Assistant District Superintendent of Police, of the batsman a pleader
in the High Court. Practically the balance of progress was all in
favour of the latter. Coming from the house of a miserable merchant
whose monthly earnings barely touched a living wage of the poorest
description, he had risen far beyond his birthright, whereas Tom
Gordon, on his pay of two hundred a month, with poor promotion before
him, had, if anything, fallen from his. But discontent sat in the dark
eyes and cheerful acquiescence in the blue ones. Perhaps the owner of
the latter was a better appraiser of his own worth, for he knew he was
not clever; knew that though he was "jolly good" at this, he was not
"jolly good" at that. Not so Gunpat-Rai. Clever at school--the
cleverness of imitation, of memory--and gifted with a fluency of words
beyond even that of most of his class, he had spent the first years of
his young manhood in waiting for an appointment which never came. How
could it come when every school in India turns out dozens of applicants
as capable as he for every Government post from Cape Comorin to Holy
Himalaya? Yet resentment at this failure of the impossible ate into his
soul. So he had turned pleader, had drifted into the editing of a
native newspaper, a copy of which lay on Tom Gordon's office table as
he looked with kindly contempt at the man who sat opposite him. For,
though Gunpat-Rai had not turned out a second Ranji, the memory of the
old days when he had coached the Ilmpur school still lingered with the
Eton boy, and he had shaken hands as frankly as ever when Gunpat-Rai
had called to welcome him to his new district.
"I'll tell you what it is, Gunpat," continued Tom Gordon, "you
fellows don't know what anybody wants but yourselves. Now, take this
district--it's a very fair sample." He turned over the leaves of the
last Census report which lay on his table rapidly. "Hum--m--m, here we
are, Jahilabad, population 560,000 odd--240,000 Jat cultivators of the
soil, 35,000 Banyas, presumably moneylenders--literacy--let's take the
average for all India if you like--it tells enormously against my
argument, but it can stand it! Now think! At fifty-three per thousand
we have twenty-nine--let's say 30,000 men who can scrawl their names
and spell out a line or two in their own vernacular. How many of these
are put out of court by the 35,000 moneylenders? More than half, I'll
wager. There you are, you educated men, a negligible minority, taking
India as a whole. So why don't you speak for yourselves, not for the
country at large? Because you don't really mean anything, you don't
know what you want yourselves." Tom Gordon paused in this unusual
eloquence, and, with a laugh, turned to the handsome little fellow of
six whom Gunpat-Rai had shown off with pride as his eldest son.
"Jolly little chap," said the Assistant Superintendent irrelevantly. "I
suppose he's married?"
Gunpat-Rai flushed up under his dark skin as he had done five years
before at the cricket match.
"The women----" he began.
"Oh, I know!" interrupted the young Englishman. "'_Stri acchar_,' and
all that. But, I say, Gunpat! How the deuce are you going to govern
India if you can't even settle your womenkind? No, my dear fellow! I
haven't the faintest sympathy with you. You sail pretty near sedition
in this copy." Here he laid his hand on the blurred, blotched
broadsheet which called itself _The Star of Hope_. "But, by George! if
you jib it the least bit more, I shall have to run you in. So don't be
a fool. You're a good sort, Gunpat, and I shall never forget that
innings of yours--never! If you would only have stuck to it instead of
'seeking a post in white clothing' you might have been----"
He paused, unable to say what; and Gunpat-Rai, feeling a like
inability, the conversation ended uncomfortably.
And so it came to pass that not many more days afterwards, Tom
Gordon sat once more in that curious atmosphere of cocoanut-oil and
curry powder which is inseparable from Indian crowds, listening to
Gunpat-Rai's voice. But he sat disguised in one of the front benches of
the crowded hall, so that he had to look far back more than once to see
that his constables were all in evidence. For a notable agitator on
tour had stopped at the little town; and this was a meeting which must
be reported upon, since here was no audience composed of peacefully
seditious Bengâli clerks and irresponsible students, but of stalwart
Jats, discontented over some new, but as yet untried, scheme of
irrigation. Now, irrigation stands closer to the heart of a Jat that
does wife and children. What! was the Sirkar to deny the land its
drink?
The other speakers had been innocuous. Their very vehemence had passed
by the slumbering passions of the long-bearded Jats who listened to
them with ill-concealed yawns. But with Gunpat-Rai it was different. At
the first word Tom Gordon felt that he was in the presence of a born
orator. And yet--and yet--surely the words were vaguely familiar in
their import, if not in their sound?
