In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

II

There was no lack of life now in the wide courtyards, though the year claimed by Uma's pride had scarcely gone by. And there was more to come ere the sunset, if the gossips said sooth as they passed in and out, setting the iron knife (suspended on a string above the inner door) a-swinging as they elbowed it aside. From within came a babel of voices, striving to speak softly and so sinking into a sort of sibilant hiss, broken by one querulous cry of intermittent complaint. Without, in the bigger courtyard was a cackle and clamour, joyfully excited, round a platter of sugar-drops set for due refreshment of the neighbours. It would be a boy, for sure, they said, the omens being all propitious and Purm-eshwar[^[36]] well aware of the worthiness of the household. But, good lack! what ways foreign women had! There was the girl's mother, disregarding this old custom, performing that new mummery as if there were no canon of right and wrong; yet they were--those town women--of the race, doubtless of the same race! It was passing strange; nevertheless Uma herself did bravely, having always been of the wise sort. She had given the word back keenly but now to Mai Râdha who, as usual, had her pestle in the mortar, and must needs join in the strange woman's hints that the first wife was better away from the sufferer's sight. Puramesh! What an idea! She had spoken sharp and fair, as was right, seeing that it was hard above the common on Uma--so young, so handsome, so well-beloved! Many a pious one in her place, with no mother-in-law to deal with--only two soft-hearted, soft-tongued men--would have closed the door on another wedding yet awhile, and bided on Providence longer. Small blame either. It was not ten years since those two had come together; while as for affection----

The rush of words slackened as the object of it set the swinging knife aside, and came forward to see that naught was lacking to the hospitality of the house. With those strange women within, lording it over all by virtue of their relationship to the expectant mother, it behoved her honour to see that there was no possible ground for complaint. It was a year since Uma had flung herself face down upon the wheat, and now the yellow corn once more lay in heaps upon the white threshing-floor. Another harvest had been sown and watered and reaped; but Uma was waiting for hers. And her mind was in a tumult of jealous fear. Shivo with all his goodness, his kindness to her, could scarcely help loving the mother of his child better than the woman who had failed to bring him one. How could she take that other woman's son in her arms and hold it up for the father's first look? Yet that would be her part.

The strain of the thought showed in her face as she moved about seeing to this and that, speaking to those other women serenely, cheerfully. Her pride ensured so much.

Within, the coming grandmother heaved a very purposeful sigh of relief at her absence. The patient would be better now that those glowering eyes were away. Whereat Mai Râdha, the time-server, nodded her head sagely; but the girlish voice from the bed, set round with lamps and flowers, rose in fretful denial.

"Hold thy peace, mother. Thou canst not understand, being of the town. It is different here in the village."

The mother giggled, nudging her neighbour. "Nine to credit, ten to debit! That's true of a first wife, town and country. But think as thou wilt, honey! Trust me to see she throws no evil eye on thee or the child. She shall not even see it till the fateful days be over."

The village midwife, an old crone sitting smoking a pipe at the foot of the bed, laughed.

"Thou art out there, mother! 'Tis her part, her right, to show the babe to its father. That is old fashion and we hold to it."

"Show it to its father! Good lack! Heard one ever the like!" shrilled the indignant grandmother to be. "Why, with us he must not see it for days. Is it not so, friends?"

The town-bred contingent clamoured shocked assent; the midwife and her cronies stood firm. Uma, appealed to by a deputation, met the quarrel coldly.

"I care not," she said; "settle it as you please. I am ready to hold the child or not."

So a compromise was effected between the disputants within, before the beating of brass trays announced the happy birth of a son, and they came trooping into the outer court full of words and explanations. But Uma heard nothing and saw nothing except the crying, frog-like morsel of humanity they thrust into her unwilling arms. So that was Shivo's child! How ugly, and what an ill-tempered little thing. Suddenly the gurgling cry ceased, as instinctively she folded her veil about the struggling, naked limbs.

"So! So!" cried the gossips, pushing and pulling joyfully, excitedly. "Yonder is the master! All is ready."

