one's self speak in this chattering place."
They sat down on the topmost step of the low flight leading to the
tomb. The heat of the sun was over, but a scorching air struck up from
the bricks, making Suttu fan herself with the corner of her veil. No
wonder men coveted her, thought her companion, eying her askance. She
grew handsomer every day.
"Suttu," he began, taking the plunge boldly, "peace is better than
war. Give me half the gold, and I am content. Let it stay in the
family, Suttu."
"Whose family--mine or thine?" she asked, scornfully.
"'Tis the same. Lo, is not Murghub thy brother, since he is thy
mother's son, though he be but a poor natural?"
"Lay not that to her charge," retorted Suttu, flippantly. "She made no
mistake in me."
Hussan coughed down his impatience. "Well, well, I care not. I came
not to chop words. It is the gold, Suttu! I mean to have some of it."
"What gold? I know of none. I have seen none."
"Then have I! See!" He felt in an innermost pocket, and showed her,
lying in his palm, a broad gold-piece. "They make not such pieces
nowadays. Where that came from there are more."
She turned it over and over in her long, brown fingers. "Aye, 'tis
old. Didst steal it from him, then?" A backward toss of the head
indicated her meaning.
"Nay, he gave it."
"Wherefore?"
"For thee, Suttu, when thou wast a child. Give it me back. Stop! what
dost thou?"
"This," she cried, shrilly, seizing his clutching hand by the wrist
in a grasp firm as a man's, while in sheer bravado she held the coin
high above her head. "I will give it back to the old man, and see
what he thinks of thee for keeping it. What! wouldst fight for one
gold-piece, fool, and lose the chance of lakhs by my death? Yea, yea,
I know. Thou art not my heir in death, though thou mayst have hold on
me alive. Hands off, or I will fight too! And Shahbash comes to his
supper. He is a devil when hungry!"
Her tone was still mocking, the grasp on his wrist firm but not
straining. Her temper in control as yet, but she meant mischief, if
mischief was to be; and for the life of him Hussan could not help
admiring her.
"Thou art a she-devil," he said, sulkily--"a she-devil, and no woman."
"I bore a son to your son, anyhow," she retorted quickly, and her
frown warned him that he had gone too far.
"If thou wilt but listen--"
"Not till I have laid this offering in the saint's hand," she
interrupted imperially, with a gesture of disdain. Hussan kicked his
heels savagely as she marched over the platform and entered the tomb.
He could see her stoop and lay the coin in the indifferent palm
resting beside the still body. She came back much the better for this
serio-comic interlude, for her dramatic instincts were strong, and she
played her part of independence vigorously.
"Well," she began, quite graciously, settling herself down on the step
beside her father-in-law, "if peace be better than war, what price
hath peace?"
The accountant leaned over to her eagerly. "Halves--halves in
everything save liberty. That is all thine own."
For an instant she felt tempted. Then her natural waywardness
returned.
"And if I claim the whole?"
"War! And that to a woman without gold--"
She gave an irritating chuckle. "Bah! It may come any day. Shahbash
may find it; the old man may speak."
The very possibility of her words being true roused his anger. "Speak!
He will never speak again."
A rattle behind made them both turn with the alertness of those who
live among snakes. Suttu was on her feet in a second without a cry.
The accountant let loose a yell of dismay, and in his recoil rolled
back a step or two, where he lay clutching at the bricks wildly. For
the old saint was sitting up on his bed waggling his bald head over
the coin; he could not have looked more ghastly had he risen from the
dead.
The great moment was upon them!
This thought came first to both spectators; and they were too
uncultured to conceal it.
"Tell us where!" cried Suttu, as she stood.
"Yea, tell us ere you die!" echoed the accountant as he lay.
Not a very warm welcome back to life, but the old man, though he
raised his head at the cry, understood nothing. The dim eyes passed
the covetous faces and rested on the familiar landscape darkening
beyond the door of his tomb. Then the nerveless hand slipped from its
resting-place on his knee--slipped, slipped, till with a clink, and a
roll, and a rattle, given back a thousand-fold by the dome, the coin
fell upon the stone floor.
"Gone!" he whispered, "gone--yea, gone forever!"
But the look of life in his face had carried Suttu back to her
childhood, and her arms were already round the failing figure, as she
turned such fierce forbidding on her companion that he shrank back
silent.
