In The Permanent Way Part 21

"Show it to its father! Good lack! Heard one ever the like!" shrilled the indignant grandmother to be. "Why, with us he must not see it for days. Is it not so, friends?"

The town-bred contingent clamoured shocked a.s.sent; the midwife and her cronies stood firm. Uma, appealed to by a deputation, met the quarrel coldly.

"I care not," she said; "settle it as you please. I am ready to hold the child or not."

So a compromise was effected between the disputants within, before the beating of bra.s.s trays announced the happy birth of a son, and they came trooping into the outer court full of words and explanations. But Uma heard nothing and saw nothing except the crying, frog-like morsel of humanity they thrust into her unwilling arms. So that was Shivo's child! How ugly, and what an ill-tempered little thing. Suddenly the gurgling cry ceased, as instinctively she folded her veil about the struggling, naked limbs.

"So! So!" cried the gossips, pushing and pulling joyfully, excitedly.

"Yonder is the master! All is ready."

She set her teeth for the ordeal and let herself be thrust towards Shivo, who was seated by the door, his back towards her. She had not seen him since the advent of the gossips at dawn had driven the men-kind from the homestead. And now the sun was setting redly, as on that evening a year ago when she had told him they were too few for the house. Well, there were more now. And this was the worst. Now she was to see love grow to his face for the child which was not hers, knowing that love for its mother must grow also unseen in his heart.

"So! So!" cried the busy, unsympathetic voices intent on their own plans. "Hold the child so, sister, above his shoulders, and bid him take his first look at a son."

The old dogged determination to leave nothing undone which should be done, strengthened her to raise the baby as she was bid, stoop with it over Shivo's shoulder and say, almost coldly:

"I bring thee thy son, husband. Look on it and take its image to thine heart."

Then she gave a quick, incredulous cry; for, as she stooped, she saw her own face reflected in the bra.s.s-ringed mirror formed by the wide mouth of the br.i.m.m.i.n.g water-pot, which was set on the floor before Shiv-deo!

"Higher! sister! higher," cried the groups. "Let him see the babe in the water for luck's sake. So! _Ari!_ father, is not that a son indeed! _Wah!_ the sweetest doll."

Sweet enough, in truth, looked the reflection of that tiny face where her own had been. She let it stay there for a second or two; then a sudden curiosity came to her and she drew aside almost roughly, still keeping her eyes on the water-mirror. Ah! there was her husband's face now, with a look in it that she had never seen before--the look of fatherhood.

Without a word she thrust her burden back into other arms, asking impatiently if that were all, or if they needed more of her services.

"More indeed," muttered the grandmother tartly as she disappeared again, intent on sugar and spices, behind the swinging knife. "Sure some folk had small labour or pains over this day's good work. Lucky for the master that there be other women in the world."

Uma looked after her silently, beset by a great impatience of the noise and the congratulations. She wanted to get away from it all, from those whispers and giggles heard from within, and interrupted every now and then by that new gurgling cry. The excitement was over, the gossips were departing one by one, Shivo and his father were being dragged off to the village square for a pipe of peace and thanksgiving. No one wanted her now; her part in the house was done, and out yonder in the gathering twilight the heaps of corn were alone; as she was. She could at least see to their safety for a while and have time to remember those faces; hers, and the child's, and Shivo's.

Well! it was all over now. No wonder they did not need her any more since she had done all--yea! she had done her duty to the uttermost!

A sort of pa.s.sionate resentment at her own virtue filled her mind as, wearied out with the physical strain, she lay down to rest upon the yielding yellow wheat. How soft it was, how cool. She nestled into it, head, hands, feet, gaining a certain consolation from the mere comfort to her tired body. And as she looked out over her husband's fields, the very knowledge that the harvest had been reaped and gathered soothed her; besides, in the years to come there would be other hands for other harvests. That was also as it should be. And yet? She turned her face down into the wheat.

"Shivo! Shivo!" she sobbed into the fruits of the harvest which she had helped to sow and gather. "Shivo! Shivo!"

But to her creed marriage had for its object the preservation of the hearth fire, not the fire of pa.s.sion, and the jealousy which is a virtue to the civilised was a crime to this barbarian.

