and very soft. He scarcely dared to breathe for fear of crushing it.
The caged green parrot that is regarded as a sort of guardian spirit
in most native households moved on its perch and fluttered a drowsy
wing.
75. “There is the answer,” said Holden. “Mian Mittu has spoken. He
shall be the parrot. When he is ready he will talk mightily and run
about. Mian Mittu is the parrot in thy--in the Mussulman tongue, is it
not?”
76. “Why put me so far off?” said Ameera fretfully. “Let it be like
unto some English name--but not wholly. For he is mine.”
77. “Then call him Tota, for that is likest English.”
78. “Ay, Tota, and that is still the parrot. Forgive me, my lord, for
a minute ago, but in truth he is too little to wear all the weight of
Mian Mittu for name. He shall be Tota--our Tota to us. Hearest thou, O
small one? Littlest, thou art Tota.” She touched the child’s cheek, and
he waking, wailed, and it was necessary to return him to his mother,
who soothed him with the wonderful rhyme of “_Aré koko, Jaré koko!_”
which says:
“Oh, crow! Go crow! Baby’s sleeping sound,
And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound,
Only a penny a pound, _baba_, only a penny a pound.”
79. Reassured many times as to the price of those plums, Tota cuddled
himself down to sleep. The two sleek, white well-bullocks in the
courtyard were steadily chewing the cud of their evening meal; old
Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden’s horse, his police sabre
across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked
like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera’s mother sat spinning in the lower
veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a
marriage-procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city,
and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon.
80. “I have prayed,” said Ameera, after a long pause, “I have prayed
for two things. First that I may die in thy stead if thy death is
demanded, and in the second that I may die in the place of the child.
I have prayed to the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary].
Thinkest thou either will hear?”
81. “From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?”
82. “I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk. Will
my prayers be heard?”
83. “How can I say? God is very good.”
84. “Of that I am not sure. Listen now. When I die, or the child dies,
what is thy fate? Living, thou wilt return to the bold white _mem-log_,
for kind calls to kind.”
85. “Not always.”
86. “With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise. Thou wilt in this
life, later on, go back to thine own folk. That I could almost endure
for I should be dead. But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to
a strange place and a paradise that I do not know.”
87. “Will it be paradise?”
88. “Surely, for who would harm thee? But we two--I and the
child--shall be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou
come to us. In the old days, before the child was born, I did not think
of these things; but now I think of them always. It is very hard talk.”
89. “It will fall as it will fall. To-morrow we do not know, but to-day
and love we know well. Surely we are happy now.”
90. “So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured. And thy
Beebee Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman. But then
she would envy me! It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.”
91. Holden laughed aloud at Ameera’s little spasm of jealousy.
92. “Is it not seemly? Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee,
then?”
93. “Thou a worshipper! And of me? My king, for all thy sweet words,
well I know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy
feet. And I would not have it otherwise. See!”
94. Before Holden could prevent her she stooped and touched his feet;
recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota close to her
bosom. Then, almost savagely:
95. “Is it true that the bold white _mem-log_ live for three times the
length of my life? Is it true that they make their marriages not before
they are old women?”
96. “They marry as do others--when they are women.”
97. “That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five. Is that true?”
98. “That is true.”
99. “_Ya illah!_ At twenty-five! Who would of his own will take a wife
even of eighteen? She is a woman--aging every hour. Twenty-five! I
shall be an old woman at that age, and--those _mem-log_ remain young
forever. How I hate them!”
100. “What have they to do with us?”
101. “I cannot tell. I know only that there may now be alive on this
earth a woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy
love ten years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of
Tota’s son. That is unjust and evil. They should die too.”
102. “Now, for all thy years thou art a child, and shalt be picked up
and carried down the staircase.”
103. “Tota! Have a care for Tota, my lord! Thou at least art as foolish
as any babe!” Ameera tucked Tota out of harm’s way in the hollow of her
neck, and was carried downstairs laughing in Holden’s arms, while Tota
opened his eyes and smiled after the manner of the lesser angels.
