The Flower of Forgiveness Part 17

"And if thou sayest a word--I swear I will deny it. Nay! look not so, Durga! I meant only if thou wilt not obey."

She stood as if turned to stone.

"Thou wouldst deny it? deny thy brother's child? Thou durst not, lest the G.o.ds should slay thee for the infamy."

He gave an embarra.s.sed laugh.

"Thou believest in the G.o.ds more than I, Durga; but I mean no harm to thee. None shall say aught against thee if thou wilt have patience."

III.

"And see that thou cleanest them well; they may be wanted ere long."

There was jeering malice in words, tone, and manner as Parb.u.t.ti handed over the tarnished silver ornaments; but Durga took them without a word--that aggressive silence of hers seeming, as it always did, to defy the ceaseless clang of the copper which, as usual, filled the sunlit courtyard. And yet to a woman less restrained than she here was an occasion for bitter outcry. The ornaments had been hers in those past days of honoured wifehood; now they were Parb.u.t.ti's to wear, or to give, as she chose. But what did that matter? what did anything matter if only Gopal could be kept content--if only Gopal could be kept to his promise? Two months of patience, two months of growing anxiety had told against Durga-dei's good looks according to native standards, though to Western eyes the face had gained more than it had lost. There was no indifference in it now. That had given place to an eagerness almost painful in its intensity; and Parb.u.t.ti, as she watched the widow begin her task, smiled to herself at the certainty of its being well performed; for Durga displayed a vast anxiety to please nowadays--a most convenient state of affairs for the household generally. Parb.u.t.ti smiled again, thinking what Durga would say when she knew the truth--that the ornaments were to go in the wedding baskets of the virgin bride who was to be the reward of Gopal's treachery.

"They will need tamarinds to give them back their whiteness," thought Durga, looking at the silver with experienced eyes. This interest in the drudgery and detail of her life was not a conscious effort on her part; of late a sort of dull comfort had come to her in the knowledge that already, in a thousand ways, she was standing between the household and that disregard of old ways which to her meant disgrace, if not disaster. And so it was with a certain pride in her work that, while Parb.u.t.ti was sleeping, she watched the tamarind pulp boiling away in the copper vessel over the fire, until her critical eye told her that its office was over, and that the ornaments boiling in it would need no silversmith's aid to enhance their l.u.s.tre. With a certain pride, also, in her own carefulness, she let the pulp stay on the fire till it had regained its original consistency, and then set it aside in the storeroom against future use. Parb.u.t.ti would not have thought of such economy. Parb.u.t.ti, in a reckless modern fashion, would have thrown the pulp away, and bought more when next she wanted some. The thought cheered her as, still with the same careful conservatism, she went on to some other process, approved by old tradition, for the due cleansing of tarnished silver. It was no light matter, that keeping of the household ornaments as if they were fresh from the goldsmith's hands; for did it not redound to the credit of the hearth? When she had worn them, none could have told they were not newly-made out of new rupees; but Parb.u.t.ti thought only of wearing them in a becoming manner.

Well! this time she should acknowledge that there was some good in having Durga in the house.

There was something infinitely pathetic in the slow workings of this woman's mind, as she sat busy over the ornaments--something infinitely pathetic in the pride with which, after the two or three days of treatment prescribed, she showed them white and glistening to her rival.

"Ay!--they are as new--_Mai_ Radha will deem them so at any rate," said Parb.u.t.ti, with studied carelessness. The time had come for revenge.

Gopal's pa.s.sion for pleasure had been aroused, he would allow nothing now to stand in the way of this projected marriage, and so--and so there was no harm in springing the mine upon Durga. There is nothing in heaven or earth so cruel as a jealous woman even when her nature is kindly, and Parb.u.t.ti's was not.

"_Mai_ Radha! What hath she to do with them?" The quick anxiety of the widow's tone was as balm to the other's ears.

"What a mother hath to do with her daughter's trousseau for sure," she answered lightly. "I meant to tell thee ere this, but Gopal would not have it, and 'tis true that widows are ill meddlers with marriage. He weds the girl next month by my consent. The house needs a child."

So far Durga had stood staring at her enemy incredulously. Now she flung out her arms in sudden pa.s.sion, letting the widow's shrouding veil fall from her figure recklessly.

