The Flower of Forgiveness Part 3

In truth fifty per cent, and payment in kind at the lowest harvest rates, with a free hand in regard to the cooking of accounts, should have satisfied even a usurer's soul. But Anunt Ram wanted that handful of grain for the pigeons and the youngsters' mess of pottage. He wanted the land, in fact, and so the long row of dibbled-in seals dotting the unending scroll of accounts began to sprout and bear fruit. Drought gave them life, while it brought death to many a better seed.

"Not give the money for the boy's wedding!" shrilled old Kishnu six months after in high displeasure. "Is the man mad? When the fields are the best in all the country side."

"True enough, O wife! but he says the value under these new rules the _sahib-logue_ make is gone already. That he must wait another harvest, or have a new seal of me."

"Is that all, O Jaimul Singh! and thou causing my liver to melt with fear? A seal--what is a seal or two more against the son of thy son's marriage?"

"'Tis a new seal," muttered Jaimul uneasily, "and I like not new things. Perhaps 'twere better to wait the harvest."

"Wait the harvest and lose the auspicious time the _purohit_[7] hath found written in the stars? _Ai_, Taradevi! _Ai!_ Pertabi! there is to be no marriage, hark you! The boy's strength is to go for nought, and the bride is to languish alone because the father of his father is afraid of a usurer! _Hae, Hae!_"

The women wept the easy tears of their race, mingled with half-real, half-pretended fears lest the Great Ones might resent such disregard of their good omens--the old man sitting silent meanwhile, for there is no tyranny like the tyranny of those we love. Despite all this his native shrewdness held his tenderness in check. They would get over it, he told himself, and a good harvest would do wonders--ay! even the wonders which the _purohit_ was always finding in the skies. Trust a good fee for that! So he hardened his heart, went back to Anunt Ram, and told him that he had decided on postponing the marriage. The usurer's face fell. To be so near the seal which would make it possible for him to foreclose the mortgages, and yet to fail! He had counted on this marriage for years; the blue sky itself had fought for him so far, and now--what if the coming harvest were a b.u.mper?

"But I will seal for the seed grain," said old Jaimul; "I have done that before, and I will do it again--we know that bargain of old."

Anunt Ram closed his pen-tray with a snap. "There is no seed grain for you, _baba-ji_, this year either," he replied calmly.

Ten days afterwards, Kishnu, Pertabi, and Taradevi were bustling about the courtyard with the untiring energy which fills the Indian woman over the mere thought of a wedding, and Jaimul, out in the fields, was chanting as he scattered the grain into the furrows--

"Wrinkles and seams and sears On the face of our mother earth; There are ever sorrows and tears At the gates of birth."

The mere thought of the land lying fallow had been too much for him; so safe in the usurer's strong-box lay a deed with the old man's seal sitting cheek by jowl beside Anunt Ram's brand-new English signature.

And Jaimul knew, in a vague, unrestful way, that this harvest differed from other harvests, in that more depended upon it. So he wandered oftener than ever over the brown expanse of field where a flush of green showed that Mother Earth had done her part, and was waiting for Heaven to take up the task.

The wedding fire-balloons rose from the courtyard, and drifted away to form constellations in the cloudless sky; the sound of wedding drums and pipes disturbed the stillness of the starlit nights, and still day by day the green shoots grew lighter and lighter in colour because the rain came not. Then suddenly, like a man's hand, a little cloud! "Merry drops slanting from west to the east;" merrier by far to Jaimul's ears than all the marriage music was that low rumble from the canopy of purple cloud, and the discordant scream of the peac.o.c.k telling of the storm to come. Then in the evening, when the setting sun could only send a bar of pale primrose light between the solid purple and the solid brown, what joy to pick a dry-shod way along the boundary ridges and see the promise of harvest doubled by the reflection of each tender green spikelet in the flooded fields! The night settled down dark, heavenly dark, with a fine spray of steady rain in the old, weather-beaten face, as it set itself towards home.

