hospital they found the native assistant volubly apologetic. He had
seemed so content, not to say weak, that they had left him alone while
busy over an accident. Half an hour ago they had missed him from his
cot. "Doubtless delirium had supervened with acerbation of fever; but
since peons were out in all directions, by the blessing of God--"
"Come on, doctor," said Dada, impatiently interrupting the flow of
words.
He was there, face down on the grass, and the squirrels were playing
over his dead body and searching for crumbs.
"No!" said Dada, when the coolies came with a string bed again. "Bring
a spade or two. I'm going to bury him here."
The doctor, having religious views, looked doubtful. "I--I wonder if
it is consecrated ground?"
"I hope to God it is!" said Dada, fervently.
As they lingered at the gate when the work was over, a squirrel hung
head downward on the peepul-trunk, eying the new-turned earth
suspiciously. Then another with bushy tail erect came hopping
fearlessly over the grass--
"Cher ip--a pip--pip--pip!"
It was a challenge. The next moment they were chasing each other over
the cross of quamoclits.
Dada closed the gate softly.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he murmured to himself.
The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something
between a laugh and a sob.
But they neither of them said anything about the other _janowar_.
Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit
Shah Sujah's mouse.
SUTTU.
I.
A grove of date-palms; each cluster of carved stems set in its
feathery crown and base, separated from its neighbours by sandy
spaces, where the snakes sunned themselves right in the wayfarer's
path. Finding few victims, however; for the _karait_, stretched out
like a blue whip-lash, curved back to the prickly cover at the distant
step, and though the dusk-coloured vipers tied in true-lovers' knots
held their ground, their evil temper gave warning of their presence as
scale rustled on scale in the angry sliding of the watchful coil.
Day and night the sweeping fringes overhead swayed softly, even when
no breath stirred the tangle below. But now, when the coming of dawn
sent that curious whisper of wind through the world, as if warning it
of what the sun may disclose, the leaves tossed their long arms
wildly.
A stretch of level land curved inward to the palm-grove; outward till
it merged on the village common with its grey-spined caper-bushes set
with coral buds. In the distance, shadowy in the half light, was a
native town, flat-roofed against the sky. Close at hand an open grave,
with a man and woman standing beside it. A queer couple. The old man,
dwarfed to distortion, grotesquely ugly; the woman young, straight as
a palm, supremely handsome.
"Lo, they come, Shahbash!" she said, in a bold, mellow voice which
fitted her appearance. As she shaded her eyes with her hand, the
coarse madder veil she wore fell from her broad shoulders as if cut in
stone.
"_Wah illah!_ Thou hast sight to boast of, Mother Suttu," replied her
companion. She might have been his daughter in age, but he used the
title of respect due to all decent women from one not of their own
blood.
"Yea, 'tis true," she echoed, carelessly. "The Potter's hand slipped
not when he made me. I have naught to bring against him." It was
perhaps a heartless truism, considering her company.
But then Shahbash was bucklered against bitter thoughts by an
ingenious theory accounting for his own ill looks. A fairy, he held,
had fallen in love with him as a babe, when (as might be augured from
his name, which meant 'Well done! Bravo!') he must have been possessed
of extraordinary beauty. Her jealous determination to keep his
perfections to herself had attained its object in roundabout fashion,
by preventing the eyes of others seeing him as he really was. Hence
the distortion lay with them.
"I would thine eyes were as sharp for the future as they are for the
present," he said, thoughtfully, leaning on his adze-like shovel.
"'Twere better they were sharp enough to see through dust," she
answered, smiling broadly into the grave at her feet. "So thou didst
not find it after all, Shahbash."
"Not a cowrie, not a _dumri!_ And I swear 'tis into the tenth dozen of
graves I have dug--with texts of the holy Koran pouring from me the
while without stint. Good sound texts, hard as melted solder on a
body's teeth. And to no good, except to pave a blessed bed for another
sinner. For they pay worse and worse, _mai_ Suttu. When old Feroz
Shah buried his son, last week, he left but a rupee's worth of clothes
on the corpse for perquisite. Look you! If I take not the very
winding-sheet which decency would leave e'en to the dead, thou and the
holy saint yonder will starve--to say naught of servant Shahbash, who
needs muscle to sow men in this hard soil."
He let his shovel fall on the hard ground to show how it echoed to the
clang.
Suttu laughed. "If dead men do not pay, there are the dates still.
They will ripen ere long."
