Chūnnee had now received his answer; he stole forth, and crept like a
shadow from wall to wall, down a series of narrow paths, till he came
to a house standing alone in an open space--a notable abode, for a tree
grew through the roof. There was no gate to the outer yard, no dog. The
door was closed--needless to try it; he must work his way through the
mud wall at the back, and crawl in. The baking of many seasons’ suns
had effectually hardened this impediment, and he strove for an hour,
listening for sounds with intense trepidation, whilst the sweat poured
down his face. At last he had scraped a sufficiently large aperture--he
was slender to leanness. He crept through, but his usual bad luck
pursued him; his head came violently against a brass chattie that fell
with a clang enough to waken the dead. It effectually aroused the old
man, who awoke and struck a match, and showed Chūnnee that he had come
too late!
The light displayed a deep hole in the floor, an empty hole. The door
was ajar; the treasure was already stolen; and Chūnnee stood there,
krooplie in hand, with the cavity in the wall to speak for him--the
convicted thief!
Old Turroo’s piercing shrieks of “murder” and “dacoity” assembled
a dozen people in less than three minutes. Yea, truly, he had
been robbed! A box lay outside empty, and Chūnnee the coolie, the
ne’er-do-well, had come to this!
He was caught like a rat in a trap! There was the opening in the
wall, the muddy krooplie in his grasp; he stood plainly convicted.
The criminal hung his head--of what avail to speak, and aver his
innocence?--he was not innocent! Others had got the booty, he would
suffer for them. As he had been toiling and labouring they had been
within, and had carried off what he too had come to seek.
Perhaps he was served rightly; but he never got a chance--no, not even
to rob.
Meanwhile old Turroo literally rent his clothes, and tore his scanty
white beard, and howled, cursed, and gesticulated like a madman. Zālim
Sing stood foremost amongst sympathizers (for the venerable relative
still possessed a house, cattle, and lands), and said “that truly it
did not surprise him to find that the thief was his blood-brother.”
Nevertheless, it did astonish most of the assembly, for Chūnnee, if
miserably poor, had ever been known to be scrupulously honest. They
were amazed, moreover, that he should _begin_ on such a large scale!
Chūnnee offered no resistance; he was led away, and shut up in a
cowhouse, whilst Zālim Sing’s brother-in-law, full of zeal, ran all the
way to Bugwa to fetch the police.
The police arrived at daybreak--two men and an inspector, in their
blue tunics and red turbans--all looking excessively wise; but their
searching and cross-examining, discovered nothing beyond the empty box.
How had Chūnnee spirited away the treasures? Who was his accomplice?
“Let him be beaten till he speaks,” implored the venerable creature
who had been ravished of his treasure. “Let the soles of his feet be
roasted until he opens his mouth. Where hath he hidden them?”--and he
shouted to the whole assembled village--“the two bags of rupees, the
golden bangles, the anklets, the strings of pearls--forty pair without
blemish? If he will only give me the pearls!”--and the old man lifted
up his voice and wept.
A dirty, half-naked old man, how strange it seemed, to behold him
weeping for his pearls! Now, had it been a young and lovely woman, the
grief would have seemed natural. And who would have believed that old
Turroo had such treasures? Ay, he was a sly fox.
“Give me my pearls, yea, and my gold mohurs. Thou mayst keep the rest,
and go free,” he declared magnanimously.
But Chūnnee could not give what he had not got, and therefore held his
peace. His children screamed when they saw their father’s arms pinioned
with ropes, the iron things on his hands, and heard he was going away
to the Jail Khana--screamed from fear and hunger.
Meanwhile old Turroo howled and raved like one possessed, and, pointing
to his grand-nephew, besought the police to put him to torture by fire,
then and there. In former days strange things were done under the
mantle of the law; but in these enlightened times no policeman dare
venture, even for a large bribe, to practise the question by torture.
So Chūnnee was led away captive, followed as far as the high-road by
fully half the village; and for more than a mile along that dusty
track, two little weeping creatures pattered behind him. At length the
girl could go no further, and fell exhausted. Her father halted between
his guard, and said--
“Girunda, take care of thy sister. Go to thy uncle; he will feed thee
till I come back. Go now, ere nightfall.”
And if he doth not receive them, what is to become of them? was a
thought that harassed him all the weary march. At a turn of the road he
turned and looked back, and saw the two small forlorn figures standing
in the straight, white highway, watching him to the last.
