The clangour of metal upon metal filling the low, dark workshop,
pulsating out into the hot sunshine of the courtyards behind, and the
hot shadow of the narrow street in front. Pulsating musically, yet with
an undercurrent of jarring vibration like a north-country burr on a
woman's tongue. The whole best described, perchance, in the native name
for the copper which the workmen were hammering and welding into pots
and pans--_tambur_.
_Tam bur, tam-burr-urr-ur_.
Thus endlessly through afternoon sunshine and afternoon shade, as the
shine fell full on a woman who was sitting silently beside a row of mud
cooking-places in the first courtyard. So still, so silent; it seemed
as if the waves of sound must break baffled upon the carven folds of
the coarse, whitey brown veil which, covering her almost from head to
foot, was drawn tight over the forehead to conceal the hair, and wound
tight under the chin so as to hide all save the oval face barred by
level black brows, and the brown curves of a wide mouth. Only about her
feet a voluminous petticoat showed its dingy red and green borderings
like a frill. The typical dress of a widow in Northern India, and the
face matched it. More indifferent than sad; the lack of vitality,
inseparable from the conviction that the life is not worth living,
written on every feature, blurring its beauty. For Durga-dei had been
beautiful a year ago when sunsetting had sent the master coppersmith to
tell her so, and praise the order of a well-kept house. Now the shadow
creeping inch by inch along the sunlit dust, and up the sunlit mud
wall, brought her no emotion save the mechanical hope that the lentils
would be properly cooked by supper time, and the vague wonder why her
sister-in-law's shrill voice had not recommenced the conjugation of the
imperative mood from the inner court. Parbutti had been sleeping longer
than usual; she who but a year agone would no more have dared to sleep!
And as for command? Was not a _dewarani_--the husband's younger
brother's wife--bound by every principle of religion and decency to
obey? Durga-dei's black brows grew straighter at the thought of the
change one short year had wrought. And Gopal, Parbutti's husband, was
the master now. A pretty master for all his good looks, for all his
learning! yet what else could one expect, seeing he had spent his youth
over books at the Municipal School, while his elder brother, despite
his crippled condition, had kept the ancestral business a-going? Yes!
on that point the dead husband had been weak; and yet how proud he had
been of the handsome lad who was to bring sons to the ancestral hearth!
But he had not even done so much, though to be sure, for that Parbutti
was to blame; a jealous wife, too selfish--
"Durga! Durga-dei! The broom, quick! Am I to sit in the dust like a
lone widow because thou art lazy? The broom, I say!"
The voice which overbore one clamour by another was not pleasant; but
it was so in comparison with Durga's face as she rose reluctantly. A
thousand times more so than that same face when, after a few minutes of
listening to the high-pitched voice, the shrouded figure showed again
through the doorway leading to the inner court. Not an ungraceful
figure, despite its shroud, as it leant despondently against the
lintel, while the black eyes shifted in a sort of helpless indifference
over the blank walls imprisoning them.
A year ago; only a year ago!
Her unpractised brain attempted no other complaint; but this
unformulated sense of injury possessed her utterly, and everything in
heaven and earth became an outrage on that capable past when she had
held the reins of government. Of a truth, in that small kingdom of hers
behind the coppersmith's shop naught had been wanting that she could
compass. Naught save children; for that Parbutti, feckless Parbutti,
with youth and health and strength on both sides, was far more
responsible than she. If the curse had been hers, would she not gladly
have given a handmaiden to her lord? But they had waited for the
brother's child which would be as their own, and in that hope had
refused to adopt a son while yet there was time. Even now--the small
supple hands sought the crevices beyond the door lintel against which
they had been resting slackly--sought them as if intent on finding some
flaw, some finger-hold in the blank brick wall--yes! even now, but for
Parbutti's indecent jealousy, the old customs might bring a tardy
comfort, and give her, the widow, back something of her lost power and
position. The Mosaic maxim, "Let him take the woman and raise up
children to his brother," was so familiar to Durga-dei that its
fulfilment in this case seemed to her quite commonplace. Married to
Gopal by _kurao_, she would not, of course, regain her status as the
wife, but she might find solace as the house mother, if there were
children. The passion of hearth and home was strong in her, as it is in
most good Hindu women; and it is not too much to say that the disregard
of time-honoured custom towards herself counted for far less in her
resentment than the disregard of a time-honoured custom which was
clearly for the good of the family; since she would then have the right
to keep handsome, lazy Gopal and his work together for the sake of the
son who might be born to the old trade. She was of the stern old
school; but those two were not; and so, between the hearth and that
calm perpetuity in which lay its only chance of success, stood a strong
woman's jealousy and a weak man's cunning. For Gopal knew well that
sooner or later even the most indecent of barren wives must give her
lord a child-bringer. And in such case, without being bad to the
heart's core, a handsome fellow like Gopal might well speculate on a
youthful bride in the future, rather than take a widow in the present,
since Parbutti would never allow both. So, on the whole, he was not so
much to blame. Men were men when all was said and done. They loved
beauty. Yet she had been beautiful--surely she had been beautiful.
