V.
The moon shone brightly as Gunesh Chund rode through the village common on his homeward way. There was scarcely a track to be seen on the hard, white ground, where the sparse bushes close at hand lay like shadows here and there, but in the distance blended themselves into a grey line against the lighter sky. No visible track, yet the lumberdar's pony picked its way unerringly, true as the needle, towards the manger awaiting it; instinct or habit supplying the place of reason. Its rider could boast of no such contented certainty. Something--what, he would have been puzzled to say--had made the path of custom seem doubtful, without supplying him with a new or clearer road. And, overlying the dull sense of discomfort, was a distinct remorse for the deceit to which his honest if sluggish soul was quite a stranger. The memory of his promise troubled him, although he quite acknowledged that a pudmuni, or ideal Hindu wife, would never have claimed its fulfilment.
Suddenly his pony started and swerved, throwing him forward in his shovel stirrups.
In his efforts to keep in his seat the cause seemed to be the sudden appearance of a veiled woman, beckoning with outstretched hands; but when he could give a calmer look, the difference in position caused by his pony's advance showed him that it was but the dead trunk of a tree. With a sign of relief he gave the animal a dig in the sides.
"'Tis thinking so much of women-folk does it," he said to himself. "I weary for the ploughing and peace."
A sense of well-being came over him at the familiar sights and sounds, as he neared the village. Even the dogs barking in chorus at the pony's echoing steps seemed to him a welcome, and the house, quiet and dark though it was, a haven of rest after the hustle and bustle of his rapid excursion into an unknown world. The door of the inner court was closed, for he was not expected till dawn, and he stood for an instant beside it, listening. All was still as death, and with another sigh of relief he stumbled up the steep stairs to his favourite sleeping-place.
How calm it was there under the stars; how clear the path, now that he was at home once more among familiar landmarks! Why, if difficulties arose, had they not arisen over and over again in the lives of those who had gone before him? What more easy than to adopt the ancient remedy, and, by building a new court for the new wife, separate the jealous women! His mother would, of course, side with her own choice; so Veru, far from having any ground of complaint, would find greater peace than heretofore. In his quiet, limited way, he loved her more than he would have cared to avow, and so, thinking of her ease, he fell asleep full of content.
The night passed, the dawn lightened into sunshine; yet still he slept, wearied out by his ten days' exile from the village. And so it came to pass that his mother, apprised of his return by finding the pony in its accustomed place, had to rouse him by sad words.
"Awake, O Gunesh Chund, son of Anant Ram, and make thy heart strong, for Veru thy wife is dead."
A sad amaze, an almost pitiful resignation, followed the first incredulity; and then, as he sat below, patiently waiting for many a rite and conventional lamentation, the memory of his last waking thought returned to him.
"I thought of building her a new house for peace' sake," he said, wistfully, to his mother; "and lo! the Great Ones have given her a grave and peace forever."
"Perhaps 'tis as well, Guneshwa!" replied the old woman, softened by his gentle grief. "Her health was poor, and if Death drew nigh, it was better he should come before the bride."
Perhaps 'twas as well! That was all her tongue found to say, but her heart rejoiced exceedingly that eternal silence had fallen over the dead wife's reproaches. If Premi and Chuni only held their tongues, as they always did if it was made worth their while, neither Gunesh Chund nor his bride need know the curse that had come upon them. Above all, the soft-hearted bridegroom would be saved the daily terror of seeing the fatal ghost.
Even as it were, the autumn chills were upon him, making him shiver and shake, and bringing the haggard, ague-stricken look so common at that time of year to his sad face. He took little interest in the preparations which his mother pressed on with feverish haste, but passed days and nights out of doors among his fields, going the round of the crops with the village accountant, and seeing to the payment of revenue dues.
"Thou takest no rest, Gunesh Chund," exclaimed his mother, indignantly, when he pleaded business as an excuse for not going to the silversmith's to hurry him up with the remodelling of poor Veru's ornaments. "A lumberdar was a lumberdar long before the sahibs came to the land. What is it to thee if they want this written one way, and that another? There were no such piles of papers in thy father's day, and he was a better lumberdar than thou wilt ever be."
"Mayhap, mother; but somehow 'tis ill work nowadays doing things as they used to be done. It suits no one, not even thee."
"Not suit me--I'd like to know--"
"Nay! are not the old trinkets being altered even now. For my part, I liked them best as they were."
"Guneshwa thou art a ninny! But thou wilt sing another song when the bride comes to thee adorned. That new silversmith hath done well. There is a fashion of necklet--French pattern he called it--like needlework for fineness. And I have not forgotten the old ways, for the talisman Veru wore is made into a saukinmhora, to keep her ghost away."
The lumberdar's face assumed a startled, alarmed look.
"The ghost, mother! Wherefore the ghost? Veru was a good wife, loving me, and I was a good husband to her. There was no ill-will betwixt us, surely."
His mother could have bitten her tongue out for her inadvertence.
"'Twas but a thoughtless word, O my son, and I am over-anxious. Surely the woman took too many blessings from thee in life to give thee curses in death. And see," she added, hastily, in the hope of diverting his eager anxiety, "I have found what thou wert asking for--the certificates of thy fathers to many and many a generation. Thou hadst given them into Veru's keeping, but they are too precious for a woman's holding. Who knows but she has lost some? Squandering thy son's heritage out of spite! Who canst give back the praises of the dead?"
So she went on in purposeful grumbling, while Gunesha, opening the handkerchief in which the precious documents were folded, counted the frayed papers laboriously.
"Nay! they are here, and more; let me count again. Surely, there are thirty-and-two, and when the canal sahib gave me his last year there were but thirty-and-one. Thirty-and-one, no more."
He sat down on the door-step, shifting the papers through his awkward hands, with the uncertain eyes of one who, being unable to read, has to seek recognition through more devious ways. His mother, meanwhile, utterly indifferent, had turned to some household occupation.
"See, there is a new one; that one, may be; 'tis cleaner than the rest," he muttered to himself, opening up the folded sheet conspicuous by its whiteness.
It was written in the Nagari character, and his puzzled face cleared at the sight.
"'Tis all right, mother!" he exclaimed; "there are but thirty one. The other is a letter."
He was about to add a suggestion that Veru might have written it, but checked himself, from fear of starting another tirade against the dead woman.
"A letter!" echoed his mother, contemptuously. "Throw it in the fire! I have no patience with folk who find their tongues too short to touch friend or foe."
"But, mother," returned Gunesh, with a smile, "even thy tongue is not long enough to reach over the world."
"And wherefore should I try? I tell thee, Guneshwa, that we peasant-folk have naught to do with the world. What he can touch with his hands is a man's portion till he dies, and 'tis theft to go beyond. Writing is no good except for certificates. There is Devi Ditta's house thrown into grief, just as the boy's betrothal began, by the news of his father being killed in Burma. God knows where Burma is. Far enough, may be, to keep the news back till a more convenient time, if it came as God meant it to come. And the man is dead, anyhow."
