Ch. 20: Without Benefit of Clergy

Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
Who am too wise in that I should not know.
BITTER WATERS.

I

'But if it be a girl?'

'Lord of my life, it cannot be. I have prayed for so many nights, and
sent gifts to Sheikh Badl's shrine so often, that I know God will give
us a son--a man-child that shall grow into a man. Think of this and be
glad. My mother shall be his mother till I can take him again, and the
mullah of the Pattan mosque shall cast his nativity--God send he be born
in an auspicious hour!--and then, and then thou wilt never weary of me,
thy slave.'

'Since when hast thou been a slave, my queen?'

'Since the beginning--till this mercy came to me. How could I be sure of
thy love when I knew that I had been bought with silver?'

'Nay, that was the dowry. I paid it to thy mother.'

'And she has buried it, and sits upon it all day long like a hen. What
talk is yours of dower! I was bought as though I had been a Lucknow
dancing-girl instead of a child.'

'Art thou sorry for the sale?'

'I have sorrowed; but to-day I am glad. Thou wilt never cease to love me
now?--answer, my king.'

'Never--never. No.'

'Not even though the mem-log--the white women of thy own blood--love
thee? And remember, I have watched them driving in the evening; they are
very fair.'

'I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred. I have seen the moon, and--
then I saw no more fire-balloons.'

Ameera clapped her hands and laughed. 'Very good talk,' she said. Then
with an assumption of great stateliness, 'It is enough. Thou hast my
permission to depart,--if thou wilt.'

The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a
room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a
very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of
sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule
and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and
she a Mussulman's daughter bought two years before from her mother, who,
being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince
of Darkness if the price had been sufficient.

It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the
girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John
Holden's life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a
little house overlooking the great red-walled city, and found,--when the
marigolds had sprung up by the well in the