She set her teeth for the ordeal and let herself be thrust towards Shivo, who was seated by the door, his back towards her. She had not seen him since the advent of the gossips at dawn had driven the men-kind from the homestead. And now the sun was setting redly, as on that evening a year ago when she had told him they were too few for the house. Well, there were more now. And this was the worst. Now she was to see love grow to his face for the child which was not hers, knowing that love for its mother must grow also unseen in his heart.

"So! So!" cried the busy, unsympathetic voices intent on their own plans. "Hold the child so, sister, above his shoulders, and bid him take his first look at a son."

The old dogged determination to leave nothing undone which should be done, strengthened her to raise the baby as she was bid, stoop with it over Shivo's shoulder and say, almost coldly:

"I bring thee thy son, husband. Look on it and take its image to thine heart."

Then she gave a quick, incredulous cry; for, as she stooped, she saw her own face reflected in the brass-ringed mirror formed by the wide mouth of the brimming water-pot, which was set on the floor before Shiv-deo!

"Higher! sister! higher," cried the groups. "Let him see the babe in the water for luck's sake. So! Ari! father, is not that a son indeed! Wah! the sweetest doll."

Sweet enough, in truth, looked the reflection of that tiny face where her own had been. She let it stay there for a second or two; then a sudden curiosity came to her and she drew aside almost roughly, still keeping her eyes on the water-mirror. Ah! there was her husband's face now, with a look in it that she had never seen before--the look of fatherhood.

Without a word she thrust her burden back into other arms, asking impatiently if that were all, or if they needed more of her services.

"More indeed," muttered the grandmother tartly as she disappeared again, intent on sugar and spices, behind the swinging knife. "Sure some folk had small labour or pains over this day's good work. Lucky for the master that there be other women in the world."

Uma looked after her silently, beset by a great impatience of the noise and the congratulations. She wanted to get away from it all, from those whispers and giggles heard from within, and interrupted every now and then by that new gurgling cry. The excitement was over, the gossips were departing one by one, Shivo and his father were being dragged off to the village square for a pipe of peace and thanksgiving. No one wanted her now; her part in the house was done, and out yonder in the gathering twilight the heaps of corn were alone; as she was. She could at least see to their safety for a while and have time to remember those faces; hers, and the child's, and Shivo's.

Well! it was all over now. No wonder they did not need her any more since she had done all--yea! she had done her duty to the uttermost!

A sort of passionate resentment at her own virtue filled her mind as, wearied out with the physical strain, she lay down to rest upon the yielding yellow wheat. How soft it was, how cool. She nestled into it, head, hands, feet, gaining a certain consolation from the mere comfort to her tired body. And as she looked out over her husband's fields, the very knowledge that the harvest had been reaped and gathered soothed her; besides, in the years to come there would be other hands for other harvests. That was also as it should be. And yet? She turned her face down into the wheat.

"Shivo! Shivo!" she sobbed into the fruits of the harvest which she had helped to sow and gather. "Shivo! Shivo!"

But to her creed marriage had for its object the preservation of the hearth fire, not the fire of passion, and the jealousy which is a virtue to the civilised was a crime to this barbarian.

So, as she lay half-hidden in the harvested corn, the thought of the baby's face, and hers, and Shivo's--all, all in the water-mirror, brought her in a confused half-comprehending way a certain comfort from their very companionship. So, by degrees, the strain passed from mind and body, leaving her asleep, with slackened curves, upon the heap of corn. Asleep peacefully until a hand touched her shoulder gently, and in the soft grey dawn she saw her husband standing beside her.

She rose slowly, drawing her veil closer with a shiver, for the air was chill.

"I have been seeking thee since nightfall, wife," he said in gentle reproach, with a ring of relief in his voice, "I feared--I know not what--that thou hadst thought me churlish, perhaps, because I did not thank thee for--for thy son."

His hand sought hers and found it, as they stood side by side looking out over the fields with the eyes of those whose lives are spent in sowing and reaping, looking out over the wide sweep of bare earth and beyond it, on the northern horizon, the dim, dawn-lit peaks of the Himalayas.

"He favours her in the face, husband," she said quietly, "but he hath thy form. That is as it should be, for thou art strong and she is fair."

So, as they went homeward through the lightening fields,--she a dutiful step behind the man,--the printing presses over at the other side of the world were busy, amid flaring gas-jets and the clamour of marvellous machinery, in discussing in a thousand ways the dreary old problems of whether marriage is a failure or not.

