From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

I.

A grove of date-palms; each cluster of carved stems set in its feathery crown and base, separated from its neighbours by sandy spaces, where the snakes sunned themselves right in the wayfarer's path. Finding few victims, however; for the karait, stretched out like a blue whip-lash, curved back to the prickly cover at the distant step, and though the dusk-coloured vipers tied in true-lovers' knots held their ground, their evil temper gave warning of their presence as scale rustled on scale in the angry sliding of the watchful coil.

Day and night the sweeping fringes overhead swayed softly, even when no breath stirred the tangle below. But now, when the coming of dawn sent that curious whisper of wind through the world, as if warning it of what the sun may disclose, the leaves tossed their long arms wildly.

A stretch of level land curved inward to the palm-grove; outward till it merged on the village common with its grey-spined caper-bushes set with coral buds. In the distance, shadowy in the half light, was a native town, flat-roofed against the sky. Close at hand an open grave, with a man and woman standing beside it. A queer couple. The old man, dwarfed to distortion, grotesquely ugly; the woman young, straight as a palm, supremely handsome.

"Lo, they come, Shâhbâsh!" she said, in a bold, mellow voice which fitted her appearance. As she shaded her eyes with her hand, the coarse madder veil she wore fell from her broad shoulders as if cut in stone.

"Wah illah! Thou hast sight to boast of, Mother Suttu," replied her companion. She might have been his daughter in age, but he used the title of respect due to all decent women from one not of their own blood.

"Yea, 'tis true," she echoed, carelessly. "The Potter's hand slipped not when he made me. I have naught to bring against him." It was perhaps a heartless truism, considering her company.

But then Shâhbâsh was bucklered against bitter thoughts by an ingenious theory accounting for his own ill looks. A fairy, he held, had fallen in love with him as a babe, when (as might be augured from his name, which meant 'Well done! Bravo!') he must have been possessed of extraordinary beauty. Her jealous determination to keep his perfections to herself had attained its object in roundabout fashion, by preventing the eyes of others seeing him as he really was. Hence the distortion lay with them.

"I would thine eyes were as sharp for the future as they are for the present," he said, thoughtfully, leaning on his adze-like shovel.

"'Twere better they were sharp enough to see through dust," she answered, smiling broadly into the grave at her feet. "So thou didst not find it after all, Shâhbâsh."

"Not a cowrie, not a dumri! And I swear 'tis into the tenth dozen of graves I have dug--with texts of the holy Koran pouring from me the while without stint. Good sound texts, hard as melted solder on a body's teeth. And to no good, except to pave a blessed bed for another sinner. For they pay worse and worse, mai Suttu. When old Feroz Shah buried his son, last week, he left but a rupee's worth of clothes on the corpse for perquisite. Look you! If I take not the very winding-sheet which decency would leave e'en to the dead, thou and the holy saint yonder will starve--to say naught of servant Shâhbâsh, who needs muscle to sow men in this hard soil."

He let his shovel fall on the hard ground to show how it echoed to the clang.

Suttu laughed. "If dead men do not pay, there are the dates still. They will ripen ere long."

"Aye, but how long can they be kept? If the saint dies without speaking, the others will find their tongues. A woman needs gold--or a man. Thou wilt have neither unless thou wilt give up the religious vow and marry the Kâzi's son. He is willing."

Suttu laughed.

"So are others that be not pock-marked and one eye to boot."

"Tobah! And thou virtuous and a widow! Lo, he is a man, and beauty is not safe for us. Was not I, Shâhbâsh, the handsomest--"

She interrupted him remorselessly. "'Tis safe for me, anyhow. The grandfather may rouse any day and tell me where the gold is hidden. Once it is found, none will covet the graveyard."

Shâhbâsh wrinkled his hideous face to an appalling frown.

"God knows! If not, then it is a case of digging graves all my life till I get over-scant of breath for texts and mattock together. If only the sickness would come, 'twould give more chance. For the fox of a father-in-law will be claiming shares of treasure with thee if I dig aught but graves. Lo! mai Suttu, I tell thee, 'tis ghoul-like work. I watch the old folk in the village, and my fingers itch to give them a blessed bed in Deen Ali's yard. 'Tis destroying my soul. Thou must marry, or I am damned!"

