CHAPTER III.
Meanwhile the desolate little couple had toiled painfully back to Paroor, and halted outside their uncle’s enclosure. They dared not venture in, and they crouched timidly without the battered wooden doorway, whilst Zālim Sing laid down the law, expounded his own virtues, and denounced Chūnnee to more than half the village. He had always been secretly jealous of his good-looking brother, who, moreover, was the father of a son, whilst his wife had borne him, instead of the much-desired heir, no fewer than seven daughters, of whom four survived; and Zālim’s enemies said among themselves that his sins must be many, or he would never have been punished with seven girls! He talked freely, knowing there was no one to defend the absent, and the starving pair heard that their father was a liar, a dacoit, a budmash, a thief, and the most ungrateful kinsman to a noble-hearted brother that ever drew the breath of life—one cannot talk for ever; and as the listeners gradually dropped off, notice was naturally attracted by the two wretched little beggars in the lane—what was to become of them?—their home was empty, save for a reaping-hook, a charpoy, and a cat.
Zālim Sing pulled his beard, and scowled; his crooked eye rolled fiercely, till a woman in the crowd exclaimed in a loud clear voice—
“Since thou sayest thou art a benevolent man, and the most generous of kinsmen, why dost thou stare at the starving ones, instead of taking them in?”
Their dusty feet and hunger-stricken faces touched the crowd—as easily swayed as the branch of a tree to this side and that, by whatever wind may blow.
There was a hoarse murmur, which the crafty Zālim quickly interpreted; now was the time to pose as a noble benefactor—or never; and he drew the two children over the threshold of the door, and shut himself in with his detested encumbrances.
He gave them some coarse food and water, and showed them a sort of shed where they might sleep. “But thou mayst not enter my house,” he said, “or play with my children; thy father is a wicked man, therefore ye are pariahs, but I and my children are good.”
The next day he went to his brother’s abode and sold the old charpoy, reaping-hook, and house for the sum of seven rupees; but he could neither sell nor kill the cat—she sat serenely aloft in a neem tree, far out of his reach. Presently she discovered her old owners, or they discovered her; they hid her secretly in their miserable shelter, and begged a little milk in the village. Alas! she was their only friend. Their cousins—four sallow, ugly children, two of whom had inherited their parent’s violent squint, and all of whom were laden with anklets and bangles, and a vast sense of their own importance—condescended to come and patronize the two wicked beggars who lived in the old goat-shed in a corner of the enclosure. They experienced an intense and novel delight in patronizing, teasing, pinching, and threatening these little pariahs, who were better fun, and afforded more scope for amusement, than any of their usual games, and their sense of their own superiority swelled to enormous proportions. They visited the unfortunates at all hours; but the cat knew their voices, and hid hastily among the thatch. Bazaar cats are wonderfully active and cunning, they are also marvellous thieves, and the cat throve.
Presently Zālim Sing’s wife discovered that Girunda was old enough to be of use. She set him to do the work of two servants, or one pony. He had to draw water and carry it home from the well, to grind corn, to cut fodder, whilst his little sister cried herself to sleep alone, for she dared not leave the cat, lest her ever-prying cousins should discover it and throw it down the well. Certainly its appearance was against it; it was lean and long and dirty-white, with a thin rat tail; and a sharp-pointed face—a pure village type—hungry, and careless of its appearance, a merciless mouser, but a faithful adherent.
Poor Girunda now toiled early and late, he received nought but blows, abuse, and the coarsest fare. Much of his utility was unknown to his uncle—who was frequently from home—but who scowled every time that his glance fell upon him.
