From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

IV.

The next three months brought Gunesh Chund many an uneasy hour. Even when, driven to bay by his mother's entreaties to allow her to look for a new wife, he confessed his promise to wait a year, he gained no respite from her reproaches, but rather enhanced their venom by her contempt for his weakness. What was he, to set himself above the wisdom of his fathers? What was the reading-writing woman, that she should run counter to the traditions which held the first duty of a Hindu wife was to be that of bringing a son to the hearth? He had no answer save a dull consciousness that somehow he was not quite as his fathers. They, for instance, had calmly acquiesced in such customs as the exposure of the dead child to the jackals; while, despite his familiarity with the idea, its practice had filled him with aversion. Honest as he was by nature, he never regretted the deceit which sent Veru, after she recovered from the illness following on the shock of Nihâli's death, to cool a little grave[^[3]] by the burning-ground with her tears and offerings.

"'Twill only make her ill again to know what thou hast done," he had said to his mother, with a decision new to him. "Silence will be the wisest for thee also, since in this I am on her side."

As for the casting out of the demon which had hurried on the inevitable end, Veru always maintained to her mother-in-law that it partook of the nature of murder; but with her usual shrewdness she exonerated Gunesh Chund from blame. For this he was grateful, though his mind was by no means made up as to the rights and wrongs of the question.

From this and many another problem he took refuge in the fields. The fierce dry winds of summer blew with scorching heat, bringing with them the necessity for a ceaseless watering of the crops. Many and many a silent, peaceful hour he spent in the forked seat behind the oxen, half asleep, half awake; while the well-wheel circled round he circled round the wheel, and the great world circled round beyond him. Whether it span swift or slow he knew not and he cared not.

Many an hour, too, he spent resting, smoking and talking, under the shade of the one big mulberry-tree, while the greybeards wheezed out their mouldy proverbs, and the lads listened with their mouths full of the overripe dead-sweet fruit. A kindly, honest crew; mayhap not far above the circling bullocks in mind or ambitions, but for the most part without an ungenerous thought or unfriendly wish.

Or he would take his pipe down to the village dharmsala, where strangers found a lodging and the inhabitants a debating club; but here the goad of Fate hit keenly at times when the talk fell on the coming settlement, and Kishnu's people would condole with him in covert sneers. For Gunesh Chund had been accustomed, ever since his father died, to have the first and last word in that assembly of elders, and even his gentle self-depreciation could not fail to feel a certain loss of authority. One night, after Kishnu's husband, his own cousin, backed by some friends, had openly derided his opinion, and talked big about changes in the future, Gunesh sat on longer than was his wont among the elder men. They had been his father's friends, and he turned to them instinctively for support. Yet as they sat, solemnly crouched up on the high wooden bench which filled the rudely carved veranda from end to end, no voice came from the darkness where they showed grey and shadowy in their white drapery; almost formless, save when every now and again a more vigorous pull at a pipe fanned the embers in it to a glow, which lit up the lean, high-featured faces and wrinkled hands.

And Gunesh, too, remained silent and perturbed, knowing well what was in their thoughts. It was a relief when the hubble-bubble of the pipes dropped into insignificance before a speech summoned up by neighbourly nods and nudges. It came from the patriarch, whose palsied hand shook as he stretched it forward.

"Listen, O Guneshwa, the lumberdar. Thy grandfather and I played together as boys in the house of my father and his. But his father was the lumberdar, and mine but an elder. If the seed of strife springs in the village, whose task is it to root it out? Answer me, ye who hear me!"

A murmur of approbation ran round the assembly, whereat the patriarch went on in a louder key.

"If there be young, untutored cattle in the herd, whose duty is it to see they do not gore the old? Answer ye who hear me!"

But Gunesh Chund, knowing of old the length to which this system of exhortation could be extended, broke in quickly:

"Granted that 'tis my task, wouldst thou have me root out mine own family?"

"Nay!" retorted the elder, laughing in proud anticipation of his own joke, "I would have thee plant some more of the same stock.--Is it not so, my brothers?"

This time a wheezy chuckle of assent came from the darkness, followed by a fresh voice:

"A man without a son hath one life; a man rejoicing in a son hath two."

Then another took up the parable.

"Aye! and four hands to boot, wherewith to root out weeds."

"The hundredfold wheat hath more stems than one," quoth a third.

"And a toddling child can drive bullocks," put in a fourth.

So in solemn adage ran the talk, with many a weighty pause, and many a self-complacent wag of the head when the ball of ancient wit had been successfully passed to the next neighbour.

Accustomed as he was to this style of reasoning, each remark was a fresh tap driving the nail of conviction into Gunesh Chund's slow brain. As he stood on the roof that night, whence he could see the horizon strike the sky in one unbroken circle, a keen desire to live as his fathers had lived excluded all other thoughts. Here was his world; here lay his duty.

