"Dittu Sansi, aged twenty-one, theft, six months," read out the
overseer of the gaol, who was introducing a batch of new arrivals to
the doctor in charge of a large gaol in the Upper Provinces of India.
It was early morning. Outside the high mud walls, which looked like
putty and felt like rock, the dew was frosting the grass in the garden
where a few favoured criminals were doing the work of oxen for the
well-wheel, and turning the runnels of fresh water to the patches of
spinach and onion. But here, inside the gaol square, everything had
the parched, arid look of sun-baked mud. Not a speck was to be seen
anywhere; the very prisoners themselves, standing in a long line
awaiting inspection, with their dust-coloured blankets folded upon the
ground in front of them, looked like darker clay images waiting to be
put on their pedestals. There was a touch of colour, however, close to
the arched gateway. First, a red-turbaned warder or two, guarding the
wicket; then half-a-dozen constables in yellow trousers, and a
deputy-inspector of police smart in silver laces and fringes; finally
the gaol _darogah_, or overseer, a stoutish, good-looking Mahomedan
with a tendency to burst out, wherever it was possible, into gay
muslin, and decorate the edges of his regulation white raiment with
fine stitchings. These, with a nondescript group fresh from the
lock-up, were gathered about the plain deal table set in full sunlight
where the Doctor sate, ticking off each arrival on the roster. He
matched the gaol, being dressed from head to foot in dust-coloured
drill, with a wide pith hat which might have been carved out of the
putty walls.
"All right, _Darogah_," he said with a yawn. "Number five hundred and
seven. Go on,--what's the matter?"
Shurruf Deen, the Overseer, was looking intently at the paper in his
hand, and the rich brown of his complacent face seemed to have faded a
little. "Nothing, _Huzoor_," he replied glibly enough, though a quick
observer might have seen the muscles of his brown throat labouring
over the syllables. "The list is badly written, in the broken
character. Thou shouldst speak to the clerk in thine office,
Inspector-_jee_; this name is almost illegible."
"'Tis Shureef, clear enough, _Darogah-jee_," dissented the Inspector,
huffily; "and I should have thought it fits thine own name too close
for--"
"Shureef," read out Shurruf, the Overseer, brusquely, "Shureef, Khoja,
thirty-five, lurking house trespass by night, habitual offender, ten
years."
The Doctor looked up sharply. Ten years meant business; one can teach
a lot in ten years--carpet-weaving, wood-carving, pottery-making--and
the Doctor's hobby was his gaol. What he saw was a man, looking many
years older than his age, haggard and grey, yet despite this with a
lightness and suppleness in every limb. Though this figure was lean
where the Overseer was fat, wrinkled where the Overseer showed smooth,
there was a similarity in the rich colour of their skins, in the
regularity of their features, which made the Englishman turn to look
at the _Darogah_ with the mental remark that the race-characteristics
of India were very instructive; for Shurruf was a Khoja also. "All
right," said the Doctor. "Number five hundred and eight."
"Five hundred and eight," repeated the habitual offender, calmly. "I
will not forget. Salaam, _Huzoor!_ Salaam, _Darogah-jee!_"
"Do you know the man?" asked the Doctor quickly of his subordinate; he
was sharp as a needle, and there had been a note in the salutation
which he did not understand.
"He was in for two years when I was sub-overseer at Loodhiana,
_Huzoor_," replied Shurruf, imperturbably. "He gave much trouble
there; he will not here, since the Doctor-_sahib_ knows how to manage
such as he."
Once more there was an undertone, but the Doctor's attention was
riveted by the adroit flattery, and he rose to begin his inspection
with a smile. It was true; he did know how to manage a gaol, and there
could not possibly be any cause for complaint when he was there to
apportion each ounce of food scientifically, to rout every germ, every
microbe, and treat even contumacy as a disease. The five hundred and
odd prisoners were, as it were, the Doctor's chessmen. He marshalled
them this way and that, checkmating their vile souls and bodies while
they were in his care. If they passed out of it into their own, he
took no heed. They might make what they liked of themselves. But if
they died, and, as the phrase runs, chose the Guardianship of God, he
buried them temporarily in the gaol graveyard with all possible
sanitary precautions, against the time when relations or friends might
appear to claim the corpse. There was no official regulation as to the
limit of time within which such claim could be preferred; but as a
dead body remains in the special Guardianship of God for a year, it
was an understood thing that man should take over the task before the
Almighty gave up the job; it was more satisfactory, especially if the
corpse was a Hindu and had to be burned. As for the Doctor, he would
have preferred to burn the lot, Hindu and Mahomedan alike; failing
that, he--took precautions.