"Aye, but how long can they be kept? If the saint dies without
speaking, the others will find their tongues. A woman needs gold--or a
man. Thou wilt have neither unless thou wilt give up the religious vow
and marry the Kazi's son. He is willing."
Suttu laughed.
"So are others that be not pock-marked and one eye to boot."
"_Tobah!_ And thou virtuous and a widow! Lo, he is a man, and beauty
is not safe for us. Was not I, Shahbash, the handsomest--"
She interrupted him remorselessly. "'Tis safe for me, anyhow. The
grandfather may rouse any day and tell me where the gold is hidden.
Once it is found, none will covet the graveyard."
Shahbash wrinkled his hideous face to an appalling frown.
"God knows! If not, then it is a case of digging graves all my life
till I get over-scant of breath for texts and mattock together. If
only the sickness would come, 'twould give more chance. For the fox of
a father-in-law will be claiming shares of treasure with thee if I dig
aught but graves. Lo! _mai_ Suttu, I tell thee, 'tis ghoul-like work.
I watch the old folk in the village, and my fingers itch to give them
a blessed bed in Deen Ali's yard. 'Tis destroying my soul. Thou must
marry, or I am damned!"
"Sure the fairy will make thee a paradise anywhere," laughed Suttu.
"Lo, they come! Is all prepared? Alms or no alms, Deen Ali's bed must
be ready for the faithful. 'Tis in the bond."
She spoke with a grave dignity quite apart from her previous manner.
"Would God they had put the alms in the bond likewise!" grumbled the
dwarf as he slid into the shallow grave to sweep some loosened soil
from the niche hollowed in the hard ground to one side for the
uncoffined tenant. Then he swung himself out again by his brawny arms
and strained his shortsighted eyes toward the advancing procession.
"'Tis well," he muttered, as a sudden braying of shawms, beating of
drums, and skirling of songs rent the still dawn. "At least they
remember that the burying of the old is as a bridal. Sure it may be
better than I feared, and they will not send the decent patriarch back
to his friends half naked."
It was an odd funeral. The bier, covered by a tissue-paper canopy,
swayed as it was borne shoulder-high at a slow trot. The crowd
laughed and sang. The streamers fluttered, flying round that still,
muslin-swathed form bound with tinsel. Only Suttu seemed in keeping
with it, as she stood forward welcoming it to Deen Ali's bed.
But the next instant, as she stepped aside to let it pass, a malicious
look of amusement was on her face as she returned the greeting of a
pock-marked man with one eye.
Then, her _role_ of hostess being over, she walked away to the
date-grove followed by admiring eyes. For Suttu, the _fakeerni_, if
somewhat outrageous, was distinctly attractive. That made her vow of
celibacy all the more unnatural.
She sat down on the edge of a back channel of the river, which, after
creeping tortuously in a deep, narrow bed, expanded here during the
rains to a broad, shallow lake, dotted by clumps of pillared palms,
beneath whose fringed crowns great bunches of fruit were ripening
fast. Each islet was reflected so clearly in the water that it needed
sharp eyes to see where reality ended and unreality began. Here and
there, showing where the perennial pools lay beneath the temporary
flood, stretched a green carpet of lotus-leaves, where the flowers
rose in varying height; the buds, still resting on the water; the
full-blown flowers flaunting between them and the mace-like stems on
which the hidden "jewel in the lotus" stood disclosed, while the
fallen petals floated like shells on the water, or lay piled up in
little pink heaps on the green carpet. A faint scent, as of bitter
almonds, perfumed the breeze which now and again ruffled the lake and
slid a fresh gift of rolling, sparkling water diamonds into the
leaf-cups. Beyond this was a golden sunrise, cloudless, serene.
Suttu, seated on the edge of grass which grew just as far as the
moisture filtered through the sand, and no farther, nodded at the
scene approvingly. The Potter had made no mistake here either; she
liked it, liked her own freedom purchased by an easy vow. The idea of
giving it up in favour of another ten years or more of marriage in a
stifling city quarter was absurd.
A kingfisher flashed down into the water like a sapphire, and her
quick eyes followed it.
"_Shahbash!_" she cried, gleefully, as the bird came up with a bar of
silver in its purple bill.
"'Tis not Shahbash," said a voice behind her. "'Tis I, come to ask--"
She leaped to her feet, confronting the Kazi's son in real wrath.