104. He was a silent infant, and almost before Holden could realise
that he was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little
god and unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those
were months of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera--happiness
withdrawn from the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan
guarded. By day Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as
were not so fortunate as himself, and a sympathy for small children
that amazed and amused many mothers at the little station gatherings.
At nightfall he returned to Ameera--Ameera, full of the wondrous doings
of Tota; how he had been seen to clap his hands together and move his
fingers with intention and purpose--which was manifestly a miracle;
how, later, he had of his own initiative crawled out of his low
bedstead on to the floor and swayed on both feet for the space of three
breaths.
105. “And they were long breaths, for my heart stood still with
delight,” said Ameera.
106. Then Tota took the beasts into his councils--the well-bullocks,
the little gray squirrels, the mongoose that lived in a hole near the
well, and especially Mian Mittu, the parrot, whose tail he grievously
pulled, and Mian Mittu screamed till Ameera and Holden arrived.
107. “O villain! Child of strength! This to thy brother on the
housetop! _Tobah, tobah!_ Fie! Fie! But I know a charm to make him wise
as Suleiman and Aflatoun [Solomon and Plato]. Now look,” said Ameera.
She drew from an embroidered bag a handful of almonds. “See! we count
seven. In the name of God!”
108. She placed Mian Mittu, very angry and rumpled, on the top of his
cage, and seating herself between the babe and the bird she cracked
and peeled an almond less white than her teeth. “This is a true charm,
my life, and do not laugh. See! I give the parrot one half and Tota
the other.” Mian Mittu with careful beak took his share from between
Ameera’s lips, and she kissed the other half into the mouth of the
child, who ate it slowly with wondering eyes. “This I will do each
day of seven, and without doubt he who is ours will be a bold speaker
and wise. Eh, Tota, what wilt thou be when thou art a man and I am
gray-headed?” Tota tucked his fat legs into adorable creases. He could
crawl, but he was not going to waste the spring of his youth in idle
speech. He wanted Mian Mittu’s tail to tweak.
109. When he was advanced to the dignity of a silver belt--which, with
a magic square engraved on silver and hung round his neck, made up the
greater part of his clothing--he staggered on a perilous journey down
the garden to Pir Khan and proffered him all his jewels in exchange
for one little ride on Holden’s horse, having seen his mother’s mother
chaffering with peddlers in the veranda. Pir Khan wept and set the
untried feet on his own gray head in sign of fealty, and brought the
bold adventurer to his mother’s arms, vowing that Tota would be a
leader of men ere his beard was grown.
110. One hot evening, while he sat on the roof between his father and
mother watching the never-ending warfare of the kites that the city
boys flew, he demanded a kite of his own with Pir Khan to fly it,
because he had a fear of dealing with anything larger than himself,
and when Holden called him a “spark” he rose to his feet and answered
slowly in defence of his new-found individuality: _“Hum 'park nahin
hai. Hum admi hai_ [I am no spark, but a man].”
111. The protest made Holden choke and devote himself very seriously
to a consideration of Tota’s future. He need hardly have taken the
trouble. The delight of that life was too perfect to endure. Therefore
it was taken away as many things are taken away in India--suddenly and
without warning. The little lord of the house, as Pir Khan called him,
grew sorrowful and complained of pains who had never known the meaning
of pain. Ameera, wild with terror, watched him through the night,
and in the dawning of the second day the life was shaken out of him
by fever--the seasonal autumn fever. It seemed altogether impossible
that he could die, and neither Ameera nor Holden at first believed the
evidence of the little body on the bedstead. Then Ameera beat her head
against the wall and would have flung herself down the well in the
garden had Holden not restrained her by main force.
112. One mercy only was granted to Holden. He rode to his office in
broad daylight and found waiting him an unusually heavy mail that
demanded concentrated attention and hard work. He was not, however,
alive to this kindness of the gods.