As he walked down the line rapidly his sharp eye noted every detail,
and Shurruf Deen had many a swift, probing question to answer. He
answered them, however, as swiftly, for he was the best gaoler
conceivable; so good that even the Doctor allowed that he was almost
capable of managing the gaol himself. A man of unimpeachable
character, he had yet a curious insight into the minds of the
criminals he guarded, and a singular tact in managing them, so that
his record of continual rise in the world seemed likely to lengthen
itself by an appointment to the most important gaolership in the
Province. Shurruf Deen was working all he knew to secure this, and
therefore, as he followed the Doctor, his keen, bold eyes were
everywhere forestalling the possibility of blame. They fell, among
other things, on Shureef's thin, somewhat bowed figure, as it was
marched off to be shaved, washed, manacled, and dressed to pattern.
Then they turned almost mechanically to the paper he still held.
_Shureef Deen, Khoja--ten years' hard--three months' solitary_. He
gave a faint sigh of relief. Solitary confinement, even when broken up
by philanthropy into blocks of a week, gave time. It meant many
ameliorations to a prisoner's lot which would be unsafe amid the ruck.
Besides no man, he told himself, would be fool enough to risk losing
these favours simply to spite another man.
He repeated this thought aloud that same evening, after lights were
out, and the silence of solitary cells lay all over the gaol, save in
one of the latter, where Shurruf sate whispering to Shureef. In the
utter darkness the curious similarity of the place to a wild beast's
cage, with its inner grating-barred cubicle and its outer high-walled
yard let open to the sky, was lost, and the two men might have been
anywhere. Shurruf, however, sate on the millstones, as being more
suited to his figure, while Shureef crouched on the ground beside the
little heap of corn he was bound to give back ounce for ounce in flour
and bran. And as he crouched, leaning listlessly against the wall, his
supple hand moved among the wheat raising it idly, and as idly letting
it slip back through his thin fingers.
"Fate!" he echoed to something the other said; "nay, 'twas not Fate,
brother, which sent me to thy gaol. I was hard pressed; I am growing
old for the life; it kills men soon. The police would have had me in
the big _dacoity_ case at Delhi despite all; so I bungled one farther
north, to come--where thou wast--brother."
"And thou didst right," assented Shurruf, eagerly; "I can make things
easy for thee."
The wheat slipped with a soft patter, like rain, through Shureef's
fingers. "'Twas not that either which brought me to thy gaol. Listen.
I am far through this life, but another begins. I am not going to
plead _guilty_ there. It is _not guilty_ there, _not guilty_ on the
first count, _not guilty_ as a lad of fifteen for theft--" He paused,
then a faint curiosity came to his listlessness and he looked at the
half-seen figure beside him--"and such a theft! I--I have not done so
mean a one--since--"
Shurruf moved uneasily. "Mayhap not; boys do things men do not. And I
have always--yea! thou knowest it--upheld thee better than some think.
What then? Thy life is past amendment now, save for tobacco and such
like; and these I will give, if thou art wise, for the ten years--"
"I shall not live three months of the ten years, brother," interrupted
Shureef, calmly; and at the words a pang of regret that the solitary
confinement could not be inflicted straight on end shot through
Shurruf's breast, killing the faint remorse the remark had awakened;
it would have simplified matters so much to have Shureef safe from the
possibility of tale-bearing for those three months. "And, as I said, I
want none of these things," went on Shureef; "I only want the truth.
Promise to tell it, and I say naught; wilt promise, brother?"
"No!" whispered Shurruf, fiercely. "What good would it do now?"
"It would make some mourn for me; it would make more than cursing
follow me; it would be evidence for me, a boy, at the Great Court."
