“Scold her? and why would I scold her? What good would that do? What would I scold her about?”
“Wash-balls,” moaned Ketty, drawing back and looking as though she doubted her mistress’s sanity.
“Oh, those! I won’t be saying a word about them, of course. Throw them away—— No, put them by; I may be glad of them myself yet. Why, Ketty, you silly old woman, don’t you see I want to put myself right with the ladies? They are making a horrid mistake about me, and well they may; and how can they be shown it unless I speak to them myself?”
“Done kill Master,” repeated Ketty miserably.
“If they do, they’ll certainly kill us as well, and then all our troubles will be over. But they won’t, for I’ll leave the blue stone round his neck, and Bearer to see that no one touches it. Here, put a pin in this.”
As an additional security, she fastened her improvised skirt with the girdle of her dressing-gown, then caught up another chadar and wrapped it round her head and shoulders, and waited impatiently for the bearer’s return, while Ketty, abandoning her tragic attitude, took up once more her familiar strain of grumbling. It seemed an immensely long time before Abdul Qaiyam returned, for the ladies must have been astonished by the suddenness of the visit, but at last he came back, bringing with him one of the negro attendants of the zenana. Under this man’s protection, after charging the long-suffering bearer with many injunctions as to his master’s safety, Eveleen crossed the courtyard—or rather, slipped from one patch of shade to another, and thus skirted round it, encountering various Arabits who hastily averted their eyes or took cover within the buildings. Ketty followed, looking exactly as if she was going to be hanged, so her mistress told her, and at the zenana door they were admitted by another negro, who handed them over to a number of old women. These offered perfunctory salutations in an unknown tongue, scrutinising the visitors greedily the while, and led them to a large vaulted room partially underground, where the ladies were passing away the hot hours as best they might. Eveleen had learnt enough from Ketty’s gossip—though it was difficult to tell whom she found to gossip with—to know who were the principal personages before her. There were three young girls—rather meek and abashed-looking—who sat together as though they found each other’s company a support. Two of them were wives of Kamal-ud-din, and one was his brother’s. Then there was Jamal-ud-din’s mother, a lady with a dissatisfied expression, who sat as near as possible to the chief place occupied by her superior, the mother of Kamal-ud-din. The Khanum was the pleasantest-looking person there, with an assured manner which showed to advantage beside the fidgetiness of her companion. To her, even as her lips uttered the words of salutation, and without being invited to approach, Eveleen moved swiftly forward, and dropping on her knees, laid hold of the Khanum’s silken draperies.
“I seize the Lady’s skirt and claim her protection,” she said in her best Persian. “Let her spread her mantle over my husband and me.”
Every one looked virtuously shocked that a woman should be so abandoned as to refer to her husband as such, but apparently the impropriety furnished a not disagreeable excitement, for the ladies gathered a little closer and listened eagerly. The Khanum alone remained unmoved.
“How is this, then?” she asked. “Is not the sick Farangi thy brother, lady?”
“Not a bit of it!” Eveleen sat back on her heels, still holding the Khanum’s dress, and felt—without realising the reason—the thrill that went round as she lifted her eyes to her audience. “My brother is only a boy. This is my husband, that I’ve followed over land and sea, after he came back for me when I’d waited twenty years for him.” Ketty followed as interpreter, but Eveleen began to suspect that her Persian was about on a par with her English when she saw the blank look on the ladies’ faces. She did her best, therefore, to repeat what she had said, and between the two some measure of understanding followed. The Khanum looked more sympathetic.