"'Tis a lie--an infamous lie! The house needs no stranger's child. Thou knowest it! Yea, thou hast known it, and this is thy revenge. But it shall not be. Gopal shall speak! Gopal, I say! Gopal!"

Parb.u.t.ti's hands gripped her rival's as in a vice despite her struggles.

"So! is it that? And thou wouldst lay the burden of thy shame on Gopal, base walker of the bazaars, betrayer of thy dead lord! On Gopal who weds a virgin; let us see what he saith. Gopal! I say, Gopal!"

It almost seemed as if their clamour must have pierced that of the coppersmith's shop, for the latter ceased suddenly in the slow chiming of five o'clock. Instinctively the women fell away from each other, feeling that the crisis had come. Another minute would bring the man to answer for himself. So they stood waiting for the well-known figure on the threshold.

"Gopal!"

He recoiled from the sight of them, coward to the backbone.

And Parb.u.t.ti knew it--knew the man with whom she had to deal a thousand times better than Durga knew him; so her shrill voice came first, allowing no compromise, no shilly-shallying. Durga had claimed him as the father of her child. Was it true? for in that case there was no need to bring a bride to the house, nor indeed under such circ.u.mstances would _Mai_ Radha ever consent to her daughter's marriage. Let him take his choice without delay.

And Durga, still gauging him by the measure of her own nature, claimed the truth also. Between the two Gopal stood irresolute, divided between fear and desire.

"'Tis thy choice, O husband!" came Parb.u.t.ti's shrill voice; "the widow or the bride, thou canst not have both."

He knew it perfectly. It was one or the other, and a sudden fierce dislike leapt up against poor Durga.

"It is a lie," he muttered, his eyes upon the ground; "I have naught to do with her, naught."

Durga fell back as if she had been struck, but Parb.u.t.ti's laugh of triumph failed before the sombre fire of those big blazing eyes. For an instant it seemed as if the former would give herself up to vehement upbraiding; then suddenly she pa.s.sed into the silence of the outer court without a word, and crouched down in her favourite att.i.tude beside the smouldering fires. She felt sick and faint with horror, shame, incredulity. In all her known world of custom and conduct she seemed to find no foothold on which to recover her balance. He had denied her, he had denied the hearth. Her tense fingers hung rigidly without clasp or grip on anything, just as her mind seemed to have lost hold on all her beliefs, all her knowledge.

In a dim, half-dazed way she knew what would happen. By and by, when opportunity occurred, Gopal would creep out, as he had crept out many a time before, and seek to soothe her. There need be no scandal, no open turning into the streets, if she would promise to make no fuss.

Perhaps, once the marriage were accomplished he might even be induced to acknowledge the child. And at this thought something that was not shame, nor anger, nor horror, but sheer animal jealousy, leapt up within her; for she had learnt to care, as women do learn, even when they know that he for whom they care is not worth it.

So Parb.u.t.ti and this new woman were to have him, and she--

When the brain is quick its owner may suffer more from the very variety and complexity it gives to grief; but the grief for all that is less absorbing. Durga was so lost in hers that she scarcely noticed Parb.u.t.ti coming in after a time to see about the supper. There was no call on her for help this evening, no blame because the fires were slack and nothing ready. To tell truth, even Parb.u.t.ti did not care to drive the stunned look from Durga's face, lest it should be replaced by seven devils; so she was left alone. Yet even so, something made her start, and for a second her hand moved as if she were about to thrust it out in a gesture of dismay; then it sank back listlessly. The impulse had come and gone--the housewifely impulse of warning to the younger woman that tamarind pulp which had been kept for days in a copper vessel was not likely to be a wholesome ingredient in a man's supper. After all, what did it matter to her? Surely Parb.u.t.ti should know such things without being told them; if not, what right had she to be house-mother, ousting those who did? A curiously petty spite against her simmered up in Durga-dei's mind, and like the bubbles on boiling water served for a time to break up the surface of her hot anger against Gopal. What! was she to save Parb.u.t.ti from the consequences of her own ignorance and negligence? There was no more than that in Durga's mind as she watched the cooking; no more than that, and a dumb conviction that somehow the future must be changed, utterly changed. It could not be as the past had been; so much was certain. Yet as she sat, thinking not at all, something must have been juggling with her brain, for Parb.u.t.ti's first words, when an hour or so afterwards she came bustling back into the outer court, found their reply ready on Durga's lips.

