CHAPTER II.
Chūnnee had now received his answer; he stole forth, and crept like a shadow from wall to wall, down a series of narrow paths, till he came to a house standing alone in an open space—a notable abode, for a tree grew through the roof. There was no gate to the outer yard, no dog. The door was closed—needless to try it; he must work his way through the mud wall at the back, and crawl in. The baking of many seasons’ suns had effectually hardened this impediment, and he strove for an hour, listening for sounds with intense trepidation, whilst the sweat poured down his face. At last he had scraped a sufficiently large aperture—he was slender to leanness. He crept through, but his usual bad luck pursued him; his head came violently against a brass chattie that fell with a clang enough to waken the dead. It effectually aroused the old man, who awoke and struck a match, and showed Chūnnee that he had come too late!
The light displayed a deep hole in the floor, an empty hole. The door was ajar; the treasure was already stolen; and Chūnnee stood there, krooplie in hand, with the cavity in the wall to speak for him—the convicted thief!
Old Turroo’s piercing shrieks of “murder” and “dacoity” assembled a dozen people in less than three minutes. Yea, truly, he had been robbed! A box lay outside empty, and Chūnnee the coolie, the ne’er-do-well, had come to this!
He was caught like a rat in a trap! There was the opening in the wall, the muddy krooplie in his grasp; he stood plainly convicted. The criminal hung his head—of what avail to speak, and aver his innocence?—he was not innocent! Others had got the booty, he would suffer for them. As he had been toiling and labouring they had been within, and had carried off what he too had come to seek.
Perhaps he was served rightly; but he never got a chance—no, not even to rob.
Meanwhile old Turroo literally rent his clothes, and tore his scanty white beard, and howled, cursed, and gesticulated like a madman. Zālim Sing stood foremost amongst sympathizers (for the venerable relative still possessed a house, cattle, and lands), and said “that truly it did not surprise him to find that the thief was his blood-brother.”
Nevertheless, it did astonish most of the assembly, for Chūnnee, if miserably poor, had ever been known to be scrupulously honest. They were amazed, moreover, that he should begin on such a large scale! Chūnnee offered no resistance; he was led away, and shut up in a cowhouse, whilst Zālim Sing’s brother-in-law, full of zeal, ran all the way to Bugwa to fetch the police.
The police arrived at daybreak—two men and an inspector, in their blue tunics and red turbans—all looking excessively wise; but their searching and cross-examining, discovered nothing beyond the empty box. How had Chūnnee spirited away the treasures? Who was his accomplice?
“Let him be beaten till he speaks,” implored the venerable creature who had been ravished of his treasure. “Let the soles of his feet be roasted until he opens his mouth. Where hath he hidden them?”—and he shouted to the whole assembled village—“the two bags of rupees, the golden bangles, the anklets, the strings of pearls—forty pair without blemish? If he will only give me the pearls!”—and the old man lifted up his voice and wept.
A dirty, half-naked old man, how strange it seemed, to behold him weeping for his pearls! Now, had it been a young and lovely woman, the grief would have seemed natural. And who would have believed that old Turroo had such treasures? Ay, he was a sly fox.
“Give me my pearls, yea, and my gold mohurs. Thou mayst keep the rest, and go free,” he declared magnanimously.
But Chūnnee could not give what he had not got, and therefore held his peace. His children screamed when they saw their father’s arms pinioned with ropes, the iron things on his hands, and heard he was going away to the Jail Khana—screamed from fear and hunger.
Meanwhile old Turroo howled and raved like one possessed, and, pointing to his grand-nephew, besought the police to put him to torture by fire, then and there. In former days strange things were done under the mantle of the law; but in these enlightened times no policeman dare venture, even for a large bribe, to practise the question by torture.
So Chūnnee was led away captive, followed as far as the high-road by fully half the village; and for more than a mile along that dusty track, two little weeping creatures pattered behind him. At length the girl could go no further, and fell exhausted. Her father halted between his guard, and said—
“Girunda, take care of thy sister. Go to thy uncle; he will feed thee till I come back. Go now, ere nightfall.”
And if he doth not receive them, what is to become of them? was a thought that harassed him all the weary march. At a turn of the road he turned and looked back, and saw the two small forlorn figures standing in the straight, white highway, watching him to the last.
