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Transcriber's Notes:
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2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
_By the same Author, 6s. each_.
The Hosts of the Lord
Voices in the Night
On the Face of the Waters
The Potter's Thumb
In the Permanent Way
Red Rowans
The Flower of Forgiveness
Miss Stuart's Legacy
London: William Heinemann
From the Five Rivers
By
Flora Annie Steel
London
William Heinemann
1901
_First Published_ 1893
_Reprinted_ 1893; 1897; 1901
_All rights reserved_
TO MANY FRIENDS AND ONE FRIEND
SINCE WITHOUT THE MANY
THESE STORIES COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN
WITHOUT THE ONE
THEY CERTAINLY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED
CONTENTS.
Gunesh Chund.
The Blue Monkey.
Shah Sujah's Mouse.
Suttu.
At a Girls' School.
In a Citron Garden.
Nur Jehan.
Shurfu the Zaildar.
Songs of the People:
Plough Song.
Sowing Song.
Harvest Song.
Cotton-picking Song.
FROM THE FIVE RIVERS.
GUNESH CHUND.
I.
Outside the village a man stood alone in the moonless night. Yet it
was not dark; for in the unending depths of violet blue the stars hung
many-hued and many-sized--each in their order, so clear, so bright,
that the simile "as one star differeth from another in glory" stood
out in all its vivid truth, undimmed by the mists of a Western
atmosphere.
The man, however, neither looked nor thought of the stars. He had seen
them shine thus after the winter rains ever since he had been able to
see, and his eyes were full of the shadowy stretch of level fields
which seemed to rise towards the pale horizon. There was a fresh, damp
smell in the air, and close to his feet some lighter shadows
surrounded by darker ones showed that the recent rains had been heavy
enough to leave fresh pools of water in the hollows whence the village
had been dug--hollows like the skeleton at the feast, serving to
remind the inhabitants that their origin was dust, their end the
grave.
Toil and moil flung their refuse into these as if in derision; the
pitiless eastern rain washed the mud from wall and roof back to its
birthplace; but year after year the antlike builders piled more mud
over the ruins of the old, until the village, girt by its grave, grew
dignified by age, and, gaining renewal from its own mortality, rose
higher and higher above the surrounding plain.
Such a treeless, formless plain, circled round by that fillet of paler
sky where the stars shone dimly, like distant fire-flies. Not a
landmark anywhere, save, behind the man, his own village. By day an
ant-hill of low huts; in the soft darkness piled like a fort,
lightless, soundless. He turned towards it, his eyes seeking a central
block standing higher than the rest. It was his house; the house where
he and his forebears for many a generation had been born; where he had
stood by his father's death-bed and taken the reins of office from the
dying hands; where he, too, hoped to die and pass the headship of the
village to some stalwart son. And it was childless as yet. A curious
thrill seemed to join heart and hand and brain in a trinity of skill
and strength and love, for yonder in that dim house a woman was
bringing a child into the world with pains beyond the primal curse;
and he, the father, driven by a restlessness new to him, had wandered
out into the night to seek patience in action. It could not be over
yet; his mother had said it would be long, and the jackals had not yet
given their second cry. He turned again to the fields.
"The land is good," he murmured to himself, "the crop is good, and the
rain is good. If only this be a son--"
He drew a long breath that was half a sigh. A stir in the thorn
enclosures where the cattle were folded for the night caught his
practised ear, and he walked towards them, listening. A feeble bleat
followed by a patter of feet made him push aside the rude hurdle
barring the entrance. Among the crowding sheep and goats the first
lamb of the season lay beside its mother, and his eyes lit up as he
forced his way through the circle of uncertain elders to reach it. He
was in luck to be there, else the first-fruits would have been dead by
morning. He lifted the lamb gently, thinking the while that he must
divide the flock ere another night, and so run no more risks. As he
made his way back to the village with swinging strides the mother
trotted after him, bleating, and the village dogs snuffed at his heels
silently; they knew better than to bark at Gunesh Chund the head-man,
tall and strong; looking all the taller by reason of his white
turban and the lank folds of white drapery falling from his high
shoulders--so tall, that he had to stoop in order to enter the door
leading to the outer court of his house. Within were lights and a
cackle of women's voices; but here, in the wide expanse of beaten mud
floor, darkness and silence, save for the cud-chewing of the milch
kine ranged in one corner, and the rasping rub of a weighted halter
through its ring, as the head-man's pony turned at its master's
entrance.
Gunesh stood still and called, "Mother! mother!"
An old woman with an oil cresset held above her head came to the inner
doorway and peered into the darkness through the flowers and branches
garlanding the entrance. Then she set aside the swinging sickle hung
to bar all passage to evil spirits, and, stepping out, shook her head
at the mute inquiry in her son's eyes.
"Not yet, O Gunesh. But all goes well. 'Twill come with the dawn, like
many another. And fear not, O my child. 'Tis a son. The stars and the
omens are agreed."
A faint bleat made her set the cresset nearer. "What hast thou there,
O Gunesh?"
"The firstling, mother. 'Twas in the fold. I have brought it hither
for safety."
The old woman's face shone with delight.
"A ewe lamb! 'Tis another omen; and there is luck in the house
to-night; for as the ewe lamb to the fold so is the male child to the
hearth. Have no fear, O Gunesh! Have no fear!"
