He shook his head. 'Maybe it was for her. I know not. Cough not so, beloved. See, I will fetch the sherbet.' He bent over her, as he rose, in gentle pleading. 'Go not from me when I am away, Azîz. Lo! I will be back ere long.'
She gave a short laugh, and sank back, still breathless from her fit of coughing.
'Go! whither should I go? God knows!' The old man sighed as he turned away, to look back more than once at the listless, dejected figure. So it remained for an instant after his had disappeared through the outer yard; then, as if galvanised, it rose suddenly, and the thin arms were flung out passionately.
'She shall not have it. Chândni shall not give it to her. She shall not, she shall not.'
Five minutes after, trembling half with weakness, half from sheer hurry, Azîzan was on her way through the village wrapped in a white sheet snatched from the hut. What she was going to do she scarcely knew, just as she scarcely knew whither she was going. Though within a stone's-throw of her birthplace, the path down which she stumbled was as unfamiliar to her feet as the tempest of emotion was to her mind. A fever of excitement, anger, mistrust of everything and everybody surged through her veins. The road was silent, deserted; but even had it been thronged, the girl would not have hesitated. Amid all the confusion, but one thing was certain: Chândni must tell the truth; she must be found and made to tell the truth. But where? Yonder was the Mori gate; she had seen that before through the lattice, and that, at any rate, was a landmark. She would go there first and see. As she came within ear-shot of the tunnelled causeway, a woman's voice rang out in shrill laughter from the dark recesses to the right. Her first instinct was to pause; then second-thought made her keep straight on her way as if to pass through, till at the farther end of the causeway she turned suddenly to the left and sank down behind a plinth. It was as if a shadow had disappeared. A minute to regain her breath, and then she crept farther into the darkness, where, unless some belated gossipers should choose that side of the arch, she was secure. From over the way a clash of anklets and a low full voice, contrasting strangely with those high trills of laughter assured her that she had come straight upon her quarry. The rest was patience, till, sooner or later, the woman would be left alone. Sooner or later the laugh must cease; sooner or later even wickedness must tire and turn to sleep. So the girl sat crouched into herself in the curiously impassive attitude of her race, her thin arms round the thin knees whereon her small chin rested. Not a very startling sight outwardly; though, to describe what lay within is wellnigh an impossible task with an audience of Western ears; for Azîzan's knowledge would be to such ears incompatible with her ignorance, her jealousy and passion with her patience. Such an audience must remember an upbringing foreign to all their experience, and imagine her, still as a statue, though the blood raced like liquid fire in her limbs and throbbed like sledge-hammers in her temples. The moon, sinking slowly, sent a slanting yellow light through the dust-haze, visible beyond the arched causeway; the village dogs ceased one by one the nightly challenge to their fellows; yet, still the laugh went on. Would wickedness never tire? The wonder, and her own heart-beats lulled the girl to a drowsier patience. She woke to silence, and, standing up, strained eyes and ears into the shadows. Not a sound. She stole softly across the causeway, slipped into the recesses at the right, and listened again. A low breathing from one corner made her feel a way towards it, and her touch, light as a breeze, hovered over a figure on the ground wrapped from head to foot in a sheet like a corpse; yet she knew it could scarcely be Chândni, for she would not choose so airless a spot. But there must be rooms above, and a roof above that, and they were worth a trial before going on to the bazaar. Slowly, for she knew nothing of where she was, Azîzan groped her way to some winding stairs, thence to a suite of low chambers, empty of all save the pigeons rustling and cooing at her step in the dark. Upwards again till, at a turn, an archway gave on a terraced roof not six feet square; and there, lying on a string cot, which, from its narrow resting-place, seemed suspended in mid-air, she saw the soft curves of a woman's figure outlined against the moon-lit dust-haze beyond. It was not a place for a sleep-walker's slumbers; not a place even for a restless one; but Chândni slept the sleep of the unjust, which, nine times out of ten, is sounder than that of the just. Her conscience never troubled her; and in addition she belonged to a race apart from the customs and creeds of the people. A race born to the profession of pandars and prostitutes, openly, shamelessly.
So, not being afraid, like other women-folk, of sleeping in the moonlight with face uncovered, she lay carelessly as she had thrown herself down, her tinsel-set veil turned aside by one arm thrust under her head, the other stretched almost straight into the gulf of dusty air, which glittered faintly like the ghost of a sunbeam. Beneath its filmy net covering the bold sweep of her bosom rose and fell softly, with its faded burden of the past day's jasmine chaplets. They gave out a last breath of perfume as Azîzan's thin brown fingers closed round the sleeper's throat.
'If thou stirrest,' whispered the girl to the startled eyes as they opened, 'I kill. Feel!'
Only a prick above the heart, but joined to that scorching, stifling grip, it was sufficient to send the coming shriek back from Chândni's lips. She lay terror-stricken, staring up at the wild light eyes which, catching the moon rays as they dipped to the horizon, seemed to glow with a pale fire. This was no ghost! it was something worse than that; something that meant more than mere fright.
'Why didst send the Ayôdhya pot to her? Why? Give it me back!'
Chândni slackened all over in sudden relief. If she could have laughed with that hand on her throat the shrill sound would no doubt have risen on the hot air. So that was all? Nothing but jealousy! Of all things in the world the easiest to rouse--or to allay--by lies, and she had plenty of those at her command. So many, that poor Azîzan, after a time, wondered sullenly how she came to be sitting amicably on the string cot beside the woman whom she had meant to coerce.