III
113. The first shock of a bullet is no more than a brisk pinch. The
wrecked body does not send in its protest to the soul till ten or
fifteen seconds later. Holden realised his pain slowly, exactly as he
had realised his happiness, and with the same imperious necessity for
hiding all traces of it. In the beginning he only felt that there had
been a loss, and that Ameera needed comforting where she sat with her
head on her knees shivering as Mian Mittu from the housetop called:
_Tota! Tota! Tota!_ Later, all his world and the daily life of it rose
up to hurt him. It was an outrage that any one of the children at the
band-stand in the evening should be alive and clamorous, when his own
child lay dead. It was more than mere pain when one of them touched
him, and stories told by over-fond fathers of their children’s latest
performances cut him to the quick. He could not declare his pain. He
had neither help, comfort, nor sympathy; and Ameera at the end of each
weary day would lead him through the hell of self-questioning reproach
which is reserved for those who have lost a child, and believe that
with a little--just a little--more care it might have been saved.
114. “Perhaps,” Ameera would say, “I did not take sufficient heed. Did
I, or did I not? The sun on the roof that day when he played so long
alone and I was--ahi! braiding my hair--it may be that the sun then
bred the fever. If I had warned him from the sun he might have lived.
But oh, my life, say that I am guiltless! Thou knowest that I loved him
as I love thee. Say that there is no blame on me, or I shall die--I
shall die!”
115. “There is no blame--before God, none. It was written, and how
could we do aught to save? What has been, has been. Let it go, beloved.”
116. “He was all my heart to me. How can I let the thought go when
my arm tells me every night that he is not here? _Ahi! Ahi!_ O Tota,
come back to me--come back again, and let us be all together as it was
before!”
117. “Peace, peace! For thine own sake, and for mine also, if thou
lovest me--rest.”
118. “By this I know thou dost not care; and how shouldst thou? The
white men have hearts of stone and souls of iron. Oh, that I had
married a man of mine own people--though he beat me--and had never
eaten the bread of an alien!”
119. “Am I an alien--mother of my son?”
120. “What else--_sahib_?... Oh, forgive me--forgive! The death has
driven me mad. Thou art the life of my heart, and the light of my eyes,
and the breath of my life, and--and I have put thee from me, though
it was but for a moment. If thou goest away, to whom shall I look for
help? Do not be angry. Indeed, it was the pain that spoke and not thy
slave.”
121. “I know, I know. We be two who were three. The greater need
therefore that we should be one.”
122. They were sitting on the roof as of custom. The night was a warm
one in early spring, and sheet-lightning was dancing on the horizon to
a broken tune played by far-off thunder. Ameera settled herself in
Holden’s arms.
123. “The dry earth is lowing like a cow for the rain, and I--I am
afraid. It was not like this when we counted the stars. But thou lovest
me as much as before, though a bond is taken away? Answer!”
124. “I love more because a new bond has come out of the sorrow that we
have eaten together, and that thou knowest.”
125. “Yea, I knew,” said Ameera in a very small whisper. “But it is
good to hear thee say so, my life, who art so strong to help. I will
be a child no more but a woman and an aid to thee. Listen! Give me my
_sitar_ and I will sing bravely.”
126. She took the light silver-studded _sitar_ and began a song of
the great hero Rajah Rasalu. The hand failed on the strings, the tune
halted, checked, and at a low note turned off to the poor little
nursery-rhyme about the wicked crow:
“‘And the wild plums grow in the jungle, only a penny a pound,
Only a penny a pound, _baba_--only....’”
127. Then came the tears and the piteous rebellion against fate till
she slept, moaning a little in her sleep, with the right arm thrown
clear of the body as though it protected something that was not there.
It was after this night that life became a little easier for Holden.
The ever-present pain of loss drove him into his work, and the
work repaid him by filling up his mind for nine or ten hours a day.
Ameera sat alone in the house and brooded, but grew happier when she
understood that Holden was more at ease, according to the custom of
women. They touched happiness again, but this time with caution.