She laid one wrinkled hand on her son's arm, and, with the lamp held
high in the other, gazed fondly on his face, curiously like her
own--the same refined, aquiline features and narrow forehead; but the
man's was less alert than the woman's, and softer, especially now as
he stood hesitating.
"And--and--Veru?" he asked, somewhat sheepishly.
His mother shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, Veru! She is well enough. She
suffers, but that is the woman's part. 'Twould have been better for
her years ago. But she will forget. All women do, and the omens are
good--"
A querulous complaint from within, followed by women's voices, made
her pause.
"I must return. Folk are so ignorant nowadays, I wonder aught comes
right. But thou needst not fear, my son; the old mother knows it all.
So! the lamps are lit, the flowers strewn, the spices burned, the
chants raised duly. The Great Ones must needs be pleased; and look
you, Guneshwa! the sun comes back with the dawn."
"Yea, mother," he answered, meekly, "and sure the firstling shows
luck."
When she left him he threw some straw in one corner for the ewe, and
guided the tottering lamb towards it, smiling to himself over the
frail, ridiculous attempts at escape made by the little creature. The
bleats subsided into contented silence, and he groped a stumbling way
up the narrow steps leading to the flat, square roof of his house.
There he sat down, his back against the parapet wall which gave
seclusion to the women's court below, whence a glimmer of light and a
murmur of voices reached eyes and ears. The rest was darkness and
silence.
"With the dawn," he muttered--"it will come with the dawn."
He took a nugget of opium from an inner pocket, broke off a bit, and
having swallowed it set himself deliberately towards patience. Most
men of his race would have found the situation simple, and their
minds, if on the rack of expectation, would have been free from doubt.
Gunesh Chund's heart, however, was softer than most men's--softer than
his mother, for instance, deemed a true man's should be. It was
occupied with one thought. Supposing it was a girl, after all? What
should he do? He could not feel orthodox disgust or anger at the idea.
Yet he longed for a son, if only because it would settle so many vexed
questions and make life so much easier. Even now with his mother and
Veru peace was not always to be had; but how would it be if the second
wife with whom the former threatened him came to make a third in the
quarrel? Sooner or later he would have to make a fourth, of course;
that was always the end, and he had all a kindly man's hatred of tears
and fuss.
Yet a son he must have, and that quickly, for, as his mother said,
truly the cousin's young wife was becoming unbearably pretentious over
those big boys of hers. What wonder? Were they not what all boys
should be? Gunesh Chund felt himself mean and spiritless as he
recognized his own admiration for those whom his mother regarded as
mere pretenders to the hereditary office of head-man. Did not Kishnu,
their black-browed, sonsy mother, openly declare that, even if Gunesh
had a son, hers might yet be preferred as being older, should autumn
chills and summer pestilence carry the present incumbent off before
his time? At least so the old mother said. And one thing was certain:
Devi Ditta and Pooram Lal, the village elders, were no friends of his
since that dispute about the common lands. They might side with the
other branch. Without doubt a son must be had to carry on work in this
world and give life to the next.
And if this was a girl? A bleat from the lamb below made him suddenly
smile at the very idea of baby fingers playing with his beard and baby
kisses on his face. Were girls' kisses less sweet, girls' fingers less
soft?
He shifted uneasily, conscious that his thoughts were heresy in his
mother's eyes. Doubtless she was right. He would have to marry again,
since Veru would plainly be accursed, unable, even after all the
pilgrimages and vows, to perform her first duty. As he sat trying to
harden his heart, wild, skirling chants rose every now and again from
the women's court, and at each outburst he shifted again uneasily; for
through the noise he seemed to hear the cry it was meant to deaden,
lest a complaint might anger the Dread Givers of Pain and Pleasure.
And Veru had been good to him. He sat on till the dream-compeller made
even his hazy thought more hazy, and patience came with sleep.
When he awoke the dawn was past, and as he stretched his long length
skyward in the first enjoyment of past sleep, the whole circle of
earth and heaven round him was ablaze with the sun rising gloriously
over the cloudless world. He stood so, for a moment, the centre of his
universe, contented, serene, ere memory returned to him. Then he made
his way down to the yard with fear at his heart. All was still as the
grave, even in the women's court, and it was a relief when he peered
past the swinging sickle to see his mother wrapped in her quilt dozing
by the open fire-place in one corner.
He went over to her and touched her on the arm.
"Mother!" he called.
She was alert in an instant, and looking in his face answered his mute
question fiercely.
"It is a girl--a useless girl! What need to wake thee for such bitter
news? The woman is accursed."
The quick assent rising to his lips was stilled by a little cry from
within the quilt. Something--he knew not what it was--thrilled him and
kept him silent.
"Is--is it pretty, mother?" he asked, sheepishly, after a while.
The old lady eyed him with suspicious scorn.
"See for thyself, ninny," she replied, shortly.
Gunesh Chund felt a distinct disappointment as he looked down at his
first-born. He had forgotten what new-born babies were like since the
days when, as a boy, he was admitted to such sights. This one struck
him as ugly, or at least as less pleasing than a lamb or a calf.
"God send it be not ill-looking, mother!" he blurted out in a tone of
alarm.
She laughed, still in the same short and scornful fashion.
"Lo! there never was a plain woman among us. The child is well enough,
and favours thee. Is it not enough that it should be a girl?"