The clangour ceased suddenly, leaving, as it were, an echo in the chime
of the police office gong at the nearest gate striking the hour--five
o'clock. Durga, as she counted the strokes, smiled contemptuously. As
usual Gopal was seizing on the first excuse for knocking off work,
though a good two hours of daylight remained for the industrious--for
the old style masters, such as her dead husband had been. But this one
did not even trouble to see the shop properly closed, the implements
put aside, or guard against the prentice trick of concealing a handful
or two of snippings and filings; for there was his lithe figure at the
door, about to cross to the inner courtyard--to ease and indolence--to
his supper--to--to Parbutti!
A flash of intense vitality came to Durga's face: despite its silence,
its absolute stillness, her whole figure was instinct with life as she
stood looking at the man opposite her. He was about her own age, and
the scanty clothing of the artisan clashes left the strength and beauty
of his limbs unconcealed. The face was handsome also, and pleasant in
its beardless contours, surrounded by the fringe of silky black hair
showing beneath the artisan's round calico cap. Both figure and
features displaying at their best the characteristics of that curious
guild which for thousands of years has defied the Sudra origin imputed
to it by the Brahmans, and worn the sacred thread of the twice-born in
the smithy, the mason's yard, and the carpenter's shop. It curved now
like a piece of whipcord across the bronze body to which the afternoon
sunshine sent gleams of gold as it shone on the sweat-dewed muscles. A
fine young fellow certainly, with the thin, deft hands and feet which
are the outcome of generations on generations of manual dexterity
displayed in one and only one direction. So far, a type of past ages
when Nasmyth hammers and Archimedean drills were unknown. Yet they were
not unknown to Gopal the coppersmith. He had not been idle at the
Municipal School, where the primers discourse glibly of all the wonders
of the world, all the marvels born from that curious potentiality--the
human brain. So the forty and odd ounces of grey matter in Gopal's own
skull were leavened with ideas foreign to those which had been
transmitted to him through ages of slow heredity. A curious anomaly;
one which has to be taken into account by the master builders of the
Great Imperial Institute when they count the cost of progress. And yet
as he paused, arrested by the glow on Durga's face, his thoughts defied
his education. For it came home to him suddenly, causelessly, that this
woman, the widow of his dead brother, was beautiful, and that he had a
right to her--if he chose. Yes! she was beautiful--far more beautiful,
despite her widowhood, than the jealous wife awaiting him within; and
she was his by right--if he chose. Why should he not choose? These
thoughts were crowding culture from his brain, as he crossed the
courtyard without a word; for convention so far held him fast. Only as
she stepped aside from the door to let him pass, their eyes met.
When he had gone, and the sound of Parbutti's shrill welcoming rose
over the high partition wall, Durga crouched down beside the fireplace,
and blew softly at the smouldering embers under the pot of lentils. It
was woman's work to fan a flame if--if it were not fierce enough to do
its duty to the hearth. Easy work also: a woman could do it with no
more exertion than would make the bosom rise and fall a trifle quicker,
or send a tremble through the arm supporting the bowed shoulder. No
more than that. And even that Parbutti did not notice, as she bustled
out, full of wifely service and housewifely blame, to set the finishing
touches to the meal and carry it off to the hungry master, leaving a
shapeless bundle of widowhood waiting indifferently for such dog's
share of food as might be left when other appetites were satisfied.
