"There are no sahibs yonder," he said, stretching his right hand towards the hills; "no one to come between a man and his right of faithful wife. God knows I am ready for my father's house again; 'tis only thy beauty, Skin of my Soul! Core of my Heart! that keeps me dawdling here a stranger in the house of mine ancient enemies. Why wilt thou not come with me to the mountains, O Haiyat?"
"I am not a wild beast as thou art," she retorted, still with speech checked by sobs. "I will stay here and get thee swung, for the sahib-logues worship a woman away over the black water and do her bidding. They will fill thy mouth with dirt, and burn thy body, and curse thy soul to the nether--"
"Nay! innermost Apple of mine Eye! do I not worship thee? And art thou not a Belooch also by race, though thy people have dug the grave of their courage with the plough, and tethered their freedom beside their bullocks? They were not always dirt-eaters, mean-spirited, big-bellied--"
"Hai! Hai!" That was the beginning of the storm. What followed drove big Faizullah into the court below, where the voices of the two women ceased to be articulate; for it is one thing to beat the wife of your bosom in order to correct a trifling indiscretion, another to deny her and her attendant the right of subsequent abuse. So he smoked his pipe placidly, and amused himself with polishing his well-beloved sword which he kept in defiance of the Arms Act.
The poorer women of the village nodded at each other as the shrill clamour, floating over the high encircling wall, reached the well where they came to draw water.
"The stranger hath big hands," chuckled one; "yet are they smaller than Haiyat's eye. That comes of being a widow so long."
"There will be murder some day, mark my words!" muttered an old hag with a toothless leer. "What else canst thou expect from a Belooch of Birokzai? Peace! Peace! that is what our men say nowadays. In my time, if a man of his race had laid a finger on a woman of ours, there would have been flames over the border, and blood enough to quench them afterwards. But they are afraid of the sahibs and the pigskin; not so Faizullah; he is of the old sort, knowing how to keep his wife."
"He will not keep her for all that, mai," sneered a strapping girl, who by the handsome water-vessels she carried showed herself to be a servant in one of the richer houses. "We shall get her back some day, despite her father-in-law's wickedness in letting her marry a good-for-nothing soldier, just because of keeping a hold on her jewels."
"Hold on their honour, O thou false tongue!" shrilled another of the group. "The daughter of thy house would have brought shame on ours. She needed a fierce one to keep her straight."
"After the man--woman, thy house gave her first, O depraved tongue that tasteth not the truth. Had thy people sent her back, our house would have kept her safe enough."