"Thou canst choose a wife for me if thou wiliest," he said sheepishly to his mother, when, in the early dawn, he found her already at work, while Veru lay abed with some ache or pain.

"O my son! O Guneshwa!" cried the old woman, flinging her arms around his neck with unwonted tenderness, and with tears of joy in her bright old eyes. "I will find thee a pearl and paragon. With a skin wheat-coloured, and--"

"Nay, mother," interrupted the big man, still more sheepishly, "an' she please thee, and have a soft tongue, that is all I care for. And, mother, say no word to Veru yet. There is time; and mayhap thou wilt not find a wife soon."

His mother laughed scornfully.

"Not find one to marry the lumberdar! such a fine, straight man as thou art, Guneshwa. Why, they will come in crowds! Nay, be not so modest; that is the girl's part, not the man's. Nevertheless, as thou sayst, 'tis time enough to tell Veru when all things are settled. There is but one woman needed in a marriage."

If some rankling doubt as to the honesty of his silence lingered in Gunesh Chund's mind, it vanished quickly before the personal peace which his decision brought to the household.

Perhaps Veru might have wondered at the lull which thereinafter fell over the combat, but that she herself was absorbed in a new hope of victory, and thought it possible that her keen-eyed mother-in-law might, in like manner, be preparing for defeat.

So the time of truce passed on; until one day, almost before Gunesh had realized his own capitulation, his mother informed him that a bride had been found.

"So soon!" he exclaimed, dismally. "O mother, take care! Sure the choice of a plough-bullock would take me longer."

"Then 'tis time to tell Veru," was his only remark, when the beauties, virtues, and charms of the young lady were dinned into his ears. Whereupon his mother, with much inward contempt at his scruples, told him curtly that she had purposely chosen a bride from a far country, so that he need say nothing, since nothing would be known by others, until the festivities began.

"I will tell her before then," he said, relieved; but somehow the days passed by, leaving behind them the silence that they found.

Meanwhile Veru wearied Heaven with prayers and penances till she grew thin and pale--given to fits of hysteria and tears, yet with a triumphant look in her eyes as she listened to her mother-in-law's constant allusions to her ill-health, with which the old lady bolstered up Gunesh Chund's failing resolution. All three were too much occupied with their own thoughts and secrets to notice anything unusual in the bearing of the others; or if they did notice it, naturally put the change down to vague suspicions, and so held their own counsel more firmly.

The crops were fast turning russet and gold under the glare of sunlight succeeding to the monsoon rains, when Gunesh Chund said good-bye to his household for ten days, and rode by winding village ways to the broad white road that carried Western civilization, in the shape of a post-bag, through the district. Veru, clothed in madder and indigo, stood on the roof to watch him out of sight; loath to lose him, and regretting that she had not risked her secret ere he left. How much more would she have regretted it had she known that her husband's destination lay far beyond his usual bourne, the Central Revenue Office, and that his bundle contained all things necessary for the interchange of presents with a new bride! Meanwhile her mother-in-law, stolidly at work below, wondered how any woman could be so immodest as to show grief at a husband's departure. And Gunesh Chund, riding between serried ranks of feather-topped maize and swelling bosses of millet, thought of the coming harvest. In a way, each and all were looking forward with eager desire to reaping what they had sown; as if life held any other fate for humanity!

That same afternoon, Veru, unwilling to relax any of her efforts because of her hopes, set off to worship a snake which frequented an old ant-hill at the farther end of the village common. The day had been one of extreme heat, and a yellow dust-haze hung over everything. Dust above, below, around her; only the ant-hill, furrowed by long-past rains into rugged pinnacles, rising clear and distinct. She was a timid woman, unused to roaming so far, and she looked fearfully around, dreading lest from one of the dark holes piercing the mound a hooded head might rear itself and speak to her. Such things had been, she knew; for beneath the veneer of unbelief the old superstitions held her in thrall.

Hastily, yet carefully, lest evil should befall from any lack of ceremony, she ranged her sugar-cakes, hung up her chaplet of flowers, and sprinkled the milk she had brought in a little brass pot with a lavish hand; it left dark, ominous-looking stains on the white dust.

