She was only a cow, but she was all things, wife and child, earth and
heaven, to old Gopal, the Brahmin who owned her.
And, apart from his estimation, she had value. Connoisseurs in the
village, as they looked over the low mud wall which separated the slip
of open courtyard, ten feet by six, where there was just room for a
crazy four-legged string bed between Surabhi's manger and the door,
would nod and say she must have been a good cow when young; but when
that was only God knew!
Whereupon Gopal would raise his shaven head with its faint frosting of
silver hair from Surabhi's silver flank, as he squatted holding a
brass _lotah_ in one hand, milking with the other, and smile
scornfully.
"Old or young, she is the best milker in the village, and the best
looking one, and the best bred," he would say. "And wherefore not? Is
she not Surabhi the Great Milk-Mother, whom even the gods worship?
Since without her where would the little godlings be?" And then he
would pop down the _lotah_ and cease milking for a moment, so that
both hands might be free for a reverential _salaam_ to the old cow
who, at the cessation, would turn her mild white face--the real
Brahmini zebu face with its wide dewy black nostril, wide dewy black
eyes, and long lopping ears--to see what had come to old Gopi; and as
often as not, would give his round frosted black poll a lick round
with her black frosted tongue, by way of encouragement to go on, as if
he had been a calf!
But the connoisseurs over the wall would snigger, and touch their
foreheads, and say that Gopal Das was getting quite childish and mixed
up things. Though, no doubt, the great Surabhi must have been just
such another cow, since the old man said right. There was not her like
in the village. No! not even now that Govinda had brought home the
brown cow with five teats, which had taken the prize at the _Huzoor's_
big show. It was younger, of course, but Surabhi would outlast the old
man, and what more could _he_ want? Then who, before these latter
days, had ever heard tell of a brown cow? And as for the five teats,
they might portend more milk, but were they lawful?
So long-limbed, whole-hearted, dull-headed, the villagers went
doubtfully about their business scarcely less confused than old Gopi
between facts and fancies, realities and unrealities; tied and bound,
as their like are in hamlet and village, by the allegories of a faith
whose inner teaching has been forgotten.
But old Gopal stayed with Surabhi. His life was bounded by her. How he
lived was one of the many mysteries of Indian village life. He did
nothing but look after his cow, but he must have inherited some
fractional share of the village land from his fathers, or been
entitled, by reason of his race, to some ancestral dues, for twice a
year at harvest time he would come back to the courtyard, like a
squirrel to its nest, with so many handfuls of this grain and so many
handfuls of that, so many bundles of wheat straw, millet stalks, or
pea stems. And on these, and the milk she gave, he and Surabhi lived
contentedly. He was very old; if he had had wife and children in the
past he had quite forgotten them. Yet it was typical of village life
that no one forgot old Gopi or his rights. Whatever was due to him
from well or unwatered land, even if it were only so many leaves of
tobacco or chili pods, came to the courtyard as regularly as the
sunshine.
And, regularly as the sunshine, too, the old man, after he had milked
Surabhi in the early dawn, would go with his solitary blanket and a
little spud, and spend the whole day till sunset in gathering
succulent weeds for the Great Milk-Mother's supper. It was his
religion. And under the broad blue sky, edging a plantigrade path over
the parched plain, leaving, like a locust, not a green leaf behind
him, old Gopi's mind would be full of confused piety and mystical
meanings.
This was the highest service of man, this was Faith, and Hope,
and Charity all combined; since every one knew that Surabhi was the
World-Mother, and without her--
Here the old Brahmin's memory of words would fail him, and he would
fall back on deeds, by digging at the biggest weed within reach.
