He had no name. The village folk, it is true, called him Baba; but so they called all such as he. Nor did he ever show that he identified the word as anything more personal than the rest of the strange sounds to which he listened serenely as if he had no part or lot in them. Perhaps he was deaf, perhaps he was dumb. Perhaps he was neither. Nobody knew, nor for the matter of that cared. He was one of Shah Sujah's mice; no more, no less. In that lay the difference between him and other men. A small difference in some ways; in others illimitable. To the level of the brows he was as fine a young fellow as you could meet; of middle height, with clean, straight limbs. Above that nothing--nothing but a skull narrowed to the contours of a new-born babe's, conical, repulsive, like a rat's. Whence the name Shah Sujah's mouse.
The learned among us call such poor creatures microcephalous, and talk glibly of joined sutures and osseous formation. The natives of upper India have a different theory. These mouselike ones belong to Shah Sujah's shrine, because they are the firstlings of barren women made fruitful by the saints' intercession. Therefore, from their birth they bear the token of the mother's vow, dedicating them to his service. The seal is set on them from the beginning in mute witness to the truth.
Whatever that truth may be; whether, as some say, the new-born babes brought to be reared, like Samuel in the temple, are born as other babies, and the typical distortion produced by slow pressure--as in lesser degree the coveted bomblike foreheads of the Sindhi women are produced--or whether, as others hold, a tradition favourable to the wealth of the shrine is kept up, and additional gain assured by the secret exchange, through agents all over India, of the normal babies for that percentage of microcephalous infants which Nature makes--this much is certain: all children dedicated to Shah Sujah are his mice. There are hundreds of them; growing up at the shrine, dying there, and during the cold months spreading over the length and breadth of India begging with unvarying success of all women, fruitful and unfruitful; living meanwhile on the broken food given them, but hoarding the money with an odd unconsciousness of all save that in some mysterious way it belongs to the saint; then, as the heat returns, wandering back like a homing pigeon to the insignificant little shrine at Gujrât, which means so much to so many.
Most of the mice are repulsive; some are more or less deformed, more or less idiotic, making idiotic noises as they dawdle through the village alleys carrying their hollow gourds in their outstretched hands. He was not repulsive, and he made no sound of any kind; whether from inability, or from some lingering consciousness that his sounds would not be as those he heard, no one knew. In fact, no one knew anything about him, save that he was a mouse; too naked to be dirty in that country of canals and tanks, and seemingly quite content with a beggar's staff and gourd as his only tie to this world. Here to-day, gone to-morrow, secure of a meal, and of a sand blanket to sleep in if the nights were cold.
Perhaps he had more sense than others of his kind. Perhaps the theory of deliberate distortion was true, and his fine physique had struggled against it more successfully than some. But all such things were idle speculations, and there was nothing to be learned even from the big, luminous eyes, somewhat over-prominent, which looked at everything so serenely. At the children running out to him with their mother's dole, at the lean dogs following him in hopes of a scrap, at the birds and squirrels watching for the crumbs he might leave behind. Down by some water-cut, his feet buried in the warm sand, his naked body covered with the fairy garments made of sunbeams, the very minnows and sticklebacks gathered round him in radiating stars, expectant of bread cast on the water beneath the arching plumes of the date-palm thickets--plumes almost touching the surface, and sending lanceolate shadows, like the fishes themselves, through the sliding water as the breeze stirred the leaflets.
It sounds idyllic viewed from our standpoint. From his, with that osseous formation of the learned closing in like an egg-shell round the embryon, God knows what it was. Until one day something happened.
Sonny baba went amissing. Fuzli, theayah, prone on her stomach, beating her palms in the dust, called God to witness that he had never been out of her sight except for one single minute when she took a pull at the gardener's pipe. This was down in the Taleri Bagh, where the English roses blossomed madly beneath the mango-trees, and the well-wheel under the big peepul-tree had the oddest habit of creaking the first two bars of "Home, Sweet Home" as the slow zebus circled round and round--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
Then a silence, save for the twitterings of birds and the soft thud of a peepul fig falling, rifled, to the ground, until the bullocks were back to the old spot. Then it began again--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
If there was no place like home, Sonny baba evidently did not think so. Anyhow, he had left it. Had disappeared utterly in that luxuriant little world down by the big canal, which was a maze of sunlight and shadow, of thickets of sweet lime and groves of date-palms interspersed with patches of tomatoes and gourds, and plantations of pomegranates laden with leaf and flower and fruit--such ugly, ill-humoured fruit, after all that beauty of blossom!
Yes, he was gone, and the solitary bungalow a mile up the road, nearer the city, where the assistant commissioner in charge of the subdivision lived, was in a lethargy of despair; for a child means much when it has been waited for during long years. Every one, from the highest to the lowest, was away searching; save only for the mother walking up and down the pretty drawing-room clasping her hands tighter and tighter as the hours went by, and theayah, numb with grief and remorse, in the dust outside. It was growing late. The sun sent its picture of theshisham-trees to decorate the blank side wall of the house; the wilderness of wild petunia, usurping the place of the fast-yielding English annuals, began to send out a faint perfume. And Sonny had been out all day alone, under the hot sun, among the treacherous canal-cuts and the lurking snakes--Sonny, who since his birth, three years ago, had never known what it was to be alone.
"Thath way, manth."
It was a sweet little voice full of liquid labials. Theayahgave an inarticulate skirl of joy as she sprang from the dust.
"Leave me l'alone, l'ayah--I'th all light. Puth me down now, pleath, man."