Glad to escape from such weird surroundings, yet feeling the need of rest, she drew aside among the wild caper-bushes, and sat down, wiping the beads of perspiration from her forehead with the corner of her veil. It felt quite hot against the damp skin, cooled by the fierce, dry wind that even in this sheltered spot drove the dust along in swirls. She drew her veil over her head and sat still as a statue, in the curiously drooping attitude which to Western eyes suggests absorbing grief; but Veru's mind was full of a great joy, which gained no little sweetness from the thought of revenge. Yet as she dreamed far away into the years, a spreading fold of her veil, caught in a caper-thorn, seemed pointing to something that glistened among the roots behind her. Veru, rising to go, stooped to disengage herself, and saw--a baby's bracelet! The next instant, with a shrill, high-pitched shriek of rage, she set off running towards the village. Her mind, slow enough to take in novel ideas, needed no prompting here. It was little Nihâli's bracelet, and the explanation of this fact followed as a matter of course. The dead child had been exposed as an augury; but what had the verdict been? Strange as it may seem, that thought came uppermost. Doubtless, had the truth been told her in the first freshness of bereavement, when the soft touch of the little hands and the clinging of the lips were more than a memory, indignation and horror at the outrage on her child might have overcome her curiosity. At any rate, the desire to pose as an advanced woman would have induced her to conceal it. But months had passed, bringing a new hope, to ensure which her inherited instincts would gladly have sacrificed more than a dead girl. Indeed, the wish for some such augury had more than once invaded her, and lo! the sign had been given, and she knew nothing of it. That it had been favourable she assumed, believing that otherwise her mother-in-law would have hastened to make it known. Unheard-of spite and cruelty!--but if it were the climax, it should also be an end to tyranny. Trembling with excitement and the uneducated woman's desire for words, she ran forward panting and breathless, with little cries of anger and grief, until she sank down exhausted with the unwonted exertion and her own emotions. When she arose again, it was with greater calmness but more resentment.

Her mother-in-law was toasting the new-made dough-cakes by the fire, when, after many pauses, Veru reached home. Wearied out, she leaned against the door-jamb for support ere commencing the fray, and looked at the elder woman with sombre, menacing eyes. The latter paid no attention, but went on tossing aside the heat-blistered cakes, and placing others upright in the embers till they blew out like bladders.

Suddenly Veru raised her hand; something gleaming flew through the air, and the dead baby's bracelet fell at her enemy's feet and rolled among the ashes.

"The jackals have sent thee a present, grandmother."

The old woman looked at it, startled; then sprang up and faced her adversary in fiercest indignation.

"What hast thou done, fool? Bringing the curse of girls back to the earth! The wild beasts were more merciful than thou art, for they gave no sign; and see, where the bread is baking thou hast thrown the augury. O Guneshwa! O my son! would that thou wert here to see this witch casting her spells to bring barrenness to the bride thou art wooing! But no matter; the old mother will avert them; so bring home thy bride, Guneshwa! bring home the virtuous Kirpa Devi, daughter of Kirpo Ram of Badrewallah!"

Veru, struck dumb by the possible consequences of her own act, as revealed to her in her mother-in-law's unforeseen reproach, felt the whole world turn round as the old woman, roused out of caution, let loose her secret and her tongue without reserve.

"It is not true! it is not true! Guneshwa would never deceive me so!" was all the poor creature found to say against the torrent of words and facts.

"Not true!" echoed the other, remorselessly. "Come hither, and see if it be not true that a wedding is nigh."

Seizing Veru by the wrist, she dragged her across the court-yard, flung open the store-room door, which was kept jealously locked against all intrusion, and pointed to a row of handkerchief-covered basket-trays, ranged in order on the ground.

"Behold!" she cried, jeeringly, as she lifted the covering from one, displaying a pile of cheap tinsel-decked garments, such as are made to fill up the measure of more solid wedding presents. "Guneshwa's mother is not so careless as his wife. Here is everything needful, and yonder is the pile of dates whence he took the offering that went with him to-day. Stay--thou canst read! Put thy scholarship to some use for once, and see if it be not true."

But Veru did not take the letters thrust at her; the shock was too great, following on her excitement and utter weariness. She swayed as she stood, and with a cry of "O Guneshwa, bring the dates back! bring them back!" she fell in a heap among the baskets.

In the dawn of the next day, her mother-in-law, as she lay down to snatch a little sleep while one of her cronies watched by Veru's bed, told herself that the house was cursed indeed! Who would have dreamed of the gods bringing such hopes to Veru? Who would have thought of her concealing them even for a day? And what a heritage of evil she would leave behind her if she died now! Nihâli's augury was bad enough, but what chance would there be for the new wife if the ghost of an expectant mother haunted the house?

Veru must not die--should not die; so the old woman nursed her tenderly, and strove in her rough way to bring comfort to the mind stricken by mad jealousy and resentment.

"I will die," was the only response; "I will die and become a ghost![^[4]] I will! I will!"

"Hearken, O Veru," replied her mother-in-law at last, "thy dying will not harm any one, for if thou diest ere Guneshwa returns, I swear he shall never know a word, neither of thy hopes nor of thy fears! It shall be silence, silence forever, and who fears a ghost he knows not of? Answer me that!"

And Veru, gripped in the stern old woman's greater strength, could only turn her face to the wall sullenly.

"Hast thou no message for Guneshwa?" asked the watcher at the last, as Veru lay sinking.

"None--that--thou--wouldst--give," came the reply, with a strange smile that remained on the lips even after death.

"Now, thank God, neither Guneshwa nor his bride need know aught of this!" thought the old lady, as they streaked the corpse with many a weird ceremony and precaution.