In the Guardianship of God Part 27

And, apart from his estimation, she had value. Connoisseurs in the village, as they looked over the low mud wall which separated the slip of open courtyard, ten feet by six, where there was just room for a crazy four-legged string bed between Surabhi's manger and the door, would nod and say she must have been a good cow when young; but when that was only G.o.d knew!

Whereupon Gopal would raise his shaven head with its faint frosting of silver hair from Surabhi's silver flank, as he squatted holding a bra.s.s _lotah_ in one hand, milking with the other, and smile scornfully.

"Old or young, she is the best milker in the village, and the best looking one, and the best bred," he would say. "And wherefore not? Is she not Surabhi the Great Milk-Mother, whom even the G.o.ds worship?

Since without her where would the little G.o.dlings be?" And then he would pop down the _lotah_ and cease milking for a moment, so that both hands might be free for a reverential _salaam_ to the old cow who, at the cessation, would turn her mild white face--the real Brahmini zebu face with its wide dewy black nostril, wide dewy black eyes, and long lopping ears--to see what had come to old Gopi; and as often as not, would give his round frosted black poll a lick round with her black frosted tongue, by way of encouragement to go on, as if he had been a calf!

But the connoisseurs over the wall would sn.i.g.g.e.r, and touch their foreheads, and say that Gopal Das was getting quite childish and mixed up things. Though, no doubt, the great Surabhi must have been just such another cow, since the old man said right. There was not her like in the village. No! not even now that Govinda had brought home the brown cow with five teats, which had taken the prize at the _Huzoor's_ big show. It was younger, of course, but Surabhi would outlast the old man, and what more could _he_ want? Then who, before these latter days, had ever heard tell of a brown cow? And as for the five teats, they might portend more milk, but were they lawful?

So long-limbed, whole-hearted, dull-headed, the villagers went doubtfully about their business scarcely less confused than old Gopi between facts and fancies, realities and unrealities; tied and bound, as their like are in hamlet and village, by the allegories of a faith whose inner teaching has been forgotten.

But old Gopal stayed with Surabhi. His life was bounded by her. How he lived was one of the many mysteries of Indian village life. He did nothing but look after his cow, but he must have inherited some fractional share of the village land from his fathers, or been ent.i.tled, by reason of his race, to some ancestral dues, for twice a year at harvest time he would come back to the courtyard, like a squirrel to its nest, with so many handfuls of this grain and so many handfuls of that, so many bundles of wheat straw, millet stalks, or pea stems. And on these, and the milk she gave, he and Surabhi lived contentedly. He was very old; if he had had wife and children in the past he had quite forgotten them. Yet it was typical of village life that no one forgot old Gopi or his rights. Whatever was due to him from well or unwatered land, even if it were only so many leaves of tobacco or chili pods, came to the courtyard as regularly as the sunshine.

And, regularly as the sunshine, too, the old man, after he had milked Surabhi in the early dawn, would go with his solitary blanket and a little spud, and spend the whole day till sunset in gathering succulent weeds for the Great Milk-Mother's supper. It was his religion. And under the broad blue sky, edging a plantigrade path over the parched plain, leaving, like a locust, not a green leaf behind him, old Gopi's mind would be full of confused piety and mystical meanings.

This was the highest service of man, this was Faith, and Hope, and Charity all combined; since every one knew that Surabhi was the World-Mother, and without her--

Here the old Brahmin's memory of words would fail him, and he would fall back on deeds, by digging at the biggest weed within reach.

From year's end to year's end he seldom fingered a coin, and if he did, it was Surabhi who brought it to him. Her last calf had long since become an ox, and drifted away from the village to fill a gap in the great company of the ploughers and martyrs who give the coffer of the Empire all its gold and die in thousands--long before famine touches humanity--without a penny piece from that coffer being spent to save them from starvation. Yet she still, after the fashion of her race, gave milk and to spare. The latter went, as a rule, to folk poorer still than the old Brahmin, especially to children; but when he sold it, part of the money was always spent on a new charm for Surabhi's neck. And it might be noted that whenever, by looking over the old mud walls which separated the village courtyards one from the other, he found that Govinda's brown cow had a fresh bell or disposition of cowries round her neck, there was always enough milk over and above Gopi's wants next day to procure a similar adornment for the white one with its heavy dewlap.