But Gunesh Chund refolded the paper and placed it in his waistband. His friend the accountant could tell him its purport.
"The chills again?" asked his mother, with no anxiety in her voice, when, coming back from Devi Ditta's house with a throat rendered hoarse by neighbourly lamentations, she found her son huddled up under his quilt. "You must get the sahib's white powder. For a wonder, it does good."
"Quinine will not cure me, mother," he replied in a curiously muffled voice that startled the hearer by its dull despair.
"What ails thee, then, Guneshwa?"
The man sat up amid his heavy wrappings and looked at her without resentment. The ague cramped his blue fingers, and made him draw shuddering breaths through widely distended nostrils, as he sat gazing at her with wild eyes full of a mute appeal and reproach. Then, with a little, almost childish cry, he fell back among the quilts once more.
"Thou knowest, mother; thou knowest it well."
Her heart throbbed, but her voice was steady as she replied:
"What do I know, O Gunesh Chund?"
"That Veru kept her promise and I broke mine! She knew you would not tell me, so she wrote. That was the letter."
The old woman stood for an instant bewildered. Then, as she realized that all her wisdom had not availed against the dead wife's knowledge, she threw her lean arms up over her head and beat her hands together wildly, while the court re-echoed with her high, resonant voice.
"She wrote it? Now may God curse her utterly! My curse upon her and every woman who learns--"
A shivering hand reached out towards her.
"Hush, mother! I have had enough of curses to-day."
The mild reproof made her forget her anger in thoughts for him.
"Light of mine eyes! heart of my heart!" she cried, flinging herself on her knees by the bed and stretching the arms, but now raised in cursing, around him in fierce protecting. "She cannot hurt thee--she dare not, if charms avail. The iron rings are about her hands and feet, the nails are through her cursed, writing fingers--would God they had been there ere she wrote that letter!--and the mustard-seed lies thick between her grave and the hearth. I have sown it, and will sow it with each new moon. Look up, Guneshwa! She cannot, she dare not return."
"She hath returned already."
The old woman rose with a gesture of despair.
"Say not so! Break not thy mother's heart with idle words. 'Tis but the chills, and thou hast them often. The powder will cure them."
"Perhaps 'tis so," he replied, listlessly. "But I have seen her. Ere ever I knew of her death she met me on the common as I rode home. Nay, weep not so soon; the truth will be told ere long, and there will be time enough for tears then."
"There will be no need to weep at all, my son," she said, crushing down her own dread in order to lessen his, and fiercely determining to shed no more tears till life held nothing else.
She kept her word; though, as the days passed on, even her wilful blindness could not fail to see how the strong man grew weaker and weaker. Her heart stood still with fear, as she watched for the sleep of exhaustion which followed each successive attack of fever and ague, before stealing away to seize the opportunity for the charms she dared not work save in secrecy.
Indeed, the subject was barred between them; and even when the fever fiend held him in its grip, Gunesh Chund never alluded again to the fatal ghost.
He put aside the saukin-mhora which, in her clutching at straws, she would have had him wear as a talisman, with quite a broad laugh.
"Wouldst have me altogether a woman, mother?" he asked, cheerfully. "I deemed instead I was too soft for thee. But see! whether it be the chills or the other thing, Death will come if he is on the road."
For all the courage of his words, a conviction that he was doomed dulled his interest in all things save his fields, and when he grew too weak to find his way there and back his patience broke into restlessness.
"I will go and stop at the well, mother," he said at last; "the air is freer out there, and I weary to death looking at these dull mud walls."
So, leaning on his mother's arm, Gunesh Chund, the lumberdar, made his way for the last time down the village street, to meet Death in the open.
"It is good to be here," he said, with peace in his face and heart, as he lay day after day, gazing with dull, contented eyes at the broad expanse of newly-tilled soil, where the sun gleamed on the furrows. The birds chattering in the mulberry-tree overhead, and the ceaseless babble of the life-giving water flowing past him, filled his ears with familiar comfort. There was nothing here to puzzle his slow brain; nothing to disturb a nature welded, by long centuries of toil under the sunny skies, into perfect accord with its environment.
So his mother, coming back from her unavailing spells, found him one day looking out over the springing crops with sightless eyes and placid face.
"I might have saved him," she said to herself with infinite bitterness, as from the sleeping-place on the roof she watched the smoke of his funeral pyre drift away into the cloudless blue--"I might have saved him but for the letter. Oh, curses, curses, ten thousand curses on those who taught her to write! Curses to all eternity on all new-fangled ways!"
Once more her lean brown arms flung themselves in wild appeal towards heaven, as she stood out against the sky facing the future--old, sonless, hopeless.
[THE BLUE MONKEY.]
"Willie," Mark Twain tells us, "had a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick"; he further informs us that this quadruman made its owner "deathly sick."
The following story shows the effect that a blue monkey on a gilt spike had in a remote Indian village called Jehâdpore--a very ordinary village set out on high, unirrigated soil, beside a large irregular tank, whence the bricks of many generations of houses had been dug; the only peculiarity about it being a glaringly whitewashed mosque façade, rising above the whole and flanked by a palm-tree. Merely a façade: viewed frontwise, distinctly imposing, with minarets and domes in orthodox numbers and positions; viewed sidewise, as distinctly disappointing. The jerriest of London jerry builders could have done nothing better than this one brick front elevation, of which even the domes were but basso-relievos.
Still it dominated the village in every way; for it was built in the court-yard of ex-Rissaldar-Major Azmutoollah Khan Sahib Bahadur's house, and he with his hangers-on represented Jehâdpore. It was a Rângur village--that is to say, a village of Mohammedan Rajputs, a race which supplies half the native cavalry of upper India with recruits. That was the case at Jehâdpore. When the district officer came round every year to attest and write up the big village note-book there was always something to add on this score. Either the number of those away a-soldiering had to be increased, or an entry made that So-and-so had returned with a "pinson"[[5]] to his wife and family. On these occasions the district officer invariably found an escort awaiting him at the boundary, consisting of sowars on leave from various regiments (with their horses), a contingent of "pinson-wallahs" in nondescript uniform on broodmares, and Khan Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, at their head. He was a very old man, as deeply wrinkled as a young actor doing the part of an ancient retainer. In the privacy of that court-yard, garnished by the jerry mosque, he clothed himself scantily in limp white muslin, and his beard was tricoloured--white at the roots, red in the middle, purple at the ends. But on his screaming stallion, sword in hand, a goodly row of medals on his worn tunic, Azmutoollah's beard was of the fiercest black, and the line of moustache shaved from the hard mouth into an arched curve under his aquiline nose, curled right up to his eyes. His voice, too, lost its quaver of age, and before he had safely inducted the Huzoor into his tents down by the tank that irregular troop of cavalry had been put through enough manœuvres to last out three ordinary field days. It was the old soldier's Kriegspiel.
