In the Permanent Way

I will marry thee." Aggie's outlook on the future went so f

am a bird-slayer: how could we live without t

ll of scarlet avitovats between them, so that the passers-by could

ng her head and looked at him as if he were the most beautiful thing in her world. "That is wiser," she said, "and if thou dost not marry me I will kill myself. So that is settled." He gave another sq

ers. "Thou hadst best be buying the birds, Aga-Meean[51] [for so, to suit her estimate of him, she had chosen to amend his name], or folk will wo

and leave it again in the hiding-place where she found the birds; so it was not an expensive amusement to either of them. And if Agamemnon Menelaus had not grasped the determination which underlay the girl's threats of taking life it was from no lack of hearing them, ay, and of shivering at them. The savage, reckless young figure, startling the sunshine and shadow of the narrow lanes with its shrill cry, "I will kill, I will kill, yea, I will take life!" had filled him with a sort of proud bewilderment, a sacred admiration. And other things had brought th

been made for it. Kabootri clasped her hands tight in sheer admiration as she watched him go down the steps with the cage of scarlet avitovats; but Mrs. Gibbs, while admitting the superlative beauty of the combination, burst into floods of lamentation at the sight, for it w

are; in other words, when he had refused to go to church, since native shoes and a Delhi cap are manifestly incompatible with a surplice, she went over to a bosom friend and wept again. But Mrs. Rosario was

will give trouble. So, if you ask my--advice, I say that if--you--cannot--get your poor boy on--a--place you had better get--him--a--wife, or the bad black woman in the bazaar will--lead--him--to bad ways; for he is a handsome boy, almost as handsome as my Lily. He is too young, perhaps, and she--is--too--young--too, but if you like he can beau my Lily. You can ask some--one--for-

othes. And both tears and scent being unbearable, she went back with quite a large bundle of garments which had belonged to a merry English boy who had come out to join his parents, only to die of enteric fever. "Give them

her pumps. To crown all, there was a note on highly scented paper with an L on it in lilies of the valley, in which Mrs. Rosario and her daughters requested the pleasure of Mr. Agamemnon Menelaus Gibbs' company at a hop that evening. What more could a young man like Aggie want for his regeneration? Nothing apparently: it was impossible, for in

e the gentleman." The remark, being made before its object had left the tiny courtyard, which the Rosarios dignified

arafat-Nissa, the old canoness who lived on the roof below the marble cupolas, had charge of the store of grain set apart for the purpose by the guardians of the mosque; but as a rule Kabootri fed the pigeons. She did many such an odd job for the queer little cripple, half pensioner, half saint, who kept a Koran class for poor girls and combined it with a sort of matrimonial agency; for the due providing of suitable husbands to girls who have no relations to see after such things is a meritorious act of piety; a lucrative one also, when, as in Sharafat-Nissa's case you belong to a good family, and have a large connection in houses where a good-looking maiden is always in request as an extra wife. So, as she taught the Ho

will kill," a little oftener than usual. Sharafat-Nissa heard the shout also, and, as she rocked backwards and forwards over her evening chant of the Holy Book, gave a covetous upward glance at the slender figure she could just see among the wings of the doves. Downstairs among the pack

locking the narrow stair, which Kabootri trod so often on her way to and from the roof. "Have a care, sister! She is not

showed clear and defiant against the sky, as she stood on the uppermost, outermost coping of the gateway. There was a sheer fall beneath her to the platform below. She

e wheedled breathlessly. "Come down

e shrill young voice. "Open, or

n! He shall be a youn

rds of the young tiger-cat that had been wont to startle the sunshine and the shadow, making Sri Parasnath seek his cash-box incontinently; but there was a new note of appeal in th

d listen. Kabootri! I swear that if thou likest not this o

ar it on the Holy Book. So--in thy right hand and in thy left. Let me see it." She stretched he

d over the oath; but above her breathless mumble came a little shriek, a little giggle

miliar, yet unfamiliar, dress. She saw two girls about her own age, with tiny waists, huge sleeves, and hats. It was Aga-Meean, escorting the two Miss Rosarios, who had expressed a desire to see

