It was a motley cargo which the rickety, red-flannel-lined wagonette (which Jehân's usurer allowed him as part of the stock-in-trade necessary for a pension-earner) carried to the stucco tombs of dead kings--for everything, including the dynasty itself, had been stucco at Nushapore! First there was the Heir in his second-best coatee of flowered green satin, then Burkut, burly in a yellow one to match, and Lateefa, despite his calico, gayer than either by reason of his inevitable kites. Finally there was the coachman in ragged livery, and three attendants in rags without the livery; literal hangers-on, clinging to the great scraper-like steps which seemed the only reliable portions of the vehicle.
It had not far to go, however, over the white road and through the clouds of dust; for the mausoleum stood just outside the city in a garden that was irresistibly suggestive of a café chantant by reason of its stucco statuary, its preparations for nightly illumination, and a generally meretricious scheme of decoration.
The tomb itself--squat, and bulging with inconsequent domes--stood on a plinth towards one end of the garden, and from it, as the wagonette discharged its load at the gates, came the sound of monotonous chanting. But this hesitated, paused, ceased in a murmur of 'the Nawâb!' as Jehân, with a new dignity in his manner, passed up the steps, and so--with a posse of cringing officials who had hurried to meet him buzzing round like bees--entered the wide hall; for despite the domes, despite the minarets outside, this tomb of dead kings was nothing else within. It was just a vast oblong hall hung throughout its length with huge, dusty, cobwebbed, glass chandeliers which, taken in conjunction with the empty polished floor, were suggestive of a ballroom; the dancing-saloon of the café chantant!
In the very centre, however, of the emptiness was a low roly-poly tomb, above which rose a musty-fusty baldequin which had once been stately in velvet and pearls. But the moth had fretted new patterns on the curtains, and the cobwebs lay like torn lace on the canopy. Nevertheless, two faintly-smouldering silver censers, standing at the foot of the tomb, showed it not all neglected. And something else, witness to memory, lay between the censers, under a common glass shade such as covers the marble-and-gilt timepiece of a bogus auction, or the dusty waxen flowers of a cheap lodging.
It was the last Nawâb's turban of state.
For the rest, the hall lay empty save for its officials; the minor canons as it were, who still received the stipends set apart by the deceased kings for due daily chantings of dirges, and so clustered round Jehân with courtier-like salaams.
But not for long; since almost before they had conducted him to the royal pew--an inlaid square of flooring close to the baldequin--a fresh arrival sent them cringing and fluttering to greet it, with greed in their hungry faces; the faces of custodians to whom strangers give tips.
And this party of English tourists looked promising, if only from the reluctant way in which, in obedience to a notice on the door, they took off their hats, and then glanced round with the 'Thank-the-goodness-and-the-grace-which-on-my-birth-hath-smiled' expression which our race learns in the nursery. For this is a frame of mind which leads to a contemptuous tipping of inferior races.
'Guide says that's the last Johnnie's cap--beastly dirty, isn't it?' said one in a churchy whisper, and the others nodded in churchy silence. So, decorously--barring a faint desire to try the waltzing capabilities of the floor on the part of a brother and sister in one corner--they hesitated round the building with the half-shy, half-defiant, 'thus far I will go but no further' reluctance to admit any interest in strange places of worship, which is also a sign of race.
And Jehân from his royal square watched them, oblivious of his prayers, until quite calmly, innocently, they included him as part of the show.