"So! Will not even death keep thy mind from marriage? Why hast crept
here to see me alone? 'Tis not decent--far worse, 'tis not even
pleasant. Have I not told thee--aye, and others--that I am a pious
widow?" She drew a corner of her veil across her eyes and hid the
suggestion of a smile under the semblance of tears. "A pious widow
vowed to the sonless shrine of my ancestors."
The Kazi's son drew a step nearer.
"Thou art too young and too well favoured for a religious. Every one
says so," he began.
"The Lord looks not at beauty, Mir Sahib," retorted Suttu, gravely;
"and 'tis well for some of us that it is so."
"A sharp weapon is no weapon against enemies, and thou hast enemies.
My house would protect you. Think! I am the Kazi's son."
"Lo, why should I forget my lord's merit?" smiled Suttu, sweetly. "He
has not so many."
He bit his lip. Repartee of that sort he knew, but not from the lips
of reputable women. The whole affair had the intoxication of an
intrigue, and its defiance of conventionalities set his pulses
throbbing.
"Listen, O Suttu!" he said, curbing his passion. "Hussan, thy dead
husband's father, will claim the land when the saint dies, and God
knows how the case may go against a woman! Marry me, and I will gain
it, were thy father-in-law fifty times over the village accountant.
Hast heard the saying, 'Only the Kazi can fight the Putwari'?"
"Lo, if I came to thy house, there would be fighting enow to fill thy
stomach, without going to a neighbour."
She drew the coarse veil which she had slipped from her head back to
its place, with wide-spread arms, as she spoke; and the action
displayed the full vigour of her finely moulded form. He cursed her
bigness and boldness inwardly, but schooled himself to another and
more tender appeal.
"Why not, O Suttu? Lo, I am rich, I am young. I--I lie awake o' nights
thinking of it. Yea, I swear it! I get no good from my food. I love
you. If I died, the very houris in paradise would not tempt me.
"But I would make thy grave gladly, Mir sahib, and then may be thou
wouldst find rest."
It was too much. He seized her by the wrist and glared at her, every
evil instinct roused to fury. "Then I will buy thee. Thy father-in-law
has the right, for the saint is half dead already. Listen! I will buy
thee to be my slave. What dost say now?"
"That even slaves have naught to do with pockmarks and one eye." Her
free right hand came down on one cheek with a resounding slap, making
him stagger. Her left, thus released, followed suit on the other.
"Go!" she cried, "or I will make Shahbash yonder strangle thee with
his monkey arms. Go! And remember that Suttu, the _fakeerni_, hath
slapped thee in the face!"
The Kazi's son, entangled in the trail of his turban, which had fallen
off, caught sight of the gravedigger within call, and felt that his
chance was over. He stalked away, trying to look dignified as he wound
his head-dress on again, but conscious of a suppressed titter behind
him, making him grind his teeth and swear vengeance.
When he had gone, Suttu sat down again on the grass and slipped her
hands into the cool water. They tingled unpleasantly.
"Yonder beans look ripe," she murmured, "and they would eke out a
meal."
Five minutes after, her sleek black head was rising and falling, her
round arms gleaming in the overhead stroke which sent her straight to
a lily-field. A couple of moor-hens fled, leaving a rippling streak of
silver behind them. As she entered the leaf carpet it took in great
waves of water over the edges--waves which broke into dew-drops that
ran races with each other for first place in the leafy hollows.
The dragon-flies darted around her, timid but persistent; and myriads
of tiny insects, disturbed from the sweet stems, rose in clouds,
attracting the swift swooping of the bronze-winged fly-catchers.
Shabash was waiting for her on the bank as she came back wading, her
arms full of blown lotus, her track marked by drifting petals. As she
approached he flung a few yards of tinsel and muslin on the ground in
extravagant, theatrical disgust.
"That is all," he cried; "by the faith of my fathers, six ells of
false tinsel and four of twopenny muslin for digging a grave in
_kunker_[10] soil. God and his Prophet! why didst not send them to be
born Hindus? Then 'twould have taken ten rupees of fire-wood to save
them from being burned in hell. And last night, look you, I cut a
sleeping snake in two as I dug, and both ends fell at my toes. _Ari!_
A riddle indeed in the dark, which be head and which be tail? And I am
to go through such moments for six ells of tinsel and four of such
muslin. No, _mai_ Suttu. 'Tis the Kazi's son, or starvation."
---------------------
[Footnote 10: Nodulated limestone.]
---------------------
Suttu smiled as she stooped to wring the water from her scant
petticoat.