The blue sky was on the side of labour this time, and, during the next month or so, Taradevi's young soldiers made mud pies, and crowed more l.u.s.tily than ever over the _bunniah's_ boys.

Then the silvery beard began to show in the wheat, and old Jaimul laughed aloud in the fulness of his heart.

"That is an end of the new seal," he said boastfully, as he smoked his pipe in the village square. "It is a poor man's harvest, and no mistake."

But Anunt Ram was silent. The April sun had given some of its sunshine to the yellowing crops before he spoke.

"I can wait no longer for my money, O _baba-ji!_" he said; "the three years are nigh over, and I must defend myself."

"What three years?" asked Jaimul, in perplexity.

"The three years during which I can claim my own according to the _sahib-logue's_ rule. You must pay, or I must sue."

"Pay before harvest! What are these fool's words? Of course I will pay in due time; hath not great Ram sent me rain to wash out the old writing?"

"But what of the new one, _baba-ji?_--the cash lent on permission to foreclose the mortgages?"

"If the harvest failed--if it failed," protested Jaimul quickly. "And I knew it could not fail. The stars said so, and great Ram would not have it so."

"That is old-world talk!" sneered Anunt. "We do not put that sort of thing in the bond. You sealed it, and I must sue."

"What good to sue ere harvest? What money have I? But I will pay good grain when it comes, and the paper can grow as before."

Anunt Ram sn.i.g.g.e.red.

"What good, O _baba-ji?_ Why, the land will be mine, and I can take, not what you give me, but what I choose. For the labourer his hire, and the rest for me."

"Thou art mad!" cried Jaimul, but he went back to his fields with a great fear at his heart--a fear which sent him again to the usurer's ere many days were over.

"Here are my house's jewels," he said briefly, "and the mare thou hast coveted these two years. Take them, and write off my debt till harvest."

Anunt Ram smiled again.

"It shall be part payment of the acknowledged claim," he said; "let the Courts decide on the rest."

"After the harvest?"

"Ay, after the harvest; in consideration of the jewels."

Anunt Ram kept his word, and the fields were shorn of their crop ere the summons to attend the District Court was brought to the old peasant.

"By the Great Spirit who judges all it is a lie!" That was all he could say as the long, carefully-woven tissue of fraud and cunning blinded even the eyes of a justice bia.s.sed in his favour. The records of our Indian law-courts teem with such cases--cases where even equity can do nothing against the evidence of pen and paper. No need to detail the strands which formed the net. The long array of seals had borne fruit at last, fiftyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold--a goodly harvest for the usurer.

"Look not so glum, friend," smiled Anunt Ram, as they pushed old Jaimul from the Court at last, dazed, but still vehemently protesting. "Thou and Jodha thy son shall till the land as ever, seeing thou art skilled in such work, but there shall be no idlers; and the land, mark you, is _mine_, not thine."

A sudden gleam of furious hate sprang to the strong old face, but died away as quickly as it came.

"Thou liest," said Jaimul; "I will appeal. The land is mine. It hath been mine and my fathers' under the king's pleasure since time began.

Kings, ay, and queens, for that matter, are not fools, to give good land to the _bunniah's_ belly. Can a _bunniah_ plough?"

Yet as he sat all day about the court-house steps awaiting some legal detail or other, doubt even of his own incredulity came over him. He had often heard of similar misfortunes to his fellows, but somehow the possibility of such evil appearing in his own life had never entered his brain. And what would Kishnu say--after all these years, these long years of content?

The moon gathering light as the sun set shone full on the road, as the old man, with downcast head, made his way across the level plain to the mud hovel which had been a true home to him and his for centuries. His empty hands hung at his sides, and the fingers twitched nervously as if seeking something. On either side the bare stubble, stretching away from the track which led deviously to the scarce discernible hamlets here and there. Not a soul in sight, but every now and again a glimmer of light showing where some one was watching the heaps of new threshed grain upon the threshing-floors.