128. “It was because we loved Tota that he died. The jealousy of God
was upon us,” said Ameera. “I have hung up a large black jar before our
window to turn the evil eye from us, and we must make no protestations
of delight, but go softly underneath the stars, lest God find us out.
Is that not good talk, worthless one?”
129. She had shifted the accent on the word that means “beloved,” in
proof of the sincerity of her purpose. But the kiss that followed the
new christening was a thing that any deity might have envied. They went
about henceforward saying: “It is naught, it is naught”; and hoping
that all the Powers heard.
130. The Powers were busy on other things. They had allowed thirty
million people four years of plenty wherein men fed well and the crops
were certain, and the birth-rate rose year by year; the districts
reported a purely agricultural population varying from nine hundred
to two thousand to the square mile of the overburdened earth; and
the Member for Lower Tooting, wandering about India in pot-hat
and frock-coat, talked largely of the benefits of British rule and
suggested as the one thing needful the establishment of a duly
qualified electoral system and a general bestowal of the franchise. His
long-suffering hosts smiled and made him welcome, and when he paused
to admire, with pretty picked words, the blossom of the blood-red
dhak-tree that had flowered untimely for a sign of what was coming,
they smiled more than ever.
131. It was the Deputy Commissioner of Kot-Kumharsen, staying at the
club for a day, who lightly told a tale that made Holden’s blood run
cold as he overheard the end.
132. “He won’t bother any one any more. Never saw a man so astonished
in my life. By Jove, I thought he meant to ask a question in the House
about it. Fellow passenger in his ship--dined next him--bowled over by
cholera and died in eighteen hours. You needn’t laugh, you fellows.
The Member for Lower Tooting is awfully angry about it; but he’s more
scared. I think he’s going to take his enlightened self out of India.”
133. “I’d give a good deal if he were knocked over. It might keep a
few vestrymen of his kidney to their own parish. But what’s this about
cholera? It’s full early for anything of that kind,” said the warden of
an unprofitable salt-lick.
134. “Don’t know,” said the Deputy Commissioner reflectively. “We’ve
got locusts with us. There’s sporadic cholera all along the north--at
least we’re calling it sporadic for decency’s sake. The spring crops
are short in five districts, and nobody seems to know where the rains
are. It’s nearly March now. I don’t want to scare anybody, but it seems
to me that Nature’s going to audit her accounts with a big red pencil
this summer.”
135. “Just when I wanted to take leave, too!” said a voice across the
room.
136. “There won’t be much leave this year, but there ought to be a
great deal of promotion. I’ve come in to persuade the Government to put
my pet canal on the list of famine-relief works. It’s an ill wind that
blows no good. I shall get that canal finished at last.”
137. “Is it the old programme then,” said Holden; “famine, fever, and
cholera?”
138. “Oh, no. Only local scarcity and an unusual prevalence of seasonal
sickness. You’ll find it all in the reports if you live till next year.
You’re a lucky chap. _You_ haven’t got a wife to send out of harm’s
way. The hill stations ought to be full of women this year.”
139. “I think you’re inclined to exaggerate the talk in the _bazars_,”
said a young civilian in the secretariat. “Now I have observed--”
140. “I daresay you have,” said the Deputy Commissioner, “but you’ve
a great deal more to observe, my son. In the meantime, I wish to
observe to you--” and he drew him aside to discuss the construction of
the canal that was so dear to his heart. Holden went to his bungalow
and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and
also that he was afraid for the sake of another--which is the most
soul-satisfying fear known to man.
141. Two months later, as the Deputy had foretold, Nature began to
audit her accounts with a red pencil. On the heels of the spring
reapings came a cry for bread, and the Government, which had decreed
that no man should die of want, sent wheat. Then came the cholera from
all four quarters of the compass. It struck a pilgrim-gathering of half
a million at a sacred shrine. Many died at the feet of their god; the
others broke and ran over the face of the land carrying the pestilence
with them. It smote a walled city and killed two hundred a day. The
people crowded the trains, hanging on to the foot-boards and squatting
on the roofs of the carriages, and the cholera followed them, for at
each station they dragged out the dead and the dying. They died by the
roadside, and the horses of the Englishmen shied at the corpses in the
grass. The rains did not come, and the earth turned to iron lest man
should escape death by hiding in her. The English sent their wives away
to the hills and went about their work, coming forward as they were
bidden to fill the gaps in the fighting-line. Holden, sick with fear of
losing his chiefest treasure on earth, had done his best to persuade
Ameera to go away with her mother to the Himalayas.
