The Flower of Forgiveness Part 2

"Yes, poor fellow! but the anemone? I don't understand how it came here."

My friend paused. "That is the odd thing. I was looking after the funeral and all that, for Taylor and I were great friends--he left me that herbarium in memory of our time in Cashmere. Well, when I went over to the house about an hour before to see everything done properly, his bearer brought me one of those little flat straw baskets the natives use. It had been left during my absence, he said, by a young Brahman, who a.s.sured him that it contained something which the great doctor _sahib_ had been very anxious to possess, and which was now sent by some one to whom he had been very kind.

"'You told him the _sahib_ was dead, I suppose?' I asked.

"'This slave informed him that the master had gained freedom, but he replied it was no matter, as all his task was this.' On opening the basket I found a gourd such as the disciples carry round for alms, and in it, planted among gypsum debris, was that anemone; or rather that is a part of it, for I put some in Taylor's coffin."

"Ah! I presume the _gosain_--Victor Emanuel, I think you called him--sent the plant; he knew of the doctor's desire?"

"Perhaps. The bearer said the Brahman was a very handsome boy, very fair, dressed in the usual black antelope skin of the disciple. It is a queer story anyhow--is it not?"

HARVEST.

[Respectfully dedicated to our law-makers in India, who, by giving to the soldier-peasants of the Punjab the novel right of alienating their ancestral holdings, are fast throwing the land, and with it the balance of power, into the hands of money-grubbers; thus reducing those who stood by us in our time of trouble to the position of serfs.]

"_Ai!_ Daughter of thy grandmother," muttered old Jaimul gently, as one of his yoke wavered, making the handle waver also. The offender was a barren buffalo doomed temporarily to the plough, in the hopes of inducing her to look more favourably on the first duty of the female s.e.x, so she started beneath the unaccustomed goad.

"_Ari!_ sister, fret not," muttered Jaimul again, turning from obscure abuse to palpable flattery, as being more likely to gain his object; and once more the tilted soil glided between his feet, traced straight by his steady hand. In that vast expanse of bare brown field left by or waiting for the plough, each new furrow seemed a fresh diameter of the earth-circle which lay set in the bare blue horizon--a circle centring always on Jaimul and his plough. A brown dot for the buffalo, a white dot for the ox, a brown and white dot for the old peasant with his lanky brown limbs and straight white drapery, his brown face, and long white beard. Brown, and white, and blue, with the promise of harvest sometime if the blue was kind. That was all Jaimul knew or cared. The empire beyond, hanging on the hope of harvest, lay far from his simple imaginings; and yet he, the old peasant with his steady hand of patient control, held the reins of government over how many million square miles? That is the province of the Blue Book, and Jaimul's blue book was the sky.

"Bitter blue sky with no fleck of a cloud, Ho! brother ox! make the plough speed.

[_Ai! soorin!_ straight, I say!]

'Tis the usurers' bellies wax fat and proud When poor folk are in need."

The rude guttural chant following these silent, earth-deadened footsteps was the only sound breaking the stillness of the wide plain.

"Sky dappled grey like a partridge's breast, Ho! brother ox! drive the plough deep.

[Steady, my sister, steady!]

The peasants work, but the usurers rest Till harvest's ripe to reap."

So on and on interminably, the chant and the furrow, the furrow and the chant, both bringing the same refrain of flattery and abuse, the same ant.i.thesis--the peasant and the usurer face to face in conflict, and above them both the fateful sky, changeless or changeful as it chooses.

The sun climbed up and up till the blue hardened into bra.s.s, and the mere thought of rain seemed lost in the blaze of light. Yet Jaimul, as he finally unhitched his plough, chanted away in serene confidence--

"Merry drops slanting from west to east, Ho! brother ox! drive home the wain; 'Tis the usurer's belly that gets the least When Ram sends poor folk rain."

The home whither he drove the lagging yoke was but a whitish-brown mound on the bare earth-circle, not far removed from an ant-hill to alien eyes; for all that, home to the uttermost. Civilisation, education, culture could produce none better. A home bright with the welcome of women, the laughter of children. Old Kishnu, mother of them all, wielding a relentless despotism tempered by profound affection over every one save her aged husband. Pertabi, widow of the eldest son, but saved from degradation in this life and d.a.m.nation in the next by the tall lad whose grasp had already closed on his grandfather's plough-handle. Taradevi, whose soldier-husband was away guarding some scientific or unscientific frontier, while she reared up, in the ancestral home, a tribe of st.u.r.dy youngsters to follow in his footsteps. Fighting and ploughing, ploughing and fighting; here was life epitomised for these long-limbed, grave-eyed peasants whose tongues never faltered over the shibboleth which showed their claim to courage.[3]

The home itself lay bare for the most part to the blue sky; only a few shallow outhouses, half room, half verandah, giving shelter from noon-day heat or winter frosts. The rest was courtyard, serving amply for all the needs of the household. In one corner a pile of golden chaff, ready for the milch kine which came in to be fed from the mud mangers ranged against the wall; in another a heap of fuel, and the tall, beehive-like mud receptacles for grain. On every side stores of something brought into existence by the plough--corn-cobs for husking, millet-stalks for the cattle, cotton awaiting deft fingers and the lacquered spinning-wheels which stand, c.o.c.ked on end, against the wall.