The sleek face beside the anxious one took a strange expression, half
joy, half fear. "That is fools' talk. Doth not the Lord know, is He
not just?"
"Yes, He knows," persisted Shureef; "but others must know, else they
will not claim my body, else my grave will not be cooled with tears.
It would not harm thee much, Shurruf. Mayhap 'twould be wiser for thee
not to seek advancement, since one, who might hear if the truth were
told, seeks it also; but if thou stayest in this fat post--"
"Peace, fool!" interrupted Shurruf, passionately. "I will not. Thou
hast no proof, so do thy worst. Thou canst claim me brother if thou
wilt, naught else--" Shureef bent forward and whispered a name in his
ear, making him start back. "It is not true," he went on rapidly; "he
died long since. Think not I do not understand, that I cannot follow
thy evil thoughts. Have I not watched thee these twenty years? Have I
not seen thee sink, and sink, and sink? Can I not guess thy guile--"
"Because it should have been thine own, Shurruf," interrupted his
brother in a new tone. "But let that be. It matters not. I asked this
thing of thee that thou mightest do it freely; if not, I take it--for
I can take it now. I give thee a fortnight to consider; till then I
have no more to say, and thy words will be wasted."
He rose, feeling his way by the wall to the inner cell, and Shurruf,
after pausing a moment uncertainly, stole from the outer one, locking
the door behind him. There were stronger arguments than words at his
command, and he had a fortnight wherein to use them. And use them he
did, unsparingly. The week of solitary confinement which followed, and
the week of work in the general ward, were alternately hell and
comparative heaven; a hell of scant food, work beyond limit, and
punishments; a heaven of tobacco, opium, even a nip of country liquor
now and then; and, as a foretaste of favours to come, there was a day
of work in the gaol-gardens among the cool runnels of water and the
spinach-patches. For the Doctor, having small faith in things beyond
his ken, was dividing the dead who were in the Guardianship of God,
from the living who were in his own; in other words, he was enclosing
a new graveyard beyond the garden, and as this involved work in the
absolute open air, with greater chance of escape, the good-conduct men
from the walled garden were drafted outwards, and their place supplied
from within. But neither fifteen lashes, nor the privilege of smoking
surreptitiously behind a thicket of jasmine and roses, tempted Shureef
from the settled resolve which gave his face a curiously spiritual
look. The Doctor called it something else, and in the private list he
kept of those in his care, put the name of an incurable disease
opposite Shureef's, with this after it: _? three months_--and he did
not try to teach him carpet-weaving or pottery-making.
The Overseer, however, felt that three months was all too long for
him, when, another week of solitary confinement coming round, he
slipped over in the dead of night to Shureef's cell, and found him
once more fingering the corn idly; but as it was a moonlight night
now, he could see the grains of wheat, shining like gold, slip through
the lean fingers.
"It is not much I ask, brother," persisted Shureef, almost gently;
"only that the home folk may claim my body when I die. That is why I
came to thy gaol; for they will not, if the truth be not told, and
only thou canst tell it without flaw. True, I can harm thee, but I
have no wish for that. See! I give thee yet another week for thought.
That is three from three months; but I give no more."
Shurruf Deen went back to his quarters over the big entrance-gate,
where the warders waited on him as if he were a prince, and pondered
over the dilemma in a white heat of indignation. It was so selfish of
Shureef; when God knew, what were a few tears more or less when a man
had deliberately cast away his right to wailing a dozen times over?
What Shureef had said about the first count was true, but what of the
others? What right had he to claim any compensation for that first
injustice? What right had he even to claim commiseration for the
result of a life he had chosen? Yet the Doctor gave it him; he even
ordered him back to the garden after a day or two, with the remark to
the native assistant-surgeon that it was a case of the candle of life
having been burned at both ends. "He might live a year," he said
critically, "but I give him three months; and, of course, he might
drop down dead any day."
He might; if he only would before the week was out, thought Shurruf,
longingly. It would save so much trouble, for though the whole truth
could easily be shirked, it would scarcely be possible to deny the
relationship, or hush up his own share in the youthful escapade. For
there had been sufficient for him to be dismissed by the magistrate
with a reprimand for keeping bad company; and this, added to the
scandal of a notorious criminal claiming kin to him, would militate
against promotion. If Shureef would only drop down dead!
