girl's straining arm like the touch of Death. "Allah akhbâr wa Mohammed rasul![[19]] Hast forgotten the faith, Feroza Begum, Moguli? Thine? Since when has the wife a right to claim all? Since when hast thou become a mem?"
The girl glared at her with wild passion, and Kareema gave a whimper as the grip bit into her tender wrists. "Don't; you hurt me!"
Feroza flung them from her in contemptuous loathing. "Fool! coward! as if he would touch you. I will tell him all. He will know--Ah God! my head! my head!--" She was in the dust at their feet stunned by her own passion.
"I warned the Moulvie to break it by degrees," grumbled Mytâb, dragging the girl to some matting; "but he said 'twould make no more to her than to the Meer. Books don't seem to change a man, but women are different."
"It's not my fault," whimpered Kareema. "I don't want to marry the Meer; he was ever a noodle. Prating of its being a duty, forsooth!"