He did not hear the latter sentence. Accustomed in all things to
accept his mother's fiat, he was lost in trying to trace the likeness
to himself, and, to aid his efforts, drew a reflective forefinger over
the featureless face, feeling, as he did so, that strange thrill at
his heart again. Suddenly, as he neared the mouth, the lips trembled
and a little red tongue shot swiftly on his finger-tip. He burst into
a great roar of delighted laughter.
"Ho! ho! Look, mother, look!"
"Didst never see a child suck before, O Gunesh Chund, _lumberdar?_"[1]
retorted the old woman, crossly, as she tucked the baby away again. He
felt abashed, but the laughter had left him at peace with all mankind.
---------------------
[Footnote 1: Head-man.]
---------------------
"And Veru? How is she?"
This was too much. The stern old lady rose to her full height and
faced him. Her grey hair, disordered by the night's watching, escaped
from the close folds of her veil, and the quilt slipping from her
showed her tall, erect as a girl. She threw out her right hand in
declamation:
"Thou art no better than a woman thyself, O Gunesh! To ask after Veru,
the wife of disgrace! Thou shouldst not have thought of her. Were it
not better she were dead? Ungrateful! wicked! For she must be wicked
to frustrate my prayers and alms. Lo, have I not fulfilled her every
wish these nine months past? And now 'tis 'How is Veru?' forsooth, and
no thought of the mother who has slaved in vain. But this is an end.
She is accursed, and thou must bring a new wife to the hearth if thou
wouldst not lose thine own soul, and the soul of those who begat thee.
Leave Veru her girl, and be kind to her, if thou art a ninny. There
are other women in the world who can bear sons."
As Gunesh crept out of the house feeling small, despite his great
height, he told himself it was only what he had expected. For all
that, his mother might have waited a day or two ere speaking of the
new wife, within Veru's hearing also. God send she had been asleep
after her long suffering!
He was so dispirited that he did not care to face the _dharmsala_ with
its congregation of elders ready to condole, and its younger men
inclined to sneer. So he gave up his morning pipe, and carried the
firstling to take possession of the lambing fold. As he walked along
in the sunshine, as he had walked in the shadow, with it in his arms,
he felt its little tongue sucking at his hand, and it seemed to hurt
him, body and soul.
II.
The forty days of seclusion being over, Veru, in her finest clothes,
sat cross-legged on a string bed ready to receive company. The
court-yard had been freshly swept, the brass cooking-vessels scoured
and set in a row against the mud wall, where the sun smote them
into retaliating rays. A few flat baskets of sweets, covered with
penny-halfpenny Manchester pocket-handkerchiefs printed in the
semblance of a pack of cards, stood ready for the expected guests, and
Gunesh Chund's mother had been busy all the morning making a sort of
furmenty in honour of the occasion; for, though she considered her
labour thrown away on the birth of a girl, she would not for the world
have omitted a single ceremony, and so have given colour to outside
condolence. Veru herself was a delicate-looking, pretty woman of about
six-and-twenty, with a broad forehead, and a thin-lipped, sensitive
mouth--both of which characteristics were more blemishes than beauties
in the opinion of her neighbours. Her chief defect, however, in the
eyes of the stalwart, open-hearted, shrill-voiced, village women lay
in a certain refined reserve, which they set down to conceit born of
her pretensions to scholarship--though how any woman could be so
wrong-minded as to usurp man's estate by learning to read and write
passed their simple understanding. But Veru, who had lived with a rich
uncle during her girlhood, had shared her cousin's desultory visits to
a mission school for a year or two, and returned to her parents and
marriage with a book in which she could read glibly, and a reputation
for writing. She could also knit many-hued comforters in _brioche_
stitch, and darn strips of net in divers patterns--appalling and
almost incredible culture, viewed with disfavour by all save Gunesh,
who was simple enough to admire it; probably because _she_ was woman
enough to admire him immensely.
The infant, to whom the name of Nihali had been given, lay in her
arms, bedizened into the semblance of a performing monkey; tight
little silk trousers on the bandy legs, a tinsel-decorated muslin
bodice, and a flowing veil, the size of a pocket-handkerchief,
disposed over the round skull-cap where a black fringe of wool
simulated hair. On this outfit Veru had spent much time and trouble,
while her mother-in-law grumbled under her breath at the expense, or
openly said that in her day a decent woman would have thought it shame
to make such a fuss over a girl, after keeping her master waiting ten
long years for a child.
There was bitter war between these two women outwardly: yet, however
fiercely Veru combated the elder woman's views, in her heart of hearts
she could not overcome the inherited conviction that the meanest thing
on God's earth, was a sonless wife. Cultured retorts as to what she
had heard and read in school of Western opinions, and of the sex of
the Queen-Empress, did very well as lethal weapons, but as inward balm
were most unsatisfactory. Often and often, after a passage of arms in
which her more dexterous point had reduced her adversary to the usual
appeal for patience, she would creep away into one of the dark,
windowless rooms opening off the central court-yard, on pretence that
the light prevented her baby from sleeping. There, safe from
observation, she would weep salt tears over its unconscious face.
After all her prayers and alms, why had not Fate given her a son? How
much easier it would have been for everybody, Fate included; for now
high Heaven would have to be wearied once more!
She had seen but little of her husband during her days of seclusion,
so the task of shutting her white teeth over a retort when he
was by had not been a very difficult one. But now the every-day
life was beginning again, and it would be harder to keep up the
forbearance--though she was clever enough to see that it earned his
gratitude.
He came in before going to his afternoon's work in the fields to
inspect the preparations. The sight of the bedizened baby awoke his
broad laugh.