So, as she lay half-hidden in the harvested corn, the thought of the baby's face, and hers, and Shivo's--all, all in the water-mirror, brought her in a confused half-comprehending way a certain comfort from their very companionship. So, by degrees, the strain pa.s.sed from mind and body, leaving her asleep, with slackened curves, upon the heap of corn. Asleep peacefully until a hand touched her shoulder gently, and in the soft grey dawn she saw her husband standing beside her.

She rose slowly, drawing her veil closer with a shiver, for the air was chill.

"I have been seeking thee since nightfall, wife," he said in gentle reproach, with a ring of relief in his voice, "I feared--I know not what--that thou hadst thought me churlish, perhaps, because I did not thank thee for--for thy son."

His hand sought hers and found it, as they stood side by side looking out over the fields with the eyes of those whose lives are spent in sowing and reaping, looking out over the wide sweep of bare earth and beyond it, on the northern horizon, the dim, dawn-lit peaks of the Himalayas.

"He favours her in the face, husband," she said quietly, "but he hath thy form. That is as it should be, for thou art strong and she is fair."

So, as they went homeward through the lightening fields,--she a dutiful step behind the man,--the printing presses over at the other side of the world were busy, amid flaring gas-jets and the clamour of marvellous machinery, in discussing in a thousand ways the dreary old problems of whether marriage is a failure or not.

It was not so to Uma-devi.

YOUNG LOCHINVAR

Young Lochinvar, in the original story, came out of the West. In this tale he came out of the East, and the most match-making mamma might be disposed to forgive him; partly on account of his youth, partly because he really was not a free agent.

They were cousins of course. In the finest race of the Panjab--possibly of the world--cousins have a right to cousins provided the relationship lie through the mother's brother, or the father's sister; the converse, for some mysterious reason, being _anathema maranatha_.

But Nanuk's mother, wife of big Suchet Singh, head man of Aluwallah village, was sister to Dhyan Singh, the armourer, who plied his trade in the little courtyard hidden right in the heart of the big city. A big man too, high-featured and handsome; high-tempered also as the steel which he inlaid so craftily with gold. For all that, round, podgy Mai Gunga, his wife, ruled him by virtue of a smartness unknown to his slower, gentler nature. Not so gentle, however, but that he mourned the degeneracy of these latter piping days of peace. They and the Arms Act had driven him from the manufacture of sword hilts and helmets, shields and corselets, to that of plaques and inkstands, candlesticks and ashtrays. From the means of resistance to the decoration of victorious drawing-rooms. Not that he nourished ill-feeling against those victors. They were a brave lot, and since then his people had helped them bravely to keep their winnings. Only it was dull work; so every now and again Dhyan Singh revenged himself by making a paper knife in the form of some bloodthirsty lethal weapon, and put his best work on it, just to keep his hand in.

Little Pertabi, his daughter, used to sit and watch her father at the tiny forge set in the central sunshine of the yard. It was funny to see the shaving of sheer steel curl up from the graver guided in its flowing curves by nothing but that skilled eye and hand; funnier still to watch the gold wire nestle down so obediently into the groove; funniest of all to blow the bellows when the time came to put that iridescent blue temper to the finished work.

Then, naked to the waist, the soft brown hair on her forehead plaited in tiniest plaits into a looped fringe, a little gold filigree cup poised on the top of her head, a long beta.s.selled pigtail hanging down behind, Pertabi would set her short red-trousered legs very far apart, and puff and blow, and laugh, and then blow again to her own and her father's intense delight; for Dhyan having a couple of strapping sons to satisfy Mai Gunga's heart felt himself free to adore this child of his later years.

But even when there was blowing to be done, Pertabi did not find life in the city half as amusing as life out in the village at her aunt's with cousin Nanuk as a playfellow. Nanuk to whom she was to be married by and by. That had been settled when she was a baby in arms, for in those, and for many years after, Suchet Singh's wife and Mai Gunga had been as friendly as sisters-in-law can well be. That is to say there were visits to the village for change of air, especially at sugar-baking time, while those who wished for shopping or society came as a matter of course to the armourer's house. The world wags in the same fashion East and West; especially among the women folk.