He did. The very day before the week was up he was shot in an
organized attempt at escape on the part of five or six prisoners, who
saw their opportunity in the temporary freedom of garden-work. A very
determined attempt it was, involving violence, in which Shurruf gained
fresh laurels by his promptness in ordering the sentry to fire. One
man was wounded in the arm, and broke his leg in falling back from the
wall he was scaling. Shureef was picked up quite dead behind the
thicket of jasmine and rose. As two or three shots had been fired in
that direction, it was possible it might have been an accident, and
that he was not really one of the plotters; on the other hand both
opium and tobacco were found upon him, proof positive that he had
friends in the gaol. And though the warder, who had connived at the
attempt at escape, and now pleaded guilty in the hope of lessening
punishment, swore that Shureef was not in the plot, he had nothing to
reply when Shurruf asked him for the name of any other gaol official
who tampered with his duty.
"Poor devil!" said the Doctor, musingly, as he finished the necessary
examination. "He was a fool to try--if he did; the run would have
finished him to a certainty. Even the excitement of being in the fun
might have killed him without anything else, for it was worse than I
thought; his heart was mere tissue-paper."
Once more the Overseer's rich brown skin seemed to fade, though he was
glib enough with his tongue. "He is to be buried tonight?" he asked
easily.
"The sooner the better. _His_ friends aren't likely to want him back;
but all the same put him in the new yard." The Doctor's hand, as he
drew up the sheet, finally lingered a bit. "If--if he wanted to get
outside, he may as well, poor devil!"
So in the cool of the evening Shureef, wrapped in a white cloth, was
taken from a solitary cell and given into the Guardianship of God in
the sun-baked patch of earth where he was the first to lie. It was a
desolate patch, bare of everything save a white efflorescence of salt,
showing, as the warder remarked cynically, that it was only fit for
corpses. Not even for them, dissented the diggers, who, with leg-irons
clanking discordantly, lingered over their task while Shureef, a
still, white roll of cloth, waited their pleasure. The soil, they
said, was much harder than in the old place, and if folk were to be
dug up as well as buried--not that any would want the expense of
moving Shureef, whose name was a byword--here the Overseer's portly
figure showed in the adjoining garden, and they hurried on with their
work.
Shurruf did not come over to the grave, however, perhaps because he
was in a demi-toilet of loose muslin, without his turban, and in
charge of his little son, a pretty child of four, whom the obsequious
gardener had presented with a bunch of jasmine and roses, and who,
after a time becoming bored by his father's interest in the spinach
and onions, drifted on by himself to find something more attractive,
until he came to stand wide-eyed and curious in the mourners' place at
the head of the grave. And there he stood silent, watching the
proceedings and keeping a tight clutch on his flowers, until a hand
from behind, dragging him back passionately, sent a shower of earth
over the edge on to Shureef's body which had just been laid in its
last resting-place, and sent also a bunch of roses and jasmines to lie
close to Shureef's heart, for the child dropped them in his fright.
"Weep not, my prince!" cried the warder. "Thou shalt have them again.
Here, some one, go down and hand them up."
But Shurruf, the Overseer, who, with his little son clutched up in his
arms, stood now in the mourners' place, his face almost grey, turned
on the man with a curse. "Let the flowers lie," he said; "there are
plenty more in the garden." So, without another word, he left them to
fill up the grave; and they, having done it, left Shureef with the
flowers on his breast to the Guardianship of God.
And there he stayed month after month, until the year drew close to
its end. And Shurruf Deen stayed in the gaol, for, after all, the man
whose place he had hoped to get was allowed another year's extension
of service. Perhaps it was the deferred hope which told on the
Overseer's nerves; but certain it is that the passing months brought a
strange look of anxiety to his face. Perhaps it was that, though he
had set aside much, he could not quite set aside the thought of that
bunch of roses and jasmine which his little son's hand had thrown upon
Shureef's breast. Something there was in his mind without a doubt,
which made him, but a few weeks before the Guardianship of God must
end, and before the momentous question of promotion must be decided,
steal out more than once at night to Shureef's solitary grave, as he
had stolen to his solitary cell. But the memory of the still, white
roll of cloth with the flowers upon it, touched him more closely than
the memory of the listless figure letting the wheat-grains slip
through its idle fingers. Why it should have done so it were hard to
say. Fear had something to do with it--sheer superstition that when
the Guardianship of God was over, the uncared-for body might fall into
the keeping of the devil and torment him. Love had its part too; love,
and a vague remorse born more of the chance which had made his little
son chief mourner, than of a sense of personal guilt. Plainly it did
not do to try and escape the tie of kindred altogether.