"Ho! ho! ho! Grandmother, see what a figure Veru hath made of the
child! For sure it is like the puppets Dya Ram brought round at Diwali
Fair, that danced on a string!"
"I'm glad thy wits give thee sense to see the folly of dressing the
child so," grumbled the old woman. "In my day there were none of those
fal-lals on farmers' children. We left them to the silly town's-folk."
"In your day, mother, farmers' wives did not know how to make them;
but I cut and sewed them all," retorted Veru, with studious courtesy.
"Aye, aye, that's true," remarked her husband, relieved. "Thou hast
clever fingers despite they are so small.--Hath she not, mother?"
"Clever, mayhap; but in my time wives found better work than snipping
and sewing. They made stalwart sons for the hearth, and left clothes
to the tailor. 'Tis the other way on now, I suppose. Thou wilt send to
the tailor for a son soon, I suppose. It is time."
"Nay, but the mother is right," interrupted Gunesh Chund, hastily,
seeing Veru's eyes begin to flash; "the little one is like a puppet,
as I said, Veru, and 'tis happier with its arms and legs free. I love
to watch it struggling on its back like a young duck with the megrims.
'Tis comical. But feed it well, wife; if 'twere a calf I would hold it
over-thin. Young things need fat. Do as the mother bids thee, and 'tis
sure to thrive. Had she not daughters of her own in her time?" His
voice had a ring of appeal in it.
"Aye, and some of them in man's guise," muttered the old lady as she
watched him bending over the baby. Nevertheless, she spoke more softly
as she bade him get to his fields, the proper place for a man.
"True, mother, true," he assented happily, as he went to the door
with her. "And there is no place I like so well. 'Tis good to stand
knee-deep in young corn when it grows blue-green, as this year. Thou
shouldst see it in the dip by the sandy bottom. And see the dappled
sky like a partridge breast, auguring more rain. A good harvest,
mother! A good harvest and new dresses--"
She checked him. "Nay, Gunesh, there is the new wife to think of
first. Good harvest days are good wedding days."
They were beyond ear-shot, and yet the man gave a quick glance at the
woman within.
"Hush, mother, hush!" he said, almost in a whisper. "Should a man take
the name of another woman in his mouth, with the cry of a month-old
babe in his ear? There is time yet."
"Time!" she echoed. "Time, indeed! 'Tis not time, but will, is
wanting. Get thee gone to thy fields--thank Heaven thou art not a
ninny there--for see, yonder comes Kishnu to the reception, bringing
all her three. The jade! 'Tis only to crow over our girl!"
Gunesh tried to frown as he stood irresolute, but his mild face
refused the task.
"May be, mother," he replied simply, "yet were the boys mine I would
take them wherever I went, crow or no crow. They are so sweet."
His mother stamped her foot. "Aye, aye! Sweet for sure. And will not
the eldest make a fine _lumberdar?_ Folk might almost deem him thy
son."
"I could wish none better."
Foiled by his gentleness, she watched his tall figure go down the
alley for a minute, and then began the attack in a more promising
quarter.
"Here comes Kishnu, Veru. Did I not say she would be the first? The
crowing cock loves early hours. She hath her three with her, and
Gunesh, poor soul, must needs stop and fondle them. He loves those
boys; and who can blame him? Sure, a man's heart cannot live in his
breast always!"
"That is true; but when a man gives it to a wife she can keep it from
straying," retorted Veru. She was never without words, but they were
empty diet, and she could not help looking at Kishnu's boys with
hungry eyes.
"I scarce liked to bring Shivu here to-day," quoth the latter,
settling herself with a flounce among the voluminous skirts that hung
half-way down her trousered legs. "You see, he grows so big--almost
too much of a man for these women's doings."
She tittered, twisted her huge nose-ring to one side, disposed her
youngest at her capacious bosom, and, thus prepared for conversation,
began afresh in a shrill, strident voice:
"So that's your girl, Veru! Sure you have dressed it for the wedding
already! Early days; but with a daughter one has to think betimes.--Is
it not so, grandmother?"
"Our women have no difficulty in finding husbands," replied Veru's
mother-in-law, who, whatever she might say herself, was not inclined
to stand impertinence from outsiders. "But perhaps in thy family 'tis
a different story."
Now Kishnu was no beauty, despite her fruitfulness. Neither was she
ready of tongue. So she sniffed, comforting herself with the knowledge
that words, after all, were but poor weapons against facts. As an
immediate revenge, however, she dragged the most disagreeable topic
she could think of into the conversation.
"Guneshwa looked but ill at ease, it struck me. No doubt the new
settlement in the village gives him trouble."
"What new settlement?" asked Veru, sharply.
Settlement time meant war time, since in the compiling of new records
lay ample opportunity for spite; and her husband as head-man had
enemies.
Kishnu tittered again. This was better than she had expected.
"So! I have broken the seal of a secret. Mayhap Gunesh said nothing
lest it should worry thee during the time of recovery. But 'tis so. My
man heard it awhile ago through his friends at court; for certain,
yesterday. Sure, Veru, 'tis a thousand pities this is a girl. Gunesh
could have written a son's name as his heir in the new papers; and
that would have ended dispute forever."
The _lumberdar's_ women folk looked at each other, for once in accord.
Gunesh had hidden this thing from them, and they were too proud to
show how it had moved them. They preferred letting the shaft rankle,
perhaps needlessly, rather than inquire further of Kishnu.
