“Nay, Gupta Rao, you said you would provide the presents. It is only fair. You owe me a consideration. And besides, now I come to think of it, I left most of my money at home.”
Ommony thrust the paper money contemptuously into Maitraya’s hands, smiling in a way that spared the actor no embarrassment.
“Go and buy mohurs at the gate,” he said. “I wait here.”
Maitraya returned presently with four gold coins and offered two of them.
“The sonar cheated me—he cheated like a dog!” he grumbled, but Ommony shrugged his shoulders and waved the coins aside.
“Give them all to the woman. I have another way to make her smile,” he said, looking important.
Maitraya approached humility as closely as professional pride would permit.
“It occurs to me I did not ask a blessing when we first met. I crave forgiveness. Your honor was so unusually free from false pride that I overlooked the fact you are a Brahman. Pranam.”
Ommony murmured the conventional curt blessing, and dismissed the apology as if it were beneath notice. They passed into another courtyard on which awninged windows opened from three sides. In a corner a dozen musicians were raising Bedlam on stringed instruments, their tune suggestive of western jazz but tainted, too, like Hawaiian music, with a nauseating missionary lilt. Fashionable India, in the shape of thirty or forty younger sons of over-rich Hindus and a sprinkling of middle-aged roués, was amusing itself in a bower of roses and strong-smelling jasmine, while in a corner of the courtyard opposite the music three girls were dancing more modestly than the scene would have led a censor of morals to expect.
It was a gorgeous scene, for the sun beat down on a blaze of turbans and the awnings cast purple shadows that made it all seem unreal, like a vision of ancient history. Maitraya was greeted noisily by a dozen men; he bowed to them right and left, as if accepting applause as he entered a stage from the wings. The girls danced more vigorously, under the eyes of an expert now, whose approval might be of more than momentary value. Professional zeal took hold of the musicians; the tune grew louder and less careless.