"Sure the fairy will make thee a paradise anywhere," laughed Suttu. "Lo, they come! Is all prepared? Alms or no alms, Deen Ali's bed must be ready for the faithful. 'Tis in the bond."

She spoke with a grave dignity quite apart from her previous manner.

"Would God they had put the alms in the bond likewise!" grumbled the dwarf as he slid into the shallow grave to sweep some loosened soil from the niche hollowed in the hard ground to one side for the uncoffined tenant. Then he swung himself out again by his brawny arms and strained his shortsighted eyes toward the advancing procession.

"'Tis well," he muttered, as a sudden braying of shawms, beating of drums, and skirling of songs rent the still dawn. "At least they remember that the burying of the old is as a bridal. Sure it may be better than I feared, and they will not send the decent patriarch back to his friends half naked."

It was an odd funeral. The bier, covered by a tissue-paper canopy, swayed as it was borne shoulder-high at a slow trot. The crowd laughed and sang. The streamers fluttered, flying round that still, muslin-swathed form bound with tinsel. Only Suttu seemed in keeping with it, as she stood forward welcoming it to Deen Ali's bed.

But the next instant, as she stepped aside to let it pass, a malicious look of amusement was on her face as she returned the greeting of a pock-marked man with one eye.

Then, her rôle of hostess being over, she walked away to the date-grove followed by admiring eyes. For Suttu, the fakeerni, if somewhat outrageous, was distinctly attractive. That made her vow of celibacy all the more unnatural.

She sat down on the edge of a back channel of the river, which, after creeping tortuously in a deep, narrow bed, expanded here during the rains to a broad, shallow lake, dotted by clumps of pillared palms, beneath whose fringed crowns great bunches of fruit were ripening fast. Each islet was reflected so clearly in the water that it needed sharp eyes to see where reality ended and unreality began. Here and there, showing where the perennial pools lay beneath the temporary flood, stretched a green carpet of lotus-leaves, where the flowers rose in varying height; the buds, still resting on the water; the full-blown flowers flaunting between them and the mace-like stems on which the hidden "jewel in the lotus" stood disclosed, while the fallen petals floated like shells on the water, or lay piled up in little pink heaps on the green carpet. A faint scent, as of bitter almonds, perfumed the breeze which now and again ruffled the lake and slid a fresh gift of rolling, sparkling water diamonds into the leaf-cups. Beyond this was a golden sunrise, cloudless, serene.

Suttu, seated on the edge of grass which grew just as far as the moisture filtered through the sand, and no farther, nodded at the scene approvingly. The Potter had made no mistake here either; she liked it, liked her own freedom purchased by an easy vow. The idea of giving it up in favour of another ten years or more of marriage in a stifling city quarter was absurd.

A kingfisher flashed down into the water like a sapphire, and her quick eyes followed it.

"Shâhbâsh!" she cried, gleefully, as the bird came up with a bar of silver in its purple bill.

"'Tis not Shâhbâsh," said a voice behind her. "'Tis I, come to ask--"

She leaped to her feet, confronting the Kâzi's son in real wrath.

"So! Will not even death keep thy mind from marriage? Why hast crept here to see me alone? 'Tis not decent--far worse, 'tis not even pleasant. Have I not told thee--aye, and others--that I am a pious widow?" She drew a corner of her veil across her eyes and hid the suggestion of a smile under the semblance of tears. "A pious widow vowed to the sonless shrine of my ancestors."

The Kâzi's son drew a step nearer.

"Thou art too young and too well favoured for a religious. Every one says so," he began.

"The Lord looks not at beauty, Mir Sahib," retorted Suttu, gravely; "and 'tis well for some of us that it is so."

"A sharp weapon is no weapon against enemies, and thou hast enemies. My house would protect you. Think! I am the Kâzi's son."

"Lo, why should I forget my lord's merit?" smiled Suttu, sweetly. "He has not so many."

He bit his lip. Repartee of that sort he knew, but not from the lips of reputable women. The whole affair had the intoxication of an intrigue, and its defiance of conventionalities set his pulses throbbing.