A cry came from within, a woman's figure came flying to the veranda, a child bubbling over with glee went flying to meet it and bury a little mop of golden curls in mother's dress.
"O Mummie, Mummie, he'th got 'quilth!'"
Then, after a time, with dignity: "Don'th, pleath; them kitheth hurth. And, Mummie, don'th l'oo hear?--he'th got 'quilth.' Oh! l'ever tho many 'quilth.'--Hathn't l'oo, man?"
The man was Shah Sujah's mouse. He stood as he had set the child down, obedient to Heaven knows what understanding of the little voice. Now he seemed to hear nothing as he looked serenely, almost brightly, at those three out of his large soft eyes.
"Ayah!" cried the mother, clasping her darling tighter as by instinct. "Who--what is he? Ask him--ask him about it all."
Not only theayah, but many others, asked him, fruitlessly--people running in from the court-house close by, hearing the news of Sonny's safe return; wanderers coming in disheartened from the search. Finally, Sonny's father, with an odd catch in his voice. But there was no answer, and the child's tongue went no further than "Loths and loths to eat, an' loths an' loths of quilth."
"Loh!" said theayah, indignantly. "He is nothing but a mouse--ajanowar.[8]Give him a rupee,Mem sahiba, and let him go; if theHuzoor, indeed, will not hang him for stealing my king of kings."
"Don'th, l'ayah--them kitheth hurth.--O Mummie, don'th l'oo know he'th goth 'quilth,' l'ever tho many 'quilth?'"
"Can'tyoumake outanything, dear?" asked Mummie, almost aggrievedly; it was dreadful to lose a whole long day of Sonny's life.
"No, dearest," replied her husband, meekly aware of the offence. "No more than you can make out what 'quilth' means. Except, of course, that thetahsildartells me that he--the man or the mouse, as you please--has been begging right away to the river's meet and is now, no doubt, on his way back to the shrine. Possibly he will meet an agent at Mooltan; they are seldom later than this in calling in their itinerants. He must have been in the gardens, and either met the child after he had lost himself, or--or stole him. That is all, unless Sonny remembers something when he is less excited. At any rate,hebrought him back, unharmed, and--and--I should like to reward him."
"Reward him! Why, of course we must reward him. Think--only think what might----" She paused, able to think, not to speak of it.
"Just so. But how? Thetahsildarsays he will put any money into his bag and never touch it. And--and it does seem mean to reward a man for saving your son's life with broken victuals."
There was no help for it, however; though, just for the sake of appearances and proprieties, they gave him five whole rupees for the bag. He slipped them into it as if they had been pice, took up his gourd and went away, his beggar's staff making little round holes in the dust as he walked down the petunia-edged path, serenely, as if nothing unusual had happened.
So that was an end of Sonny's adventure for the time, since ere he woke, like a young bird at dawn next day, the child seemed to have forgotten all about Shah Sujah's mouse; but only for a time.
At first they thought it nothing but a touch of sun fever from being out all day which made the darling of their hearts so languid. He was down in the heat a little later, too, than was perhaps quite wise, but those holidays at the end of the month, which would give father the chance of settling mother and son in the wee house among the Himalayan pines, and of getting a whiff of fresh air himself, had been so tempting.
But a week after, the doctor, summoned from headquarters, looked into their scared faces and said "Typhoid," ere, loath to leave them to this knowledge, he had to ride back, promising to arrange his work so as to be there as often as possible. He stood talking in undertones to the native doctor in the veranda before mounting, and the sound of their voices made the mother shiver. It was soon after this that the little voice began:
"O Mummie, he had 'quilth'--lovely, lovely 'quilth.' Whereth he gone--the 'quilth'--man? I wanth to thee the 'quilth' again.--Dada, will l'oo shend for the 'quilth'--man?"
"Can't you send for him--somehow?" She had Sonny in her arms, and the heat of him struck through to her own breast. Yet she shivered again.
Two days after, when the cot was set out in the veranda for the sake of the cool evening air, she bent over the child, who lay more languid than suffering among the toys he liked to see even while he did not care to play with them.
"Sonny, the 'quilth'-man has come. Dada has brought him."
Whence, is no matter. The fiat had gone forth, as fiats do go forth. The order had been given to find and, if possible, to bring back one of Shah Sujah's mice, who had wandered on northward through the villages. They had found him, and he had returned with them peaceably, contentedly, serenely.
"Thath's jolly," sighed Sonny. "Now, Mummie, l'oo'l thee the 'quilth,' too."
He wanted to be carried out in those brown arms as before, and stretched his hands to Shah Sujah's mouse, who stood just as he had stood before, silent, uncomprehending, incomprehensible--except, perhaps, to Sonny; but they took him, cot and all, as he lay, across the petunias, and set him down under one of the greatshisham-trees, backed by palms and a wide-spreading banyan. The air was dry and balmy; he was as well there as elsewhere until the dew should begin to fall.
"Spec'ths l'oo'l flighten them, Mummie; 'quilths' is flightful fings. 'Posing l'oo an' Dada an' l'ayahthits light away--light away."
So they sat right away, over the petunias once more, upon the veranda steps, and two pairs of strained, anxious eyes looked at the group under the trees. The third pair looked also, doubtfully. It was an odd sight, certainly. The child's soft curls on the pillow, his flushed cheek seen sidewise, his little hot hands clasped round the bars of the cot. Beside him, on the grass, like a bronze statue, Shah Sujah's mouse.