Chūnnee was brought up before the magistrate that day. He had been
taken red-handed, and had not denied his guilt. He was silent with
respect to the treasure. It had been a most daring dacoity, but, as
it was his first offence, he would be only sentenced to two years’
imprisonment in Shahjhanpur jail.
“And his two children?” he ventured to ask. “Who would care for them?
How were they to live?” (There are no poor-houses in India.)
“Oh, the neighbours, or your relations,” said the Sudder judge, knowing
how immensely generous, good, and charitable the very poorest are to
one another. “You have a brother, of course--he will take them.”
Chūnnee was by no means so sanguine on this point.
He was sent on foot to jail--a distance of sixty miles--and there put
in leg-irons, and a convict sacking-coat, with a square cap to cover
his shaven head. He was set to work to pick oakum. He worked steadily,
though with a face and air of dogged despair. But what was the good
of giving trouble? What was the good of anything? The jail fare was
not jail fare to him--it was better than he had at home; and now that
he had sufficient to eat, he grew strong. But how were his children
faring? Were they starving? Other convicts--robbers, gamblers,
dacoits--thought Chūnnee proud and sullen, he was so silent; or surely
he was in for some great crime?
Luckily for him, the jail daroga liked him, and promoted him to
basket-making, and thence to the vegetable garden. His percentage on
his earnings he did not take out in money, or even in the Sunday smoke.
No; all went to the remission of his sentence. Truly, life was not so
bad, save for the hangings--every convict was forced to attend--and
these executions were not infrequent, for Shahjhanpur was in the centre
of a district notorious for murders. It was a veritable case of “Satan
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.”
When all the grain of this most fertile tract is harvested, and the
sugar-cane brakes have been cut and carried away on bullock-carts, when
the linseed is pressed, and the sugar sold, and the wheat threshed and
ground, it is the hot weather; no sowing or ploughing can be done.
People must wait for the first burst of the rains, to soften the
stone-like ground. And, oh, how sweet to the nostrils is the smell of
earth after the first wild downpour!
Meanwhile, they have money in their hands--the fruit of their labour.
They have long, hot, idle days, and no occupation, so they rake up old
land-feuds, old blood-feuds, old jealousies, and the result is but too
frequently a man’s body found in a nullah, killed by a sickle or a
lathi (heavy stick), or a woman’s corpse drawn out of some abandoned
well.
The jail gardens supplied all the vegetables to the station, and
the mem sahibs, when the vegetable “doli” came late, knew well the
reason--there had been a hanging.
Chūnnee attended the first execution with apparently more trepidation
than the criminal himself, who walked to his fate with a jaunty air,
and on being asked if he had arranged all his affairs said--
“By your favour, yea;” and then, on second thoughts, added, with
amazing vivacity, “There is one small brass lotah which I forgot. I
desire that it be given to my sister-in-law.” And so, singing a song to
Nirvana, he ascended the gallows and calmly met his fate.
Another young man’s demeanour was outrivalled by that of his own father
and the kinsfolk who had come to take leave of him.
The execution was at half-past six, and the official in charge--a
tender-hearted gentleman--stood waiting till the farewells were over,
watch in hand. Time was up, but he would give this vigorous young
Brahmin yet a few more minutes of life. He was engaged in eager
conversation with his relatives, and it was commonly reported and
suspected that he had actually confessed to the crime, and sacrificed
himself in order to save a near kinsman. The official glanced at his
watch once more, and was astounded to catch the eye of the culprit’s
father, and hear him say, in a most matter-of-fact tone--
“Yea, truly, my son, time is up. Thou hadst better go at once, for,
remember, we have fifteen koss to carry thee to the Ganges to burn--and
we shall not get home till dark, and the moon is old!”
The son, without a word, salaamed to this more than Roman parent, and
then turned to meet his fate without an instant’s hesitation. Chūnnee
had beheld many heroes of this type, but he had also seen others who
had not had it in them to encounter death with similar fortitude. He
had noted the wandering, terrified eye, the ashen lips drawn back from
the chattering teeth, the twitching knee-caps, as the man was led
forth to die like a dog; he had seen it, and the sight had made his
heart melt like wax within him, and his limbs shake as if he had been
stricken with palsy. It was his one horror, to be warned to attend an
execution.
And then there was the ever-haunting fear about his two desolate,
helpless children--were they well or ill, alive or dead? He was
seventy-six miles from his own pergunnah--no one ever visited him with
tidings from home, no one came to see him, and brought him bazaar
news, and sweets, a tin pot to drink from, or even a bit of a wheaten
chupatti. No, he had no friends, either within the jail, or beyond its
walls.