"'Tis no pity at all," retorted Veru, tossing her head. "There can be
no dispute that I know of. And I prefer girls."
This went too far for her mother-in-law. At the risk of Kishnu's
delectation, she lost patience.
"There 'tis! Heard one ever the like? '_I prefer girls_.' So! thus
thou mockest the great ones, and by idle words turn my prayers to
naught. 'Tis too vexatious--"
"Girls are every whit as good as boys. The great Queen--"
"Pshaw! I am sick of the great Queen! Why did she come to breed
dissension, and teach young women to mock at the old? Though, for
sure, she herself knows better, seeing she hath proved her worth by a
good family of sons."
"So may Nihali in her time."
"What! That sickly thing! Thou wilt scarce rear her to the first year,
and mayhap 'tis better so. 'Dead girls,' thou knowest, 'bring live
boys.'"
Veru's face of fear sent a pang of remorse to a heart which beat true
after its fashion, and the old lady went on, hastily:
"Nay, daughter-in-law! Perchance I am wrong. The child dwindles a bit,
no more. I will make seven spices for it. 'Twill thrive if only thou
wilt be reasonable, and save thyself from tantrums and tears. 'Tis the
calf has the pain, mind you, if the cow steals green wheat."
"And with a girl the mind is at rest," continued Kishnu, in malicious
consolation. "Now, with me, if the charcoal rubs from their foreheads
I'm agog with fear of the evil eye, and the rest of my day is wasted
in prayers and offerings. As thou sayst, Veru, girls are better."
Veru had no answer ready; and even when the stream of visitors set in,
full of chattering congratulations and condolences, she did not find
her tongue. The noise, she said, made her head ache and disturbed the
baby. She stripped the finery from its little limbs, and, wrapping it
warmly in her veil, held it tight to her breast, refusing to uncover
it in order to gratify the curious.
Gunesh, coming in from the darkening fields, with their calm in his
face, found her crying in the inner room.
"She wants to bring another wife home even now. She will not have
patience and wait awhile." That was the burden of her complaint, while
Gunesh sat comforting her uneasily.
"Surely, Veru, I have waited," he said, after a time. "Few would have
been so patient; but thou art a good wife and duteous even with the
mother."
"And thou! Oh, thou art good, Gunesh--so good to me! See, thy patience
hath brought Nihali. Wait a year, only a year longer, husband, and it
will bring thee a son."
He looked at the mother and child with kindling eyes.
"A year! Surely, surely! That is but fair. So dry thine eyes, wife,
for I am hungry."
That night, when Veru had retired to her bed with the baby, and he sat
smoking with his mother in the outer yard, he asked her wistfully if
she really thought the child was dwindling.
She turned on him fiercely, perhaps from a feeling of pity.
"And if it does, canst not trust me to physic it? Or wouldst thou have
a man doctor to thy women's rooms? They tell me the travelling one
sent on his rounds by the _Sirkar_[2] is in the next village but now.
Shall I bid him come, since thou seemst to hold by new-fangled ways?"
---------------------
[Footnote 2: Government.]
---------------------
Gunesh Chund filled his pipe again with poppy-leaves and tobacco, and
watched his mother carding cotton viciously. What would she say if she
knew of the promise he had made to Veru? The narcotic did not soothe
him; and when sleep failed, he strolled out to where the village
elders sat discussing the possible effects of this new settlement on
the total of revenue due from the community. The familiar company was
a relief, though it brought a doubt of his own wisdom in waiting a
year. Still it was only a year. After that, if Veru failed to bear him
a son, his duty to himself, to his ancestors, and to the _Sirkar_
demanded another wife.
III.
Whether Gunesh Chund's mother, when she prophesied evil to little
Nihali, did so from conviction or temper, it was not long before her
words came true. Despite the marvellous seven spices, and many another
time-honoured remedy, the baby dwindled and pined unaccountably. Then
came a day when Veru, half distraught and absolutely helpless, sat
with it in her arms, sullen and silent. The old women of the village
dropped in one after the other, more from curiosity than sympathy,
each laying down the law as to some infallible nostrum, whose efficacy
they defended against other views in high-pitched cackle. At last
Veru, whose smattering of knowledge only brought incredulity without
lending aid, declaring she would not have the child tormented further,
laid it to her breast, and turned her back upon hoarded wisdom. Only
when Gunesh Chund came wandering in restlessly from the fieldwork,
which for the first time in his life failed to bring him peace, she
unclasped her straining arms to show him the still face lying against
the full breast that roused no sign of life or desire.
A piteous sight. The big tears ran down his cheeks and fell on the
soft, closed hand. He took a corner of his cotton shawl and wiped them
away clumsily but with infinite tenderness.
"Sure, thou dost love her, though she is a girl," said Veru, with the
calm of despair.
The man broke into a sob and turned away.
"Mother, canst thou do nothing?" he asked, in all the wistful
confidence of a child, laying his great hand on the old woman's head
as she bent over her task of kneading the dough for his supper.
"Do! What is to be done with a woman who cries out if the child is
touched? I tell thee, O Guneshwa, the little one is bewitched--though
God only knows why any one should trouble to cast an eye on a girl.
Ask Munlya. Ask Premi, or Chuni, or any wise woman. But Veru heeds us
not, saying the books deny it. So be it! The child will die!"
Gunesh Chund lingered, hesitating.
"I--I--perhaps, mother, 'twould be better to fetch the doctor. He is
here still, they say."