"Now, manth! if l'oo pleath," murmured Sonny. And, as before, he seemed obedient to the liquid voice. A strange sound indeed! Not a cry, not a whistle. More like the croon of wind through tall tiger-grass. Scarcely audible, and yet a hush fell on the trees, as if they stopped to listen. Jack, the fox-terrier, cocked his ears. A horse neighed from the stables. Then came a rustle, as of leaves.
"I know," whispered Mummie, touching Dada on the arm. "He means squirrels. How stupid of me! Look!"
Along the branches they came, circling shyly down the trunks, now with a swift patter, now hanging splayed against the bark, petrified by curious timidity. Odd little mortals these, with the mark of Great Ram's fingers on their shining coats, and barred tails a-bristle. Soft little mortals, not much bigger than a mouse, their round ears cocked, their bright eyes watchful. Nearer and nearer, by fits and starts, hopping from distant trees through the short grass as through a thicket, while the croon went on, and Sonny's eyes grew heavy with sheer satisfaction.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth.'--Go on, pleath, manth."
Nearer and nearer; a dozen or more sitting up with the scattered crumbs in their odd little fingers. Dainty over the feast, nibbling a bit here and a bit there, and growing fearless, climbing on to the bronze limbs, looking into the dark, serene eyes.
Sonny's grew heavier and heavier.
"I think he is asleep," said Dada, indistinctly, through a lump in his throat. But Mummie could not speak at all.
"Dew fallin',mem sahiba" remarked theayah, in a dissatisfied tone. "Time Sonny baba leavejanowarsalone."
It was a slow fever, as it often is with the little ones in India, and every day for many days Sonny would rouse himself when the sun left the air cooler and ask for his 'quilth.'
"It will not hurt him," said the doctor, who looked graver at each visit. "Our best chance is to keep him going somehow. If you were on the railway, I'd risk all and have him in the hills to-morrow; but that longdhoolijourney--it is not to be thought of. We must keep him going--keep hold on life as best we can."
So they used to carry him out under the trees to the quilth and Shah Sujah's mouse. And some sort of a comprehension seemed to come to thejanowars, as theayahcalled them scornfully, of what was required of them, for day by day the crumbs were scattered nearer the cot, and day by day the timid courage grew into some new venture, rousing a languid smile from Sonny.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he would say, as the bright eyes looked at him knowingly, and the patter, patter of the little feet came nearer. But the sheer content came quicker and he slept sooner and sooner, until one day when they were racing over the cot and playing gymnastics with the bars, he made up his mind that there could be nothing more to wake for, and fell asleep once and for all.
"Take her away at once," said the doctor, as in the early dawn they drove back without the little coffin on the back seat of the dog-cart, from the graveyard where Dada had read the service without a break in his voice. There was no lump in his throat now; nothing but an angry despair in his heart. "Take her away. I telegraphed for you to the commissioner last night; that will give you three days. Then furlough, privilege, urgent, private--anything. She must not come back till the baby is born. And leave theayahbehind--they will get talking of the child."
That evening, when the servants were being paid off, and certificates to character written, while thedhoolieswaited in the shade where Sonny's cot had stood the day before, theayah, whimpering but indignant, asked what was to be done about thejanowar.
"I'll look after that," said the doctor, kindly, seeing Dada's look. "Five rupees, I suppose, and thetahsildarto have him escorted so far on his way north to the shrine. 'Tis time he were getting back."
Undoubtedly. Even the last few days had brought the heat. The roses down in the Taleri gardens had dried topot-pourrias they grew, smelling almost sweeter than ever. The mangoes grew larger and larger, and the green parrots clung to them, eating the pulp as it ripened. That was when the gardeners were away turfing a grave in the little enclosure opening out of the garden, and planting red and white quamoclit to twine up a wooden cross. It did not take long, for the grave was small. So they came back to frighten the parrots, leaving it to take care of itself; for the rains came early that year, and after a time there was no need for watering.
So much rain, that three months after, when Dada, back from leave, walked through the garden at sunsetting, many of the mango-trees were ankle-deep in water, and a second crop of roses nodded at their own reflection in the still pools. But the graveyard stood purposely on higher ground, and its brick wall was backed by a perfect thicket of date-palms stretching away to the low sand-hills, save on the side marching with the garden. There oleanders and roses and elephant creeper massed themselves into a hedge, and clambered over the arched gateway where Dada paused. The doctor was there too, for fever comes with heavy rain, and the outlying hospitals needed constant inspection. As the gate swung open, they paused again, not at the sight within, but at a sound they seemed to recognize. It was a shady spot. To begin with, great branches swept over it from the garden, and then in the far corner a huge peepul stood quivering its silver-lined leaves. There lay the little grave, solitary in its square of grass, for the place was divided into four by two narrow gravel walks ending abruptly at the walls. Two other graves claimed other squares, the fourth lay vacant. It seemed as if, when that was occupied, the shady spot would refuse another tenant. Yet there were others even now.
"Who's that?" cried the doctor, sharply.
It was Shah Sujah's mouse. He sate propped against the peepul-tree, and over the grass and the cross of quamoclits the squirrels were chasing each other and playing pranks with the crumbs they were scarcely hungry enough to eat, while the otherjanowarlooked at them out of hollow serene eyes.
He shifted his gaze to the new-comers, but did not rise. He could not.
"Good God," muttered the doctor, kneeling down beside him, "the man is a skeleton, and burning with fever. How the mischief-- Well, the first thing is to get him moved to hospital."
When Dada came back with a string bed and four coolies impressed from the garden, he found the doctor looking suspiciously at the crumbs, at a piece of dough-cake and a bag of money. There were ten whole rupees in it, besides odd coins.