When it was over, and he dozed, wearied out by the unaccustomed effort, on the wooden bed under the nim-tree, the hard roly-poly bolster tucked in to the hollow of his neck--or something else--made his sleeping-place a Bethel, and he dreamed dreams.
Then he had to resume the old uniform once more and go over to the tents again with a petition. Rângurs always have petitions about wells, or water, or brood mares; for, if they make excellent troopers, they are intolerably bad ploughmen. That was why Mool Raj, the hereditary money-lender of Jehâdpore, was able to send his son, Hunumân Sing, to college and make a pleader of him.
The ex-rissaldar, with two sons and three grandsons in the old regiment, waxed contemptuous over the "pleadery" career. But that was his attitude in all things towards Mool Raj and the small Hindu element the latter represented in Jehâdpore. The fact that the Mohammedan population to a man was in the usurer's debt did not affect the position of affairs at all, or detract from the feeling of virtuous tolerance which allowed a most modest and retiring Hindu temple to conceal itself behind the back wall of the mosque façade. It was a great concession, for Azmutoollah was not the only Hâdji[[6]] in Jehâdpore. The place was a perfect hot-bed of fighting Mohammedanism, which only needed opposition to grow into fanaticism.
Yet, when Mool Raj added a new story to the Hindu temple, nobody said him nay. They were good friends with the wizened, monkey-like usurer.
"Bismillah! Khan Sahib," laughed one of the group of sowars round Azmutoollah's wooden bed. "He saith it is to save his soul from sin. God knows he needs it, for he hath charged me rascally interest on my last debt. If we must needs have a Hindu in the place, seeing God and his Prophet forbid the true believer to soil his hands with usury, then, by the Imâms, let us have a pious one!"
Even when he put a gilt spike on the top they spoke of it in contemptuous kindness. "Whether he buries our gold or sets it on high is all one, so long as he hath enough to lend us when we seek it. And 'tis thank-offering, he says, for his son Hunumân passing as B.A. God knows what that may be, but the boy hath thin legs and a narrow chest."
Azmutoollah Khan, C.I.E., looked distastefully at the extreme tip of a gilt spike which from the farthermost corner of the court-yard showed just over the façade.
"So far well," said the old martinet. "A Hindu may have repentance, and he is like to ourselves in affection for his family--though, Allah be praised, none of mine carry themselves like a 'lumpa ta heen.'[[7]] But that is an end of repentance and affection. I will have no idolatrous spike under my eyes, and so I will tell Mool Raj. Let Hunumân build himself a temple in Lahore out of his scholarships and pleader's fees. We want none of his kind in Jehâdpore."
The usurer came back from his interview with his patron quite resigned. To tell the truth, he himself was not much set on these pious additions which cost a heap of hard-won money. Their initiator was Hunumân's mother, who, ever since her pilgrimage to Shah Sultan had been rewarded by the long-prayed-for son, had looked on him as doubly dependent on the favour of the gods--his very name, Hunumân, having been bestowed on him because she had seen a monkey when she first regained consciousness after the curious hysterical crisis which seizes on most women at that most famous shrine. The inference being, of course, that the monkey god was responsible for the baby--a presumption not in the least weakened by the fact that Shah Sultan was a Mohammedan saint to whom monkeys and gods were an abomination.
Chand Kor, therefore, gave shrill disapproval to Azmutoollah's fiat. In her heart of hearts she nourished the ideal of a blue monkey god perched on the top of that golden spike; and when, two days afterwards, Hunumân Sing, B.A., came down for his vacation, she poured the tale of intolerance into his ear.
Now, Hunumân Sing, after the manner of his kind, did not care--well, what the Iron Duke said cost him twopence--for his godfather, nor, indeed, for most of the beliefs of his mother. How could he? Who could expect it of him? The cry which goes up now and again in India when some clever lad, educated at a mission-school, openly forsakes his religion, is beneath contempt. There is not one orthodox Hindu father, north or south, who, pushing his lad on for the sake of worldly success, does not do it with his eyes open to the inevitable gulf which must separate them in the future. This particular son was like many another son of the sort; a good lad, on the whole, if more interested in his own development than anything else in the world. This, again, was inevitable. When you have to cram the evolution of ages into two-and-twenty years, and grow from a baby named after the monkey god into a B.A., a strict attention to business is necessary. If he was pushing, was not that also inevitable? Jonah's gourd had to push "some," as the Americans say. For the rest, he was like hundreds of the amiable, clever young graduates whom one longs to have in the desert for forty days and nights opposite the Sphinx. One by one, of course; for if there were two of them they would form a sub-committee and vote the Sphinx to the chair. Then the millennium would come, of course, and that would be inconvenient for nous autres.
But, though Hunumân cared not at all for the blue monkey god, he worshipped liberty--especially his own; and he preferred it, if possible, with a flavour of law about it. What! deprive a citizen, a subject of the Queen Empress, from due exercise of religious right? Who was Azmutoollah Khan, to promulgate such a pernicious attempt at intimidation?--vide section so-and-so.
Little Mool Raj, who seemed to shrivel smaller as he grew older, listened to all this with great pride but steadfast inaction. He knew who Azmutoollah Khan was well enough. He knew the temper of the people who had enriched him all too well. Liberty was a fine thing, but money was better--peace and comfort best of all. This latter conviction, however, made him give way slightly before Chand Kor's tears; and the next evening, when the rissaldar--major was interviewing two new arrivals on leave, and bringing the wisdom of a lifetime to bear on their horses, an odd noise floated over the sham domes of the mosque.
"Tis a donkey with the strangles, Khan Sahib," remarked Rahmat Ali. "Yea, mine is a lucky one--five curls and--" He paused.
No, it was not a donkey. What was it? A camel snoring? A cow dying? The women servants baking bread in the corner stood up to listen. The two boys, heads down, arms interlaced, wrestling stark naked in the sun, paused also. Then, suddenly, as if by mistake, an inconceivable gamut, beginning with an earthquake, passing on to a foghorn, and ending with a pennywhistle, let itself loose.
"God and his Prophet," yelled Azmutoollah, "it is a conch!"
As they stood petrified by the audacity, the low grunting recommenced, and then once more something let go, lost control over itself, and went skirling up like a burst bagpipe.
"My sword!" gasped the ex-rissaldar. "The idolatrous defiler of the faith--the desecrator of my fathers' graves! A conch in Jehâdpore! By the Lord who made me, 'tis the last!"