His mother sprang to her feet, all the vigour and fire of her past
youth in eyes and gesture.
"That I should have lived to hear such words in the house where I came
a modest bride, where never man set foot save thy father and mine!
Wilt thou cast thy honour and mine in the dust for a baby girl? Be it
so, Gunesh! Choose now between her and me; or choose, rather, between
Veru's barren kisses and my curse, for the child will die if the evil
eye be not averted by charms. Choose, I say; for, by my father's soul,
if this bastard half-a-man enters the house, I leave it!"
"Nay, mother! I did but suggest. Veru--"
"O Veru! Veru! I am sick of the name. 'Tis she who hath bewitched
thee; 'tis her evil eye--"
He interrupted her fiercely, seizing her by the wrist.
"Peace, I say, mother! Peace! I will not hear such words."
"They are true for all that. She _hath_ bewitched thee!"
They stood for a moment face to face, so like each other in their
anger and dread. Then the strong man quailed, and fled before her
words and his own thoughts. He was no wiser than his fellows, for all
the soft heart that betrayed him into progress; perhaps less so, since
the superstitions of his fathers enslaved his mind without controlling
his affections. He wandered into the fields once more, where the rows
of blossoming mustard sown among the wheat showed like a yellow sea
against the horizon, but close at hand broke the green gloom of the
earing corn in long, curling waves crested with gold--a sight dear to
husbandmen's eyes! Yet it brought no comfort to the dull ache in
Gunesh's heart, which drove him to finish work with the first excuse
of waning light.
The child was at least no worse. Perhaps the warmth had soothed its
pain; perhaps the feeble life was sinking silently; but the ignorant,
loving eyes that watched it knew not whether the stillness made for
sleep or death.
Save for Gunesh Chund and his wife the house was empty, for his mother
had sought the relief of words with a neighbouring crony.
"Veru," said Gunesh in a whisper, as if the darkening walls had ears,
"dost think the doctor might do her good? The mother will not have him
here--mayhap she is right--but I could take the child to him."
"O husband!" Brought face to face with decision, the woman shrank from
action. "I know not, and the mother would be so angry."
But the slower mind and warmer heart had been at work on the problem,
and ciphered it out once and for all.
"She need never know. Sit within, silent, as if thou hadst it still,
should she return. I shall not be long; so give the child to me."
Half fearful, half pleased at his decision, the mother shifted her
burden to his awkward arms. How small, how light it seemed, hidden
away in the folds of his flowing plaid-like shawl, as he passed
through the twilight alleys on his way to the camping-ground where, in
the mud caravanserai, the travelling vaccinator was to be found!
Neighbours, resting after the day's labour, called to him in various
greeting, and he paused to reply with dull patience, conscious always
of the unseen burden near his heart. So had he carried the firstling
lamb on the night when Nihali was born. How it had struggled to
escape, and sucked at his restraining hand in fierce desire for life!
A fear lest the child's quiet was death made him turn aside more than
once into a darker corner to look and listen.
Still with the same dull patience he sat down before the vacant room
in the serai to await the vaccinator's return; for patience and
doggedness are the peasant farmer's unfailing inheritance, not to be
reft from him by tyrants or strangers. Some camel-drivers, newly
arrived, were cooking their food at a blazing wood-fire in the open,
whence the flames threw long shadows, distorted out of all human
semblance, into the far corners of the court-yard, where a circle of
kneeling camels browsed upon a pile of green branches. Familiar sights
and sounds to Gunesh's eyes and ears, yet to-night, with that strange
burden near his heart, seeming out of place and unexpected.
Meanwhile Veru, with empty arms and nervous fingers twisting and
turning themselves on each other restlessly, was straining her eyes
into the darkness, and wondering with greater and greater insistence
what kept her husband. Her mother-in-law had not returned. She almost
wished she had, for the solitude and silence seemed unending. At last,
unable to endure the suspense any longer, she drew her veil tightly,
to avoid recognition, and stole like a shadow along the darkest side
of the street to meet Gunesh. But he, also weary of waiting, returned
from an unsuccessful pursuit of the doctor by another route. Thus no
reply came to his whispered call to Veru, as he stepped over the
threshold. What had happened? He repeated the call louder.
"Veru!--Mother! Is there no one in the house?"
His mother's voice answered him from behind, and he turned to her,
relieved; for all its lightness, the little burden at his heart grew
heavy in responsibility. Even in his mother's arms it seemed safer.
Two old women who had accompanied her, with the intention of making a
last appeal to common sense, looked at the child critically.
"Truly, O mother of Gunesha," said one, "'tis the evil eye; but there
is time yet to cast the devil out by fumigations."
"Without doubt," echoed the other. "I have seen children nearer death
than this, snatched from the grave by wisdom such as thine."
Gunesh Chund's mother looked at him, her triumph dimmed and softened
by appeal.
"Wilt kill the little thing by over-kindness?" she whispered. "See,
chance hath given her to us. Veru, poor fool, is away.--Let us work
the charm, Guneshwa. I worked it on thee when thou wast a sickly babe,
and see how strong and tall thou art."
He looked from one to the other doubtfully. What was he, an ignorant
man, to set his wishes against these wise mothers, when they assured
him of success? He gave a sign of assent, and set himself towards
authority should Veru come back ere the business was well over.