"Listen, O Suttu!" he said, curbing his passion. "Hussan, thy dead husband's father, will claim the land when the saint dies, and God knows how the case may go against a woman! Marry me, and I will gain it, were thy father-in-law fifty times over the village accountant. Hast heard the saying, 'Only the Kâzi can fight the Putwâri'?"

"Lo, if I came to thy house, there would be fighting enow to fill thy stomach, without going to a neighbour."

She drew the coarse veil which she had slipped from her head back to its place, with wide-spread arms, as she spoke; and the action displayed the full vigour of her finely moulded form. He cursed her bigness and boldness inwardly, but schooled himself to another and more tender appeal.

"Why not, O Suttu? Lo, I am rich, I am young. I--I lie awake o' nights thinking of it. Yea, I swear it! I get no good from my food. I love you. If I died, the very houris in paradise would not tempt me.

"But I would make thy grave gladly, Mir sahib, and then may be thou wouldst find rest."

It was too much. He seized her by the wrist and glared at her, every evil instinct roused to fury. "Then I will buy thee. Thy father-in-law has the right, for the saint is half dead already. Listen! I will buy thee to be my slave. What dost say now?"

"That even slaves have naught to do with pockmarks and one eye." Her free right hand came down on one cheek with a resounding slap, making him stagger. Her left, thus released, followed suit on the other. "Go!" she cried, "or I will make Shâhbâsh yonder strangle thee with his monkey arms. Go! And remember that Suttu, the fakeerni, hath slapped thee in the face!"

The Kâzi's son, entangled in the trail of his turban, which had fallen off, caught sight of the gravedigger within call, and felt that his chance was over. He stalked away, trying to look dignified as he wound his head-dress on again, but conscious of a suppressed titter behind him, making him grind his teeth and swear vengeance.

When he had gone, Suttu sat down again on the grass and slipped her hands into the cool water. They tingled unpleasantly.

"Yonder beans look ripe," she murmured, "and they would eke out a meal."

Five minutes after, her sleek black head was rising and falling, her round arms gleaming in the overhead stroke which sent her straight to a lily-field. A couple of moor-hens fled, leaving a rippling streak of silver behind them. As she entered the leaf carpet it took in great waves of water over the edges--waves which broke into dew-drops that ran races with each other for first place in the leafy hollows.

The dragon-flies darted around her, timid but persistent; and myriads of tiny insects, disturbed from the sweet stems, rose in clouds, attracting the swift swooping of the bronze-winged fly-catchers.

Shâbâsh was waiting for her on the bank as she came back wading, her arms full of blown lotus, her track marked by drifting petals. As she approached he flung a few yards of tinsel and muslin on the ground in extravagant, theatrical disgust.

"That is all," he cried; "by the faith of my fathers, six ells of false tinsel and four of twopenny muslin for digging a grave in kunker[^[10]] soil. God and his Prophet! why didst not send them to be born Hindus? Then 'twould have taken ten rupees of fire-wood to save them from being burned in hell. And last night, look you, I cut a sleeping snake in two as I dug, and both ends fell at my toes. Ari! A riddle indeed in the dark, which be head and which be tail? And I am to go through such moments for six ells of tinsel and four of such muslin. No, mai Suttu. 'Tis the Kâzi's son, or starvation."

Suttu smiled as she stooped to wring the water from her scant petticoat.

"Not so, Shâhbâsh. The Kâzi's son doth not like me. And lotus-beans are good till the dates ripen. Then the gold! It may be in the next grave."

He scratched his thick grey hair, on which he wore no turban, doubtfully.

"God knows! Every full moon I stretch my sheet on the ground and dance to please my fairy. Then when I fall into the trance I ask the old question, 'Where is Deen Ali's gold?' But there is no answer in the morning. Now, if the fairy cannot tell--"

Suttu laughed. "Dost not, may be, forget the answer? The black bottle steals thy brains--"

'"Tis not the bottle," muttered Shâhbâsh, sulkily, as he gathered up his perquisites. "'Tis the fairy steals my brains. For sure there be not rum enough in it nowadays--"

So they walked home to the mosque-like tomb in the date-grove, she with her sheaf of lotus, he with his shovel and shroud.