, eagerly, anxiously, "I have sworn it. Come down,

said sooth; the wings made one diz

the marble cupolas, past the purple shadow of the great gateway, to the wide platform where the doves are bought and sold. And some of the pigeons followed her, and some

WIMME

thee silent!" It was a woman's voice that was beginning to lose its fulness and sweetness, in other words, its womanliness

e roof where the Indian corn was drying to a richer gold in the sunlight; but it was a voice

makes them be for ever fi

; then the voice from the ro

tersected each other at right angles, and there had been a lingering lover, expectant of some recognition, in each alley. Now, if half-a-handful of golden corn be thrown a

rs again to resume her spinning in the courtyard. Once more she spoke truth, but hardly the whole truth; since when fe

formed a background to her sudden girlish laugh at the recollec

ful of Indian corn to pick up out of the gutter. But these two being the most expert swimmers in that quaint bare colony of huts set on a loose shale slope with the wild wicked rush of the Indus at its foot, were, perhaps, the mo

of the rushing river, it follows that those who kill must also swim, since there is no bridge far or near. That was why Hussan and Husayn, and many another of their sort, with carefully oiled thews and sinews of bronze, would go down the shale slope on dark nights and slip softly into the ice-cold stream. Then, if there was a glint of moon, you could see them caught in the great upward curve of the mad current inshore, the two skin-bladders that were slung under their armpits making it look as if six dark heads, not two, were drifting down and down; yet somehow drifting nearer and nearer to the other side where the pigs of Hindus were to be found. But even a glint of moon kept them, as a rule, talking of future nights--unless there was s

on and done to death in the dark upon the undulating tract of low jungle on the other side. Then the worshippers going home would say casually in their houses: "Hussan killed his man last night; that makes him two ahead of Husayn. And Ahmad, the new one, hath another, so that brings him next to Husayn, who will need to work hard." And the women would gossip about it among themselves, and say that, of course, Miriam, the village-beauty, would choose the best swimmer when the time came for

over the water. The more so because his name happened to be John Nicholson, and John Nicholson was not a man to allo

ten in the last. And I told you that for every man killed on our side there were to be two in Sitana. What on earth are your swimmers about? If they are not so good as theirs, get others. Get something! There

sat spinning in the courtyard. And the rest of the long, low, flat-roofed village clinging to the shaly slope seemed very much at its usual; that is to say, the commonplace nest of as uncommon a set of religious scoundrels as could be found north or south. So he told himself that they must have been strengthened lately by a new contingent of fanatics from the plains, or that the approaching Mohurrum-tide had raised their

belief,--fellow-workers in that stream of Death,--first and second alternately in the great race for men's lives, they knew that the time had come when they must be at each other's throat and settle which was to be best once and for all--which was to be best in Miriam's eyes. And then to their blind wrath came an authoritative voice, the voice of the holiest man there, the Syyud Ahmad, whom to disobey was to be accursed. "There is too much of this brawling," came the fiat. "'Tis a disgr

ives hung in a sheath round their necks. Their bronze muscles shone even in the growing gloom; from head to foot they were lithe, strong, graceful in their ve

t, Hussan; and when I return equal, we will draw

of their swimmers, 'twere better. Then will it be easier to get his place.

am, and without another word they faced round from the river to the western hills. The parapet of Miriam's house stood out higher t

ll not fight any more," said a girl, who giggled as she spoke, to Mi

and roundness. "They are all like fighting-cocks, except the shepherds. Belike 'tis the sheep which make them peace

mother-in-law will need her tongue. Th

iver is far." Then it added inconsequently: "But there are streams up in the hills that folk can guide

d," put in another girl pertly; where

n as a swimming patrol on the river opposite Sitana in place of one who was supposed to have been killed or drowned? There is no need to know. No need to know which it was who won the toss when Husayn came back with

, Huzoor, on the Indus. There is one, over the wat

ng almost before the order was ended, and in the silence which followed under the white wings of the tent set wide to all the winds of heaven, the sound of two pens could be heard. One was the En

lf to the shiny paper laid beside it, and the dark, keen, kindly eyes looked up once m

