In The Permanent Way Part 24

Adverse influence on hereditary claims! The words, translated brutally, as only clerks can translate, sent poor old Tulsi into an agony of remorse and resolve.

A month afterwards Kishnu spoke to the headmen. "The Three-Legged-One hath driven the _putwari_ crazy," she said. "Remove it from him or he will die. Justice! Justice!"

So it was removed and hidden away with obloquy in an outhouse; whereupon he sat and cried that he had ruined Gurdit--Gurdit the light of his eyes!

"Heed not the Bengali," they said at last in sheer despair. "He is a fool. Thou shalt come with us to the big Sahib. He will understand, seeing that he is more our race than the other."

That is how it came to pa.s.s that Tulsi Ram sat on the stucco steps of an Englishman's house, pointing with a trembling but truthful finger at a white spot among the green, while a circle of bearded Jats informed the Presence that Sri Hunuman himself was not wiser nor better than their _putwari_.

"And how do _you_ account for it? I mean what do _you_ think it is?"

asked the foreign voice curiously.

The wrinkles on Tulsi's forehead grew deeper, his bright yet dim eyes looked wistfully at the master of his fate. "'Tis an over-large margin of error, _Huzoor_, owing to lack of control over the plane-table.

That is what the book says; that is what Gurdit will say."

"But what do _you_ say? How do _you_ think that bit of land came into your village?"

Tulsi hesitated, gained confidence somehow from the blue eyes: "Unless _Purumeshwar_ sent a bit of another world?" he suggested meekly.

The Englishman stood for a moment looking down on the wizened monkey-like face, the truthful finger, the accusing white spot. "I think he has," he said at last. "Go home, Tulsi, and colour it blue.

I'll pa.s.s it as a bit of Paradise."

So that year there was a blue patch, like a tank where no tank should be, upon the village map, and the old _putwari's_ conscience found peace in the correct total of the columns of figures which he added together; while the Three-Legged-One, released from durance vile at his special request, stood in the corner garlanded with the marigolds of thanksgiving. Perhaps that was the reason why, next mapping season, the patch of Paradise had shrunk to half its original size; or perhaps it was that he really had more control over the plane-table. At any rate he treated it more as a friend by spreading its legs very wide apart, covering it with his white cotton shawl, and so using it as a tent, when the sun was over hot.

And yet when, on Gurdit's return from college with a first-cla.s.s surveyor's certificate, Paradise became absorbed in a legitimate margin of error, there was a certain wistful regret in old Tulsi's pride, and he said that, being an ignorant old man, it was time he returned to find Paradise in another way.

"But thou shalt not leave us for the wilderness as before," swore the Jats in council. "Lo! Gurdit is young and hasty, and thou wilt be needed to settle the disputes; so we will give thee a saintly sitting of thy very own in our village."

But Tulsi objected. The fields were the fields, he said, and the houses were the houses; it only led to difficulties to put odd bits of land into a map, and he would be quite satisfied to sit anywhere. In the end, however, he had to give in, for when he died, after many years spent in settling disputes, some one suggested that he really had been Sri Hunuman himself; at any rate, he was a saint. So the white spot marking a shrine reappeared in the map, to show whence the old man had pa.s.sed to the Better Land.

THE SORROWFUL HOUR

It was one of those blue days which come to the plains of Upper India when the rains of early September have ceased, leaving the heat-weary, dust-soiled world regenerate by baptism.

A light breeze sent westering ripples along the pools of water filling each shallow depression, and stirred the fine fretwork of an acacia set thick with little odorous puffs, sweet as a violet. Despite the ruddy glow of the sinking sun, the shadows, far and near, still kept their marvellous blue--a clear porcelain blue, showing the purity of the rain-washed air. A painter need have used but three colours in reproducing the scene--red and blue and yellow in the sky; russet and blue and gold in the tall battalions of maize and millet half-conquered by the sickle, which stood in shadowed squares or lay in sunlit reaches, right away to the level horizon.