"The crimes we charge against this alien Government of India," came the
liquid Indian voice, "are not lapses, defects, errors of common frailty
which we, brethren, as we know them in ourselves, can allow for. They
are no crimes that have not arisen from evil passions--passions which
it is criminal to harbour"--an iron mailed stick held by a burly farmer
fell with a clang as its owner shifted it to his right hand--"no
offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride,
insolence, ferocity, treachery, cruelty, malignity of temper----" Each
epithet seemed punctuated by a growing stir amongst the audience. "In
short, in nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral
principle, that does not manifest an inveterate blackness of heart."
Tom Gordon had it now! The Billingsgate he had confounded years ago, of
course--Burke's Billingsgate!
He had flung off his disguise and leapt to the dais in a second.
"Oh, hold your jaw! Do, there's a decent chap! Don't go spouting other
folks' abuse!" he cried.
But Gunpat-Rai was helpless before the sudden need for decision. "Dyed
ingrain with malice, vitiated----" he went on mechanically.
The young Assistant Superintendent of Police gave a sharp glance behind
him. What he saw there was not reassuring. "Oh! do shut up! Tell them
the meeting's over, or there'll be mischief."
"Corrupted, gangrened----"
"Constables," came the order keenly, "clear the room! For Heaven's
sake, Gunpat, don't get yourself into trouble!"
They were the last words Tom Gordon spoke. His hand slipped from
Gunpat-Rai's shoulder as he was struck full on the bare head from
behind by an iron-bound staff which crashed into his skull.
Even then the tyranny of words held Gunpat-Rai, though the suddenness
of the shock dislocated his sequence.
"Dyed ingrain, corrupted to the very core."
Then he stood staring at what lay before him, and a great silence--a
golden silence from words--came to him at last.
He only broke it once, when he was on trial. The court was full of his
friends, and on the dais sat Englishmen, so the conditions were nearly
the same as they had been years ago when the hot sunshine had slanted
from the Tipper windows at Ilmpur to lay broad squares on the cool
whitewash.
"I learnt it at school," he said dully; and then he began: "But the
crimes we charge against you----"
"Hush--h!" said the judge gravely. "We know what you learnt at school."
But that did not lessen the sentence.
THE FOOTSTEPS OF A DOG
She passed, smiling softly, though a vague trouble seemed to clutch at
her heart. She had found him asleep so often of late, and if the driver
slept, the oxen might well pause in their task of drawing water, and so
the fields which needed it so much be deprived for yet another day of
their life-giving draught. They were not, however, pausing now, at any
rate. Their slow circling brought her sleeping husband to Sarsuti's
eyes, and carried him away again, wheeling round by the well from whose
depths a stream of water splashed drowsily into a wooden trough and
then hurried away--a little ribbed ribbon of light--out of the shade of
the great banyan tree into the sun-saturated soil beyond where the
young millet was sprouting.
How cool it was, after her hot walk from the village! No wonder he
slept! She sat herself down beside the runnel of water where a jasmine
bush threw wild whips of leaf and blossom over the damp earth. There
was no need to wake him yet. The bullocks would not pause now that she
was there to make them do their work.
That was her task in life!--to make them do their work.
She sighed, and yet she smiled again, as the slow-circling oxen brought
her husband Prema almost to her feet once more. How handsome he was,
his bare head lying on the turban he had pressed into the service of a
pillow. And his slender limbs! How ingeniously he had curved them on
the forked seat so as to gain a comfortable resting-place! Trust Prema
to make himself and everyone else in the world comfortable! A sudden
leap of her heart sent the blood to dye her dark face still darker, as
she thought of the softness, the warmth, the colour he had brought into
her life.
How long had they been married? Ten years--a whole ten years, and there
was never a child yet. It was getting time. No! No! Not yet--not yet!
She need not look that in the face yet.
She rose suddenly as the wheeling oxen brought him to her once more,
and staying them with one swift word, bent over the sleeping man.
"Prem!" she said. "Prema! I am here." His arms were round her in an
instant, his lips on hers; for here, out in the shadow amongst the
sunshine, they were alone.
"Sarsuti! Wife!" he murmured drowsily, then with a laugh, shook his
long length and stood beside her, his arm still about her waist. Tall
as he was, she was almost as tall, a straight, upstanding Jatni woman
with eyebrows like a broad bar across her face.