God, Huzoor, by

e of the current where a bold swimmer might by one swift venture drift down faster to the calmer water, and so have a second or two in which to regain breath ere the fight began? What matters it whether the panther was on the western bank and the leopard on the eastern? They were two wild beasts pacing up and down, up and down, with their feet upon the water's edge; up and down, up and down, even when the moon rose and t

an sleep! Prayer

once more the real spiritual Kaaba was what they saw with the eyes of the flesh; that flat-roofed house just beginning to blush rosy in the earliest rays of the rising sun; mor

of the village and the officials over the way, alike; "but there is no fear

n either side; "but when

of gloom across the sky. It was dusk an hour sooner, dawn an hour later than usual that night and day, so there was plenty of time for sheer murder before prayer-time. And as there was no storm, no thunder after all, but only the heavy clouds hanging lik

khbar! All

ter, no doubt, and Husayn, mindful of advice, followed suit; and so the six black heads must have gone drifting down stream peacefully, save for the hatred in the two faces glaring at each other, since the river hid their blows decorously.

ng and wailing at Sitana. Two of their swimmers had apparently been killed in fair fight, for their bodies had been brought up for burial from the backwater further down the river; a

to himself, "I wonder which of t

AKEER

Hind), please admit bearer to privileges of praising God on the littl

"ancient and a fishlike smell," suggestive of many years' acquaintance with dirty humanity. I looked at the man who had presented it--a very ordinary fakeer, standing with hands folded humbly--and was struck by the wistf

ly, "and his place of sitting close to Deputy-Commissioner's bungalow

hope from the old man's face; his thin sho

this been goin

fficers, and it is always na-munzoor." He dipped

n a sudden decision. "Munzoor

The pathos and bathos of it hit me hard; but a stare of infinite surprise had replaced the circumambient smile. The fakeer himself seemed flabbergasted. I thi

home." It had, with a vengeance. I had thought my sarishtidar's language a trifle too picturesque; now I recognised its supreme accuracy. The fakeer was "a damnably noiseful man." It is useless trying to add one iot

yet to come, faded before it. Perfect happiness is not the lot of many, but apparently it was his. He salaamed down to the ground. "Huzoor," he said, "the great joy in me created a disturba

ch follows a deep organ note--a throbbing which found its way into the drum of my ear and remained there--so faint that it kept me on the rack to know if it had stopped or was still going o

tc., I had admitted this man to the privileges of praising God on the little drum, and there was an end of it. But the effort left my nerves shattered with the strain put on them. It was the middle of the hot weather--that awful fortnight before

ed the dripping trees, the fever of unrest was over. Clouds of winged white ants besieged the lamp: what wonder, when the rafters of the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of safety by their galleri

king round the house. I was after him in the moonlight. Not a sign; the whit

!" Fainter this ti

th

enough to be traced. So on the track, I was roun

n--no

sh, a thud, a roar and rattle

been two minutes before. The first sunbeams were on the still sparkling trees when, full of curiosity, I strolled over to the fakeer's hut. It

the morning over a Johnson's dictionary and a revenue report, informed me that "such catastrophe

BECK

your name

he answered, with a bri

foot of the snows above us. Flowerful life! Truly that was hers. She had a great bunch of scarlet rhododendron stuck behind her ear, matching the cloth cap perched jauntily on her head, and as she sat herding her buffaloes on the upland she had threaded chaplet on chaplet of ox-eyed dai

and smiled again,

he Sahib who came last year gave me five rupees. I will take six this year. Food is dear, and tho

n could be in the little shingle huts clustering below by the river. I will not describe the place. To begin with it defies description, and next, could I even hint at its surpassing beauty, the globetrotter would come and defile it. It is sufficient to say that a murg is an upland meadow or a

hat is plenty," I remarked suave

---" Here she went off into a perfect cascade of smiles, and began to pull the eyelashes off the daisies deliberately. There seems a peculiar temptation in girlhood for cruelty towards flowers all over the world,