"The poor beggar seems starved, and yet he had this and--he was feeding the squirrels. There's something deuced odd about it all."
Odd, but simple, especially in theayah'seyes. "Master, having given orders for thejanowarto go, the police had naturally taken him away. He had come back again and begged--naturally, when themem sahibahad given him sweet rice every day. But she had given nothing, nothing at all, except information to the police. Then they had taken him away again miles and miles, quite close to the highroad to the shrine, and had bidden him to go home. Even ajanowarcould have found his way had he chosen; but the obstinate animal had come back after the sweet rice. So then every one had been told not to give the disobedient one anything to eat. Indeed, it was past time for alms to Shah Sujah's mice; they should have been back at the shrine with their earnings. To linger was sacrilege, nothing less, especially when theHuzoorhad said he was not wanted any longer. But instead of going, when he was starved out, as every one imagined, he must have hidden in the damp garden and got fever. As to what he was doing on the little king of kings' grave, that was mysterious. Perhaps now the master might believe thatjanowarswere not safe round a sick--"
"Chuprao,[9]you fool!" shouted Dada. As the ayah sidled away, still indignant, the two men sat and looked at each other.
"I'm afraid it's no use," said the doctor. "Starvation and fever are ill companions; but I'll stay over to-morrow and see what I can do. It is as much my fault as yours, if any one is to blame, but--"
The doctor, being orthodox, paused.
When they went down on the following evening to see the patient in hospital they found the native assistant volubly apologetic. He had seemed so content, not to say weak, that they had left him alone while busy over an accident. Half an hour ago they had missed him from his cot. "Doubtless delirium had supervened with acerbation of fever; but since peons were out in all directions, by the blessing of God--"
"Come on, doctor," said Dada, impatiently interrupting the flow of words.
He was there, face down on the grass, and the squirrels were playing over his dead body and searching for crumbs.
"No!" said Dada, when the coolies came with a string bed again. "Bring a spade or two. I'm going to bury him here."
The doctor, having religious views, looked doubtful. "I--I wonder if it is consecrated ground?"
"I hope to God it is!" said Dada, fervently.
As they lingered at the gate when the work was over, a squirrel hung head downward on the peepul-trunk, eying the new-turned earth suspiciously. Then another with bushy tail erect came hopping fearlessly over the grass--
"Cher ip--a pip--pip--pip!"
It was a challenge. The next moment they were chasing each other over the cross of quamoclits.
Dada closed the gate softly.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he murmured to himself.
The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something between a laugh and a sob.
But they neither of them said anything about the otherjanowar. Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit Shah Sujah's mouse.
A grove of date-palms; each cluster of carved stems set in its feathery crown and base, separated from its neighbours by sandy spaces, where the snakes sunned themselves right in the wayfarer's path. Finding few victims, however; for thekarait, stretched out like a blue whip-lash, curved back to the prickly cover at the distant step, and though the dusk-coloured vipers tied in true-lovers' knots held their ground, their evil temper gave warning of their presence as scale rustled on scale in the angry sliding of the watchful coil.
Day and night the sweeping fringes overhead swayed softly, even when no breath stirred the tangle below. But now, when the coming of dawn sent that curious whisper of wind through the world, as if warning it of what the sun may disclose, the leaves tossed their long arms wildly.
A stretch of level land curved inward to the palm-grove; outward till it merged on the village common with its grey-spined caper-bushes set with coral buds. In the distance, shadowy in the half light, was a native town, flat-roofed against the sky. Close at hand an open grave, with a man and woman standing beside it. A queer couple. The old man, dwarfed to distortion, grotesquely ugly; the woman young, straight as a palm, supremely handsome.
"Lo, they come, Shâhbâsh!" she said, in a bold, mellow voice which fitted her appearance. As she shaded her eyes with her hand, the coarse madder veil she wore fell from her broad shoulders as if cut in stone.
"Wah illah!Thou hast sight to boast of, Mother Suttu," replied her companion. She might have been his daughter in age, but he used the title of respect due to all decent women from one not of their own blood.
"Yea, 'tis true," she echoed, carelessly. "The Potter's hand slipped not when he made me. I have naught to bring against him." It was perhaps a heartless truism, considering her company.
But then Shâhbâsh was bucklered against bitter thoughts by an ingenious theory accounting for his own ill looks. A fairy, he held, had fallen in love with him as a babe, when (as might be augured from his name, which meant 'Well done! Bravo!') he must have been possessed of extraordinary beauty. Her jealous determination to keep his perfections to herself had attained its object in roundabout fashion, by preventing the eyes of others seeing him as he really was. Hence the distortion lay with them.
"I would thine eyes were as sharp for the future as they are for the present," he said, thoughtfully, leaning on his adze-like shovel.
"'Twere better they were sharp enough to see through dust," she answered, smiling broadly into the grave at her feet. "So thou didst not find it after all, Shâhbâsh."
"Not a cowrie, not adumri!And I swear 'tis into the tenth dozen of graves I have dug--with texts of the holy Koran pouring from me the while without stint. Good sound texts, hard as melted solder on a body's teeth. And to no good, except to pave a blessed bed for another sinner. For they pay worse and worse,maiSuttu. When old Feroz Shah buried his son, last week, he left but a rupee's worth of clothes on the corpse for perquisite. Look you! If I take not the very winding-sheet which decency would leave e'en to the dead, thou and the holy saint yonder will starve--to say naught of servant Shâhbâsh, who needs muscle to sow men in this hard soil."
He let his shovel fall on the hard ground to show how it echoed to the clang.