From year's end to year's end he seldom fingered a coin, and if he
did, it was Surabhi who brought it to him. Her last calf had long
since become an ox, and drifted away from the village to fill a gap in
the great company of the ploughers and martyrs who give the coffer of
the Empire all its gold and die in thousands--long before famine
touches humanity--without a penny piece from that coffer being spent
to save them from starvation. Yet she still, after the fashion of her
race, gave milk and to spare. The latter went, as a rule, to folk
poorer still than the old Brahmin, especially to children; but when he
sold it, part of the money was always spent on a new charm for
Surabhi's neck. And it might be noted that whenever, by looking over
the old mud walls which separated the village courtyards one from the
other, he found that Govinda's brown cow had a fresh bell or
disposition of cowries round her neck, there was always enough milk
over and above Gopi's wants next day to procure a similar adornment
for the white one with its heavy dewlap.
The rivalry grew, by degrees, into a definite challenge between their
owners, so that when, after a time, Govinda's beast fell off in her
milk, Gopi's delight was palpable, and he scouted all reasonable
explanations of the fact.
The cow, he said, was underbred. You could see by her hoofs that she
had been accustomed to wander about and pick up her own living like
low-caste folk; while Surabhi bore token of her lifelong seclusion in
every polished ring of her long-pointed black toes.
But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about
which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's
brass _lotah_ cease to brim.
There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were
dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture
elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and
that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been
a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier
growth of grass in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did
not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every
morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if
that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done,
seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? _That_ is a time
when help is given by the new master. God knows why, since the old
masters never gave any.
Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds
remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on
mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be
expected?
So the long dry days dragged on. That spring-harvest old Gopal's share
of garnered grain was scarcely worth the bringing home. The squirrel's
hoard in the little courtyard was scanty indeed, and very soon he had
to stint his own share, and rise an hour earlier to go weed-grubbing,
and return an hour later, so that Surabhi should not low her
discontent at short commons. For that would be shame unutterable, even
though the brown cow had long since been driven from high-class
seclusion to fend for herself with the common herd from dawn to eve.
Thus old Gopal's lank anatomy was appreciably more lank, more
skeleton-like, when one day the headman of the village, as he smoked
his pipe in front of the house of faith where strangers were lodged,
announced that the famine had really come at last. Over in Chotia
Aluwala there were piles of baskets and spades. Some _Huzoors_ were
there in white tents, so doubtless ere long, God knows why, they would
begin digging earth from one place and putting it in another, so that
a distribution of grain could be made in the evening.
That was the headman's idea of relief-works, and his hearers had no
other.
Now, Chotia Aluwala was ten miles at least from Surabhi's stall, but
of late Gopi had scarce found a weed within twice that distance.
So the very next day, when, backed by a pile of forlorn-looking earth
on one side and a not much smaller pile of baskets with which the
earth had, during the day's toil been conveyed to its present
resting-place, one hungry face after another came up in file to the
distribution of food, old Gopi's frosted head was among the number.
But he was bitterly disappointed at his dole of cooked dough-cake. He
had expected grain. Though more than enough for his old appetite, what
would Surabhi, with her seven stomachs, say to such concentrated food?
After his long trudge home he passed a miserable night seeking, by
every means in his power, to supply the bulk necessary for the
satisfying of those clamorous stomachs. He even chopped up the grass
twine of his string bed and tempted the old cow to chew it by soaking
the fibre in some of her own milk.
Thus, once more, he came off second best, for the milk should have
been his share. So he could scarcely manage to stagger along with his
basket next day. Not that this mattered, for already the Englishmen,
who, in their khaki clothes and huge pith helmets were supervising the
work, were saying tentatively, with a glance at the totterers, that it
might have been better to start relief a little sooner. And down in
one hollow Gopi saw a woman being carried away, while the babe which
had been at her breast yelled feebly in an orderly's arms.
The sight did not affect Gopi in the least. He had thought out a plan
which filled his confused old soul with a heavenly joy. So when his
two dough-cakes were given him that evening he hurried off with them
to the contractor in the background, through whom the _Huzoors_
had arranged for this supply, and exchanged them--at a loss,
inevitably--for the coarse husks, the bran, the sweepings, the
absolute waste which could not be used even in famine bread.
