The Potter's Thumb Part 13

"What a noise you make; I am tired of flies."

So she swept them into a melon rind.

"Be quiet, flies! lie still in the dark."

She clapped her palm to the hole in the rind.

"I'm tired of it all, I will go to sleep; When morning comes I will seek for something-- _Over hill and dale, through night and day, I must seek for something_".

She rested her head on her palm, and slept, Down in the valley close to the river; Slept to the tune of the buzzing flies, Wrestling and fighting about fair play.

And while she slept the big Flood came, And the melon pillow floated away.

And all within swarmed out to the sun-- Gra.s.s, and herds, and ploughs, and looms.

People fighting for none knows what.

"I have made a new world," she said, with a laugh.

"A brand-new world; and the flies have gone.

But the palm of my right hand tickles still, May be it will cool when I find what I seek."

So she left her new world down by the river, Left it alone and sought for something-- _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for something_.'

The galloping wheel, which had responded always to the mad hurry of the recurring refrain, slackened slowly. Rose gave a sigh of relief, and glanced at Lewis Gordon to see if he too had been oppressed by that shrinking recognition of a stress, a strain, a desire, such as she had never felt before; but he was leaning forward, his chin on his curved hand, intent on listening, so she could not see his face.

'By the powers,' came Dan Fitzgerald's voice above the softening hum, 'the old chap has made an Ayodhya pot--the same shape, I mean.'

'He always does when he tells this story,' broke in George, quite pleased with the success of his entertainment. 'I don't think he quite knows why he does it, however. Sometimes he says the woman was looking for one; sometimes that she always carries one in her left hand to balance the world in her right. But he always takes the unbaked pot to the ruins and buries it with two of those odd little ninepins, he calls men and women, inside it. He is as mad as a hatter, you know.'

'Several hatters,' a.s.sented Gordon fervently, 'but it is an interesting theory of creation.'

'Now don't,' protested Dan, sitting with his long legs crunched up on the low stool close to the potter. 'It is too human for dissection by the Folklore Society. But I'm surprised at one thing. The wrestlers--they are persistent figures in Indian tales, Miss Tweedie--are generally represented as giants. They are pigmies here.'

'The Huzoor is right and wrong,' replied the potter in answer to an inquiry; 'the pailwans were neither pigmies nor giants. They were as the Huzoor--two and a half haths round the chest--neither more nor less.'

'That's a good shot,' remarked Dan in English, 'forty-five inches according to my tailor. You have an accurate eye, potter-ji,' he added in Hindustani, 'only half an inch out.'

'Not a hair's-breadth, Huzoor,' replied the old man mildly. 'The measures of the pailwans is the measure of the Huzoor. I have it here; my fathers used it, and I use it.'

He sought a moment in the little niche, hollowed, close to his right hand, out of the hard soil forming the side of his sunken seat, and drew from it a fine twisted cord of brown, red, and cream coloured wool. It was divided into measures by small sh.e.l.ls strung on the twist and knotted into their places.

'Hullo!' cried Gordon eagerly, 'that must be hundreds of years old.

Those are sea-sh.e.l.ls, and very rare. Simpson at the museum showed me one in fossil the other day. I wonder how the d.i.c.kens the old man got hold of them?'

'Two and a half haths,' repeated Fuzl Elahi absently, 'the potter's full measure for a man in the beginning and the end.' He leaned forward rapidly as he spoke, pa.s.sed the cord round Dan Fitzgerald's chest, and drew the ends together. The curled spirals of the two sh.e.l.ls lay half an inch apart. 'So much for the garments,' he muttered. 'Yea! I knew it. The measure of a true pailwan to a hair's breadth.

'And what am I, potter-ji?' asked George, laughing.

The puzzled look came back to the old man's face. 'The Huzoor may be a pailwan too. Times have changed.'

'Rough on a fellow, rather!' exclaimed the boy, still laughing. 'Here, Fitz! chuck me over the thing. Is that fair, Miss Tweedie?'

She laughed back into his bright face, as he pulled his hardest to make the two second sh.e.l.ls meet, then shook her head.