Suttu laughed. "If dead men do not pay, there are the dates still. They will ripen ere long."
"Aye, but how long can they be kept? If the saint dies without speaking, the others will find their tongues. A woman needs gold--or a man. Thou wilt have neither unless thou wilt give up the religious vow and marry the Kâzi's son. He is willing."
Suttu laughed.
"So are others that be not pock-marked and one eye to boot."
"Tobah!And thou virtuous and a widow! Lo, he is a man, and beauty is not safe for us. Was not I, Shâhbâsh, the handsomest--"
She interrupted him remorselessly. "'Tis safe for me, anyhow. The grandfather may rouse any day and tell me where the gold is hidden. Once it is found, none will covet the graveyard."
Shâhbâsh wrinkled his hideous face to an appalling frown.
"God knows! If not, then it is a case of digging graves all my life till I get over-scant of breath for texts and mattock together. If only the sickness would come, 'twould give more chance. For the fox of a father-in-law will be claiming shares of treasure with thee if I dig aught but graves. Lo!maiSuttu, I tell thee, 'tis ghoul-like work. I watch the old folk in the village, and my fingers itch to give them a blessed bed in Deen Ali's yard. 'Tis destroying my soul. Thou must marry, or I am damned!"
"Sure the fairy will make thee a paradise anywhere," laughed Suttu. "Lo, they come! Is all prepared? Alms or no alms, Deen Ali's bed must be ready for the faithful. 'Tis in the bond."
She spoke with a grave dignity quite apart from her previous manner.
"Would God they had put the alms in the bond likewise!" grumbled the dwarf as he slid into the shallow grave to sweep some loosened soil from the niche hollowed in the hard ground to one side for the uncoffined tenant. Then he swung himself out again by his brawny arms and strained his shortsighted eyes toward the advancing procession.
"'Tis well," he muttered, as a sudden braying of shawms, beating of drums, and skirling of songs rent the still dawn. "At least they remember that the burying of the old is as a bridal. Sure it may be better than I feared, and they will not send the decent patriarch back to his friends half naked."
It was an odd funeral. The bier, covered by a tissue-paper canopy, swayed as it was borne shoulder-high at a slow trot. The crowd laughed and sang. The streamers fluttered, flying round that still, muslin-swathed form bound with tinsel. Only Suttu seemed in keeping with it, as she stood forward welcoming it to Deen Ali's bed.
But the next instant, as she stepped aside to let it pass, a malicious look of amusement was on her face as she returned the greeting of a pock-marked man with one eye.
Then, herrôleof hostess being over, she walked away to the date-grove followed by admiring eyes. For Suttu, thefakeerni, if somewhat outrageous, was distinctly attractive. That made her vow of celibacy all the more unnatural.
She sat down on the edge of a back channel of the river, which, after creeping tortuously in a deep, narrow bed, expanded here during the rains to a broad, shallow lake, dotted by clumps of pillared palms, beneath whose fringed crowns great bunches of fruit were ripening fast. Each islet was reflected so clearly in the water that it needed sharp eyes to see where reality ended and unreality began. Here and there, showing where the perennial pools lay beneath the temporary flood, stretched a green carpet of lotus-leaves, where the flowers rose in varying height; the buds, still resting on the water; the full-blown flowers flaunting between them and the mace-like stems on which the hidden "jewel in the lotus" stood disclosed, while the fallen petals floated like shells on the water, or lay piled up in little pink heaps on the green carpet. A faint scent, as of bitter almonds, perfumed the breeze which now and again ruffled the lake and slid a fresh gift of rolling, sparkling water diamonds into the leaf-cups. Beyond this was a golden sunrise, cloudless, serene.
Suttu, seated on the edge of grass which grew just as far as the moisture filtered through the sand, and no farther, nodded at the scene approvingly. The Potter had made no mistake here either; she liked it, liked her own freedom purchased by an easy vow. The idea of giving it up in favour of another ten years or more of marriage in a stifling city quarter was absurd.
A kingfisher flashed down into the water like a sapphire, and her quick eyes followed it.
"Shâhbâsh!" she cried, gleefully, as the bird came up with a bar of silver in its purple bill.
"'Tis not Shâhbâsh," said a voice behind her. "'Tis I, come to ask--"
She leaped to her feet, confronting the Kâzi's son in real wrath.
"So! Will not even death keep thy mind from marriage? Why hast crept here to see me alone? 'Tis not decent--far worse, 'tis not even pleasant. Have I not told thee--aye, and others--that I am a pious widow?" She drew a corner of her veil across her eyes and hid the suggestion of a smile under the semblance of tears. "A pious widow vowed to the sonless shrine of my ancestors."
The Kâzi's son drew a step nearer.
"Thou art too young and too well favoured for a religious. Every one says so," he began.
"The Lord looks not at beauty, Mir Sahib," retorted Suttu, gravely; "and 'tis well for some of us that it is so."
"A sharp weapon is no weapon against enemies, and thou hast enemies. My house would protect you. Think! I am the Kâzi's son."
"Lo, why should I forget my lord's merit?" smiled Suttu, sweetly. "He has not so many."
He bit his lip. Repartee of that sort he knew, but not from the lips of reputable women. The whole affair had the intoxication of an intrigue, and its defiance of conventionalities set his pulses throbbing.
"Listen, O Suttu!" he said, curbing his passion. "Hussan, thy dead husband's father, will claim the land when the saint dies, and God knows how the case may go against a woman! Marry me, and I will gain it, were thy father-in-law fifty times over the village accountant. Hast heard the saying, 'Only the Kâzi can fight the Putwâri'?"