If the opponents had been better matched, there would have been bloodshedding in the village on that calm evening; but what could a dozen sowars with drawn swords, headed by Azmutoollah, joined by half the populace of the village, do against Hunumân Sing, who, with a trembling in his knees but the courage of martyrs in his mind, stood on the steps of the temple, nearly bursting himself in his efforts to play the unwonted instrument?
A roar of laughter went up from the crowd, as, alarmed but determined, he backed from the onslaught to the temple door, stumbled on the step, sat down violently, and the concussion sent a perfectly supernatural "Ker--whoo--oo--oo--oo--ph!" through the conch.
Even Azmutoollah's indignation could not withstand it.
"Go, Rahmat Ali, and take it from him ere he do himself an injury, and seek Mool Raj, Kutb-u-din. 'Tis his blame, not the boy's."
But Hunumân was on his feet again, full of outraged importance. The affair to him was deadly earnest.
"I am no boy, Khan Azmutoollah, but of legal age, with B.A. pass. I am a loyal citizen of Victoria Kaiser-i-hind. Religious liberty enjoins me to play conch if I choose, and I do choose."
The spirit was willing, but the flesh, in the hustling hands of half a dozen troopers, was perforce weak. The Hindu is not naturally resistant, and the fighting men around him were not slow to recognize Hunumân's unusual show of determination.
"It is assault! it is battery! I am coerced. I claim my rights. The law is on my side!" he gasped, between his struggles.
"Smash the blasphemous thing, and let the boy go," called Azmutoollah. "Enough, Hunumân-ji. Seek thy law elsewhere--not here, in the house of my fathers."
The conch lay shivered to atoms, but the young man felt himself master of the situation. Just as the concussion of his fall had forced his breath into the conch, so the pressure of illegal coercion made his newly acquired love of freedom overflow into eloquence. Heart and head were both full to inflation with the finest sentiments. As he stood on the steps, haranguing the people, he would have done credit to the House of Commons in a party discussion.
"By the faith, he speaks well! 'Tis a pity his shoulders are so narrow," remarked a trooper, carelessly, as he strolled away to a bare, beaten patch by the tank, where a number of naked boys were standing in pairs, heads down, hands on knees, smacking their thighs, and crying "Hull-la-la!" to give themselves courage ere closing for the grip. Beneath the skeleton of a peepul-tree hard by, whence the branches had been stripped for fodder, some elders were at work over gymnastic exercises, swinging clubs, or--supported on palms and feet--touching the dust with their foreheads, and then rising again like a strung bow. The sunlight shone on their bronze sinews.
"Didst kill him?" asked one, breathlessly keeping the count of his own performance.
"Kill him? Look you, Allah Baksh--there was not enough of him to kill!"
And a chuckle ran round the assembly.
A fortnight after, when the district officer was playing whist with the policeman, the doctor, and the young assistant, who was gradually being taught that rules are occasionally more honoured in the breach than the observance, Dhunput Rai, judicial assistant, sent in to ask five minutes' leisure of the Huzoor. Every one laid down his cards at once, and the doctor lit a fresh cigar, for Dhunput Rai was one of those natives of the old school who many a time and oft have steered the British bark safely through troubled waters, as their fathers steered the alien armadas of the Mogul. He was a Brahman of the highest caste, keen-witted, clear-sighted; privately a bigot, publicly a statesman.
"Huzoor," he said, briefly, "young Lala Amr Nath the Extra hath this day in a case given leave for a conch to be blown in Jehâdpore. There will be trouble. In my opinion, it is a fitting occasion for the Huzoor to act under section 518, which gives absolute power to the district officer in emergency."
Five minutes afterwards, Dhunput Rai took his leave with an interdict in his pocket, and a deputy inspector of police and four mounted constables rode out with it post haste, so as to arrive before the earliest blink of dawn made conch-blowing compatible with anything save sheer malice aforethought. It was a great blow to Hunumân and a small circle of select college friends who had assembled to witness the triumph of religious freedom. They consoled themselves during the interval of appeal by writing an article to the 'Sun of Asia,' in the course of which they promulgated several valuable new discoveries, such as that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor. Azmutoollah, meanwhile, admitted grudgingly that there was some sense left in the sahibs still, in spite of their setting goldsmiths' sons, like Amr Nath, to rule over honest folk.
"I'm dashed if I can find a precedent," remarked the district officer, disconsolately talking over the matter with the policeman, the doctor, and the assistant. "And in a case like this, where every thing depends on the environment, and it's sure to be appealed again, there is no mortal good in anything but a precedent. If I say there will be a row, I shall only be told with great dignity that Mr. Smith is expected to keep his district in order."
There was a pause. Finally, the doctor spoke. He hailed from Aberdeen.
"It's an ill burd that files his ain nest, but for religious into-lerance give me Scotland. Aw'm no saying ut'll hold as a preeceedent amongst the heathen, but it's a preeceedent in the Court o' Session. It was aprepaw of a bell."
"A bell! Heaven be praised! the very thing."
"A bell is not a conch," remarked the assistant.
"Alias, I should say," murmured the policeman. "Bell, conch, call to prayer: that's the spirit. Fire away, old chap!--Bearer, bring the doctor-sahib another peg."
So the precedent of a far-away cathedral, whose schismatic chime annoyed good Calvinists, was brought to bear on Hunumân and the conch, and the latter, not being an integral part of public worship, was proclaimed a nuisance.
The deputy commissioner himself had no doubt about its being one, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and remarked to Dhunput Rai that that ought to finish the business.
The courteous old gentleman smiled.
"Huzoor," he said, "I have heard my father say that Akbar's order to his judges was, 'Write ever with the pen which has been cut by the sword; then there is peace in the land.' The case will be appealed, and the pen of the Huzoors is cut by machine."
He was a true prophet. Hunumân, backed by the 'Sun of Asia,' not only appealed the conch question, but raised another in the interim by putting a small blue plaster monkey on the top of the gold spike, in fulfilment, it was urged, of the pre-natal vow made for him by his mother, a pious Hindu lady, whose virtuous life was crowned with honour.
The monkey remained there exactly five-and-twenty minutes after the first beams of the rising sun disclosed the fact that it had been put there during the night. That it remained so long was due to three reasons: First, that the Jehâdpore troopers, if good swordsmen, were uncommonly bad shots; second, that Azmutoollah's blunderbuss was a flint-lock; third, that he insisted on letting it off himself until it knocked him down.
This time the case was taken direct to the deputy commissioner, who, urged on the one side by a remembrance of Dhunput Rai's remark, and on the other by a sneaking fear of revision, decided that the blue monkey, as an idolatrous image, was a distinct nuisance when displayed unnecessarily over the top of a Mohammedan gentleman's private mosque. On the other hand, viewed from the Hindu standpoint, the image of a blue monkey might be an integral part of public worship. Azmutoollah Khan Bahadur, C.I.E., ex-rissaldar, must therefore pay over to Mool Raj and to Hunumân Sing the price of the destroyed blue monkey, as they might wish to erect a similar one in a less conspicuous place.