The rivalry grew, by degrees, into a definite challenge between their owners, so that when, after a time, Govinda's beast fell off in her milk, Gopi's delight was palpable, and he scouted all reasonable explanations of the fact.

The cow, he said, was underbred. You could see by her hoofs that she had been accustomed to wander about and pick up her own living like low-caste folk; while Surabhi bore token of her lifelong seclusion in every polished ring of her long-pointed black toes.

But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's bra.s.s _lotah_ cease to brim.

There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier growth of gra.s.s in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done, seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? _That_ is a time when help is given by the new master. G.o.d knows why, since the old masters never gave any.

Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be expected?

So the long dry days dragged on. That spring-harvest old Gopal's share of garnered grain was scarcely worth the bringing home. The squirrel's h.o.a.rd in the little courtyard was scanty indeed, and very soon he had to stint his own share, and rise an hour earlier to go weed-grubbing, and return an hour later, so that Surabhi should not low her discontent at short commons. For that would be shame unutterable, even though the brown cow had long since been driven from high-cla.s.s seclusion to fend for herself with the common herd from dawn to eve.

Thus old Gopal's lank anatomy was appreciably more lank, more skeleton-like, when one day the headman of the village, as he smoked his pipe in front of the house of faith where strangers were lodged, announced that the famine had really come at last. Over in Chotia Aluwala there were piles of baskets and spades. Some _Huzoors_ were there in white tents, so doubtless ere long, G.o.d knows why, they would begin digging earth from one place and putting it in another, so that a distribution of grain could be made in the evening.

That was the headman's idea of relief-works, and his hearers had no other.

Now, Chotia Aluwala was ten miles at least from Surabhi's stall, but of late Gopi had scarce found a weed within twice that distance.

So the very next day, when, backed by a pile of forlorn-looking earth on one side and a not much smaller pile of baskets with which the earth had, during the day's toil been conveyed to its present resting-place, one hungry face after another came up in file to the distribution of food, old Gopi's frosted head was among the number.

But he was bitterly disappointed at his dole of cooked dough-cake. He had expected grain. Though more than enough for his old appet.i.te, what would Surabhi, with her seven stomachs, say to such concentrated food?

After his long trudge home he pa.s.sed a miserable night seeking, by every means in his power, to supply the bulk necessary for the satisfying of those clamorous stomachs. He even chopped up the gra.s.s twine of his string bed and tempted the old cow to chew it by soaking the fibre in some of her own milk.

Thus, once more, he came off second best, for the milk should have been his share. So he could scarcely manage to stagger along with his basket next day. Not that this mattered, for already the Englishmen, who, in their khaki clothes and huge pith helmets were supervising the work, were saying tentatively, with a glance at the totterers, that it might have been better to start relief a little sooner. And down in one hollow Gopi saw a woman being carried away, while the babe which had been at her breast yelled feebly in an orderly's arms.

The sight did not affect Gopi in the least. He had thought out a plan which filled his confused old soul with a heavenly joy. So when his two dough-cakes were given him that evening he hurried off with them to the contractor in the background, through whom the _Huzoors_ had arranged for this supply, and exchanged them--at a loss, inevitably--for the coa.r.s.e husks, the bran, the sweepings, the absolute waste which could not be used even in famine bread.

The arrangement suited both parties, the contractor and old Gopi, who day after day trudged home, hungry, with a bulky bundle of fodder for Surabhi. It was a fair exchange all round; even with the old cow, who turned the fodder into milk. Not much, it is true, since the bundle was not over-large, but enough to keep Gopi's soul and body together.

And the soul grew if the body wasted. How could it be otherwise, when one was permitted to be the babe and suckling, as it were, of the Great Milk-Mother? The Great World-Mother, whose sacred work it was to nourish all things, even the little G.o.dlings?

The old Brahmin's eyes grew softer, more trustful, more like the eyes of a child, as the days went by; and as he milked her, Surabhi's black frothed tongue often licked more than his shaven poll, as if she were concerned at the bones which showed through the skin of her calf.

Gopal himself, however, took this licking as a mark of Divine favour; and, as for the thinness, were not all the babes and sucklings growing thin?

That was true. The Englishman in head charge of the Chotia Aluwala relief-work ca.n.a.l had that thinness on his conscience. But what could man do in a wilderness, without mothers, without milk?