It was not so to Uma-devi.

[YOUNG LOCHINVAR]

Young Lochinvar, in the original story, came out of the West. In this tale he came out of the East, and the most match-making mamma might be disposed to forgive him; partly on account of his youth, partly because he really was not a free agent.

They were cousins of course. In the finest race of the Panjab--possibly of the world--cousins have a right to cousins provided the relationship lie through the mother's brother, or the father's sister; the converse, for some mysterious reason, being anathema maranatha.

But Nânuk's mother, wife of big Suchêt Singh, head man of Aluwallah village, was sister to Dhyân Singh, the armourer, who plied his trade in the little courtyard hidden right in the heart of the big city. A big man too, high-featured and handsome; high-tempered also as the steel which he inlaid so craftily with gold. For all that, round, podgy Mai Gunga, his wife, ruled him by virtue of a smartness unknown to his slower, gentler nature. Not so gentle, however, but that he mourned the degeneracy of these latter piping days of peace. They and the Arms Act had driven him from the manufacture of sword hilts and helmets, shields and corselets, to that of plaques and inkstands, candlesticks and ashtrays. From the means of resistance to the decoration of victorious drawing-rooms. Not that he nourished ill-feeling against those victors. They were a brave lot, and since then his people had helped them bravely to keep their winnings. Only it was dull work; so every now and again Dhyan Singh revenged himself by making a paper knife in the form of some bloodthirsty lethal weapon, and put his best work on it, just to keep his hand in.

Little Pertâbi, his daughter, used to sit and watch her father at the tiny forge set in the central sunshine of the yard. It was funny to see the shaving of sheer steel curl up from the graver guided in its flowing curves by nothing but that skilled eye and hand; funnier still to watch the gold wire nestle down so obediently into the groove; funniest of all to blow the bellows when the time came to put that iridescent blue temper to the finished work.

Then, naked to the waist, the soft brown hair on her forehead plaited in tiniest plaits into a looped fringe, a little gold filigree cup poised on the top of her head, a long betasselled pigtail hanging down behind, Pertâbi would set her short red-trousered legs very far apart, and puff and blow, and laugh, and then blow again to her own and her father's intense delight; for Dhyân having a couple of strapping sons to satisfy Mai Gunga's heart felt himself free to adore this child of his later years.

But even when there was blowing to be done, Pertâbi did not find life in the city half as amusing as life out in the village at her aunt's with cousin Nânuk as a playfellow. Nânuk to whom she was to be married by and by. That had been settled when she was a baby in arms, for in those, and for many years after, Suchêt Singh's wife and Mai Gunga had been as friendly as sisters-in-law can well be. That is to say there were visits to the village for change of air, especially at sugar-baking time, while those who wished for shopping or society came as a matter of course to the armourer's house. The world wags in the same fashion East and West; especially among the women folk.

"They will make a fine pair! God keep them to the auspicious day," the deep-chested countrywomen would say piously; then Mai Gunga would giggle a bit, and remark that if Nânuk grew so fast she would have to leave Pertâbi at home next time. Whereupon the boy's mother would flare up, and sniff, as country folk do, at town ideas. In her family such talk had never been necessary; the lads and lasses grew up together, and mothers were in no hurry to bring age and thought upon them. Perhaps that was the reason why men and women alike were of goodly stature and strength; for even Mai Gunga must admit that Dhyân was at least a fine figure of a man. So there would be words to while away the hours before the men returned from the fields. And outside, under the bushy mulberry trees, Pertâbi and Nânuk would be fighting and making it up again in the cosmopolitan fashion of healthy children. Of the two Pertâbi, perhaps, hit the hardest; she certainly howled the loudest, being a wilful young person. Nânuk used to implore her not to tease the sacred peacocks, when they came sedately by companies to drink at the village tank, as the sun set red over the limitless plane of young green corn, and she would squat down suddenly on her red-trousered heels with her hands tight clasped behind her back, and promise to be as still as a grey crane if she might only look. Then some vainglorious cock was sure to show off his tail; every tail was to Pertâbi's eager eyes the most beautiful one in the world, and she must needs have a feather--just one little feather-- from it as a keepsake--just a little keepsake. Now, what Pertâbi desired she got, at any rate if Nânuk had aught to say towards the possibility. So the little tyrant would play with the feather for five minutes; then fling it away. But Nânuk, serious, conscientious Nânuk, would set aside half his supper of curds on the sly and sneak out with it after sundown as an oblation to the mysterious village god, who lived in a red splashed stone under the peepul tree. Else the peacocks being angry might not cry for rain, and then what would become of the green corn? Nânuk was a born cultivator, true in most things, above all to Mother Earth. Despite the peacocks' feathers, however, not without a will of his own; for when, on one of his visits to the city, Pertâbi insisted on handling the little squirrel he brought with him housed in his high turban, and it bit her, he laughed, saying he had told her so; nay, more, when she chased the frightened little creature savagely, howling for vengeance, he fell upon her and boxed her ears soundly, much to Mai Gunga's displeasure. A rough village lout, and her darling the daintiest little morsel of flesh!