"Not so, Shahbash. The Kazi's son doth not like me. And lotus-beans
are good till the dates ripen. Then the gold! It may be in the next
grave."
He scratched his thick grey hair, on which he wore no turban,
doubtfully.
"God knows! Every full moon I stretch my sheet on the ground and dance
to please my fairy. Then when I fall into the trance I ask the old
question, 'Where is Deen Ali's gold?' But there is no answer in the
morning. Now, if the fairy cannot tell--"
Suttu laughed. "Dost not, may be, forget the answer? The black bottle
steals thy brains--"
'"Tis not the bottle," muttered Shahbash, sulkily, as he gathered up
his perquisites. "'Tis the fairy steals my brains. For sure there be
not rum enough in it nowadays--"
So they walked home to the mosque-like tomb in the date-grove, she
with her sheaf of lotus, he with his shovel and shroud.
II.
Suttu's great-great-grandfather had been a saint of the first water--a
double-distilled, above-proof performer of miracles; his holiness
being strong enough to stand two generations of dilution and still
leave spiritual distinction to his descendants. Yet the difference in
the saintship of Deen Ali, the original, and Inam Ali, the present
incumbent of the shrine, lay more in their surroundings than in
themselves. The former, according to tradition, had lived for ten
years in a trance, oblivious of all save the touch of a certain
prayer-carpet on his feet; a carpet brought from holy Mecca, which had
been used--again according to tradition--by the Prophet himself. Then
sight, speech, action, were restored to Deen Ali for a space, and
while earth and sky wore the glorious apparel of sunrise and sunset,
his soul came back in praise and prayer.
Inam Ali inherited the trance, but folk called it paralysis, and the
death in life yielded to carnal, not spiritual, food. Doubtless
physiologically it was quite as wonderful that twice a day, regularly
as clock-work, the half-dead organism should accept nourishment;
practically it was not so impressive.
But other things had changed too in the seventy-and-odd years since
Deen Ali had planted the Arabian date-stones he had also brought back
from holy Mecca in the land granted to his saintship. Curious holdings
these, burdened at times by quaint conditions in return for official
canonization; for in those days saintship paid. In this case the
offerings of the faithful had taken visible shape in the blue-tiled
tomb where Deen Ali's body lay under a stucco roly-poly twelve feet
long. Whether this length awarded to saintly tombs, which contrasts so
oddly with the curtness of those allowed to the laity, has reference
to the extent of piety, or whether some Mohammedan exemplar of old
really was of unusual stature, is a moot point. Certain it is that in
upper India, as elsewhere, the "unco guid" are tedious even when at
rest.
The blue-green dome of the saint's tomb, therefore, soared up into the
green-grey plumes of the palms, as a record of past munificence; and
round it the green-blue parrots circled and swept till the wearied eye
sought relief in the gold clusters of dates above and the gold sand
below.
Gold! If report said true, golden indeed with other records of
munificence. But where? That secret lay hid in Inam Ali's paralyzed
brain. He must have known; for, despite the slackness of modern
offerings, there had never been any want in the mud hovel hitched on
to the tomb; until Suttu, coming in one evening with her veil full of
dates, had found the old man quite unconscious on the saint's high
wooden bed, which still stood over the grave under the dome.
The news thrilled the adjoining township with brief enthusiasm. Then a
bustling Hindu assistant surgeon got wind of the case, and sanctity
vanished before science. From that day, several years past, matters
had gone from bad to worse. A railway appeared, reducing offerings to
the lowest ebb; for, as Shahbash declared with mingled truth and
tears, the pilgrims counted their third-class return tickets as
offerings to the shrine, and the traffic department charged dead
against charity in the extortionate fares for sheep, goats, and fowls.
On the other hand, the railway had certainly brought cholera three
years in succession--an unheard-of event--and that had increased the
chances of finding the gold in the digging of graves--graves, however,
for which the perquisites lessened month by month. That was due to the
village accountant's spite; spite born of family matters which went
back to the time when Suttu was born.
Inam Ali, briefly, had lived for six months in hopes that a posthumous
child of his only son would be an heir to the saintship; and in his
first disappointment had been only too glad to get rid of mother and
child, by the former's marriage to the accountant and the latter's
betrothal to her stepfather's son. After a time, however, he had
bought the child back, with bribes, to keep him company, and
thereinafter had spent years in spoiling her. Consequently, when the
inevitable fulfilment of the betrothal came round, Suttu was dragged
off to _zenana_ life, struggling like a wild animal. She failed,
however, to fulfil her duty of bringing a son to inherit, through her,
the date-palms and the hidden treasure; and after one baby, born when
she was thirteen, ceased its feeble efforts to live, she settled
down--well, as a leopardess might settle in its cage.