The arrangement suited both parties, the contractor and old Gopi, who
day after day trudged home, hungry, with a bulky bundle of fodder for
Surabhi. It was a fair exchange all round; even with the old cow, who
turned the fodder into milk. Not much, it is true, since the bundle
was not over-large, but enough to keep Gopi's soul and body together.
And the soul grew if the body wasted. How could it be otherwise, when
one was permitted to be the babe and suckling, as it were, of the
Great Milk-Mother? The Great World-Mother, whose sacred work it was to
nourish all things, even the little godlings?
The old Brahmin's eyes grew softer, more trustful, more like the eyes
of a child, as the days went by; and as he milked her, Surabhi's black
frothed tongue often licked more than his shaven poll, as if she were
concerned at the bones which showed through the skin of her calf.
Gopal himself, however, took this licking as a mark of Divine favour;
and, as for the thinness, were not all the babes and sucklings growing
thin?
That was true. The Englishman in head charge of the Chotia Aluwala
relief-work canal had that thinness on his conscience. But what could
man do in a wilderness, without mothers, without milk?
He had it on his heart too, because he was a father; and because,
despite a mother and milk, doctors and dosing galore, it was not two
months since he had seen his first-born waste away mysteriously to
death, as children will waste.
So his mind was full of it, when, for the sake of seeing a lonely wife
and mother, he rode forty miles after nightfall to the little bungalow
so empty of a child's voice.
"I've got quite a nursery of 'em now," he said grimly, "but they beat
me. I can't get the men in charge to mix that tin-milk stuff right,
you know, and the little beggars won't look at a teaspoon."
Perhaps it was his ride that had tired him. Anyhow, he crossed his
hands on the table, and laid his head on them wearily.
He roused, however, at her touch on his shoulder.
"Let me come," she said; "I've--I've nothing to do here."
He looked at her for a moment, then turned his eyes away. "Will you?"
he said in an odd voice; "that--that will be awfully jolly."
So in a day or two, armed with the dead baby's bottles, feeding-cups,
God knows what, and such mother's lore as the dead child had taught
her, she was at work in a white tent set in the shade of the only tree
at Chotia Aluwala.
"I must have more milk," she said decidedly, and there was a new light
in her eyes, a new tone in her voice, when they brought her yet
another whimpering black baby. "That is the end of it; by hook or by
crook I _must_ have more milk. There _must_ be some, somewhere. Send
out and see!"
So, because when a woman is standing between death and children, her
orders are the orders of "She-who-must-be-obeyed," they sent. And, of
course, one of the first discoveries made by the native underling to
whom the inquiry was entrusted, was Surabhi. In other words, that an
old Brahmin, in receipt actually of relief, was the possessor of a
remarkably fine cow, if not in full milk, yet capable of supporting an
infant or two. It needs the vicious _flair_ of an underpaid
_chuprassi_ to find such chances for tyranny and extortion at the
first throw off. But this one was found, and when Gopi returned that
evening to the little courtyard, an official with a brass _lotah_ was
waiting for milk. It would be paid for, of course, by-and-by. Gopi
could keep an account, and the _Sirkar_ no doubt would pay, provided
the _proper official_ certified it by a countersign.
The old man was too confused, too tired to be ready with protest at a
moment's notice. So that night he went supperless to bed. But in the
white tent over at Chotia Aluwala, an Englishwoman's pale face had
quite a colour in it.
"Fancy!" she said, "two whole quarts of the most beautiful, rich milk!
I would reward that man if I were you, hubby. I am to have the same
every day. It--it means four lives at least!"
Possibly, for a baby takes less to keep it alive than an old man.
Small tragedies of this sort are common enough in India, but it is
difficult to give all their fineness of detail to English eyes.