"I don't care," sobbed Pertâbi; "I'll bite him hard next time--yes! I will, Nâno; you'll see if I don't."

Mai Gunga, however, was right in one thing. Pertâbi was an extremely pretty child. The gossips coming in of an afternoon to discuss births, marriages, and deaths took to shaking their heads and saying that she might have made a better match than Nânuk, who, every one thought, would limp for life in consequence of that fall from the topmost branch of the shisham tree where the squirrels built their nests. Not much of a limp, perhaps, but who did not know that under the bone-setter's care a broken leg often came out a bit shorter than the other, even if it was as strong as ever? Mai Gunga's plump, pert face hardened, but she said nothing; not even when a new acquaintance, the wife of a rich contractor on the lookout for a bride of good family, openly bewailed the prior claim on Pertâbi.

Nevertheless the next time that the sister-in-law came to town, and on leaving it laden with endless bundles wrapped in Manchester handkerchiefs spoke confidently of the meeting at sugar-time, Mai Gunga threw difficulties in the way. She was too busy to come herself; Nânuk, still a semi-invalid, must be quite sufficient charge for her sister-in-law. Besides seeing that Pertâbi touched the eights, she thought it time for village customs to give way to greater decorum. Briefly, despite the peculiar virtue of some people's families, she did not choose that her daughter should be out of her sight. The two women, as might be supposed, parted with ceremony and effusion; but Suchêt Singh's wife had barely arrived in the wide village courtyards ere she burst forth:

"Mark my words!" she said, even as she disposed her bundles about her. "That town-bred woman means mischief. I was a fool to give in to you and Dhyân, instead of having the barber, as to a stranger. Not that I want the little hussy above other brides, but I would not have Nânuk slighted."

Suchêt Singh laughed.

"Twenty mile of an ekka hath shook thy brains out, wife. What talk is this? They are two halves of one pea. As friend Elahi Buksh saith, 'do dil razi to kia kare kazi?' (when two are heart to heart, where's the parson's part?)"

"Tra! That's neither in three nor thirteen," retorted his wife. "Give me the barber[^[37]] for certainty."

Meanwhile Pertâbi was howling in the little courtyard, much to big, soft-hearted Dhyân's distress.

"Let her go, but this once," he pleaded aside; "truly thou art over anxious, and she but seven for all her spirit."

"Seventy or seven, God knows thee for a baby," snapped Mai Gunga. "Would I had never listened to thee and thy sister, though, for sure, the children were pretty as marionettes. It was a play to think of it. But a mother knows her daughter better than the father, though it seems thou wilt be ordering the wedding-garments next. So be it, but till then Pertâb goes not to Nânuk; 'tis not seemly."

"I--I don't want Nânuk," howled Pertâbi. "I--I want the fresh molasses--I do--I do."