So, by degrees, the thought grew that it would indeed be safer for
Shureef to pass into other guardianship before God's ended. He had
asked for nothing, save that his grave might be cooled by tears; if
this could be compassed, surely he ought to be satisfied, ought to
forget everything else and leave his kindred in peace. And it might be
compassed with care. Shureef's mother--not his own, for they had only
been half-brothers--was alive, alive and blind, and poor too, since
his father, stung by his son's disgrace, had sent her back to her own
people. Poor, blind, and a mother! Here was material ready to his
hand. It would not cost half a month's pay, even with the expenses of
moving the body; and then--yes, then, when they were no longer needed,
those flowers, even if they were dust, as they must be, could be taken
away and forgotten.
It was the anniversary of Shureef's burial, and in the cool of the
evening the clanking leg-irons were once more at work upon his grave;
for, much to the Doctor's disgust, an old woman had put in an
appearance at the last moment with unimpeachable credentials of
relationship and sufficient cash to convey the remains to her village.
There was, as Shurruf, the Overseer, said regretfully, no valid excuse
for refusal, and the Doctor-_sahib_ might rely upon his doing all
things decently and in order, and on strict sanitary principles.
Whereupon the Doctor had smiled grimly, and said that in cases of
resurrection there was safety in extremes.
Nevertheless, it was the love of horrors, no doubt, which made the
gathering round the opening grave so large. The old woman sate in the
mourners' place, her tears flowing already. The others, however,
talked over probabilities, and told tales of former disinterments with
cheerful realism, while Shurruf Deen bustled backwards and forwards
among his elaborate arrangements.
They dug down to one side of the original grave after approved
fashion, so that there should be as little disturbance as possible,
and when traces of what was sought showed in a fold of still, white
shroud, extra cloths were sent down, in which, covering as they
exposed, the workmen gradually swathed all that was mortal of the dead
_dacoit_.
"He hath not lost much weight," said those at the ropes as they
hauled.
So there the task was done, decently and in order. But Shurruf wanted
something which he knew must still lie within the brand-new shroud,
and, ere they lifted the gruesome bundle to the coffin awaiting it, he
stooped,--then stood up suddenly, grey to the very lips, and crushing
something in his hand, something, so it seemed to those around, pink
and white and green. But his face riveted them. "In the Guardianship
of God," he muttered, "in the Guardianship of God."
"What is it?" said one to another, as he stood dazed and speechless.
Then they, too, stooped, looked, touched, until, as he had lain when
they found him behind the rose and jasmine thicket, Shureef lay before
them looking more as if he was asleep than dead.
"_Wah!_" said a voice in the crowd; "he cannot have been so bad as
folk thought him, if the Lord has taken all that care of him."
Shurruf gave a sort of sob, stepped back, lost his footing on the edge
of the open grave and fell heavily. When they picked him up he was
dead.
The Doctor, summoned hastily, shook his head. Death must have been
instantaneous, he said; the neck was broken. After which he went over
and looked at Shureef curiously; then stooped down and picked up some
of the earth on which the body lay, earth which had come from the
bottom of the grave. "Look," he said, pointing out minute white
crystals in it to the native assistant; "that's bi-borate of soda. I
knew there was some of it here when I chose this patch. It's a useful
antiseptic; but he has been in a regular mine of it--a curious case of
embalming, isn't it?"
It certainly was; and it was still more curious that a bunch of fresh
roses and jasmine should have been found on Shurruf Deen the
Overseer's breast, as he lay in Shureef's grave; but, as the Doctor
said, the obsequious gardener had most likely given them to him as he
passed through the spinach and onion patches. And perhaps it was so.