Ten years after, she paid her first visit to the cemetery, in order to
cool her newly buried husband's grave with decorous tears. She went
there calmly, and then as calmly refused to return. She had made up
her mind to become a religious, she said. Now this fell in with both
the old man's and her father-in-law's views. The former was willing,
as before, to pay for her companionship; and the latter, with an eye
to a future when he should have Suttu entirely under his control,
thought it as well she should keep in with her grandfather and the
hidden treasure. So a religious she became, somewhat to the scandal of
the neighbourhood. Then came the paralysis, leaving Hussan _minus_ his
monthly payment, and quite uncertain whether Suttu said truth when she
denied all knowledge of the hoard. In truth, the position was awkward.
The saint might recover speech, and then, if he found that Suttu had
been violently used, he might resent it and make away with the
treasure. If, however, by starving her out, Suttu could be induced to
break her vow and marry, Hussan could no doubt get himself appointed
guardian of the shrine, and so have an opportunity of searching where
he chose. The task was not a difficult one, since the people around
were easily led to believe that her ways and works were anything but
what a _fakeerni's_ should be. So the offerings grew less and less,
the complaints of mischance or neglect more frequent; yet still Suttu
held her head jauntily and laughed when, of an evening, she met her
father-in-law prowling around the graveyard. It had a fascination for
him; and often when his feet were not there, his finger was tracing
its outline on the village map. There, within that little space, lay
the treasure, and a horrible conjunction of a half-dead old man and a
very much alive young woman prevented him from getting hold of it. The
thought kept him from sleeping when there had been a death in the
village, and he knew Shahbash was digging and delving. And when he
slept he dreamed that the old saint sat up and spoke, but that no one
could hear a word he said. He did not know that Suttu and her henchman
had gone the crucial length of spreading the holy carpet Mecca-ways,
and setting the old saint's feet upon it, more than once, at sunrising
and sunsetting. In vain; the miracle would not work for gold; so they
had lifted him back again to the high wooden bed.
Shahbash was really losing his temper over his part of the business.
Lotus-beans for breakfast were all very well, but you could not dig
graves on lotus-beans. Besides, the black bottle was always empty.
"Lo, _mai_, I grow thin," he grumbled; "then the fairy will cease to
care for me, and that is an end. Women are not to be trusted."
As he set to work on a baby's grave, he went on grumbling and
muttering to himself. He had been her father's foster-brother, and she
was the apple of his eye. For all that, he must eat. Some day her
enemy would tempt him to treason when he ached with hunger, and who
could be faithful on an empty stomach? He blubbered at the thought of
his own betrayal.
Thus, on the evening of the day when Suttu slapped the Kazi's son,
matters were approaching a crisis all round; even Hussan, prowling
about the graveyard in the vague disquiet which beset him after every
fresh excavation of the soil, made up his mind to a bolder game. As he
picked his way through the short mud mounds, a sort of thrill shot up
his legs at the thought that he might be treading on gold; for the
hope of buried treasure takes possession of men, body and soul. He
found no one in the reed thatched-hut; but a savory smell of curried
beans from the fire-place showed that its mistress would soon be back
to supper. So he went over to the tomb where the saint lay on the
wooden bed under the dome, in which the faint breathing of the old man
swelled to a murmuring echo like a swarm of bees. Hussan stood beside
the bed, full of rage, malice, and greed. If he could only crack that
bald old noddle and pick out the kernel!
Suddenly the thought came that perhaps now--this moment or the
next--was the one appointed from all eternity in which speech would
return, and he stood petrified by expectation. Perhaps a call might
rouse the sleeping soul. He started as his own hoarse whisper grew to
a roar in the echoing dome. That should wake the dead. Then, as the
sound died ineffectually to silence, the desire to crack the old man's
skull at all costs returned. The kernel might take care of itself.
Something of this must have showed in his face, for Suttu, coming in
behind him, passed softly to the bed and raised a menacing hand. Only
for an instant. Then she sat down on the edge and laughed.
"Well! did he tell you?"
A brutal question; for the answer would be dinned into his ears by the
echo, and he knew it all too well already.