And despite Burkut's help he had failed to get it; as yet--
Meanwhile Lateefa, naked as he was born--save for his rag of decency and an embroidered skull-cap of inexpressibly filthy white muslin set on the oily, grizzled hair that hung in an inward curve about his ears--was at large in the gutters and lanes, feeling the freedom of a bird newly escaped from a cage. His last sense of allegiance to the Nawâb had gone; he had not yet attached himself to the Nawâbin. He did not really care much as to the fate of the ring. It had been more a desire to outmatch their cunning, than any hope of keeping his promise to Khôjee, that had made him transfer the precious ballast--as he had done in the leisure afforded him by that discreet game of cards--from the old kite to a new one, and leave it in the pile. It was a trifle safer there; but, on the other hand, any one might find it at any time. If so, it would be the fault of Fate. Not Lateefa's, as it would have been had he been foolish enough to try and take the ring, or even the kites with him. That would have been fatal.
So as, with a twopenny-halfpenny wisp of a muslin scarf he borrowed from a friend, superadded to his costume--or the lack of it--and a certain soft brilliance of opium in his eyes, the kitemaker lounged about in the more disreputable quarters of the town, listening to tales and telling them with equal indifference, he was, in a way, the spirit of an Indian bazaar incarnate. Truth had gone from him utterly. In its place had come an impersonal appreciation of the value of vice or virtue as a mere ingredient of anecdote, and an absolute lack of responsibility for the result of his admixture of good and evil.
Therefore, as he sat crouched up in the corner of a frail lady's reception room, fingering a lute which he had found there, and trilling softly of 'oughts' and 'naughts' while she retailed the latest lies to the shifting audience which came and went up and down the steep musk-scented stairs, he was at once a thing dreadful, a thing pathetic. For his keen face, seen by the smoking oil lamps set high in a brass trefoil before the mistress of the house, was alight with a sensuous spirituality, and his lean figure, so listless in its lounge, was instinct with that power of energy, of spring, that shows even in a sleeping tiger.
'Lo, thou in the corner!' came the narrator's voice; 'hold thy peace. What are thy "oughts" and "naughts" to us of the bazaar? Take them to thy virtuous beauties who leave messages for thee at Dilarâm's--at Dilarâm's forsooth! an odd "post-arffis"[[16]] for virtue! And so, my masters,' she went on, 'the daghdars[[17]]--there were five of them--carried the woman off by force, and----'
Lateefa was not one of the breathless listeners. He was winking elaborately at the buxom assistant who was handing round the sherbets, and asking irresponsibly, 'Didst leave a message for me at Dilarâm's, beloved?'
'Not I, fool!' she giggled; 'thou must be drunk indeed to think virtue fits me. Yet it is true. One such did come when I was at Dilarâm's with her----' She nodded to the speaker--who, having reached her climax, was becoming dramatic, the light before her making her face all eyes and lips--'An old body--out on thee for thy bad taste, Lateef! And she says, says she, "Tell Lateef of the house of the Nawâb that it is well with us in the prison--that we want no service." See you, friends? not even his! Nay, take it not to heart, beloved! there be others less unkind.'
But Lateefa had risen with a sudden sense of something beyond his present freedom; that freedom from truth, clothes, kite-making, above all things, from the methods of the police! And that something was Auntie Khôjee. For the messenger, he felt, could have been no one else. Why had she come to say it was well with her? Had they made her do so? And if so, what had they been doing to those helpless women? What they could have done, had they dared, Lateefa knew only too well; and his brain was too confused to remember that had they dared, they would scarcely have bidden him go back to his workshop in the old palace.
His feet were as confused as his brain, but, in or out of the gutter, they steered him pretty straight for the big iron-studded door with the little wicket in it beneath the naubat khana.
'Khôjee!' he called cautiously, rattling at the wicket; for it was barred, as usual, at night. There was no answer. He raised his voice--'Auntie Khôjee, it is Lateef! Rise, sister, and let me in.'