"It is the last chance!" he whispered, after a time.
"I care not."
Suddenly the bald head fell back on Suttu's breast.
The chance was over.
They sat all through the night waiting for a sign, and none came.
Before the dawn broke, the old saint and his secret had gone together
into the darkness.
Hussan, as he walked cityward, felt that Fate had done him a good as
well as an ill turn. He had made no compact with Suttu, and, now that
the grandfather was out of the way, he could sue for guardianship at
once, and unmask a battery he had been keeping in reserve.
And Shahbash, disconsolate over the cold curry he had actually
forgotten to eat in the hope of hearing his old master speak once
more, made gruesome faces over his coming task. The gold, for sure,
was not hidden under Deen Ali's roly-poly, so he would have to find a
resting-place in it for the last incumbent without greed of gain to
beguile his labour.
Only Suttu did not think of the future, but of the past, when the old
man had been her willing slave.
III.
The dates were ripe. Great drooping bunches of them hung under the
swaying palm-leaves--rose-pink and purple-black, yellow and brown,
many-tinted like some rare agate. Shahbash gorged himself on the
sickly-sweet fruit, and every one, far and near, grew visibly fatter.
But Deen Ali's Arabian dates were too valuable for home consumption,
and Suttu only awaited the new moon in order to summon the pluckers
and driers to prepare the fruit for market. Shahbash, with a sigh at
the shortness of opportunity, ate all the more and thought of little
else.
Yet the four weeks since the saint's death had not been uneventful.
The Kazi's son and the accountant had joined issue in their desire to
see Suttu worsted. As yet, however, there had been no overt act. To
begin with, the native of India does nothing in a hurry. In addition,
none gauges better than he the indisputable advantage of an old lie
over a new one. It is like port wine depositing a crust for itself out
of its own sediment. Finally, even a false claim acquires dignity by
being preferred deliberately, moderately. All these considerations had
coincided towards inaction--as yet.
But a day or two before the new moon matters changed. Suttu, coming at
dawn from her hut, saw a sight which literally took her breath away.
Three of the tallest stems in the nearest clump of palms were swaying
under the weight of men clinging to them by clamps and a rope passed
round their waists. Below, the freshly gathered fruit lay in heaps
under the fingers of women busy in sorting it and carrying it in
baskets to a drying enclosure already fenced in by hedges of plaited
leaves. In a word, date-picking was in full swing. Had she by chance
given the orders in her sleep?
Incredulous of her own sight, she roused Shahbash, who still lay
snoring on the raised platform of the tomb.
He was on his feet in a moment, and shouting "Thieves!" loudly as the
only explanation, swung himself down like a monkey, and ran
gesticulating with windmill arms towards the trees. His ugliness, even
when familiar, was phenomenal; seen by the date-pickers, who as usual
were strangers employed by a big contractor, it appeared supernatural;
and the women, taking him to be nothing more nor less than the demon
in charge of the grove, flung down their baskets and fled, screaming.
The men would doubtless have followed their example, had it been
possible; but, rather than run the gantlet of the dancing, yelling
creature below, they dug their clamps tighter and held on in mortal
terror of what would happen next.
Suttu's more tardy appearance led to an explanation; from which it
appeared that the pickers had been sent by a contractor, who had
formally bought the crop from one Hussan the accountant.
"Leave them to me, _mai_ Suttu!" shrieked Shahbash, in an ecstasy of
rage over this calm appropriation. "Lo, I will give them a crop of
blows if they come down. If not, let them starve and drop like bats in
the cold. I am in no hurry." He squatted himself on the matting and
helped himself to the gathered dates with both hands. But Suttu saw
further than the immediate present, and knew a protest must be raised,
and that quickly. She turned at once to that confidence in the power
of personal appeal which, thank Heaven, still lingers in India,
despite Western attempts to strangle it with red tape and smother it
with sealing-wax.
"Yea, watch thou," she cried, "while I go to the big _sahib's_ house
and cry for justice. He listens to the poor."
"_Wah! wah!_" assented the clingers, "but see us safe first, O
mother!"
"Let them be," said Shahbash, confidentially, "else they may make away
with the dates they have picked. Lo, they are safer there till the
police come."
So there they clung, while the _fakeerni_, her indignation increasing
at every swinging stride, made her way to the deputy-commissioner's
bungalow.