"He is not well," she fussed. "Durga! thou art more learned in simples than most. What shall I give to stay the burning in his throat and keep the sickness from him? G.o.d send it be not the great sickness; but 'tis in the city they say." The widow stood up mechanically, and her right hand sought once more the crevices of the wall against which she was leaning.

"I know not. Give him tamarind water an thou likest. 'Tis not my work, but thine."

Revenge had sprung full-fledged from her slow brain in familiar face and welcome form. And it would not be her doing, but Parb.u.t.ti's! A sort of sensual delight in the idea surged through her, making her add--as if to, give an edge to the sword of fate--"yet if the sickness be about 'twere well to have more skill than mine. I would not have it said I killed him!"

Once more the spite against the woman overbore all other feelings for the time. That, and a dull recognition of the fact that if Gopal died he would be beyond the reach of them all--that it would benefit no one; save that in good sooth the child would be fatherless instead of--and then, suddenly, those black eyes of hers blazed up fiercely. Yes! that was the only possible end; as well now, when opportunity offered a beginning, as later.

"Ay! give him tamarind water--'tis best for such as he."

Not a shadow of regret came to her as she watched Parb.u.t.ti follow her advice. It was as if since all time this thing had been ordained, as if aught else were beyond her control. The curious calm with which the Oriental regards death, even for himself, does not count for nothing in such situations as this. We of the West, who reckon the measure of guilt without it, judge harshly, even while we judge equitably.

Durga-dei did not think out the question at all. Chance gave her quick opportunity, and she took it. Yet as the night wore on, bringing a succession of gossiping neighbours, she became restless, asking herself if the native doctor, summoned from the _sahib-logue's_ hospital beyond the walls, to satisfy that curious streak of education in the sick man's mind, said sooth in declaring it to be a case of cholera? or whether the wise woman sent by _Mai_ Radha was right in hinting at the evil eye? Was it, briefly, G.o.d's judgment, or man's? The uncertainty oppressed her.

So the dawn breaking over that unseen, unknown world beyond the house of the coppersmith found three haggard faces within it. Found the same thought in each heart: was it to be death, or death in life for one, or for all? yet each awaited the answer with a strange indifference.

"Yes! 'tis the great sickness; he grows blue and cold already," said the neighbours in frank wisdom as they looked in. The air was cooler then with the sudden freshness which seems to come with the sun's first rays; a thin blue smoke began to rise over the awakening city; the sparrows sat preening themselves on the tops of the walls; the loose slippers of the visitors, as they shuffled over the empty courtyards, had whispering, gossiping tongues of their own, which seemed to echo the ominous cackle of the wearers as they left those three faces to their task of waiting. One turned pa.s.sively to the brightening sky from the low string bed; the other two bent on the ground as pa.s.sively. A vessel full of tamarind water stood by the sick man, but he had scarcely touched it. Perhaps after all it was the great sickness. Durga scarcely knew whether she were glad or sorry at the thought.

So the sun climbed up until, with one clear distinct "_tam-burr-urr-ur-r_," the daily clamour of the shop began. Maybe the master would not die, maybe he would; either way work must be done, and no one had said the workers nay--as yet.

"Gopal is still alive," commented the neighbours cheerfully as they listened; "they will stop, likely, when they hear the death wail, and 'tis as well for him to end as he began with the ring of the metal in his ears."

The water-clock from the stairs where Gopal used to sit chimed noon.

The heavens were as bra.s.s. A perfect blaze of light beat down on the courtyard and those three faces. But one of them waited no longer, though it still gazed pa.s.sively into the pale sky from the ground where it lay. And Parb.u.t.ti, the new-made widow, glared in terrified hatred at the face of that other widow who stood looking down at the dead man.

Then suddenly the death wail rose loud and clear in a woman's voice.

"_Naked he came, naked has gone. This empty dwelling-place belongs neither to you nor to me_."

The clangour ceased, ending in a faint vibration like a dying breath.

"Listen!" said the policeman watching the waterclock; "there is death in the coppersmith's house. I heard he was ill of the sickness. G.o.d save him--he hath no son."

FAIZULLAH.