But, as her dark eyes met his in passionate adoration, something in the
sight of his exceeding beauty smote her to the heart. The thought that
there was none to inherit it, the knowledge that if it passed it would
leave nothing behind it. It is a thought which has driven many an
Indian woman to take another woman by the hand and lead her home to be
a hand-maiden to the lord. It drove Sarsuti--after long weeks, nay,
months of thought--almost to speech.
"Prem!" she faltered, hiding her face on his breast,
"I have been thinking--thou needst a son--and----" But she could get no
further, partly because the words seemed to choke her, partly because
Prema, turning her face to his with his soft, supple hand, stopped her
mouth with kisses.
What was the use? What was the use, she asked herself fiercely,
thinking of such things when she loved him so? Some morning, aye! some
summer morning after a summer's night, she would rather make the
Dream-compeller send her to sleep, once and for all!--to sleep and
dreams of Prema and his love! Then he could marry again, and there
would be children to light up the old house, a son to light the funeral
pyre.
But now--no! Not yet!...
The sunshine filtering through the broad leaves dappled them with light
and shade; the oxen resting stood head down, nosing at the damp earth;
the water, ceasing to splash, ran silently more and more slowly on its
way, and all around them a yellow glare of heat hemmed them in
breathlessly. Yet here, at the well, the jasmine grew green, a big
datura lily, rejoicing in the shade, threw out its wide white blossoms,
and, looking down to the mirror-like pool of water into which the long,
unending circle of deftly-arranged earthen pots and ropes dipped, you
could see the tufts of maidenhair fern which came God knows whence.
They were like love in the heart--Heaven--sent!
"Thou wilt call at the Lala-_jee's_ this evening, Sarsuti," said Prema,
with a faint note of half-shamed uneasiness in his voice, as, his
midday meal of milk and hearth-cakes over, she prepared to go back. "He
deals more justly with thee than with me--may he be accursed, and may
the footsteps of a dog ..."
"S'st! Prema," she interrupted, "the Lala-_jee_ is no worse than his
kind; and we have asked so much--lately."
Yes! she thought as she trudged homewards, they had asked much, for
Prema had a lavish hand. Yet she would, of course, have him keep up his
position as head man of the village; the position that had been hers by
right as the only child of her father. Prema, her cousin, had gained it
through his marriage to her, by special favour of the Sirkar, in memory
of good service done in the Mutiny time by the old man. He had been a
better husbandman than Prema, and money had gone fast these few years
since he died, though she had tried to keep things as they had been.
Still, who could grudge Prema the handsomest yoke of oxen in the
country-side, the fleetest mare? And those mad experiments of his with
new ploughs, new seeds that the Huzoors spoke about! It was well to
keep to the soft side of the masters, no doubt, yet it should be done
discreetly--and when was Prema ever discreet? She almost laughed, even
while she stooped to let the water from an overflooded plot run into
the next by removing the clod which her husband had forgotten, thinking
of his indiscreetness--of the gifts he showered on her when he had
money in his pocket to pay for them; sometimes when he had not. Of
course, the Lala-_jee_ would listen to reason and lend more on the
coming crop--who could deny Prem anything?
But the Lala was curiously obdurate. He was an old man, who had backed
the luck of the village for three generations, and never had a dispute
with his creditors.
"See you, daughter," he said. "Prem for all he is head man and thy
husband, is but man, and there is none to come after him."
Her face darkened with a hot blush again.
"The land will be there," she replied, haughtily.
"Aye, but who will own it! Strangers, they say, from far away. I have
no dealings with strangers."
"There will be my share," she protested.
"Aye! but how wilt thou fare with strangers also, thou--childless
widow?" he asked.
Her hot anger flamed up. "Wait thou and see! Meanwhile, since thou art
afraid, take this," she tore off the solid gold bangle she wore, "'tis
worth fifty rupees at the veriest pawnshop--give me forty!"
"Nay," replied the bunnya, with spirit. "'Tis worth a good
seventy-five, though thy man--I'll warrant me--paid a hundred. So
seventy-five thou shalt have; but, look you, daughter--or, if thou
willest it, mother--keep Prem in leash, or a surety the footsteps of a
dog will show on his ashes."