Now, though Mool Raj's name was duly entered in the file as complainant, the affair had long ago passed out of his hands and become a real, solid, Heaven-sent grievance to a small knot of advanced young pleaders. Indeed, the old man was so distinctly unsatisfactory as chief victim, that they had more than once taken the opportunity of his absence to advance matters a step. Azmutoollah Khan, as shrewd an old soldier as could be found on either side of the Indus, was not slow to notice this, and his blind opposition covered a great longing to have these youngsters on the hip. After all, he and Mool Raj had pulled along well enough for years before this B.A. was thought of--ay, and their fathers before them. If the usurer had been alone, the money screw could have been put on him somehow; since he would not risk a pice for all the blue monkeys in heaven or on earth.
Azmutoollah Khan was cogitating these matters one afternoon on the wooden bed, with his turban as usual standing like a helmet beside him, when a party of boys rushed into the court-yard full of news and excitement. Hunumân Sing, who, as every one knew, had come with some friends in a bullock cart that morning, must have brought the thing with him; but as sure as fate there was a blue monkey sitting on the square pedestal in front of the temple which Alla Ditta, the mason, had built in all innocence of heart last week--a blue monkey, not a miniature marionette at the top of a gilt spike like the last, but a life-sized affair, and, what is more, all the Hindus in the place and many more from neighbouring villages were doing poojah to it.
The fierce old Mohammedan's very lips turned pale. He never even thought of his turban, but, bald-headed as he was, and stumbling in his haste, was out of the court-yard into the narrow street. The next minute a cry, that was not pleasant to hear, cut the calm sunshine like a sword.
"Jehâd! Jehâd! Futt-eh Mohammed! Jehâd! Jehâd! Futt-eh Mohammed!" shrilled the boys in refrain.
A knot of young men in patent-leather shoes, standing by the blue monkey, heard the cry with a glow of triumph.
"Brothers and sisters," called one, in the polished, curiously artificial tones of one accustomed to public speaking, "remember we are peaceable citizens. There is to be no opposition. Our trust is in truth and justice, not in violence. Our weapon is right, not might. Stand aside and let them do their worst. 'I will repay,' saith the law."
It was a bold paraphrase lost on all save that little knot of culture which said, "Hear, hear!" as if to the manner born. The speech, however, though admirable, proved somewhat superfluous. The first sight of that mad assault coming round the corner sent the crowd, composed for the most part of women and children, scattering hither and thither like frightened sheep. Culture stood firm, unwisely firm, for a minute. Then a voice rose in English:
"Gentlemen, discretion is better part of valour--nor is it permissible to foster or excite breach of peace. We can speak with equal fluence and freedom from roof of house." And they did.
The scene thus described sounds farcical. There was not even a grain of comedy in it to the actors; least of all to the plaster monkey on whose blue hide the sabres hacked fast. Above, on the roof, as on a hustings, the new culture wielded the sword of the Spirit; below, the older cult clinched argument by the sword of the flesh.
That night peace reigned in Jehâdpore. Young India, in a body, had gone to report wilful destruction of private property accompanied by violence, to the deputy commissioner. Old India sat triumphant but thoughtful on the wooden bed, while the troopers laughed and drank and made merry over the discomfiture of the blue monkey.
"By the Prophet," cried Rahmat Ali, "I swear it had a look of old money-bags! And why not, seeing 'tis the father of Sri Hunumân? Ha-ha! But thou shouldst have seen the old man's face, rissaldar-sahib, when he returned but half an hour gone, and I told him we were but waiting leisure to burn his books and clear off old scores in the old way. He wept, and said 'twas none of his doing; that he asked but peace, as in the old days. Yea, as he sat a-begging on his haunches, praying forgiveness, he looked more like the blue monkey than ever."
Khan Azmutoollah Khan let off a detonating roulade of Arabic anathema as a Te Deum.
"Fetch him here, Rahmat! I have a plan. We old folk will settle it old ways."
The next morning the deputy commissioner, the police officer, and the doctor rode out in hot haste to the scene of what they were told had been a bloodthirsty riot. At the village boundary they were met, rather to their surprise, by the usual escort. The leader of the little band was more military than ever, but there was an odd twinkle in his eye as he obeyed the curt order to fall behind, and the hint--which British majesty gave in the interests of law and order--that his presence even there was undesirable. Hunumân Sing, and a friend who had remained to see fair play, certainly seemed to think the troopers jingling and clashing along in close order very much in their way. They edged their ponies here and there, only to find themselves perpetually ridden over; especially when, at the head of the lane leading to the temple, British majesty reined up short, the troop behind turned to stone, the horses on their haunches steady as rocks. Then there was a wild hustle; the two ponies shot out in front, where their owners managed to pull up flabbergasted at the sight which met their eyes.
"How is this?" asked the deputy commissioner, sternly. "I thought you said the blue monkey was destroyed; and there it is, in perfect condition!"
There it was, indubitably--bright blue, with a long tail curving over its legs.
From behind among the troopers came gentle grunts of disapproval, that the ears of the Huzoor should be assailed with such wanton lies. Blue monkeys indeed! What quarrel had the faithful with blue monkeys?
"Khan Azmutoollah Khan sahib," called British majesty, "what does this mean? I was told you and your fellows had wantonly destroyed Mool Raj's monkey. Is this true?"
The old man rode up from behind, his martial dignity undimmed by the discipline he respected and understood.
"I am no scholar myself, Huzoor," he said, saluting, "but I am a just man for all that. I injure neither man nor beast wantonly. Let the Huzoor ask the blue monkey if it or its master hath aught against me. Of these"--here he gave a contemptuous wave of his hand to the pleaders on their ponies--"I know naught, nor did my fathers."
Then he rode forward. "Oh, bunder-jee! speak for thyself and for thy master."
"By the Lord Harry," shrieked the policeman, as the figure on the pedestal rose slowly and salaamed, "it's old Mool Raj himself!"
"My lord!" faltered Hunumân, "this is irrelevant--this is contempt of court."
"Peace! oh Hunumân! and respect the voice of thy parent," began the blue monkey.
Then a roar of inextinguishable laughter played the mischief with majesty.
Half an hour afterwards, when Chand Kor in tears was washing the blue distemper off her lord and master's shrivelled limbs, he repeated his injunction regarding the fifth commandment to his son, who sat haranguing on liberty, freedom, public spirit, equality, fraternity, and a host of other duties and privileges.