"They will make a fine pair! G.o.d keep them to the auspicious day," the deep-chested countrywomen would say piously; then Mai Gunga would giggle a bit, and remark that if Nanuk grew so fast she would have to leave Pertabi at home next time. Whereupon the boy's mother would flare up, and sniff, as country folk do, at town ideas. In her family such talk had never been necessary; the lads and la.s.ses grew up together, and mothers were in no hurry to bring age and thought upon them. Perhaps that was the reason why men and women alike were of goodly stature and strength; for even Mai Gunga must admit that Dhyan was at least a fine figure of a man. So there would be words to while away the hours before the men returned from the fields. And outside, under the bushy mulberry trees, Pertabi and Nanuk would be fighting and making it up again in the cosmopolitan fashion of healthy children. Of the two Pertabi, perhaps, hit the hardest; she certainly howled the loudest, being a wilful young person. Nanuk used to implore her not to tease the sacred peac.o.c.ks, when they came sedately by companies to drink at the village tank, as the sun set red over the limitless plane of young green corn, and she would squat down suddenly on her red-trousered heels with her hands tight clasped behind her back, and promise to be as still as a grey crane if she might only look. Then some vainglorious c.o.c.k was sure to show off his tail; every tail was to Pertabi's eager eyes the _most_ beautiful one in the world, and she must needs have a feather--just one little feather-- from it as a keepsake--just a little keepsake. Now, what Pertabi desired she got, at any rate if Nanuk had aught to say towards the possibility. So the little tyrant would play with the feather for five minutes; then fling it away. But Nanuk, serious, conscientious Nanuk, would set aside half his supper of curds on the sly and sneak out with it after sundown as an oblation to the mysterious village G.o.d, who lived in a red splashed stone under the peepul tree. Else the peac.o.c.ks being angry might not cry for rain, and then what would become of the green corn? Nanuk was a born cultivator, true in most things, above all to Mother Earth. Despite the peac.o.c.ks' feathers, however, not without a will of his own; for when, on one of his visits to the city, Pertabi insisted on handling the little squirrel he brought with him housed in his high turban, and it bit her, he laughed, saying he had told her so; nay, more, when she chased the frightened little creature savagely, howling for vengeance, he fell upon her and boxed her ears soundly, much to Mai Gunga's displeasure. A rough village lout, and her darling the daintiest little morsel of flesh!

"I don't care," sobbed Pertabi; "I'll bite him hard next time--yes! I will, Nano; you'll see if I don't."

Mai Gunga, however, was right in one thing. Pertabi was an extremely pretty child. The gossips coming in of an afternoon to discuss births, marriages, and deaths took to shaking their heads and saying that she might have made a better match than Nanuk, who, every one thought, would limp for life in consequence of that fall from the topmost branch of the _shisham_ tree where the squirrels built their nests.

Not much of a limp, perhaps, but who did not know that under the bone-setter's care a broken leg often came out a bit shorter than the other, even if it was as strong as ever? Mai Gunga's plump, pert face hardened, but she said nothing; not even when a new acquaintance, the wife of a rich contractor on the lookout for a bride of good family, openly bewailed the prior claim on Pertabi.

Nevertheless the next time that the sister-in-law came to town, and on leaving it laden with endless bundles wrapped in Manchester handkerchiefs spoke confidently of the meeting at sugar-time, Mai Gunga threw difficulties in the way. She was too busy to come herself; Nanuk, still a semi-invalid, must be quite sufficient charge for her sister-in-law. Besides seeing that Pertabi touched the eights, she thought it time for village customs to give way to greater decorum.

Briefly, despite the peculiar virtue of some people's families, she did not choose that her daughter should be out of her sight. The two women, as might be supposed, parted with ceremony and effusion; but Suchet Singh's wife had barely arrived in the wide village courtyards ere she burst forth:

"Mark my words!" she said, even as she disposed her bundles about her.

"That town-bred woman means mischief. I was a fool to give in to you and Dhyan, instead of having the barber, as to a stranger. Not that I want the little hussy above other brides, but I would not have Nanuk slighted."

Suchet Singh laughed.

"Twenty mile of an _ekka_ hath shook thy brains out, wife. What talk is this? They are two halves of one pea. As friend Elahi Buksh saith, '_do dil razi to kia kare kazi?_' (when two are heart to heart, where's the parson's part?)"

"Tra! That's neither in three nor thirteen," retorted his wife. "Give me the barber[37] for certainty."

[Footnote 37: The barber is always employed in regular betrothals.]

Meanwhile Pertabi was howling in the little courtyard, much to big, soft-hearted Dhyan's distress.