No More Learning

He knew
that men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the
forenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance.

So he went, that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a
boorka, which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in
the City made the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up "The
Love Song of Har Dyal" at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon
Har Dyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In
English you miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:--

Alone upon the housetops, to the North
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Below my feet the still bazar is laid
Far, far below the weary camels lie,--
The camels and the captives of thy raid,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I. --
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered:--"I am here. "

Bisesa was good to look upon.

That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double
life so wild that Trejago today sometimes wonders if it were not all a
dream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter had
detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the
window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which an
active man might climb.

In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or
put on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station;
wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor little
Bisesa. At night, when all the City was still, came the walk under the
evil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quick
turn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead
walls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of
the old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room that
Durga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter.
Who or what Durga Charan
was, Trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was not discovered
and knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, and Bisesa. . .
But this comes later.

Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird;
and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had
reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping
attempts to pronounce his name--"Christopher. " The first syllable was
always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures
with her rose-leaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then,
kneeling before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do,
if he were sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more than
any one else in the world. Which was true.

After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled
Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You
may take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed
and discussed by a man's own race, but by some hundred and fifty natives
as well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the
Band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instant
dreaming that this would affect his dearer out-of-the-way life. But the
news flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till
Bisesa's duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubled
that she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's
wife in consequence.

A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She understood
no gradations and spoke openly.