She looked at him, startled. Curious how the phrase, born of a belief
that one can read the reward of the dead from the marks which show on
his funeral pyre, should crop up. First from Prem, regarding the
Lala-_jee_, next from the Lala-_jee_ concerning Prem. Was there any
truth in it, she wondered? She had the money, that was one comfort, and
Prema would be pleased. Then, when the Biluch mare foaled, and they
sold it as a yearling for the three hundred rupees Prem thought it
would fetch, she would tell him how she had pawned his gift; meanwhile,
a brass bracelet, to be had at the shop for a rupee, would serve to
deceive his eyes. But not the sharp ones of Veru, the young widow who
was the only other inhabitant of the wide courtyard with its slips of
arcaded rooms round about it, and great stacks of millet stalks, and
huge bee-hive stores of grain.
Her eyes were on it from the moment Sarsuti, sitting down above her on
the little raised mud dais, began to spin.
"Thou needst not stare so, girl," broke in Sarsuti, at last. "Yes! I
have pawned it. He needed money, and he is more to me than aught else
beside--more than thou, husbandless, can dream, child."
Veru--she was indeed but little more than a child, this virgin widow of
Sarsuti's half-brother, who had been born and died in his father's old
age--held her head lower over her wheel, and said nothing. Her widow's
shroud seemed to swallow her up. Yet in that Jat household she was
kindly enough treated, for Sarsuti's strong arms loved work, and she
had a great pity in her great soft heart for all unloved things. Here
was no question of shaven head or daily fasting. Veru simply led a
cloistered life, and did what share her strength allowed of the daily
work. Of late that had not been much; she had complained of fatigue,
and had sat all day spinning feverishly as if to make up for her
failure in other ways; for she was a sensitive little thing, ready to
cry at a word of blame.
So the evening passed by. Prema was not to be back from the well till
late, not, indeed, until the moon set; for the young millet had been
neglected somewhat, and even he was roused to the necessity for action.
Water it must have, or there would be no crop. Thus, as the sun set,
Sarsuti cooked the supper, reserving the best dough cakes, the choicest
morsels of the pickled carrots against her husband's return, and then,
being weary, lay down so as to freshen herself up to receive him as he
should be received. The night was hot, there was a restlessness in it
which found its way into her mind, and she lay awake for some time
thinking of what the Lala-_jee_ had said. Yes! It was time, it was
growing time for so many things. Yes! she must harden her heart and be
wise--the footsteps of the ...
Here she fell asleep.
When she woke, there was pitch darkness. The moon had set. What had
happened? Had Prema returned, and, full of kindliness as ever, seen she
was tired and so refrained from waking her? She put out her hand and
touched his bed, but he was not there. How late he was! And where was
Veru? Veru, who should have been watching for him.
"Veru! lazy child--art asleep?"
Her question came back to her unanswered; Veru, also, was not in the
wide courtyard. Where were they?
The very conjunction of her thought regarding them, woke in her a
sudden swift pang of jealousy.
Where were they?
A minute later, holding an oil cresset in her hand as a guard against
snakes, she was passing swiftly through the deserted village on her way
to the well. Prema might have fallen asleep--he might be asleep still.
The night was so dark, she held the lamp high above her head so as to
throw its light before her on the narrow edge of a pathway between the
flooded fields. It was so still, she could hear the faint sob made by
some deadly thing slipping from her coming into the water, over which a
wandering firefly would flash, revealing an inky glimmer between the
rising shoots of corn. Ahead, that massed shadow was the banyan tree.
The fireflies were thick there, thick as cressets at a bridal feast ...
If Prema slept--Yes! if he slept, to be awakened by a kiss.
Underneath the arching branches of the banyan tree it was dark indeed,
but the silence of it told her that the oxen anyhow were at rest.
And Prema!
As she held the light forward, something on the ground at her feet
caught her eye--jasmine! Jasmine twined into a wreath. For whose head?
Not hers!
"Prema!" she called. "Prem!"
There was no answer. But he was there for all that; half resting on the
forked seat, as if he had flung himself upon it when weary; weary and
content; his head thrown back upon his arm, his whole body lax with
sleep--and with content.
She had seen him look thus so often! "Prem!" she whispered. "Prem!" and
touched him on the bosom.
Then a hideous shriek of terror and horror startled the sleeping oxen
into forward movement, as from the folds of his clothes, like some evil
thought, there slipped a snake, swift, curved, disappearing into the
darkness.
"Prem! Prem! Speak to me! Oh, Prem--speak!"
As she flung herself upon him, the forward movement of the oxen forced
her to her knees, so heeding it not at all, one hand holding the light
close to his face as she strove vainly to rouse him, she was dragged
along the accustomed round, until the beasts, recognising the
unaccustomed strain, paused once more.
"Prem! Say thou art not dead--say only that, Prem!" she moaned.
