Page:In Black and White - Kipling (1890).djvu/92

 When the noise of the drums ceased, no one in the white room spoke for a time. '"The first tazia has moved off," said Wali Dad, looking to the plain.

"That is very early," said the man with the pince-nez. "It is only half-past eight." The company rose and departed.

"Some of them were men from Ladakh," said Lalun, when she last had gone. "They brought me brick-tea such as the Russians sell, and a samovar from Peshawar. Show me, now, how the English memsahibs make tea."

The brick-tea was abominable. When it was finished, Wali Dad suggested a descent into the streets. "I am nearly sure that there will be trouble to-night," he said. "All the City thinks so, and Vox Populi is Vox Dei, as the Babus say. Now I tell you that at the corner of the Padshahi Gate you will find my horse all this night if you want to go about and to see things. It is a most disgraceful exhibition. Where is the pleasure of saying Ya Hasan, Ya Hussain twenty thousand times in a night?"

All the processions—there were two and twenty of them— were now well within the City walls. The drums were beating afresh, the crowd were howling "Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!" and beating their breasts, the brass bands were playing their loudest, and at every corner where space allowed Muhammadan preachers were telling the lamentable story of the death of the Martyrs. It was impossible to move except with the crowd, for the streets were not more than twenty feet wide. In the Hindu quarters the shutters of all the shops were up and cross-barred. As the first tazia, a gorgeous erection ten feet high, was borne aloft on the shoulders of a score of stout men into the semi-darkness of the Gully of the Horsemen, a brickbat crashed through its tale and tinsel sides.

"Into Thy hands, O Lord!" murmured Wali Dad profanely, as a yell went up from behind and a native officer of Police jammed his horse through the crowd. Another brickbat followed, and the tazia staggered and swayed where it had stopped.