He had it on his heart too, because he was a father; and because, despite a mother and milk, doctors and dosing galore, it was not two months since he had seen his first-born waste away mysteriously to death, as children will waste.

So his mind was full of it, when, for the sake of seeing a lonely wife and mother, he rode forty miles after nightfall to the little bungalow so empty of a child's voice.

"I've got quite a nursery of 'em now," he said grimly, "but they beat me. I can't get the men in charge to mix that tin-milk stuff right, you know, and the little beggars won't look at a teaspoon."

Perhaps it was his ride that had tired him. Anyhow, he crossed his hands on the table, and laid his head on them wearily.

He roused, however, at her touch on his shoulder.

"Let me come," she said; "I've--I've nothing to do here."

He looked at her for a moment, then turned his eyes away. "Will you?"

he said in an odd voice; "that--that will be awfully jolly."

So in a day or two, armed with the dead baby's bottles, feeding-cups, G.o.d knows what, and such mother's lore as the dead child had taught her, she was at work in a white tent set in the shade of the only tree at Chotia Aluwala.

"I must have more milk," she said decidedly, and there was a new light in her eyes, a new tone in her voice, when they brought her yet another whimpering black baby. "That is the end of it; by hook or by crook I _must_ have more milk. There _must_ be some, somewhere. Send out and see!"

So, because when a woman is standing between death and children, her orders are the orders of "She-who-must-be-obeyed," they sent. And, of course, one of the first discoveries made by the native underling to whom the inquiry was entrusted, was Surabhi. In other words, that an old Brahmin, in receipt actually of relief, was the possessor of a remarkably fine cow, if not in full milk, yet capable of supporting an infant or two. It needs the vicious _flair_ of an underpaid _chupra.s.si_ to find such chances for tyranny and extortion at the first throw off. But this one was found, and when Gopi returned that evening to the little courtyard, an official with a bra.s.s _lotah_ was waiting for milk. It would be paid for, of course, by-and-by. Gopi could keep an account, and the _Sirkar_ no doubt would pay, provided the _proper official_ certified it by a countersign.

The old man was too confused, too tired to be ready with protest at a moment's notice. So that night he went supperless to bed. But in the white tent over at Chotia Aluwala, an Englishwoman's pale face had quite a colour in it.

"Fancy!" she said, "two whole quarts of the most beautiful, rich milk!

I would reward that man if I were you, hubby. I am to have the same every day. It--it means four lives at least!"

Possibly, for a baby takes less to keep it alive than an old man.

Small tragedies of this sort are common enough in India, but it is difficult to give all their fineness of detail to English eyes.

Old Gopal was at once cunning as a fox, guileless as a child; and through both the guile and the innocence ran that bewildered belief in Surabhi as something beyond ordinary cows. He tried to escape the _impa.s.se_ by not milking her dry, so as to leave some for himself; but though Surabhi resented any other hand finishing the task, it was impossible for an experienced onlooker to be deceived. The result of that, therefore, was abuse and blows. Then he tried keeping back one dough-cake from his daily dole for himself, and only exchanging the other for fodder. That reduced the milk in reality, but it also reduced Surabhi to lowing; and his sense of sin, in consequence, became so acute that he was forced into going back to the old plan.

But these tactics had, by this time, roused the petty official's ire.

The _mem sahiba_ had spoken sharply to him because the milk had fallen off in quant.i.ty and quality; for he had not scrupled, despite old Gopi's tears and distracted prayers, to take away the Milk-Mother's character by filling up the measure with water.

And so he lost patience. Thus one day he avenged himself and attained his object by first reporting that Gopi, Brahmin, was wrongfully and fraudulently obtaining relief, seeing that he was, amongst other things, possessor of a remarkably fine cow, whose milk he was selling to the _Huzoors_, and then seizing Surabhi, on the ground that Gopi, having no means of supporting her, was not fit to take care of so valuable an animal!

These two blows, followed by the sight of Surabhi being walked off on her dainty toes into the rough outside world, quite upset the frail balance of the old man's mind.

He crouched shivering all night in the empty stall, feeling himself accursed. He was not worthy. Surabhi had gone.

How long he remained there speechless, famine-stricken, yet not hungry, he did not know. It was early afternoon when the white garment and bra.s.s badge of authority showed again at the door in the low wall, and a voice said sullenly--