The girl who came forward was not more than fifteen by the look of her, with a frizz of hot-pressed light hair over her forehead, and a skin which gave one the impression of being bleached, perhaps because of the coal-black eyes set in the narrow sharp face; yet with a certain attractiveness about the figure, dressed as it was in the height of fashion, with sleeves to the ears, and a waist requiring the surgical bandage of folded silk to prevent it from breaking in two.
His wife! Chândni, from her full height and magnificent development, looked at her as distastefully as she had looked at the view from the terrace. Neither were to her liking: they both appealed too much to the imagination. This other woman who came in answer to the call was better, though past her prime and pulpy; drowsy, too, from the snooze she had been enjoying on the sofa. Still with a torrent of capable, tell-tale abuse for the intruder.
'Ari!' laughed Chândni contemptuously, when the fat lady paused for breath. 'So thou too hast been of the bazaar? But I want not thee, or that half-fledged thing who calls herself a wife. I want Dalel--where is he?'
'Mamma!' cried the unformed voice in English, breaking down over its own feeble passion. 'Send her away, I tell you! The Mirza will be back soon, and she must not be here. Don't fool with words. Call the servants. Ai! budzart! (base-born). I will throw you down the khud! (hill-side).'
Chândni laughed again--laughed louder as, in response to the girl's cry, a face showed itself behind her.
'Salaam, oh bhai! (brother),' she said, nodding her head at the new-comer. 'Ah! 'tis thou, Mohammed? look you, this image saith she will fling me down the khud. If it came to force, my pigeon, I know which would have the Mirza; but I will not fight for him thus, he is not worth it. So, he fancies thee? God help him. Sure, thy mother is the better woman.'
'Come, come, mother Chândni,' urged the servant in response to shrill commands. 'This is no place for thee now. These are mem's. And he hath married her,' he went on fast and low. 'Yea! 'tis true, the nikka hath been read, so abuse is vain. Come, thou canst see him elsewhere.'
'Nay! I will see him here--here with his mem,' retorted Chândni airily. Then she turned swiftly on the elder woman, who, going to the door, was about to call for further assistance. 'What harm shall I do thee, fool, who art as I am with a piebald skin, or as this one, who would be as I am had God made her a woman. Lo! ask thy servants who Chândni the courtesan is, and what she has been, ay! and will be--if she chooses.'
It was an odd scene. The room decorated into bastard civilisation; the girl depending on a lack of pigment in her skin for all her claims to mem-ship, that being the only trace of her unknown European father; the mother without even this distinction, yet clinging to her taint of 'Western blood, as to a patent of nobility; clinging to it farcically, in fringe and furbelow, in fashion generally. Before them, as it were, against them, stood Chândni, in her trailing white Delhi draperies and massive garlands, a figure which might have served as model for some of those strange solemn-eyed statues, half Greek, half Indian, which are found buried in the sand-hills of the frontier. There was a little crowd of dark expectant faces at the door now, towards which she nodded familiarly.
'Go back! oh brothers! I do no harm. 'Tis not my way with women folk. I wait the Mirza's return. Then, if I am not wanted, I will go. Lo! Chândni the courtesan hath no need to keep a man in a leash; she hath no need to have the nikka read, my little pigeon, as thou hast. Ari! so the pictures in the papers Dalel used to bring me are true, and 'tis a beauty to have no body and a big head.