"They are good, my son," he said, "but money is good also, and peace best of all. Ask no more. I am content, and thou hast naught to do with it. The temple is, and the blue monkey was mine--at least I was the blue monkey."
Then Hunumân Sing swore.
That evening the deputy commissioner held a friendly inquiry, and everybody shook hands all round, excepting Hunumân Sing and his friend, who left by ekka before the proceedings commenced, vowing vengeance on all summary justice. He was a full-blown pleader before the famous case of "Mool Raj and a Conch versus Azmutoollah Khan and Others" came up before the chief court of appeal. On that occasion he argued most eloquently on various subjects for half an hour, and was about to resume his seat, covered with perspiration and honour, when a voice from the body of the court cried:
"Respect thy parent, O Hunumân! Remember the things that are behind."
Coiled up neatly on his chair was a blue tail, and once more laughter played the mischief with majesty.
Some people say that was why the appeal was dismissed. Anyhow, it is certain that shortly afterwards Hunumân set up as a pleader in another province.
So Jehâdpore brought up its troopers, and paid or did not pay its debts in peace. And when Mool Raj died, the folk wagged their heads, saying, "Well, he was not much to speak of as a man, but he was a first-rate monkey."
[SHAH SUJAH'S MOUSE.]
He had no name. The village folk, it is true, called him Baba; but so they called all such as he. Nor did he ever show that he identified the word as anything more personal than the rest of the strange sounds to which he listened serenely as if he had no part or lot in them. Perhaps he was deaf, perhaps he was dumb. Perhaps he was neither. Nobody knew, nor for the matter of that cared. He was one of Shah Sujah's mice; no more, no less. In that lay the difference between him and other men. A small difference in some ways; in others illimitable. To the level of the brows he was as fine a young fellow as you could meet; of middle height, with clean, straight limbs. Above that nothing--nothing but a skull narrowed to the contours of a new-born babe's, conical, repulsive, like a rat's. Whence the name Shah Sujah's mouse.
The learned among us call such poor creatures microcephalous, and talk glibly of joined sutures and osseous formation. The natives of upper India have a different theory. These mouselike ones belong to Shah Sujah's shrine, because they are the firstlings of barren women made fruitful by the saints' intercession. Therefore, from their birth they bear the token of the mother's vow, dedicating them to his service. The seal is set on them from the beginning in mute witness to the truth.
Whatever that truth may be; whether, as some say, the new-born babes brought to be reared, like Samuel in the temple, are born as other babies, and the typical distortion produced by slow pressure--as in lesser degree the coveted bomblike foreheads of the Sindhi women are produced--or whether, as others hold, a tradition favourable to the wealth of the shrine is kept up, and additional gain assured by the secret exchange, through agents all over India, of the normal babies for that percentage of microcephalous infants which Nature makes--this much is certain: all children dedicated to Shah Sujah are his mice. There are hundreds of them; growing up at the shrine, dying there, and during the cold months spreading over the length and breadth of India begging with unvarying success of all women, fruitful and unfruitful; living meanwhile on the broken food given them, but hoarding the money with an odd unconsciousness of all save that in some mysterious way it belongs to the saint; then, as the heat returns, wandering back like a homing pigeon to the insignificant little shrine at Gujrât, which means so much to so many.
Most of the mice are repulsive; some are more or less deformed, more or less idiotic, making idiotic noises as they dawdle through the village alleys carrying their hollow gourds in their outstretched hands. He was not repulsive, and he made no sound of any kind; whether from inability, or from some lingering consciousness that his sounds would not be as those he heard, no one knew. In fact, no one knew anything about him, save that he was a mouse; too naked to be dirty in that country of canals and tanks, and seemingly quite content with a beggar's staff and gourd as his only tie to this world. Here to-day, gone to-morrow, secure of a meal, and of a sand blanket to sleep in if the nights were cold.
Perhaps he had more sense than others of his kind. Perhaps the theory of deliberate distortion was true, and his fine physique had struggled against it more successfully than some. But all such things were idle speculations, and there was nothing to be learned even from the big, luminous eyes, somewhat over-prominent, which looked at everything so serenely. At the children running out to him with their mother's dole, at the lean dogs following him in hopes of a scrap, at the birds and squirrels watching for the crumbs he might leave behind. Down by some water-cut, his feet buried in the warm sand, his naked body covered with the fairy garments made of sunbeams, the very minnows and sticklebacks gathered round him in radiating stars, expectant of bread cast on the water beneath the arching plumes of the date-palm thickets--plumes almost touching the surface, and sending lanceolate shadows, like the fishes themselves, through the sliding water as the breeze stirred the leaflets.
It sounds idyllic viewed from our standpoint. From his, with that osseous formation of the learned closing in like an egg-shell round the embryon, God knows what it was. Until one day something happened.
Sonny baba went amissing. Fuzli, the ayah, prone on her stomach, beating her palms in the dust, called God to witness that he had never been out of her sight except for one single minute when she took a pull at the gardener's pipe. This was down in the Taleri Bagh, where the English roses blossomed madly beneath the mango-trees, and the well-wheel under the big peepul-tree had the oddest habit of creaking the first two bars of "Home, Sweet Home" as the slow zebus circled round and round--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
Then a silence, save for the twitterings of birds and the soft thud of a peepul fig falling, rifled, to the ground, until the bullocks were back to the old spot. Then it began again--
"'Mid pleasures and palaces."
If there was no place like home, Sonny baba evidently did not think so. Anyhow, he had left it. Had disappeared utterly in that luxuriant little world down by the big canal, which was a maze of sunlight and shadow, of thickets of sweet lime and groves of date-palms interspersed with patches of tomatoes and gourds, and plantations of pomegranates laden with leaf and flower and fruit--such ugly, ill-humoured fruit, after all that beauty of blossom!
Yes, he was gone, and the solitary bungalow a mile up the road, nearer the city, where the assistant commissioner in charge of the subdivision lived, was in a lethargy of despair; for a child means much when it has been waited for during long years. Every one, from the highest to the lowest, was away searching; save only for the mother walking up and down the pretty drawing-room clasping her hands tighter and tighter as the hours went by, and the ayah, numb with grief and remorse, in the dust outside. It was growing late. The sun sent its picture of the shisham-trees to decorate the blank side wall of the house; the wilderness of wild petunia, usurping the place of the fast-yielding English annuals, began to send out a faint perfume. And Sonny had been out all day alone, under the hot sun, among the treacherous canal-cuts and the lurking snakes--Sonny, who since his birth, three years ago, had never known what it was to be alone.
"Thath way, manth."
It was a sweet little voice full of liquid labials. The ayah gave an inarticulate skirl of joy as she sprang from the dust.
"Leave me l'alone, l'ayah--I'th all light. Puth me down now, pleath, man."
A cry came from within, a woman's figure came flying to the veranda, a child bubbling over with glee went flying to meet it and bury a little mop of golden curls in mother's dress.