Old Gopal was at once cunning as a fox, guileless as a child; and
through both the guile and the innocence ran that bewildered belief in
Surabhi as something beyond ordinary cows. He tried to escape the
_impasse_ by not milking her dry, so as to leave some for himself; but
though Surabhi resented any other hand finishing the task, it was
impossible for an experienced onlooker to be deceived. The result of
that, therefore, was abuse and blows. Then he tried keeping back one
dough-cake from his daily dole for himself, and only exchanging the
other for fodder. That reduced the milk in reality, but it also
reduced Surabhi to lowing; and his sense of sin, in consequence,
became so acute that he was forced into going back to the old plan.
But these tactics had, by this time, roused the petty official's ire.
The _mem sahiba_ had spoken sharply to him because the milk had fallen
off in quantity and quality; for he had not scrupled, despite old
Gopi's tears and distracted prayers, to take away the Milk-Mother's
character by filling up the measure with water.
And so he lost patience. Thus one day he avenged himself and attained
his object by first reporting that Gopi, Brahmin, was wrongfully and
fraudulently obtaining relief, seeing that he was, amongst other
things, possessor of a remarkably fine cow, whose milk he was selling
to the _Huzoors_, and then seizing Surabhi, on the ground that Gopi,
having no means of supporting her, was not fit to take care of so
valuable an animal!
These two blows, followed by the sight of Surabhi being walked off on
her dainty toes into the rough outside world, quite upset the frail
balance of the old man's mind.
He crouched shivering all night in the empty stall, feeling himself
accursed. He was not worthy. Surabhi had gone.
How long he remained there speechless, famine-stricken, yet not
hungry, he did not know. It was early afternoon when the white garment
and brass badge of authority showed again at the door in the low wall,
and a voice said sullenly--
"Thou must come. Thy cursed cow is a devil for kicking, and the _mem_
is a fiend for temper. My badge is gone if thou come not. My pony will
carry two."
The sun was showing red behind the great piles of earth which in that
wide level plain rose like a range of hills, when the oddly assorted
pair rode into the shade of the Chotia Aluwala tree. There was no need
to announce the arrivals. Surabhi declared who one was, almost ere he
stumbled to the ground, stiff, dazed, bewildered. All the more
bewildered for that vision of something undreamt of, unseen hitherto
in Gopal Das' ignorant village life--a woman fair as milk herself,
smiling at him gladly, calling with quaint, strange accent:
"Quick--quick! we wait, we are hungry--are we not, babies?"
There were dark toddlers round the white dress, a dark head on the
white bosom, and old Gopi muttered something about the Milk-Mother,
the World-Mother, as, with a brass vessel some one thrust into his
hand, he squatted down beside Surabhi.
He scarcely needed to milk her; perhaps that was as well, for he was
very tired. But the _lotah_ brimmed, and another had to be called for,
while Surabhi's black frosted tongue licked the black frosted head
between her "_moos_" of satisfaction.
And beyond, in the shadiest part of the shade, there was more
satisfaction and to spare.
After a while old Gopi crept stiffly to watch it, squatting in the
dust with dry, bright, wistful eyes fixed on the bottles, the babies;
above all on the milk-white face full of smiles.
Until suddenly he gave a little cry.
"Me too, Mother of mercy! Great Milk-Mother of the world, me too!" he
said, like any child, and so fell forward insensible with
outstretched, petitioning hands.
But that was the end of his troubles.
When he came to himself, the Great Milk-Mother was feeding him with a
teaspoon. Nor when he recovered his strength would she let him out of
the nursery, for by that time the whole story had been told, with the
curious calm acquiescence of villagers in such pitiful tales of
mistake and wrong. Every one had known the truth, of course, but what
then? The _Huzoors_ wanted the milk for the babies, and Gopi was old--
"He is only a baby himself," interrupted a woman's voice indignantly
when this explanation was being given; "why, this morning I made him
as happy as a king by letting him suck one of the bottles! He said
that there was nothing left now to be desired, nothing wanting,
except--"
"Except what?" asked the man's voice.
"That he could see no little godlings like--like me."
Then there was silence.