I had some difficulty in making the gharri wallah understand that I really wished him to drive to the Burra Bazaar. But when he did understand, he drove stolidly across Dhurrumtollah into Bentick Street. We stopped a moment while my escort bought me an immense bunch of spicy roses “to smell when we get into the Bazaar”; and while he was paying for it, a lame boy hobbled up with a huge ridiculous cotton-wool lamb. That was bought also “for the boy, if we ever come back.” Down Bentick Street, where the dexterous Chinese shoemakers plied their trade by lamplight, beyond two noisy “Sailors’ Rests,” then into the dark. Neither of us spoke. My friend afterwards told me that he was a little anxious as to the outcome of my mad escapade. I was expectant. Every door was barred. Every house was dark. Asia was asleep. Where thousands of chattering natives had crowded about my carriage that very morning, not even a dog was to be seen. We drove for over two hours. We passed, here and there, a turbaned, belted policeman. Each looked at us with as much amazement as a sleepy Oriental can display, and salaamed. It was brightly, weirdly light now. The moon was up, and the dusty deserted streets lay before us like snow. We knocked at many doors, oftenest without response. A few of the doors opened after a long pause. A drowsy-looking native examined my bit of cloth by the light of our gharri lamps, and shook his head. He retreated behind his heavy door, shut and barred it. We went on. Not once, but twenty times, that was our experience.
But long after I had quite relinquished all hope of getting my pine-apple cloth, I insisted upon driving on. The moonlight was so marvellous. It was so wonderful to be one of the three or four awake among myriad sleepers. One old merchant was more enterprising than the rest. He had, he said, just what I sought. He went into his house and was gone some twenty minutes. Then he came out to us again. I leaned over the gharri with anticipatory excitement. The old Hindoo drew from his sleeve a piece of pale blue satin, on which two slippers were heavily embroidered with gold and seed pearls. Very beautiful they were in the midnight moonlight. I longed to take them back to my good-natured husband, but I was too vexed with the ancient Brahmin, who had brought me gold embossed blue satin instead of cream embroidered pine-apple cloth, to deal with him. “Cedar jao,” I snapped out, and the patient horses went on. I forgot my petty millinery vexation in looking upon the magic high lights and the fathomless chiaroscuro made by the white magnificence of the moonlight and the black splendour of the old gray walls.
“What—oh! what is that?” I whispered, forgetting my own vague musings and remembering my companion suddenly.
“That is a fakir chap. He has made a vow, don’t you know. His arm is paralyzed; he has held it high up above his head for a vow, and now it has grown that way. It doesn’t hurt him, but it looks jolly queer, doesn’t it?”
An incongruously European clock struck midnight.
“Are you frightened?” I asked my friend.
“A little,” said the soldier, smiling; “and I am sure your husband is more so.”
“Not he,” said I; “he’s singing ‘Roy’s Wife of Aldivalloch.’ ” But I added to the sais, “Nautch ghât jao.”
Poor sais! He was fast asleep; standing bolt upright behind us. I woke him, and sent him up to sit with the gharri wallah.
“I wonder why that fakir was the one native out at midnight,” I said, as we returned out of the unknown moonlight of Asia into the familiar gaslight of cosmopolitan Dhurrumtollah. My friend smiled involuntarily, but he said nothing.