Affairs were not going quite as smoothly as hitherto with Zālim Sing. The prices had risen in everything, save in his own particular commodity, linseed. There was the prospect of an unusually hot, scarce season, and his pony was sick. He vented all his ill humour on the two oppressed children “within his gates”—a most excellent, comprehensive, and Eastern expression—meaning within the mud or stone enclosure, where the master is supreme, where he can shut out all the world save his household, his oxen, and servants—shut it out by merely closing to the street an iron-knobbed wooden door. Within Zālim’s gates his nephew became a slave; he was made to tend the furnace in the wall, at the other side of which boiled an enormous receptacle of linseed oil. This duty was murderous in the glaring, breathless month of April; it was worse than a fireman’s work in June in the Red Sea—and the fireman is relieved at his post; no one ever relieved Girunda—the name signified “thick bread;” but of any bread his share was small—and then he fell sick. For two days he lay in his shed, burning with fever, his uncle beat him repeatedly with a thick stick for his laziness—beat him savagely too—but the boy made no moan, only his little sister screamed, and the screams attracted the neighbours.
“He is a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing pig!” explained the uncle to an eager inquirer; “he will not work aught save his teeth. And she is half-witted.”
“True,” said the listener; “and it is only a charitable man like thyself, O Zālim Sing, who would keep the beggar’s brats, and with a dearth in the land, too; and wheat rising every week.”
Then she went back to her spinning of coarse country cloth; Girunda lay and buried his head in his hands, and Gyannia sobbed in a corner; but his tormentor went into the house, to confer with his wife.
“If the boy would not work, neither should he eat. Was he himself to mind the furnace?” he demanded angrily.
“The boy is sickening,” said the woman. “I have seen it coming—it is something bad—maybe the cholera, maybe the smallpox. It is surely some heavy sickness.”
“And he may die?”
“Yea, having given it to us and ours. What shall we do?”
“Behold, to-night, when the village is quiet, I will take the two of them, and set them on the high-road. Thou canst bake some chupattis, and I will give them four annas, and tell them to begone, to return here no more, for if they do, of a surety I will kill them.”
“They will believe thee!” said his wife with a laugh.
“Yea. Why should they not beg, as others do? And soon the boy can work, and earn an anna a day.”
“Yea, he will soon be able to work,” agreed this treacherous woman.
The children were surprised to be left in peace till sunset, and then to receive some fried beans and a chupatti—most sumptuous fare for them! But when it was dark, save for a dying moon, Zālim Sing entered their hut, staff in hand, and awoke them roughly.
“Arise quickly, and come with me; thou shalt no more remain under my roof. I have fed thee for three moons, now thou mayst go forth and feed thyselves. I will set thee on the road, and give thee food for two days and a little money; get thee to some town, and appeal to the charitable. Return here, and I will slay thee.”
The children rose trembling; they had not much delay in dressing, but Gyannia smuggled the cat under her bit of blue cloth (once her mother’s), and without one word the wretched pair meekly followed their uncle across the enclosure, past the oil-press, the sleeping bullocks, out of the postern, and through the silent village, then away to the high-road. Their kinsman walked along behind them in the powdery-white dust, stick in hand, for nearly two miles. It was nigh dawn; already the yellow light glimmered in the east; he must return; so he halted abruptly, and gave the boy some chupattis rolled in plantain leaves, and a four-anna piece (five-pence), and then said, “There lieth thy road out into the world; get thee gone, and never let me behold thy face again,” and turning, he walked rapidly homewards.
The soft tap of his stick gradually died away, and then the children were quite alone. They sat down, and began to whisper. It was not a dream; their uncle had come to them in the middle of the night, and brought them along the high-road in the dark, and given them food, and told them to begone, and never let him see them again.
After their first feeling of astonishment had abated, they devoured a chupatti, sharing it with the cat; and then, as the dawn of light showed red along the horizon, they rose and went forward.
“If they had to walk, best make the journey now,” thought the boy, who was wonderfully sensible for his years.
“Brother, whither are we going?” asked Gyannia presently.
“We have no one to go to but father,” he replied. “We will go to him—to the Jail Khana.”
But he did not tell her, nor would she have understood, that the jail in which their father lay imprisoned was seventy miles away. Hand-in-hand the two outcasts went slowly along the shadeless white roads; several villagers on the way to their work met them, and halted and stared at the party—a ragged little boy and girl, with a bazaar cat running after them.