And then a straighter thread of path leading right upon his own fields and the village beyond. What was that? A man riding before him. The blood leapt through the old veins, and the old hands gripped in upon themselves. So he--that liar riding ahead--was to have the land, was he? Riding the mare too, while he, Jaimul, came behind afoot--yet for all that gaining steadily with long, swinging stride on the figure ahead. A white figure on a white horse like death; or was the avenger behind beneath the lank folds of drapery which fluttered round the walker?

The land! No! He should never have the land. How could he? The very idea was absurd. Jaimul, thinking thus, held his head erect and his hands relaxed their grip. He was close on the rider now; and just before him, clear in the moonlight, rose the boundary mark of his fields--a loose pile of sunbaked clods, hardened by many a dry year of famine to the endurance of stone. Beside it, the shallow whence they had been dug, showing a gleam of water still held in the stiff clay.

The mare paused, straining at the bridle for a drink, and Jaimul almost at her heels paused also, involuntarily, mechanically. For a moment they stood thus, a silent white group in the moonlight; then the figure on the horse slipped to the ground and moved a step forward. Only one step, but that was within the boundary. Then, above the even wheeze of the thirsty beast, rose a low chuckle as the usurer stooped for a handful of soil and let it glide through his fingers.

"It is good ground! Ay, ay--none better." They were his last words. In fierce pa.s.sion of love, hate, jealousy, and protection, old Jaimul closed on his enemy, and found something to grip with his steady old hands. Not the plough-handle this time, but a throat, a warm, living throat where you could feel the blood swelling in the veins beneath your fingers. Down almost without a struggle, the old face above the young one, the lank knee upon the broad body. And now, quick! for something to slay withal, ere age tired in its contest with youth and strength. There, ready since all time, stood the landmark, and one clod after another s.n.a.t.c.hed from it fell on the upturned face with a dull thud. Fell again and again, crashed and broke to crumbling soil. Good soil! Ay! none better! Wheat might grow in it and give increase fortyfold, sixtyfold, ay, a hundredfold. Again, again, and yet again, with dull insistence till there was a shuddering sigh, and then silence. Jaimul stood up quivering from the task and looked over his fields. They were at least free from that _thing_ at his feet; for what part in this world's harvest could belong to the ghastly figure with its face beaten to a jelly, which lay staring up into the over-arching sky? So far, at any rate, the business was settled for ever, and in so short a time that the mare had scarcely slaked her thirst, and still stood with head down, the water dripping from her muzzle. The _thing_ would never ride her again either. Half-involuntarily he stepped to her side and loosened the girth.

"_Ari!_ sister," he said aloud, "thou hast had enough. Go home."

The docile beast obeyed his well-known voice, and as her echoing amble died away Jaimul looked at his blood-stained hands and then at the formless face at his feet. There was no home for him, and yet he was not sorry, or ashamed, or frightened--only dazed at the hurry of his own act. Such things had to be done sometimes when folk were unjust.

They would hang him for it, of course, but he had at least made his protest, and done his deed as good men and true should do when the time came. So he left the horror staring up into the sky and made his way to the threshing-floor, which lay right in the middle of his fields. How white the great heaps of yellow corn showed in the moonlight, and how large! His heart leapt with a fierce joy at the sight. Here was harvest indeed! Some one lay asleep upon the biggest pile; and his stern old face relaxed into a smile as, stooping over the careless sentinel, he found it was his grandson. The boy would watch better as he grew older, thought Jaimul, as he drew his cotton plaid gently over the smooth round limbs outlined among the yielding grain, lest the envious moon might covet their promise of beauty.

"Son of my son! Son of my son!" he murmured over and over again, as he sat down to watch out the night beside his corn for the last time. Yes, for the last time. At dawn the deed would be discovered; they would take him, and he would not deny his own handiwork. Why should he? The midnight air of May was hot as a furnace, and as he wiped the sweat from his forehead it mingled with the dust and blood upon his hands. He looked at them with a curious smile before he lay back among the corn.

Many a night he had watched the slow stars wheeling to meet the morn, but never by a fairer harvest than this.