142. “Why should I go?” said she one evening on the roof.
143. “There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white
_mem-log_ have gone.”
144. “All of them?”
145. “All--unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes
her husband’s heart by running risk of death.”
146. “Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I
will be a scald-head too. I am glad all the bold _mem-log_ are gone.”
147. “Do I speak to a woman, or a babe? Go to the hills and I will
see to it that thou goest like a queen’s daughter. Think, child. In a
red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks
upon the pole and red cloth hangings. I will send two orderlies for
guard, and--”
148. “Peace! Thou art the babe in speaking thus. What use are those
toys to me? _He_ would have patted the bullocks and played with the
housings. For his sake, perhaps--thou hast made me very English--I
might have gone. Now, I will not. Let the _mem-log_ run.”
149. “Their husbands are sending them, beloved.”
150. “Very good talk. Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me
what to do? I have but borne thee a son. Thou art only all the desire
of my soul to me. How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall
thee by the breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail--is that not
small?--I should be aware of it though I were in paradise. And here,
this summer thou mayest die--_ai, janee_, die! and in dying they might
call to tend thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of
thy love!”
151. “But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!”
152. “What dost thou know of love, stone-heart? She would take thy
thanks at least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the
mother of thy Prophet, that I will never endure. My lord and my love,
let there be no more foolish talk of going away. Where thou art, I am.
It is enough.” She put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.
153. There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are
snatched under the shadow of the sword. They sat together and laughed,
calling each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath
of the gods. The city below them was locked up in its own torments.
Sulphur fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples
screamed and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days.
There was a service in the great Mohammedan shrine, and the call to
prayer from the minarets was almost unceasing. They heard the wailing
in the houses of the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost
a child and was calling for its return. In the gray dawn they saw the
dead borne out through the city gates, each litter with its own little
knot of mourners. Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.
154. It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and
needed a little breathing space ere the torrent of cheap life should
flood it anew. The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers
made no resistance. They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the
sword should be sheathed in November if it were so willed. There
were gaps among the English, but the gaps were filled. The work of
superintending famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and
what little sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so
ordered.
155. Holden had been told to keep himself in readiness to move to
replace the next man who should fall. There were twelve hours in each
day when he could not see Ameera, and she might die in three. He was
considering what his pain would be if he could not see her for three
months, or if she died out of his sight. He was absolutely certain that
her death would be demanded--so certain that when he looked up from the
telegram and saw Pir Khan breathless in the doorway, he laughed aloud.
“And?” said he--
156. “When there is a cry in the night and the spirit flutters into the
throat, who has a charm that will restore? Come swiftly, heaven-born!
It is the black cholera.”
157. Holden galloped to his home. The sky was heavy with clouds, for
the long-deferred rains were near and the heat was stifling. Ameera’s
mother met him in the courtyard, whimpering: “She is dying. She is
nursing herself into death. She is all but dead. What shall I do,
_sahib_?”
158. Ameera was lying in the room in which Tota had been born. She made
no sign when Holden entered, because the human soul is a very lonely
thing and, when it is getting ready to go away, hides itself in a misty
border-land where the living may not follow. The black cholera does its
work quietly and without explanation. Ameera was being thrust out of
life as though the Angel of Death had himself put his hand upon her.
The quick breathing seemed to show that she was either afraid or in
pain, but neither eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden’s kisses.
There was nothing to be said or done. Holden could only wait and
suffer. The first drops of the rain began to fall on the roof, and he
could hear shouts of joy in the parched city.