"O Mummie, Mummie, he'th got 'quilth!'"
Then, after a time, with dignity: "Don'th, pleath; them kitheth hurth. And, Mummie, don'th l'oo hear?--he'th got 'quilth.' Oh! l'ever tho many 'quilth.'--Hathn't l'oo, man?"
The man was Shah Sujah's mouse. He stood as he had set the child down, obedient to Heaven knows what understanding of the little voice. Now he seemed to hear nothing as he looked serenely, almost brightly, at those three out of his large soft eyes.
"Ayah!" cried the mother, clasping her darling tighter as by instinct. "Who--what is he? Ask him--ask him about it all."
Not only the ayah, but many others, asked him, fruitlessly--people running in from the court-house close by, hearing the news of Sonny's safe return; wanderers coming in disheartened from the search. Finally, Sonny's father, with an odd catch in his voice. But there was no answer, and the child's tongue went no further than "Loths and loths to eat, an' loths an' loths of quilth."
"Loh!" said the ayah, indignantly. "He is nothing but a mouse--a janowar.[[8]] Give him a rupee, Mem sahiba, and let him go; if the Huzoor, indeed, will not hang him for stealing my king of kings."
"Don'th, l'ayah--them kitheth hurth.--O Mummie, don'th l'oo know he'th goth 'quilth,' l'ever tho many 'quilth?'"
"Can't you make out anything, dear?" asked Mummie, almost aggrievedly; it was dreadful to lose a whole long day of Sonny's life.
"No, dearest," replied her husband, meekly aware of the offence. "No more than you can make out what 'quilth' means. Except, of course, that the tahsildar tells me that he--the man or the mouse, as you please--has been begging right away to the river's meet and is now, no doubt, on his way back to the shrine. Possibly he will meet an agent at Mooltan; they are seldom later than this in calling in their itinerants. He must have been in the gardens, and either met the child after he had lost himself, or--or stole him. That is all, unless Sonny remembers something when he is less excited. At any rate, he brought him back, unharmed, and--and--I should like to reward him."
"Reward him! Why, of course we must reward him. Think--only think what might----" She paused, able to think, not to speak of it.
"Just so. But how? The tahsildar says he will put any money into his bag and never touch it. And--and it does seem mean to reward a man for saving your son's life with broken victuals."
There was no help for it, however; though, just for the sake of appearances and proprieties, they gave him five whole rupees for the bag. He slipped them into it as if they had been pice, took up his gourd and went away, his beggar's staff making little round holes in the dust as he walked down the petunia-edged path, serenely, as if nothing unusual had happened.
So that was an end of Sonny's adventure for the time, since ere he woke, like a young bird at dawn next day, the child seemed to have forgotten all about Shah Sujah's mouse; but only for a time.
At first they thought it nothing but a touch of sun fever from being out all day which made the darling of their hearts so languid. He was down in the heat a little later, too, than was perhaps quite wise, but those holidays at the end of the month, which would give father the chance of settling mother and son in the wee house among the Himalayan pines, and of getting a whiff of fresh air himself, had been so tempting.
But a week after, the doctor, summoned from headquarters, looked into their scared faces and said "Typhoid," ere, loath to leave them to this knowledge, he had to ride back, promising to arrange his work so as to be there as often as possible. He stood talking in undertones to the native doctor in the veranda before mounting, and the sound of their voices made the mother shiver. It was soon after this that the little voice began:
"O Mummie, he had 'quilth'--lovely, lovely 'quilth.' Whereth he gone--the 'quilth'--man? I wanth to thee the 'quilth' again.--Dada, will l'oo shend for the 'quilth'--man?"
"Can't you send for him--somehow?" She had Sonny in her arms, and the heat of him struck through to her own breast. Yet she shivered again.
Two days after, when the cot was set out in the veranda for the sake of the cool evening air, she bent over the child, who lay more languid than suffering among the toys he liked to see even while he did not care to play with them.
"Sonny, the 'quilth'-man has come. Dada has brought him."
Whence, is no matter. The fiat had gone forth, as fiats do go forth. The order had been given to find and, if possible, to bring back one of Shah Sujah's mice, who had wandered on northward through the villages. They had found him, and he had returned with them peaceably, contentedly, serenely.
"Thath's jolly," sighed Sonny. "Now, Mummie, l'oo'l thee the 'quilth,' too."
He wanted to be carried out in those brown arms as before, and stretched his hands to Shah Sujah's mouse, who stood just as he had stood before, silent, uncomprehending, incomprehensible--except, perhaps, to Sonny; but they took him, cot and all, as he lay, across the petunias, and set him down under one of the great shisham-trees, backed by palms and a wide-spreading banyan. The air was dry and balmy; he was as well there as elsewhere until the dew should begin to fall.
"Spec'ths l'oo'l flighten them, Mummie; 'quilths' is flightful fings. 'Posing l'oo an' Dada an' l'ayah thits light away--light away."
So they sat right away, over the petunias once more, upon the veranda steps, and two pairs of strained, anxious eyes looked at the group under the trees. The third pair looked also, doubtfully. It was an odd sight, certainly. The child's soft curls on the pillow, his flushed cheek seen sidewise, his little hot hands clasped round the bars of the cot. Beside him, on the grass, like a bronze statue, Shah Sujah's mouse.
"Now, manth! if l'oo pleath," murmured Sonny. And, as before, he seemed obedient to the liquid voice. A strange sound indeed! Not a cry, not a whistle. More like the croon of wind through tall tiger-grass. Scarcely audible, and yet a hush fell on the trees, as if they stopped to listen. Jack, the fox-terrier, cocked his ears. A horse neighed from the stables. Then came a rustle, as of leaves.
"I know," whispered Mummie, touching Dada on the arm. "He means squirrels. How stupid of me! Look!"
Along the branches they came, circling shyly down the trunks, now with a swift patter, now hanging splayed against the bark, petrified by curious timidity. Odd little mortals these, with the mark of Great Ram's fingers on their shining coats, and barred tails a-bristle. Soft little mortals, not much bigger than a mouse, their round ears cocked, their bright eyes watchful. Nearer and nearer, by fits and starts, hopping from distant trees through the short grass as through a thicket, while the croon went on, and Sonny's eyes grew heavy with sheer satisfaction.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth.'--Go on, pleath, manth."
Nearer and nearer; a dozen or more sitting up with the scattered crumbs in their odd little fingers. Dainty over the feast, nibbling a bit here and a bit there, and growing fearless, climbing on to the bronze limbs, looking into the dark, serene eyes.
Sonny's grew heavier and heavier.
"I think he is asleep," said Dada, indistinctly, through a lump in his throat. But Mummie could not speak at all.