Russet and blue and gold, also, in the dress of a woman who was crouching against the palisade of plaited tiger-gra.s.s, which formed two sides of the well-homestead. Seen upon this dull gold diaper, her madder-red veil and blue petticoat, with their corn-coloured embroideries, seemed to blend and be lost in the harvest scene beyond, even the pools of water finding counterpart in the bits of looking-gla.s.s gleaming here and there among her ample drapery. She was a woman who in other countries would have been accounted in the prime of life; in India, past it. Yet, as she crouched--her whole body tense in the effort of listening--every line of her strong face and form showed that she was not past the prime of pa.s.sion.

"_Ari!_ Heart's delight! See, O father! Yon is his fifth step, and still he totters not. What! wouldst crawl again? Oh! fie upon such laziness." The high, girlish voice from within the palisade paused in a gurgle of girlish laughter. "Say, O father! looks he not, thus poised hands and feet, for all the world like the monkey people in Gopal's shop when they would be at the sweets? _Ai!_ my brother! what hast found in the dust? Cry not, heart's life. Mother will give it back to Chujju again. So, that is good! Holy Ganeshji! Naught but a grain of corn! Art so hungry as all that, my little pecking pigeon, my little bird from heaven?"

"Little glutton, thou meanest," chuckled a base voice. "Still, of a truth, O Maya, the boy grows."

"Grows? I tell thee he hath grown. See you not this two-year-old hath turned farmer already? He comes to bargain with thee, having his corn in his hand. Give him a good price, to handsel his luck, O Gurditta Lumberdar."[41]

[Footnote 41: Head-man of village.]

"I will pay thee for him, O wife! Sure, hast thou not given me the boy, and shall I not pay my debt? Nay, I am not foolish, as thou sayest. What! Wouldst have me kiss thee also, little rogue? So! Yet do I love mother best--best of all."

The woman behind the palisade stood up suddenly. Tall as she was, the feathery tops of the tiger-gra.s.s rose taller; so she could stand, even as she had crouched, unseen. Unseeing also. Other women might have lent eyes to aid their ears, but Saraswati was no spy--no eavesdropper by intent, either. The lacquered spinning-wheel, the wheat-straw basket piled with downy cotton cards which lay on the ground beside her, testified to what her occupation had been, till something--Heaven knows what, for she heard such light-hearted babble every day--in those careless voices roused her pent-up jealousy beyond the dead level of patience. She was not jealous of the child. Ah, no! not of the child. Was it not for the sake of such a one that three years before she had given Maya, his mother, a dignified welcome to the childless home? But Maya? Ah! well was she called Maya--the woman prolific of deceit and illusion, of whom the pundits spoke; woman, not content with being the child-bringer, but seeking---- Saraswati's large, capable hands closed in upon themselves tightly. She did not need to peer through the plaited c.h.i.n.ks to know the scene within. She saw it burnt in upon her slow, constant brain. The tall bearded man of her own age--her own type--her kinsman--the patient, kindly husband of her youth; the child--his naked brown limbs dimpled still more by silver circlets on wrists and ankles; those curving, dimpling limbs, which, somehow, made her heart glad; and between them, degrading them both, Maya, with her petty, pretty face, her petty, pretty ways.

Suddenly, as it had come, the pa.s.sion pa.s.sed--pa.s.sed into that curious resignation, that impa.s.sive acquiescence, which does more to separate East from West than all the seas which lie between England and India.

"Old Dhunnu said sooth," she muttered, stooping to gather up her wheel and bobbins methodically. "'Tis the child which makes him love her, and I have been a fool to doubt it. I will delay no longer."

Behind the low mud houses, angled so as to form two sides of the square, four or five jujube trees cl.u.s.tered thickly, and beneath them the dark green whips of the jasmine bushes curved to the ground like a fountain set with blossoms. Hence, and from the straggling rose hard by, the women in the early dawn gathered flowers for the chaplets used in the worship of the G.o.ds. There were so many occasions requiring such offerings; sorrowful hours and joyful hours, whether they were of birth, or marriage, or death. Who could say, till the end came, whether they were one or the other? Only this was certain, flowers were needed for them all.