"It depends which will pay the most, for we are poor. There are

he equal of that face. I should have made my fortune if I could have painted it there in the blazing sunlight, framed in flowers; but it was too much for

nting to a patch of green sword-leaves, where the

perceptib

raves? It is true. All our people are buried here. We plant the iris ov

ven let me pick a handful of the flowers for her to hold. It was unlucky; besides, one never knew what one might find in the thickets of leaves--bones and horrid things. Had I never heard that dead people got tired of th

of pine-trees covering the bottom of the valley? That was Goloo's fire. He was drying orris root for the Maharajah. There, on the opposite murg, where the buffaloes showed dark among the flowers, was Chuchchu's hut. Undoubtedly, Chuchchu was the richer, but Goloo could climb like an ibex. It was

petal left on the ox-eyed daisies, and I was divid

hododendron behind his ear, stopped and grinned at my caricature of Phooli-jan. Five minutes after, down by the servants' encampment, I heard a free fight going on, and strolled over to see what was the matter. After the manner o

ined the shikari elaborately. "That was extortionate, even though Goloo, being the Huzoor's guide for to-morrow, may be

s of red rhododendron they both wore were her gift I did not doubt. They were both fine

in my memory, and I mentioned it to Phooli-jan when, on returning to finish my sketch,

ows that Goloo is more active, and Goloo knows that Chu

lied; "I was thinking of you. Suppo

rrel. In summer time there are

s, and could not repress a smile at

the wint

me one. I have only to choose. That i

ds, and as I turned the last corner of the pine-set path which threaded its way through the defile I saw the meadow before me, with

Huzoor, she is dead; she died from picking flowers. A vain thing. It was at the turn beyond the murg, Huzoor, half-way between Chuchchu's hu

l had fallen down, or if she had played with flowers too recklessly and one of her lovers, perhaps both---- It was an idea which dimmed the sunshine and I was glad that I had arranged not to remain for the night, but to push on to anoth

aves--all but one too recent to be poor Phooli-jan's. That, then, must be hers, wi

lask, and thus providentially fortified, I stooped, ere leaving, to pick one or two of the blosso

vens! wha

on of a beckoning hand might have done. I did not stay to see more; I let the flowers close over it--whatever it was--and made my way back to the village. My baggage, having changed shoulders, was streaming out over the plank bridge again, and in the two f

wonder what it was I saw among the iris. And then I seem to see Phooli-jan sitti

huchchu, I would be

ATH CHA

hani was dutifully at his elbow. This blindness of his was, however, far more to his advantage than his disadvantage as a master. It was, in short, the cause of his being one at all; since had he had the use of his eyes no mother would have dreamed of employing a man, who was not more than forty-five at the outside, in teaching her girls. As it was, his time was fully taken up in the houses of the clerks, contractors, barristers, and such like, who for some reason or another desired to impart the exotic accomplishment of music to their daughters or wives. But of all these houses Punoo loved the one which contained the harmonium best; not because of his pupil, since Bahani, who was betrothed to a young man who might be seen any day on a Hammersmith omnibus over on the other side of the world, never learned anything; but because of the instrument itself. To tell truth it had quite a fine tone, especial

mething that goes not wombling up and down like an ill-greased wheel, something with a count in it that gives a body time to catch the beat of it? For sure I could make better music with my ladle and tray; better music

h great dignity, "that Bahani will have mastered so much.

the girl gets on, I hope, Master Punoo. Her father writes of it of

was a further legend, vague and misty even to himself, which he kept holy, as it were, from profane use by locking it away in his own breast, which hinted that the harmonium had been thrown on the market from no desire to get rid of it, but simply from pecuniary necessity; the Chaplain having been forced into selling his greatest treasure in order to pay the bill for a new one. To tell truth, Punoo's estimate of the harmonium was vague and misty on more points than this. He was, in fact, abs