Her voice seemed to reach him on the far edge of the great Blank, for
his eyelids quivered. Then, for one moment, he looked at her, and there
was appeal in his eyes.
"Wife--Veru--my----" It was scarcely a whisper, but she heard it, and
with a cry of joy, she caught him in her strong arms, laid him on the
ground, and, tearing his cloth aside, sought for the wound. Finding it,
her lips were on it in a second. Ah! could kisses draw the poison,
surely her frantic love must avail.
But no. His eyelids closed. There was no sound, only a little quiver
that she felt through her lips. Then his beauty lay still beneath them.
After a time she drew herself away from him, and laid his head upon her
lap. So she sat, dazed, thinking of that jasmine wreath in the dust,
and of that half-heard whisper--
"Wife--Veru--my----" My--what?
* * * * *
"And there is none to come after him," said the village worthies, when
the fire of Prema's burning had died down to smouldering embers, and
the oldest man of his clan in the village had performed the rites which
should have been the duty of a son.
And then they shook their heads wisely, thinking that men of Prem
Singh's kind ran an ill risk in the next world without a son to perform
the funeral obsequies; especially, nowadays, when the law prevented a
dutiful wife from ensuring her husband's safety and salvation by
burning herself on his funeral pyre. Yea! it was an ill world indeed in
which the fostered virtue of a woman you had cared for and cossetted
might not avail to save the man she loved from the pains of purgatory.
And then they drifted away, full of surmise and deep desire concerning
the headship of the village. Mai Sarsuti could not hold it as a widow,
though she could hold the land; and there were no relations--none. So
the coast was clear for many claims.
Sarsuti meanwhile had not clamoured--as many an Indian widow does even
nowadays--to be allowed to sacrifice herself for her husband's
salvation. She had scarcely wept. She had, on the contrary, spoken
sternly to Veru, bidding her keep her foolish tears until all things
had been done in due order to keep away the evil spirits and ensure
peace to the departed.
Then, after all the ceremonies were completed, and Prem's beauty lay
swathed awaiting sunset for its burning, she had sat on one side of his
low bier, while Veru sat on the other, and the wail had risen
piercingly--
"Naked he came, naked he has gone; this empty dwelling-house belongs
neither to you nor to me."
There had been a menace in her voice, high-pitched, clear, almost
impassive, while Veru's had been broken by sobs.
So now that frail weakling was asleep, wearied out by her woe, while
Sarsuti sat where the bier had been, still in all the glory of her
wifely raiment, still with the vermilion stain upon her forehead, still
wearing round her neck the blessed marriage cord with which he had so
often toyed. For she had point-blank refused to allow it to be broken.
Time enough for the widow's shroud, she had said. To-day she was still
Prem's wife--he had scarce had time to die.
So she sat quite still, looking at the place where he had lain,
thinking of those last words. Had she really heard them? Was it
possible, the thing that had leapt to her mind?
Deep down in her heart she knew vaguely that the feet of her idol had
been of clay; that with Prem all things were possible. Poor, wandering
feet, which might yet have kept to the straight path, if--Oh, Prem!
Prem! Had it been her fault? Or was she wronging him?
Then, suddenly, that recurring phrase recurred to her once more.
"The footstep of a dog--the footstep of a dog."
Was it past midnight? Had another day begun--the day of judgment?
Surely; then she could see--yea! She could prove it was not true.
The moon was just sinking as, close-wrapped in her veil, she crept down
to the edge of the nullah, where the burning-ground lay; a gruesome
place, haunted by the spirits of the departed, not to be ventured near
after dark. But Sarsuti had forgotten all the village lore, she had
forgotten everything save that deadly doubt.
Yonder, it must be on the point close to the water, for still an almost
mist-like vapour lingered there. She sped past the faintly lighted
patches on the hard-baked soil which told of other burnings, murmuring
a prayer for the peace of dead souls, and so found herself beside that
little pile of dear ashes. A breeze from the coming dawn stirred them,
sending a grey flake or two to meet her.
"Prem!" she whispered; then, as she stooped to look, the whisper passed
to a cry--
"Oh! Prema! Prema!"
She lay there face down, her hands grovelling in the still warm embers
on which there showed unmistakably the footstep of a dog!
And the moon sank, so there was darkness for a while. Then in the far
east the horizon lightened, bringing a grey mystery to the wide expanse
of the level world. And behind the greyness came a primrose dawn, and
the sun, rising serene and bright, sent a shaft of light to touch her
as she lay.