Want, however, was her master, since her own obstinacy was but inherited from her mother. So she sat sulkily in the sunshine, refusing the armourer's big caresses or the charms of bellows-blowing, while she pictured to herself, with all the vividness of rage, Nânuk going down--going down alone--to watch the great shallow pans of foamy, frothy, fragrant juice shrink and shrink in the dark, low hut where one could scarcely see save for the flame of the furnaces. What joy to feed those flames with the dry, crushed refuse of the cane and leaves! What bliss to thrust a tentative twig, on the sly, into the seething, darkening molasses, and then escape deftly to that shadowy hiding-place by the well, and gravely consider the question as to whether it was nearly boiled enough. Toffee-making all over the world has a mysterious fascination for children, and this was toffee-making on a gigantic scale. The legitimate bairn's part of scraping from each brew never tasted half so sweet as those stolen morsels; if only because, when you threw away the sucked twigs, the squirrels would come shyly from the peepul tree where the green pigeons cooed all day long, and fight for your leavings. Pertâbi could see the whole scene when she closed her eyes. The level plain, the shadow of the trees blotting out the sunshine, the trickle of running water from the well, the creaking of the presses, the babel of busy voices, and over all, through all, that lovely, lovely smell of toffee! Yes! sugar-baking time in the village was heavenly, and Nânuk was greedy--greedy as a grey crow to keep it all to himself!

When Spring brought big Suchêt to pay the village revenue into the office, he and the armourer met, as ever, on the best of terms; nevertheless their subsequent interviews with their woman-kind were less satisfactory.

"Thou art worse than a peacock which cries even after rain has fallen," finished the big villager testily. "What is it to me if women come or go? Dhyân is a man of mettle and word."

Yet in his heart he knew well that the armourer had no more to say to such matters in the narrow city court, than he had in the wide village yard, where the kine stood in rows, and Nânuk's tumbler pigeons never lacked a grain of corn at which to peck.

As for Mai Gunga, her wrath became finally voluble at the hint thrown out by big Dhyân, that if she went no more to the village, folk might talk of Pertâb being slighted. Slighted, indeed, with half the eligible mothers agog with envy! Slighted, when but for this cripple--yea! Dhyân need not make four eyes at her--she said cripple, and meant it. He had a broken leg, and that to a man of sense was sufficient excuse for breach of betrothals. If, indeed, there ever had been such a thing as a betrothal; which for her part she denied.

Dhyân Singh swore many big oaths, vowed many mighty vows that he would have naught to do with such woman's work. Not even if it became clear that, as his wife hinted, his little Pertâb would not be welcome in his sister's house. Yet he scowled over the idea, twisted his beard tighter over his ears, as became a man, and looked very fierce. And when a month or two later Suchêt Singh's wife met his halting apology for Mai Gunga's absence with a distinct sniff and a cool remark that she really did not care,--Nânuk could no doubt do better in brides,--he came home in a towering passion to his anvil and made a paper knife fit for a brigand. To have such a thing said to him, even in jest, when he, for his sister's sake, had been willing to waive the fact of Nânuk being a cripple!

"Cripple indeed!" shrieked the boy's mother, when Suchêt came back from the city one day with Dhyân's remark enlarged and illustrated by friendly gossip. "Lo, husband! That is an end. Whose fault if he limps?--only in running, mind, not in walking. Whose indeed! Whose but that immodest, wicked, ill-brought-up hussy's! Was it not to get her another squirrel, because she cried so for his, that he climbed? Let her have her girl; we will have damages."

So when sugar-baking time came round again, Suchêt and Dhyân, rather to their own surprise, found themselves claimant and defendant in a breach of betrothal case for the recovery of fifteen hundred rupees spent in preliminary expenses. Yet, despite their surprise, they were both beside themselves with rage. Dhyân because of the unscrupulous claim when not one penny had been spent, Suchêt because of the slur cast on his boy's straight limbs by the secondary plea in defence; that even if there had been a betrothal and not a family understanding, the crippled condition of the bridegroom was sufficient excuse for the breach of contract. The actual point of the betrothal being so effectually overlaid by these lies as to be obscured even from the litigant's own eyes.

It was one gorgeous blue day in December that Suchêt rode in to the city on his pink-nosed mare, with Nânuk on the crupper to bear witness in Court to his own perfections. A handsome, soft-eyed lad of ten, glad enough of the ride, sorry for the separation, even for one day, from the village toffee-making; but with a great lump of raw sugar stowed away in his turban as partial consolation. For the rest, he had a childish and yet grave acquiescence. Pertâbi apparently had been a naughty girl, and Mammi Gunga had never been nice. Yet the "jej-sahib"[^[38]] might say they were married; since, after all, he, Nânuk, could run as fast as ever. Tchu! he would like to show Pertâbi that it was so.