Chūnnee was brought up before the magistrate that day. He had been taken red-handed, and had not denied his guilt. He was silent with respect to the treasure. It had been a most daring dacoity, but, as it was his first offence, he would be only sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Shahjhanpur jail.
“And his two children?” he ventured to ask. “Who would care for them? How were they to live?” (There are no poor-houses in India.)
“Oh, the neighbours, or your relations,” said the Sudder judge, knowing how immensely generous, good, and charitable the very poorest are to one another. “You have a brother, of course—he will take them.”
Chūnnee was by no means so sanguine on this point.
He was sent on foot to jail—a distance of sixty miles—and there put in leg-irons, and a convict sacking-coat, with a square cap to cover his shaven head. He was set to work to pick oakum. He worked steadily, though with a face and air of dogged despair. But what was the good of giving trouble? What was the good of anything? The jail fare was not jail fare to him—it was better than he had at home; and now that he had sufficient to eat, he grew strong. But how were his children faring? Were they starving? Other convicts—robbers, gamblers, dacoits—thought Chūnnee proud and sullen, he was so silent; or surely he was in for some great crime?
Luckily for him, the jail daroga liked him, and promoted him to basket-making, and thence to the vegetable garden. His percentage on his earnings he did not take out in money, or even in the Sunday smoke. No; all went to the remission of his sentence. Truly, life was not so bad, save for the hangings—every convict was forced to attend—and these executions were not infrequent, for Shahjhanpur was in the centre of a district notorious for murders. It was a veritable case of “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.”
When all the grain of this most fertile tract is harvested, and the sugar-cane brakes have been cut and carried away on bullock-carts, when the linseed is pressed, and the sugar sold, and the wheat threshed and ground, it is the hot weather; no sowing or ploughing can be done. People must wait for the first burst of the rains, to soften the stone-like ground. And, oh, how sweet to the nostrils is the smell of earth after the first wild downpour!
Meanwhile, they have money in their hands—the fruit of their labour. They have long, hot, idle days, and no occupation, so they rake up old land-feuds, old blood-feuds, old jealousies, and the result is but too frequently a man’s body found in a nullah, killed by a sickle or a lathi (heavy stick), or a woman’s corpse drawn out of some abandoned well.
The jail gardens supplied all the vegetables to the station, and the mem sahibs, when the vegetable “doli” came late, knew well the reason—there had been a hanging.
Chūnnee attended the first execution with apparently more trepidation than the criminal himself, who walked to his fate with a jaunty air, and on being asked if he had arranged all his affairs said—
“By your favour, yea;” and then, on second thoughts, added, with amazing vivacity, “There is one small brass lotah which I forgot. I desire that it be given to my sister-in-law.” And so, singing a song to Nirvana, he ascended the gallows and calmly met his fate.
Another young man’s demeanour was outrivalled by that of his own father and the kinsfolk who had come to take leave of him.
The execution was at half-past six, and the official in charge—a tender-hearted gentleman—stood waiting till the farewells were over, watch in hand. Time was up, but he would give this vigorous young Brahmin yet a few more minutes of life. He was engaged in eager conversation with his relatives, and it was commonly reported and suspected that he had actually confessed to the crime, and sacrificed himself in order to save a near kinsman. The official glanced at his watch once more, and was astounded to catch the eye of the culprit’s father, and hear him say, in a most matter-of-fact tone—
“Yea, truly, my son, time is up. Thou hadst better go at once, for, remember, we have fifteen koss to carry thee to the Ganges to burn—and we shall not get home till dark, and the moon is old!”
The son, without a word, salaamed to this more than Roman parent, and then turned to meet his fate without an instant’s hesitation. Chūnnee had beheld many heroes of this type, but he had also seen others who had not had it in them to encounter death with similar fortitude. He had noted the wandering, terrified eye, the ashen lips drawn back from the chattering teeth, the twitching knee-caps, as the man was led forth to die like a dog; he had seen it, and the sight had made his heart melt like wax within him, and his limbs shake as if he had been stricken with palsy. It was his one horror, to be warned to attend an execution.
And then there was the ever-haunting fear about his two desolate, helpless children—were they well or ill, alive or dead? He was seventy-six miles from his own pergunnah—no one ever visited him with tidings from home, no one came to see him, and brought him bazaar news, and sweets, a tin pot to drink from, or even a bit of a wheaten chupatti. No, he had no friends, either within the jail, or beyond its walls.