He was a small, fair English lad, put in charge--with many
instructions to telegraph to headquarters if he saw signs of the
millennium or another mutiny--during the absence on three weeks' leave
of a senior man. He was just mounting his polo pony in order to keep
his hand in by chivying a ball round a stick, when wronged womanhood
appeared and flung out a pair of remarkably beautiful arms for
justice. Perhaps the fact that the complainant was superbly handsome
and struck a most impressive attitude had something to do with the
readiness with which he turned to the red-coated orderlies for a
translation of her _patois_ petition.
"'Tis Suttu, the _fakeerni_, and she comes to tell the Protector of
the Poor that contractors are feloniously picking her dates."
"Send and stop 'em. And, and--what the deuce is the right thing to do.
Oh, yes. Tell the police to report as usual." Then, as he rode off, he
nodded affably to Suttu. "Take comfort, mother; I'll see to it."
He had been swished at Harrow quite an incredibly short time before,
but he did the part of Providence neatly, while men for whom he had
fagged were enjoying the inestimable privilege of sitting on a
vestry--or the knife-board of an omnibus conveying them citywards to
act as copying-machines for the term of their natural lives.
Suttu's apparent triumph, however, dwindled in Shahbash's eyes to
ignominious defeat when the police refused permission for any one to
pick the dates until the petition of Hussan for the land on behalf of
his son Murghub should be decided.
"What has that idiot to do with my land?" cried the _fakeerni_,
indignantly. "Lo, there is no drop of saint's blood in him. He is of
the second marriage."
The policeman sniggered. "I know not, mother! But this I hear, that
Hussan saith otherwise, and the Kazi is with him. And births and
marriages are ticklish things to date, if the Kazi be not friendly."
Suttu's heart throbbed. If the Kazi were indeed her only refuge, she
might have to face the storm in the open.
"O thou with the yellow trousers on thy legs, and wisdom in head and
heart," moaned Shahbash, "dost mean that these dates--Deen Ali's
famous dates--are to be food for parrots? while I----" He sat in the
sand, clasping his stomach, rocking backwards and forwards, a
ludicrous spectacle of woe; yet there was tragedy in the comedy.
That evening, when supper consisted of a few millet-cakes and a tray
of watery _pilu_-berries, which Suttu had gathered from the jungles,
he looked at the ripe dates overhead and felt that the hour of
apostasy had come. After the barmecidal feast he took his mattock and
went to the graveyard--not to dig, but solemnly to consider which of
Suttu's two enemies should have his services. Dawn found him returning
from the Kazi's house, with the black bottle full of rum, and the
remains of a perfect feast of _bakkar khana_ tied up in a
handkerchief--both of which he hid carefully. All that day he did
nothing but vaunt the delights of a sheltered home combined with rich
food; especially to a woman--more especially to a woman who had
nothing to eat but _pilu_-berries and millet cakes! Suttu smiled at
him indulgently.
"Lo, God did not make me all stomach," she said. "I eat the air and
the sunshine; and I like to see the parrot people and the squirrel
people eat my dates, even if I can't."
Shahbash gave a rumble of despair, and bolstered up his uneasy
conscience by telling himself such views were unnatural, accursed.
"Is a grave ordered?" asked Suttu, in surprise, when, that evening
after supper, the dwarf shouldered his mattock. "Who is dead?"
"The saddler's son. Leastways he was so nigh his end to-day that his
people gave me warning it might be wanted. And like as not they would
eat oaths had it been bespoke in form, for they are keen to quarrel.
Aye, aye, if lies were satisfying, my belly wouldn't be empty."
He disappeared into the soft, balmy darkness, grumbling and
muttering--to come back circuitously to the hiding-place of the black
bottle. He would need that for consolation, aye, for forgetfulness,
before midnight brought the bribed watchmen to guard the date-grove.
Then sooner or later after that some one's cries---- Well, why not?
Suttu would not be the first woman who had been carried off to a rich
marriage, and had lived to tell the tale cheerfully. Still, the
thought of those cries when the Kazi and his friends came was
disturbing. Shahbash took a great pull at the bottle. It would bring
the fairy, and the fairy was unfailing consolation.