Towards this thicket Saraswati, still with the same impa.s.sive face, made her way, pausing an instant before the long, low, mud manger where her favourite milch cow stood tethered, to stroke its soft muzzle and give it a few tall stalks of millet from a sheaf resting against the well-wheel. And once more the scene was red and blue and gold, as the broad yellow leaves and blood-streaked stems blent with her dress. There was not a change in her face, as, parting the branches, she disappeared into the thicket, scattering the loose blossoms as she went; not a change, when after a minute or two, she reappeared, carrying a little basket with a domed cover, securely fastened by many strands of raw cotton thread, such as she had been spinning--a basket of wheaten straw festooned with cowries, and tufted with parti-coloured ta.s.sels, such as the Jatni women make for the safe keeping of feminine trifles--an innocent-looking basket, suggestive of beads and trinkets. She paused a moment, holding it to her ear, and then for the first time a faint smile flickered about her mouth as she caught a curious rasping noise, half-purr, half-rustle.

"Death hath a long life," she murmured, as she hid the basket in the voluminous folds of her veil and walked over to the homestead. As she entered by a wide gap in the plaited palisade, the scene within was even as she had imagined it; but the barb had struck home before, and the actual sight did not enhance her resentment.

"It grows late, O Maya," she said coldly. "Leave playing with the child and see to the fire for the cooking of our lord's food. Thou hast scarce left an ember aglow beneath the lentils while I was yonder spinning."

The reproof was no more than what might come with dignity from an elder wife; but Gurditta, lounging his long length in well-earned rest on a string bed, rose, murmuring something of seeing to the plough oxen ere supper time. The big man was dimly dissatisfied with affairs; he felt a vague desire to behave better towards the woman who had been his faithful companion for so many years. But for her, he knew well, things would go but ill in the little homestead by the well. Yet Maya was so pretty. What man, still undulled by age, would not do as he did? For all that, the little capricious thing might be more friendly with Saraswati; there was no need for her to s.n.a.t.c.h Chujju in her arms whenever the latter looked at the child. But then women--and Maya was a thorough woman--were always so fearful of the evil eye. Fancy her calling that straight-limbed, utterly desirable son, Chujju,[42] as if any one would cast such a gift away in the sweeper's pan! As if the G.o.ds themselves, far off as they were, could be deceived by such a palpable fraud, or even by that ridiculous smudge of charcoal on the boy's face which only enhanced instead of detracting from its beauty!

Gurditta laughed a deep, broad laugh as he strewed the long manger with corn cobs and green stuff cut from the fodder field by the well.

[Footnote 42: From _chujj_, a sweeper's basket. One of the many opprobrious names given to avert the envious, and therefore evil, eye.]

Meanwhile, within the house yard, Maya was sullenly blowing away at the embers held in the semicircular mud fireplaces ranged along one of the walls. A gra.s.s thatch, supported by two forked sticks, protected this, the kitchen of the house, from possible rain and certain sun; while on the other wall a similar screen did like duty to a triple row of niches or pigeon-holes, wherein the household stores in immediate use were kept out of harm's way. For the rest, was a clean-swept expanse of beaten earth set round, after the fashion in a farmer's house, with implements and hive-like stores of grain. Between the one thatch and the other Saraswati moved restlessly, bringing pickles and spices as they were wanted. And still the basket lay tucked away in the folds of her veil.

"The raw sugar is nigh done," she said, stooping with her back towards Maya to reach the lowest row of niches.

"We must use the candy to-night, till I can open the big store.

Luckily I bought some when we took the Diwali[43] sweets from Gopal."

Then, ere she replaced the cloth in which the sweetmeats were tied, she held out a sugar horse to the child, who was playing by his mother. "Here, Chujju, wilt have one?"

[Footnote 43: For the most part, sugar animals, such as are sold at English fairs.]