"Lo, if I came to thy house, there would be fighting enow to fill thy stomach, without going to a neighbour."
She drew the coarse veil which she had slipped from her head back to its place, with wide-spread arms, as she spoke; and the action displayed the full vigour of her finely moulded form. He cursed her bigness and boldness inwardly, but schooled himself to another and more tender appeal.
"Why not, O Suttu? Lo, I am rich, I am young. I--I lie awake o' nights thinking of it. Yea, I swear it! I get no good from my food. I love you. If I died, the very houris in paradise would not tempt me.
"But I would make thy grave gladly, Mir sahib, and then may be thou wouldst find rest."
It was too much. He seized her by the wrist and glared at her, every evil instinct roused to fury. "Then I will buy thee. Thy father-in-law has the right, for the saint is half dead already. Listen! I will buy thee to be my slave. What dost say now?"
"That even slaves have naught to do with pockmarks and one eye." Her free right hand came down on one cheek with a resounding slap, making him stagger. Her left, thus released, followed suit on the other. "Go!" she cried, "or I will make Shâhbâsh yonder strangle thee with his monkey arms. Go! And remember that Suttu, thefakeerni, hath slapped thee in the face!"
The Kâzi's son, entangled in the trail of his turban, which had fallen off, caught sight of the gravedigger within call, and felt that his chance was over. He stalked away, trying to look dignified as he wound his head-dress on again, but conscious of a suppressed titter behind him, making him grind his teeth and swear vengeance.
When he had gone, Suttu sat down again on the grass and slipped her hands into the cool water. They tingled unpleasantly.
"Yonder beans look ripe," she murmured, "and they would eke out a meal."
Five minutes after, her sleek black head was rising and falling, her round arms gleaming in the overhead stroke which sent her straight to a lily-field. A couple of moor-hens fled, leaving a rippling streak of silver behind them. As she entered the leaf carpet it took in great waves of water over the edges--waves which broke into dew-drops that ran races with each other for first place in the leafy hollows.
The dragon-flies darted around her, timid but persistent; and myriads of tiny insects, disturbed from the sweet stems, rose in clouds, attracting the swift swooping of the bronze-winged fly-catchers.
Shâbâsh was waiting for her on the bank as she came back wading, her arms full of blown lotus, her track marked by drifting petals. As she approached he flung a few yards of tinsel and muslin on the ground in extravagant, theatrical disgust.
"That is all," he cried; "by the faith of my fathers, six ells of false tinsel and four of twopenny muslin for digging a grave inkunker[10]soil. God and his Prophet! why didst not send them to be born Hindus? Then 'twould have taken ten rupees of fire-wood to save them from being burned in hell. And last night, look you, I cut a sleeping snake in two as I dug, and both ends fell at my toes.Ari!A riddle indeed in the dark, which be head and which be tail? And I am to go through such moments for six ells of tinsel and four of such muslin. No,maiSuttu. 'Tis the Kâzi's son, or starvation."
Suttu smiled as she stooped to wring the water from her scant petticoat.
"Not so, Shâhbâsh. The Kâzi's son doth not like me. And lotus-beans are good till the dates ripen. Then the gold! It may be in the next grave."
He scratched his thick grey hair, on which he wore no turban, doubtfully.
"God knows! Every full moon I stretch my sheet on the ground and dance to please my fairy. Then when I fall into the trance I ask the old question, 'Where is Deen Ali's gold?' But there is no answer in the morning. Now, if the fairy cannot tell--"
Suttu laughed. "Dost not, may be, forget the answer? The black bottle steals thy brains--"
'"Tis not the bottle," muttered Shâhbâsh, sulkily, as he gathered up his perquisites. "'Tis the fairy steals my brains. For sure there be not rum enough in it nowadays--"
So they walked home to the mosque-like tomb in the date-grove, she with her sheaf of lotus, he with his shovel and shroud.
Suttu's great-great-grandfather had been a saint of the first water--a double-distilled, above-proof performer of miracles; his holiness being strong enough to stand two generations of dilution and still leave spiritual distinction to his descendants. Yet the difference in the saintship of Deen Ali, the original, and Inâm Ali, the present incumbent of the shrine, lay more in their surroundings than in themselves. The former, according to tradition, had lived for ten years in a trance, oblivious of all save the touch of a certain prayer-carpet on his feet; a carpet brought from holy Mecca, which had been used--again according to tradition--by the Prophet himself. Then sight, speech, action, were restored to Deen Ali for a space, and while earth and sky wore the glorious apparel of sunrise and sunset, his soul came back in praise and prayer.
Inâm Ali inherited the trance, but folk called it paralysis, and the death in life yielded to carnal, not spiritual, food. Doubtless physiologically it was quite as wonderful that twice a day, regularly as clock-work, the half-dead organism should accept nourishment; practically it was not so impressive.
But other things had changed too in the seventy-and-odd years since Deen Ali had planted the Arabian date-stones he had also brought back from holy Mecca in the land granted to his saintship. Curious holdings these, burdened at times by quaint conditions in return for official canonization; for in those days saintship paid. In this case the offerings of the faithful had taken visible shape in the blue-tiled tomb where Deen Ali's body lay under a stucco roly-poly twelve feet long. Whether this length awarded to saintly tombs, which contrasts so oddly with the curtness of those allowed to the laity, has reference to the extent of piety, or whether some Mohammedan exemplar of old really was of unusual stature, is a moot point. Certain it is that in upper India, as elsewhere, the "unco guid" are tedious even when at rest.