The old women turned to their task joyfully. The time was past, they
cackled, for any but robust measures, and life in Nihali's frail form
must be made unendurable to the devil without delay. For this purpose,
what more effectual than red pepper and turmeric? Swiftly, with
muttered charms, and many a deft passing through of this thing seven
times, and that seven times seven, the child was laid on a low,
strong-seated stool, in full blaze of the fire-light, while the
grandmother, bringing the drugs from her stores within, mixed them in
approved manner. An earthenware saucer filled with smouldering
charcoal served for brazier. Then, all being ready and placed beneath
the stool, a discordant chant was raised, and the powder flung on the
embers.
From the dense yellow smoke enveloping poor little Nihali came a
feeble, gasping cry.
"Mother!" pleaded the man, hiding his face.
"'Tis the devil cries," replied the stern old woman, flinging fresh
drugs on the coals.
A fainter cry came, echoed in a shriek from the door, where Veru
stood, paralyzed for an instant by rage and terror. The next, dashing
the witches aside with furious blows, coughing and suffocating in the
fumes, her empty, craving arms sought the child and found it--too
late! A sigh, a struggle, and the demon, or angel of life, had fled
forever.
Smarting and half blind with the foul smoke, Veru's eyes failed to see
the tall figure half hidden in the corner; but her voice seemed to
pierce him through and through.
"I gave her to Guneshwa! Where is he?"
Then, as the full extent of the result came home to her, shriek after
shriek rent the air, and she fell into one of the violent hysterical
fits so common among Indian women of all classes.
"The devil hath entered into _her_," said her mother-in-law, bitterly;
so the turmeric and red pepper came in handy.
Gunesh Chund, torn by a vague remorse, and uncertain what to think,
found his refuge in the dream-compeller. But while he dreamed under
the stars, on the roof that rose like a watch-tower above the village,
and Veru lay in the unconsciousness of exhaustion below, a strange,
ghastly scene was enacted in the outer court-yard, where the old women
flitted about with tiny oil lamps in their hands. Little Nihali,
dressed in her fine clothes, with bandy legs straightened and
struggling arms at rest, lay stiff on the string stool, with each tiny
palm clenched over a ball of raw sugar, and miniature cards of
cotton-wool, such as women prepare for their spinning, between each
finger. So armed with all female attractions, the sugar symbolizing
sweetness to a lover, the cotton diligence as a wife, Nihali was
ready, like a true woman, to sacrifice herself unconditionally in
order to bring sons to the hearth.
"Veru, of course, would not hear of this," said the stern grandmother
to her cronies, "and Guneshwa is fairly bewitched by her obstinacy.
Nevertheless, the opportunity shall not slip; for if the omens are
bad, I must give him another wife without delay."
So, in the darkest of the night, before the jackal's last cry heralded
the dawn, the three women slipped through the deserted streets. No
fear was on their faces, no huddling together or whispering; straight
in solemn order, as to a sacred duty, went the little procession,
headed by the tall, gaunt grandmother, bearing the dead baby in her
arms.
Past the still, shining pools of water girdling the village; beyond
the thorn enclosures; through the fields of wheat, till the village
common-land, a stretch of bare mud and low, sparse bushes, lay dim and
desolate around them.
"'Tis the nick of time," said one of the cronies, pointing to a grey
shadow slinking away from their steps; "now may the Great One send a
good omen!"
In an open spot surrounded by bushes Gunesh Chund's mother paused and
looked around.
"Here," she whispered, and the others nodded.
She stooped to lay the dead child on the ground, carefully placing it
so that the feet were from the village; then raising herself to her
full height, she stretched her right hand towards the horizon, as if
pointing out a road, repeating in a wild chant echoed by those behind
her:
"Thus we drive you forth, O daughter!
Come not back, but send a brother."
Swift and silent as they had come, they made their way back to the
village, leaving the dead baby alone, unwatched. For a while the night
was still; then soft pattering feet crept round Nihali, and fierce
eyes glared on her from the bushes; but Death held her in his arms
secure, and fear was over forever.
"Hist!" cried the retreating women, as the sobbing wail of the jackal,
beginning with a faint whine, rose louder and louder, till each bush
and brake seemed to give a voice to swell the horrid chorus.
They waited listening.
"Now may the omen be good!" said one.
"The dawn will show," replied the grandmother, calmly. "I will wait
here; go you home to bed."
But when the rising sun brought sufficient light to see withal, her
eager eyes could find no certain indication on which to build either
hope or fear. Marks there were, and plenty, showing where the beasts
had fought, but no broad track of dragging, either away from or
towards the village, conveying Nihali's last message to her friends.
Had she gone over the edge of the world seeking for the long-sought
son? Or had she come back to haunt the hearth with her unwelcome
presence? Who could tell?
"Everything goes wrong nowadays," muttered the discontented old woman.
"Even the omens fail! 'Tis all the fault of the great Queen and her
new-fangled notions."
IV.
The next three months brought Gunesh Chund many an uneasy hour. Even
when, driven to bay by his mother's entreaties to allow her to look
for a new wife, he confessed his promise to wait a year, he gained no
respite from her reproaches, but rather enhanced their venom by her
contempt for his weakness. What was he, to set himself above the
wisdom of his fathers? What was the reading-writing woman, that she
should run counter to the traditions which held the first duty of a
Hindu wife was to be that of bringing a son to the hearth? He had no
answer save a dull consciousness that somehow he was not quite as his
fathers. They, for instance, had calmly acquiesced in such customs as
the exposure of the dead child to the jackals; while, despite his
familiarity with the idea, its practice had filled him with aversion.