Then a great silence seemed to take possession of and fill the outer
court, just as the clangour had filled it, and still Durga sat waiting,
her eyes upon the fire. The sunlight left the wall to dull shadow, the
flames died down, but no one called; perhaps they had eaten everything,
and she must stave off her whole day's hunger with a handful of parched
grain. Well! 'twould count as a virtue, not for herself, but for the
dead husband who had gone down to death sonless; not by her fault,
though--not by her fault! The old vague sense of injury returned,
lulling her to a sort of resignation.
"Durga! Durga-dei!"
She started from a half doze to see Parbutti pausing on her way to the
outer door, in order to exclaim at laziness--exclaiming all the louder
because Gopal, also on his way to the world beyond those four walls,
stood by listening both to the scolding and the silence. Suddenly he
moved impatiently to the door.
"Come, wife! There is no time for such things nowadays. Stay wrangling
if thou wilt. I hate it all. Holy Lukshmi! it hath been so since the
world began, and I am tired of it!"
He scarcely knew his own meaning; only this was clear--the old customs,
the old conventional ways were an annoyance. Yet, as he walked moodily
down the narrow street towards the police station, his mind circled
round one thought--he had a right by immemorial usage to claim Durga if
he chose. A queer medley altogether was Gopal, the coppersmith, seated
in the growing darkness on a certain flight of steps leading at one and
the same time to a small Hindu temple and the back door of a native
printing-office. Just over the way a yellow-trousered constable was
pacing up and down in front of the police and octroi station, between a
patent Birmingham-made weighing machine, warranted all the latest
improvements, and a primitive water-clock; thus as it were keeping
watch over the due measurement of the two great staples of
civilisation--Time and Money, and looking with equal impartiality at
the rising beam registering its burden accurately, and the copper
bowl--made no doubt by a forebear of Gopal's--sinking lower and lower
as the water filtered through the hole in its bottom, until it marked
the whereabouts of an hour by having to be fished up and set afloat
once more on the Sea of Time--like the soul of a man according to the
theory of metempsychosis. This flight of steps was a favourite resort
of the idle, for, lying as it did just within the city gate, it was a
coign of vantage whence things new and old might be seen clearly side
by side. Gopal liked it, because he himself was compounded of ancient
characters and modern ideas. He sat gossiping over an ill-printed
newspaper, watching the worshippers go up to do _pooja_ in the temple,
commenting on the last police news, and the chance of so and so being
run in for a breach of the bye-laws; while through the high arched
gateway, showing in shadow against the darkening sky, the herds of
cattle came trooping dustily, undriven save by custom and the homing
instinct. A packed throng, streaming through the gate in unison, then
separating into flocks, and so, by endless unswerving subdivision
through highways and byeways, into units, arriving each at last in the
familiar stall. One of them, a big, pearl-grey, soft-eyed creature,
walked in composedly to the courtyard where Durga-dei still crouched by
the ashes of the fire, and, sidling into her accustomed corner, lowed
for her supper. The woman rose and brought it mechanically. The cow at
any rate must not fast. As she mixed the portion of parched grain with
the fodder it smelt appetising, but she did not taste it. The hunger
that was on her was not to be stayed by food. She did not envy Parbutti
away at the wedding festivities at a neighbour's house--those
festivities whence the ill-omened widow's face was barred; she did not
envy Gopal sitting on the steps watching the current of life slip into
the old and the new channels, but in a vague way she envied Motiya, the
milk-giver, her honoured place by the hearthstone. She envied her the
calf which the milker on his rounds loosed from its tether in the dark
shed, and an answering quiver seemed to run through her limbs as she
saw the mother yield to the first rough touch of the sucking tongue.
When that was over, she crouched down again to brood over the empty
house. Parbutti would not be back till all hours, and Gopal--what of
Gopal?
The night settled down. There was no moon, only a spangled star or two
showing in the narrow slip of sky above her. The noise of the city
without seemed lost in the stillness of the courtyard, where, through
the darkness, you could hear the sound of Motiya chewing the cud of
content.