The blue-green dome of the saint's tomb, therefore, soared up into the green-grey plumes of the palms, as a record of past munificence; and round it the green-blue parrots circled and swept till the wearied eye sought relief in the gold clusters of dates above and the gold sand below.
Gold! If report said true, golden indeed with other records of munificence. But where? That secret lay hid in Inâm Ali's paralyzed brain. He must have known; for, despite the slackness of modern offerings, there had never been any want in the mud hovel hitched on to the tomb; until Suttu, coming in one evening with her veil full of dates, had found the old man quite unconscious on the saint's high wooden bed, which still stood over the grave under the dome.
The news thrilled the adjoining township with brief enthusiasm. Then a bustling Hindu assistant surgeon got wind of the case, and sanctity vanished before science. From that day, several years past, matters had gone from bad to worse. A railway appeared, reducing offerings to the lowest ebb; for, as Shâhbâsh declared with mingled truth and tears, the pilgrims counted their third-class return tickets as offerings to the shrine, and the traffic department charged dead against charity in the extortionate fares for sheep, goats, and fowls. On the other hand, the railway had certainly brought cholera three years in succession--an unheard-of event--and that had increased the chances of finding the gold in the digging of graves--graves, however, for which the perquisites lessened month by month. That was due to the village accountant's spite; spite born of family matters which went back to the time when Suttu was born.
Inâm Ali, briefly, had lived for six months in hopes that a posthumous child of his only son would be an heir to the saintship; and in his first disappointment had been only too glad to get rid of mother and child, by the former's marriage to the accountant and the latter's betrothal to her stepfather's son. After a time, however, he had bought the child back, with bribes, to keep him company, and thereinafter had spent years in spoiling her. Consequently, when the inevitable fulfilment of the betrothal came round, Suttu was dragged off tozenanalife, struggling like a wild animal. She failed, however, to fulfil her duty of bringing a son to inherit, through her, the date-palms and the hidden treasure; and after one baby, born when she was thirteen, ceased its feeble efforts to live, she settled down--well, as a leopardess might settle in its cage.
Ten years after, she paid her first visit to the cemetery, in order to cool her newly buried husband's grave with decorous tears. She went there calmly, and then as calmly refused to return. She had made up her mind to become a religious, she said. Now this fell in with both the old man's and her father-in-law's views. The former was willing, as before, to pay for her companionship; and the latter, with an eye to a future when he should have Suttu entirely under his control, thought it as well she should keep in with her grandfather and the hidden treasure. So a religious she became, somewhat to the scandal of the neighbourhood. Then came the paralysis, leaving Hussanminushis monthly payment, and quite uncertain whether Suttu said truth when she denied all knowledge of the hoard. In truth, the position was awkward. The saint might recover speech, and then, if he found that Suttu had been violently used, he might resent it and make away with the treasure. If, however, by starving her out, Suttu could be induced to break her vow and marry, Hussan could no doubt get himself appointed guardian of the shrine, and so have an opportunity of searching where he chose. The task was not a difficult one, since the people around were easily led to believe that her ways and works were anything but what afakeerni'sshould be. So the offerings grew less and less, the complaints of mischance or neglect more frequent; yet still Suttu held her head jauntily and laughed when, of an evening, she met her father-in-law prowling around the graveyard. It had a fascination for him; and often when his feet were not there, his finger was tracing its outline on the village map. There, within that little space, lay the treasure, and a horrible conjunction of a half-dead old man and a very much alive young woman prevented him from getting hold of it. The thought kept him from sleeping when there had been a death in the village, and he knew Shâhbâsh was digging and delving. And when he slept he dreamed that the old saint sat up and spoke, but that no one could hear a word he said. He did not know that Suttu and her henchman had gone the crucial length of spreading the holy carpet Mecca-ways, and setting the old saint's feet upon it, more than once, at sunrising and sunsetting. In vain; the miracle would not work for gold; so they had lifted him back again to the high wooden bed.
Shâhbâsh was really losing his temper over his part of the business. Lotus-beans for breakfast were all very well, but you could not dig graves on lotus-beans. Besides, the black bottle was always empty.
"Lo,mai, I grow thin," he grumbled; "then the fairy will cease to care for me, and that is an end. Women are not to be trusted."
As he set to work on a baby's grave, he went on grumbling and muttering to himself. He had been her father's foster-brother, and she was the apple of his eye. For all that, he must eat. Some day her enemy would tempt him to treason when he ached with hunger, and who could be faithful on an empty stomach? He blubbered at the thought of his own betrayal.
Thus, on the evening of the day when Suttu slapped the Kâzi's son, matters were approaching a crisis all round; even Hussan, prowling about the graveyard in the vague disquiet which beset him after every fresh excavation of the soil, made up his mind to a bolder game. As he picked his way through the short mud mounds, a sort of thrill shot up his legs at the thought that he might be treading on gold; for the hope of buried treasure takes possession of men, body and soul. He found no one in the reed thatched-hut; but a savory smell of curried beans from the fire-place showed that its mistress would soon be back to supper. So he went over to the tomb where the saint lay on the wooden bed under the dome, in which the faint breathing of the old man swelled to a murmuring echo like a swarm of bees. Hussan stood beside the bed, full of rage, malice, and greed. If he could only crack that bald old noddle and pick out the kernel!
Suddenly the thought came that perhaps now--this moment or the next--was the one appointed from all eternity in which speech would return, and he stood petrified by expectation. Perhaps a call might rouse the sleeping soul. He started as his own hoarse whisper grew to a roar in the echoing dome. That should wake the dead. Then, as the sound died ineffectually to silence, the desire to crack the old man's skull at all costs returned. The kernel might take care of itself.