rcation echoed through the wooden partitions. By a recognised etiquette, however, all serious disputes were carried on in the well-room where the women bathed. It was more a verandah than a room, though the arches were filled up breast-high with a screening wall. But through the hole in the floor, above which the windlass stood, you could not only see right down into the well on the basement story, but also see the people in the street coming for their water. It was when Bahani was discovered lying flat on the floor so as to crane over and peep into the very street itself, that the fiercest quarrels arose between Mai Kishnu and her widowed sister-in-law. And no quarrel ever ran its course without a reference of some sort to the harmonium, and the iniquity and idiotcy of learning to play tunes as if you were a bad woman in the bazaar. In her heart of hearts Mai Kishnu agreed with this view of the question, but she would sooner have died than confess it, so she invariably carried the war into the enemy's country instead, by insisting on it that Bahani learned in deference to the oft-expressed desire of her lawful husband, that husband being the complainant's own son. And sometimes, but not often, for she was a faithful defender of the absent municipal clerk, she would clinch the matter by telling her sister-in-law that if there was iniquity or idiotcy about, her brother was also to blame. Wh

was a quaint household when all was said and done, this colony of women, whose husbands were for the most part away serving the Government in remote stations. Quaintest of all it was, perhaps, when in the afternoon the boys belonging

'Twas she forced me into giving your stomachsful of my best pickles to some dirty beast of a beggar in the street. God f

here were so many ideas, and one must be right; it might be this one. In a way they were more afraid of her and her views than Mai Kishnu was, who never doubted at all. But then Mai Kishnu knew that she could always have the upper hand over her

ueen. As they sat on the dark flight of steps between the living-room and the well-verandah they used to pipe away at it in English in the

ishnu's vexed clattering of her ladles and pots, and blind Punoo's perspiring efforts after melody on the old harmonium. For he never attempted harmony; that was beyond his self-taught execu

only fee, knowing that even such payment was in excess of his desires, since it was enough for him to have the honour and glory of playing on the harmonium,

had scarcely an instant's respite from the multitudinous rituals; and if there was a minute or two to spare, the women downstairs were sure to remember something else which if left undone would bring the most direful misfortune on the young couple. There was no quarrelling now, only a babel of shrill kindly voices. And there was no music, save of a kind to which Mai Kishnu could clatter her ladles and pans; drubbings of drums and endless tinklings of sutaras--for the good lady had set her foot down as regards the harmonium, even to the extent of showing off Bahani's accomplishment. Accomplishment forsooth! What need was th

the days passed, and those two on the roof, despite music and culture, despite all the sciences and all the 'ologies, were quite content with those things which had contented their fathers and mothers before them. It was not so with old Punoo. Even his fiddle afforded him no comfort; and though his other pupils' accordions and concertinas gave him the correct musical

to the old life, and that as he had every intention, when this first very natural and inevitable relapse was over, of setting up house on more civilised lines, it might be as well to show off his new habits a little, and so emphasise the difference which he meant to draw between his life and the life led in the qua

nse. Bahani, standing decorously in the shadow with her veil down in most alluring bashfulness, t

-satisfied face. "The bellows are leaking," he cried agai

and harmony together, coming in great waves of sound and bearing him away, further and further and further into some unknown land that was yet a Land of Promise? And all these years he had lived in ignorance; he had boa

s done for the old thing," he said with a laugh; "but it was past work anyhow, and I prefer a piano any day of the week. Don't stand in t

once more sympathetic. "It is a new world, sister," whispered the one to the other as they moved off respectively to their pra

that poor travesty of God Save the Queen which had once filled him with pride. And as he sat fingering the dumb keys, idly, a dim content that it should

TNO

te 1:

2: Gran

e 3: Ma

tchers, men employe

pudmi houm. The Bu

te 6:

e 7: Ma

8: Vishnu

oli, the Indi

e 10: K

te 11:

te 12:

hese are all names of Vis

te 14:

5: A fossi

e 16: G

Victory to

st Aryan settlements

widow brings il

anund. Ram, God;

in honour of the mart

whereas the tazzias used for the procession are afterwards burned.

pet name for

24: The G

number of guns is the first pu

26: Pag

throated; the name

28: The

e 29: W

yright, 1895, by

Equivalent

32: Bad

reeting or pea

onorific title

A common be

6: The Uni

er is always employed

te 38:

9: The Uni

40: The M

: Head-man

. One of the many opprobrious names given t

art, sugar animals, such as

in a true-lover's knot, rustling its scales one against the ot

never be mentioned by a wife, espec

46: World

47: Take

e 48: E

e 49: W

yright, 1896, by

Aga, noble; M

yright, 1895, by

yright, 1896, by