Meanwhile Suttu sat on the steps of the tomb, too much disturbed, by
this outrageous claim of Hussan's, for sleep. The grounds which he
would put forward were easy to guess. He and the Kazi would post-date
the second marriage, and ante-date Murghub, the idiot's birth, so as
to make him out her full brother. Besides, they had money for
evidence; she had none, and the neighbours were unfriendly. Her only
help lay in the Lord, and that, she knew, had nothing to do with a
court of justice. Still, it was as well to omit nothing which might be
of use; so she brought out the trestle-shaped stool, on which her
grandfather's copy of the Koran lay, and began to chant an additional
chapter of Holy Writ as a kind of bribe to favour. As she rocked
herself backward and forward, her lips busy with the long rhythm in
which the unknown words quite lost all identity, her mind was busy
over the time when she had learned it all with tears and trouble from
the saint, stern on this one point. How fond he had been of
divinations!--and Suttu paused in the middle of a pious apothegm to
recollections of her grandfather compiling date-names for his
neighbours--names, that is to say, which by the values of the
composing letters would give the date of birth. What if her own name,
Sutara Begum, was one of these, and the idiot's also? That would be
proof indeed! Perhaps Shahbash---- She had started to her feet, when
she remembered her chapter, in some trepidation, since half a bribe
was no bribe. She would just go on chanting till Shahbash came home.
It could do no harm, and might do good. Her round, full voice echoed
back from the tomb, and out into the date-palms.
"_Wah!_ if she were really, after all, a pious one, and not a bad
walker," said one of the watchers to the other. His companion clucked
a denial. "_Thchu!_ 'tis likely she knows the Kazi is to be here
to-night. That is woman's way."
Suttu chanted and chanted till she grew hoarse. Then she stood up and
listened. The night was still and silent. Not even the distant thud of
the mattock, so Shahbash must be on his way back. She waited with the
little oil-lamp in her hand, eager for her question. Then impatience
gained the mastery, and still with the oil-cresset in her hand--for
the new moon gave little light, and snakes were common--she set off
swiftly through the palms towards the cemetery.
"Shahbash!" she cried, but nothing stirred or answered as she picked
her way through the short graves. Suddenly she was brought up sharply
by something at her feet--something she had deemed another grave. It
was the dwarf stretched fast asleep on a white sheet. His grey hair
was twined with jasmine blossoms, and a black bottle lay empty by his
side. He had been dancing to amuse his fairy. That was no uncommon
affair; but whence had he got the inspiration, and the greasy remnants
of a feast which the light of the lamp disclosed? What villainy had he
been bribed to commit? Something, she felt sure, even if it were
nothing more serious than a failure to fulfil the duties of her
freehold, by having Deen Ali's bed ready for the saddler's son. If it
were that! She seized the shovel, and swinging it over her head
brought it down on the ground, where Shahbash had outlined a grave,
with a thud which set her arms tingling. The soil was hard, indeed,
and surely that was twelve o'clock chiming from the court gong! Not
much time left; but softer spots were to be found than the one
Shahbash had chosen. She took up the oil-cresset again and wandered
round to the extreme edge of the graveyard where it merged into the
sandier common.
Thud! thud! The strokes of the mattock echoing through the night made
the Kazi's son smile as, about an hour after midnight, he crept alone
to the tomb. A man who is the prey of a purely animal passion does not
have his ears boxed for nothing, and his idea of revenge went further
than marriage. No one would heed Suttu's cries for help this time, and
the watchers were in his pay.
Thud! thud! Suttu's respect for her henchman increased at every
stroke. She was well into the grave by this time, digging round and
round methodically, though she ached all over. Yet, if she died of it,
that grave should be ready. What was that? Metal on metal! The
surprise sent a tingle all through her. Then she was down on hands and
knees, groping in the loosened soil.
Yes, it was the treasure at last, and no one, no soul alive, except
herself, must know of it. She looked round hastily into the darkness
and silence. There was no fear of interruption now; there might be
afterwards. Her best plan was to finish the grave, so as to obliterate
all trace of the spot whence she had taken that heavy brass pot, and
then, but not till then, to go home quietly. The next instant the thud
of the mattock began again. A lucky decision; for the Kazi's son,
surprised at finding Suttu absent, was beginning to suspect treachery
from the silence, when the digging recommenced. Shahbash, then, meant
to keep faith, and not seek safety in flight. But Suttu? As the
spoiler sat beside the friendly watchman he asked himself if the lies
he himself had circulated so diligently about the religious were true,
and she had an assignation elsewhere. He gnashed his teeth over the
thought and his own rejection.