Something of this must have showed in his face, for Suttu, coming in behind him, passed softly to the bed and raised a menacing hand. Only for an instant. Then she sat down on the edge and laughed.
"Well! did he tell you?"
A brutal question; for the answer would be dinned into his ears by the echo, and he knew it all too well already.
"Come outside, daughter," he said, with a curse; "one cannot hear one's self speak in this chattering place."
They sat down on the topmost step of the low flight leading to the tomb. The heat of the sun was over, but a scorching air struck up from the bricks, making Suttu fan herself with the corner of her veil. No wonder men coveted her, thought her companion, eying her askance. She grew handsomer every day.
"Suttu," he began, taking the plunge boldly, "peace is better than war. Give me half the gold, and I am content. Let it stay in the family, Suttu."
"Whose family--mine or thine?" she asked, scornfully.
"'Tis the same. Lo, is not Murghub thy brother, since he is thy mother's son, though he be but a poor natural?"
"Lay not that to her charge," retorted Suttu, flippantly. "She made no mistake in me."
Hussan coughed down his impatience. "Well, well, I care not. I came not to chop words. It is the gold, Suttu! I mean to have some of it."
"What gold? I know of none. I have seen none."
"Then have I! See!" He felt in an innermost pocket, and showed her, lying in his palm, a broad gold-piece. "They make not such pieces nowadays. Where that came from there are more."
She turned it over and over in her long, brown fingers. "Aye, 'tis old. Didst steal it from him, then?" A backward toss of the head indicated her meaning.
"Nay, he gave it."
"Wherefore?"
"For thee, Suttu, when thou wast a child. Give it me back. Stop! what dost thou?"
"This," she cried, shrilly, seizing his clutching hand by the wrist in a grasp firm as a man's, while in sheer bravado she held the coin high above her head. "I will give it back to the old man, and see what he thinks of thee for keeping it. What! wouldst fight for one gold-piece, fool, and lose the chance of lakhs by my death? Yea, yea, I know. Thou art not my heir in death, though thou mayst have hold on me alive. Hands off, or I will fight too! And Shâhbâsh comes to his supper. He is a devil when hungry!"
Her tone was still mocking, the grasp on his wrist firm but not straining. Her temper in control as yet, but she meant mischief, if mischief was to be; and for the life of him Hussan could not help admiring her.
"Thou art a she-devil," he said, sulkily--"a she-devil, and no woman."
"I bore a son to your son, anyhow," she retorted quickly, and her frown warned him that he had gone too far.
"If thou wilt but listen--"
"Not till I have laid this offering in the saint's hand," she interrupted imperially, with a gesture of disdain. Hussan kicked his heels savagely as she marched over the platform and entered the tomb. He could see her stoop and lay the coin in the indifferent palm resting beside the still body. She came back much the better for this serio-comic interlude, for her dramatic instincts were strong, and she played her part of independence vigorously.
"Well," she began, quite graciously, settling herself down on the step beside her father-in-law, "if peace be better than war, what price hath peace?"
The accountant leaned over to her eagerly. "Halves--halves in everything save liberty. That is all thine own."
For an instant she felt tempted. Then her natural waywardness returned.
"And if I claim the whole?"
"War! And that to a woman without gold--"
She gave an irritating chuckle. "Bah! It may come any day. Shâhbâsh may find it; the old man may speak."
The very possibility of her words being true roused his anger. "Speak! He will never speak again."
A rattle behind made them both turn with the alertness of those who live among snakes. Suttu was on her feet in a second without a cry. The accountant let loose a yell of dismay, and in his recoil rolled back a step or two, where he lay clutching at the bricks wildly. For the old saint was sitting up on his bed waggling his bald head over the coin; he could not have looked more ghastly had he risen from the dead.
The great moment was upon them!
This thought came first to both spectators; and they were too uncultured to conceal it.
"Tell us where!" cried Suttu, as she stood.
"Yea, tell us ere you die!" echoed the accountant as he lay.
Not a very warm welcome back to life, but the old man, though he raised his head at the cry, understood nothing. The dim eyes passed the covetous faces and rested on the familiar landscape darkening beyond the door of his tomb. Then the nerveless hand slipped from its resting-place on his knee--slipped, slipped, till with a clink, and a roll, and a rattle, given back a thousand-fold by the dome, the coin fell upon the stone floor.
"Gone!" he whispered, "gone--yea, gone forever!"
But the look of life in his face had carried Suttu back to her childhood, and her arms were already round the failing figure, as she turned such fierce forbidding on her companion that he shrank back silent.
"It is the last chance!" he whispered, after a time.
"I care not."
Suddenly the bald head fell back on Suttu's breast.
The chance was over.
They sat all through the night waiting for a sign, and none came. Before the dawn broke, the old saint and his secret had gone together into the darkness.
Hussan, as he walked cityward, felt that Fate had done him a good as well as an ill turn. He had made no compact with Suttu, and, now that the grandfather was out of the way, he could sue for guardianship at once, and unmask a battery he had been keeping in reserve.
And Shâhbâsh, disconsolate over the cold curry he had actually forgotten to eat in the hope of hearing his old master speak once more, made gruesome faces over his coming task. The gold, for sure, was not hidden under Deen Ali's roly-poly, so he would have to find a resting-place in it for the last incumbent without greed of gain to beguile his labour.
Only Suttu did not think of the future, but of the past, when the old man had been her willing slave.