Honest as he was by nature, he never regretted the deceit which sent
Veru, after she recovered from the illness following on the shock of
Nihali's death, to cool a little grave[3] by the burning-ground with
her tears and offerings.
---------------------
[Footnote 3: Female children are not worth the expense of burning.]
---------------------
"'Twill only make her ill again to know what thou hast done," he had
said to his mother, with a decision new to him. "Silence will be the
wisest for thee also, since in this I am on her side."
As for the casting out of the demon which had hurried on the
inevitable end, Veru always maintained to her mother-in-law that it
partook of the nature of murder; but with her usual shrewdness she
exonerated Gunesh Chund from blame. For this he was grateful, though
his mind was by no means made up as to the rights and wrongs of the
question.
From this and many another problem he took refuge in the fields. The
fierce dry winds of summer blew with scorching heat, bringing with
them the necessity for a ceaseless watering of the crops. Many and
many a silent, peaceful hour he spent in the forked seat behind the
oxen, half asleep, half awake; while the well-wheel circled round he
circled round the wheel, and the great world circled round beyond him.
Whether it span swift or slow he knew not and he cared not.
Many an hour, too, he spent resting, smoking and talking, under the
shade of the one big mulberry-tree, while the greybeards wheezed out
their mouldy proverbs, and the lads listened with their mouths full of
the overripe dead-sweet fruit. A kindly, honest crew; mayhap not far
above the circling bullocks in mind or ambitions, but for the most
part without an ungenerous thought or unfriendly wish.
Or he would take his pipe down to the village _dharmsala_, where
strangers found a lodging and the inhabitants a debating club; but
here the goad of Fate hit keenly at times when the talk fell on the
coming settlement, and Kishnu's people would condole with him in
covert sneers. For Gunesh Chund had been accustomed, ever since his
father died, to have the first and last word in that assembly of
elders, and even his gentle self-depreciation could not fail to feel a
certain loss of authority. One night, after Kishnu's husband, his own
cousin, backed by some friends, had openly derided his opinion, and
talked big about changes in the future, Gunesh sat on longer than was
his wont among the elder men. They had been his father's friends, and
he turned to them instinctively for support. Yet as they sat, solemnly
crouched up on the high wooden bench which filled the rudely carved
veranda from end to end, no voice came from the darkness where they
showed grey and shadowy in their white drapery; almost formless, save
when every now and again a more vigorous pull at a pipe fanned the
embers in it to a glow, which lit up the lean, high-featured faces and
wrinkled hands.
And Gunesh, too, remained silent and perturbed, knowing well what was
in their thoughts. It was a relief when the hubble-bubble of the pipes
dropped into insignificance before a speech summoned up by neighbourly
nods and nudges. It came from the patriarch, whose palsied hand shook
as he stretched it forward.
"Listen, O Guneshwa, the _lumberdar_. Thy grandfather and I played
together as boys in the house of my father and his. But his father was
the _lumberdar_, and mine but an elder. If the seed of strife springs
in the village, whose task is it to root it out? Answer me, ye who
hear me!"
A murmur of approbation ran round the assembly, whereat the patriarch
went on in a louder key.
"If there be young, untutored cattle in the herd, whose duty is it to
see they do not gore the old? Answer ye who hear me!"
But Gunesh Chund, knowing of old the length to which this system of
exhortation could be extended, broke in quickly:
"Granted that 'tis my task, wouldst thou have me root out mine own
family?"
"Nay!" retorted the elder, laughing in proud anticipation of his own
joke, "I would have thee plant some more of the same stock.--Is it not
so, my brothers?"
This time a wheezy chuckle of assent came from the darkness, followed
by a fresh voice:
"A man without a son hath one life; a man rejoicing in a son hath
two."
Then another took up the parable.
"Aye! and four hands to boot, wherewith to root out weeds."
"The hundredfold wheat hath more stems than one," quoth a third.
"And a toddling child can drive bullocks," put in a fourth.
So in solemn adage ran the talk, with many a weighty pause, and many a
self-complacent wag of the head when the ball of ancient wit had been
successfully passed to the next neighbour.
Accustomed as he was to this style of reasoning, each remark was a
fresh tap driving the nail of conviction into Gunesh Chund's slow
brain. As he stood on the roof that night, whence he could see the
horizon strike the sky in one unbroken circle, a keen desire to live
as his fathers had lived excluded all other thoughts. Here was his
world; here lay his duty.
"Thou canst choose a wife for me if thou wiliest," he said sheepishly
to his mother, when, in the early dawn, he found her already at work,
while Veru lay abed with some ache or pain.
"O my son! O Guneshwa!" cried the old woman, flinging her arms
around his neck with unwonted tenderness, and with tears of joy in her
bright old eyes. "I will find thee a pearl and paragon. With a skin
wheat-coloured, and--"
"Nay, mother," interrupted the big man, still more sheepishly, "an'
she please thee, and have a soft tongue, that is all I care for. And,
mother, say no word to Veru yet. There is time; and mayhap thou wilt
not find a wife soon."
His mother laughed scornfully.
"Not find one to marry the _lumberdar!_ such a fine, straight man as
thou art, Guneshwa. Why, they will come in crowds! Nay, be not so
modest; that is the girl's part, not the man's. Nevertheless, as thou
sayst, 'tis time enough to tell Veru when all things are settled.
There is but one woman needed in a marriage."