"A step, my lord! it was a step!" whispered one of the guardians, and
the Kazi's son crept towards the hut. He had not entered it before,
being assured it was empty; but now, thinking Suttu might have seen
him and slipped into the darkness for safety, he felt his way through
the door and so on by the wall.
Then a yell burst from him--a cry once heard never to be forgotten:
"Snake! snake!"
The watchmen heard it and came slowly, feeling their dark way with
sticks, lest where one snake was there might be two. Suttu heard it
also, and, lamp in hand, ran back to the hut, knowing that friend or
foe was in deadly peril.
Something huddled up, writhing, moaning, clasping one hand with the
other, shapeless, convulsed by fear, lay upon the ground--something
that flung itself before her and yelled for a charm--the saint's
charm--for mercy--for help--for anything.
"Thou!" she cried, "thou! What dost here?"
She knew well enough, and she thrust him back savagely.
"Never mind that now, mother," whimpered one of the men. "Give him the
charm. Sure God gave such to the saints for all men, and all men are
sinners."
"For men--not for dogs! Go, hound--go and die! I have no charm for
thee."
The wretched creature, struggling from the hands of the watchmen, who
strove to set him on his feet, caught her by the ankle. "Save me! save
me, to be thy friend! I know--I can save--I--"
He sank down helpless, foaming at the mouth from abject fear.
Suttu paused. There was something in that view of the case. If
anything could be done, if by chance-- By the light of the lamp she
examined the bitten finger closely, and an odd look came to her face.
"It was near the door, breast-high by the sticks of the thatch thou
wast bitten," she said, as she hastily concealed the wound under a
bandage.
"Yea, yea, thou knowest! The charm, mother Suttu, the charm! I swear
to be thy friend!"
The _fakeerni_ looked contemptuously at her writhing lover. "Swear by
thy son's head, fool! naught else will satisfy me!"
When the only oath a native will not break had been pronounced, Suttu
stood up with a laugh.
"The charm is worked, Mir Sahib. Thou wilt not die of that bite." Then
she checked herself, and with the same odd look on her face assumed a
graver tone. "Lo, I will work the charm. As for thee--go home, swift
as thou canst. Call the barber, let him bleed thee to faintness. Take
_kala dana_[11] and sulphur to the full. Eat naught for two days, live
righteous, and look not on the bite for a month. Then give a hundred
rupees to the saint's shrine."
---------------------
[Footnote 11: Ipomea seeds.]
---------------------
"'Tis all right, master," whispered one of the men. "There is no fear
of the bargain when payment follows cure. Lo, thou art better already,
and by this thou shouldst have been worse, had not the charm worked.
Hurry, hurry, lest harm come from disobedience!"
When they were quite out of sight and hearing, Suttu took the lamp,
went to the door of the hut and chirruped. From a hole in the wall a
pair of bright eyes looked out.
"The Brahmans say true," she chuckled, "and Ram befriends those who
befriend his favourite. Shahbash would have had me tear the squirrel's
nest down, but I love the chattering things."
She had little time, however, to spare for amusement at her own trick.
The grave had to be completed, the treasure brought home by dawn. Her
arms ached worse than ever from their short rest, and there was a grey
glimmer in the east, before she judged that her work would pass
muster. Then she removed all Shahbash's belongings to the side of the
grave, leaving him still in a drunken sleep upon the bare ground.
Finally, lifting the brass pot, which was carefully luted over with
hard clay, she carried it to the hut, shut the door, and by the
growing light through the chinks began to open up her treasure.
The pot was full of farthings--nothing but farthings. She sat and
looked at them hopelessly. What did it mean? Why should any one take
the trouble to bury farthings? The puzzle was beyond her, and when a
gleam of real sun warned her that time was passing, she hid the pot
under a pile of brushwood, and stepped out with a feeling of relief
into the open air. The world was ablaze with the clear, uncompromising
light of an Indian morning. The parrots were wheeling round the blue
dome, and a squirrel sat on the top of the thatch chirping over a date
stolen from the disputed crop.
Suttu thought of the Kazi's son physicked, bled, and hungry. Her laugh
echoed out among the palms, and she felt more comforted than when, the
night before, she had sought solace in chanting.
IV.