'Not on yourself, Mr. Keene. You are more of a hero than that, I should say.'

The potter's eyes were on her, then back on George. 'Everything is changed,' he muttered again, 'even the measure of the pots.'

'Then you measure them, do you?' asked Gordon, to whom George had handed the cord, and who was now examining it minutely.

'Surely, Huzoor. The first one of each batch. Then the hand learns the make.'

'Try what make you are, Gordon?' suggested Dan.

'Not I. Here, potter-ji, catch. Miss Tweedie and I, according to the best authority, are abnormal; we are not ordinary pots, so I, for one, decline to be measured by their standard. And now, if some of us are to be in time for such trivialities as dinner, we ought to be going.'

The potter rose also and stepped out of his hole. Seen thus at full length, he showed insignificant, his hairy, bandy, almost beast-like legs, contrasting strangely with the mild high-featured face, with its expression of puzzled anxiety, as he laid a deprecating hand on George Keene's sleeve.

'Wants bucksheesh, I suppose,' murmured Lewis. 'I have some rupees somewhere, if you want them, Keene.' But it was not money; it was only leave to speak to the 'madr mihrban.'

'That's a nice name for you, Miss Rose,' said Dan softly--'Mother of mercy--a name to be glad of.'

She blushed as she went forward a step, asking, 'What is it? what can I do for you?'

He stooped to touch her feet with his supple hands ere replying.

'Huzoor! it is a little thing. Fuzl Elahi, potter of Hodinuggur, has a daughter somewhere. Perhaps she has gone to the Huzoor's world; it is new, I do not know it. If the "madr mihrban" were to see her, she might tell her to come back--just once--only once. I would not keep her. But now I have no answer when my father says: "Where is thy little Azizan?"'

'Azizan!' echoed George quickly. But the old man seemed almost to have forgotten his own request. He stood looking past the strangers, past the village, past even the ruins, into the sunset sky.

'I will send her--if I see her,' said Rose gently, with tears in her eyes; for George had told her the story of the lost daughter, and the sudden, diffident appeal touched her. Yet the vast gulf between her and the old man touched and oppressed her still more, as she left him standing alone beside his wheel.

'Well!' said Lewis Gordon, when in silence they had reached the road again. 'You may call that amus.e.m.e.nt, Keene, if you like; I don't. When I get home, I shall have a sherry and bitters.'

'He _is_ rather a gruesome old chap,' admitted George cheerfully. 'I felt a bit creepy myself the first time I heard that song--by the way, Miss Tweedie, talking of creepiness, did I tell you about the Potter's Thumb? I didn't! Oh,--that is really a grand tale.' He told it, happily, as an excellent sequel to the show, while Dan, in one of his best moods, piled on the imaginative agony about Hodinuggur generally, until Lewis announced his intention of returning to the palace by the longer way. He would be late, of course, but that was preferable to having no appet.i.te for dinner!

'By Jove! seven o'clock,' cried Dan, looking at his watch. 'And you and I, George, have to get over to the bungalow. We must run for it.'

Rose watched them racing down the path, laughing and talking as they ran, with a troubled look.

'Fine specimens, Miss Tweedie,' remarked Lewis after a pause. 'I don't think you need fear their cracking in the fire.'

'I--I--' faltered Rose, taken aback by his comprehension.

'Am Scotch! That's sufficient excuse. I notice we seldom get rid of our native superst.i.tion. Besides, it _was_ uncanny--the yard-measure and the Potter's Thumb, and that horse-leech of a woman, who was never satisfied. I felt it myself.'

She knew he was speaking down to her as a nervous woman; yet she did not resent it, because it was a distinct relief not to be taken seriously.

'I wish they had not been measured, for all that,' she persisted. 'You will own it was odd, won't you?'

'Not so odd as Dan himself! He has been cracked ever since I knew him.

And Keene is one of the sterling sort, certain of success; besides, he measured himself! Now, before you go upstairs to dress, if your Scotch blood is still curdling, as mine is, have a half of sherry and bitters with me. Crows roost with crows, you remember.'