Taradevi sits on the white sheet spread beneath the quern, while her eldest daughter, a girl about ten years of age, lends slight aid to the revolving stones whence the coa.r.s.e flour falls ready for the mid-day meal. Pertabi, down by the grain-bunkers, rakes more wheat from the funnel-like opening into her flat basket, and as she rises flings a handful to the pigeons sidling on the wall. A fluttering of white wings, a glint of sunlight on opaline necks, while the children cease playing to watch their favourites tumble and strut over the feast. Even old Kishnu looks up from her preparation of curds without a word of warning against waste; for to be short of grain is beyond her experience. Wherefore was the usurer brought into the world save to supply grain in advance when the blue sky sided with capital against labour for a dry year or two?

"The land is ready," said old Jaimul over his pipe. "'Tis time for the seed, therefore I will seek Anunt Ram at sunset and set my seal to the paper."

That was how the transaction presented itself to his accustomed eyes.

Seed grain in exchange for yet another seal to be set in the long row which he and his forbears had planted regularly, year by year, in the usurer's field of accounts. As for the harvests of such sowings? Bah!

there never were any. A real crop of solid, hard, red wheat was worth them all, and that came sometimes--might come any time if the blue sky was kind. He knew nothing of Statutes of Limitation or judgments of the Chief Court, and his inherited wisdom drew a broad line of demarcation between paper and plain facts.

Anunt Ram, the usurer, however, was of another school. A comparatively young man, he had brought into his father's ancestral business the modern selfishness which laughs to scorn all considerations save that for Number One. He and his forbears had made much out of Jaimul and his fellows; but was that any reason against making more, if more was to be made?

And more _was_ indubitably to be made if Jaimul and his kind were reduced to the level of labourers. That handful of grain, for instance, thrown so recklessly to the pigeons--that might be the usurer's, and so might the plenty which went to build up the long, strong limbs of Taradevi's tribe of young soldiers--idle young scamps who thrashed the usurer's boys as diligently during play-time as they were beaten by those clever, weedy lads during school-hours.

"Seed grain," he echoed sulkily to the old peasant's calm demand. "Sure last harvest I left thee more wheat than most men in my place would have done; for the account grows, O Jaimul! and the land is mortgaged to the uttermost."

"Mayhap! but it must be sown for all that, else _thou_ wilt suffer as much as I. So quit idle words, and give the seed as thou hast since time began. What do I know of accounts who can neither read nor write?

'Tis thy business, not mine."

"'Tis not my business to give ought for nought--"

"For nought," broke in Jaimul, with the hoa.r.s.e chuckle of the peasant availing himself of a time-worn joke. "Thou canst add that nought to thy figures, O _bunniah-ji!_[4] So bring the paper and have done with words. If Ram sends rain--and the omens are auspicious--thou canst take all but food and jewels for the women."

"Report saith thy house is rich enough in them already," suggested the usurer after a pause.

Jaimul's big white eyebrows met over his broad nose. "What then, _bunniah-ji?_" he asked haughtily.

Anunt Ram made haste to change the subject, whereat Jaimul, smiling softly, told the usurer that maybe more jewels would be needed with next seed grain, since if the auguries were once more propitious, the women purposed bringing home his grandson's bride ere another year had sped. The usurer smiled an evil smile.

"Set thy seal to this also," he said, when the seed grain had been measured; "the rules demand it. A plague, say I, on all these new-fangled papers the _sahib-logue_ ask of us. Look you! how I have to pay for the stamps and fees; and then you old ones say we new ones are extortionate. We must live, O _zemindar-ji!_[5] even as thou livest."

"Live!" retorted the old man with another chuckle. "Wherefore not! The land is good enough for you and for me. There is no fault in the land!"

"Ay! it is good enough for me and for you," echoed the usurer slowly.

He inverted the p.r.o.nouns--that was all.

So Jaimul, as he had done ever since he could remember, walked over the bare plain with noiseless feet, and watched the sun flash on the golden grain as it flew from his thin brown fingers. And once again the guttural chant kept time to his silent steps.

"Wheat grains grow to wheat, And the seed of a tare to tare; Who knows if man's soul will meet Man's body to wear.

Great Ram, grant me life From the grain of a golden deed; Sink not my soul in the strife To wake as a weed."

After that his work in the fields was over. Only at sunrise and sunset his tall, gaunt figure stood out against the circling sky as he wandered through the sprouting wheat waiting for the rain which never came. Not for the first time in his long life of waiting, so he took the want calmly, soberly.

"It is a bad year," he said, "the next will be better. For the sake of the boy's marriage I would it had been otherwise; but Anunt Ram must advance the money. It is his business."

Whereat Jodha, the youngest son, better versed than his father in new ways, shook his head doubtfully. "Have a care of Anunt, O _baba-ji_,"[6] he suggested with diffidence. "Folk say he is sharper than ever his father was."

"'Tis a trick sons have, or think they have, nowadays," retorted old Jaimul wrathfully. "Anunt can wait for payment as his fathers waited.

G.o.d knows the interest is enough to stand a dry season or two."