"Dew fallin', mem sahiba" remarked the ayah, in a dissatisfied tone. "Time Sonny baba leave janowars alone."
It was a slow fever, as it often is with the little ones in India, and every day for many days Sonny would rouse himself when the sun left the air cooler and ask for his 'quilth.'
"It will not hurt him," said the doctor, who looked graver at each visit. "Our best chance is to keep him going somehow. If you were on the railway, I'd risk all and have him in the hills to-morrow; but that long dhooli journey--it is not to be thought of. We must keep him going--keep hold on life as best we can."
So they used to carry him out under the trees to the quilth and Shah Sujah's mouse. And some sort of a comprehension seemed to come to the janowars, as the ayah called them scornfully, of what was required of them, for day by day the crumbs were scattered nearer the cot, and day by day the timid courage grew into some new venture, rousing a languid smile from Sonny.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he would say, as the bright eyes looked at him knowingly, and the patter, patter of the little feet came nearer. But the sheer content came quicker and he slept sooner and sooner, until one day when they were racing over the cot and playing gymnastics with the bars, he made up his mind that there could be nothing more to wake for, and fell asleep once and for all.
"Take her away at once," said the doctor, as in the early dawn they drove back without the little coffin on the back seat of the dog-cart, from the graveyard where Dada had read the service without a break in his voice. There was no lump in his throat now; nothing but an angry despair in his heart. "Take her away. I telegraphed for you to the commissioner last night; that will give you three days. Then furlough, privilege, urgent, private--anything. She must not come back till the baby is born. And leave the ayah behind--they will get talking of the child."
That evening, when the servants were being paid off, and certificates to character written, while the dhoolies waited in the shade where Sonny's cot had stood the day before, the ayah, whimpering but indignant, asked what was to be done about the janowar.
"I'll look after that," said the doctor, kindly, seeing Dada's look. "Five rupees, I suppose, and the tahsildar to have him escorted so far on his way north to the shrine. 'Tis time he were getting back."
Undoubtedly. Even the last few days had brought the heat. The roses down in the Taleri gardens had dried to pot-pourri as they grew, smelling almost sweeter than ever. The mangoes grew larger and larger, and the green parrots clung to them, eating the pulp as it ripened. That was when the gardeners were away turfing a grave in the little enclosure opening out of the garden, and planting red and white quamoclit to twine up a wooden cross. It did not take long, for the grave was small. So they came back to frighten the parrots, leaving it to take care of itself; for the rains came early that year, and after a time there was no need for watering.
So much rain, that three months after, when Dada, back from leave, walked through the garden at sunsetting, many of the mango-trees were ankle-deep in water, and a second crop of roses nodded at their own reflection in the still pools. But the graveyard stood purposely on higher ground, and its brick wall was backed by a perfect thicket of date-palms stretching away to the low sand-hills, save on the side marching with the garden. There oleanders and roses and elephant creeper massed themselves into a hedge, and clambered over the arched gateway where Dada paused. The doctor was there too, for fever comes with heavy rain, and the outlying hospitals needed constant inspection. As the gate swung open, they paused again, not at the sight within, but at a sound they seemed to recognize. It was a shady spot. To begin with, great branches swept over it from the garden, and then in the far corner a huge peepul stood quivering its silver-lined leaves. There lay the little grave, solitary in its square of grass, for the place was divided into four by two narrow gravel walks ending abruptly at the walls. Two other graves claimed other squares, the fourth lay vacant. It seemed as if, when that was occupied, the shady spot would refuse another tenant. Yet there were others even now.
"Who's that?" cried the doctor, sharply.
It was Shah Sujah's mouse. He sate propped against the peepul-tree, and over the grass and the cross of quamoclits the squirrels were chasing each other and playing pranks with the crumbs they were scarcely hungry enough to eat, while the other janowar looked at them out of hollow serene eyes.
He shifted his gaze to the new-comers, but did not rise. He could not.
"Good God," muttered the doctor, kneeling down beside him, "the man is a skeleton, and burning with fever. How the mischief-- Well, the first thing is to get him moved to hospital."
When Dada came back with a string bed and four coolies impressed from the garden, he found the doctor looking suspiciously at the crumbs, at a piece of dough-cake and a bag of money. There were ten whole rupees in it, besides odd coins.
"The poor beggar seems starved, and yet he had this and--he was feeding the squirrels. There's something deuced odd about it all."
Odd, but simple, especially in the ayah's eyes. "Master, having given orders for the janowar to go, the police had naturally taken him away. He had come back again and begged--naturally, when the mem sahiba had given him sweet rice every day. But she had given nothing, nothing at all, except information to the police. Then they had taken him away again miles and miles, quite close to the highroad to the shrine, and had bidden him to go home. Even a janowar could have found his way had he chosen; but the obstinate animal had come back after the sweet rice. So then every one had been told not to give the disobedient one anything to eat. Indeed, it was past time for alms to Shah Sujah's mice; they should have been back at the shrine with their earnings. To linger was sacrilege, nothing less, especially when the Huzoor had said he was not wanted any longer. But instead of going, when he was starved out, as every one imagined, he must have hidden in the damp garden and got fever. As to what he was doing on the little king of kings' grave, that was mysterious. Perhaps now the master might believe that janowars were not safe round a sick--"
"Chuprao,[[9]] you fool!" shouted Dada. As the ayah sidled away, still indignant, the two men sat and looked at each other.
"I'm afraid it's no use," said the doctor. "Starvation and fever are ill companions; but I'll stay over to-morrow and see what I can do. It is as much my fault as yours, if any one is to blame, but--"
The doctor, being orthodox, paused.
When they went down on the following evening to see the patient in hospital they found the native assistant volubly apologetic. He had seemed so content, not to say weak, that they had left him alone while busy over an accident. Half an hour ago they had missed him from his cot. "Doubtless delirium had supervened with acerbation of fever; but since peons were out in all directions, by the blessing of God--"
"Come on, doctor," said Dada, impatiently interrupting the flow of words.
He was there, face down on the grass, and the squirrels were playing over his dead body and searching for crumbs.
"No!" said Dada, when the coolies came with a string bed again. "Bring a spade or two. I'm going to bury him here."
The doctor, having religious views, looked doubtful. "I--I wonder if it is consecrated ground?"
"I hope to God it is!" said Dada, fervently.
As they lingered at the gate when the work was over, a squirrel hung head downward on the peepul-trunk, eying the new-turned earth suspiciously. Then another with bushy tail erect came hopping fearlessly over the grass--
"Cher ip--a pip--pip--pip!"
It was a challenge. The next moment they were chasing each other over the cross of quamoclits.
Dada closed the gate softly.
"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he murmured to himself.
The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something between a laugh and a sob.
But they neither of them said anything about the other janowar. Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit Shah Sujah's mouse.