The court-house compound was full of suitors and flies, the case of Suchêt versus Dhyân Singh late in the list, so the former bade his son tie the mare in the furthest corner behind the wall, in the shade of a spreading tree, and keep watch, while he went about from group to group in order to discuss his wrongs with various old friends--that being half the joy of going to law; grave groups of reverend bearded faces round a central pipe, grave, slow voices rising in wise saws from the close-set circles of huge turbans and massive blue and white draperies.

Meanwhile Nânuk ate sugar till it began to taste sickly, and then he sat looking at the remaining lump and thinking, not without a certain malice, how Pertâbi would have enjoyed it. Then suddenly, from behind, a small brown hand reached out and snatched it. "One two, that's for you; two three, that's for me; three four, sugar galore; the Rajah begs, with a broken leg----" The singing voice paused, the little figure munching, as it sang, with vindictive eyes upon the boy, paused too in its tantalising dance.

"Did it hurt much, Nâno? I'm so sorry. And mother wouldn't let me keep the squirrel, Nâno; but I howled, I howled like--like a bhut (devil)."

The abstract truth of the description seemed to bring back the past, and Nânuk's face relaxed.

"Father's at Court, and mother's gone to see the woman who wants me to marry her son," explained Pertâbi between the munchings, "but I won't. I won't marry anybody but you, Nâno. I like you, Nâno."

Nâno's face relaxed still more.

"You have got sugar-presses, Nâno, and the other boy has none. He lives in the city, and I hate the city. Is there much sugar this year, Nâno?"

"More than last," replied the boy proudly. "We have the best fields in----"

"Then give me another bit," interrupted Pertâbi.

"That is all I brought." There was a trace of anxiety in Nânuk's voice, and he looked deprecatingly at the little figure now cuddled up beside him.

"Oh, you silly! but it doesn't matter. We can go and fetch some more. That's why I ran away. I knew uncle would bring you, so we can go to the village early. Come, Nâno."

"Go to the village, Pertâb! Oh, what a tale!" It is easy to be virtuously indignant at the first proposition of evil, but what is to be done when you are at the mercy of a small person who hesitates at nothing? Wheedlings, pinchings, kissings, tears, and promises were all one to Pertâbi. At least a ride on the pink-nosed mare for the sake of old times! They could slip away easily without being seen; yonder lay the road villagewards--there would be plenty of time to go a mile, perhaps twain, and get back before Chachcha-ji could possibly finish with his friends. She could get off at the corner, and then even if Chachcha-ji had discovered their absence Nâno could say he had taken the mare for water, or that the flies were troublesome. Excuses were so easy.

Ten minutes after, his feet barely reaching the big shovel stirrups, young Lochinvar ambled out of the court-house compound with his bride behind him.

"We must come back at the turn, Pertâb," he said, to bolster up his own resolution.

"Of course we must come back," replied Pertâbi, digging her small heels into the old grey mare. "Can't you make the stupid go faster, Nâno? We may as well have all the fun we can."

So the old mare went faster down the high-arched avenue of flickering light and shade, and Pertâbi's little red legs flounced about in a way suggestive of falling off. But she shrieked with laughter and held tight to her cavalier.

"Don't let us go back yet, Nâno!" she pleaded; "the old thing is all out of breath, and Chachcha-ji will find out you've been galloping her, and beat you. I shouldn't like you to be beaten, Nâno dear, and it is so lovely."

It was lovely. They were in the open now among the level stretches of young green corn, and there were the fallen battalions of red and gold canes, and from that clump of trees came the familiar creak of the press. Nay, more! wafted on the soft breeze the delicious, the irresistible smell of sugar-boiling. Other people's sugar-boiling.

"It's time we were going back," remarked Nânuk boldly.

"Tchu!" cried Pertâbi from behind, "we are not going back any more. See! I've tied your shawl to my veil. When I do that to my dolls, then they are married; so that settles it. Go on, Nâno! it's all right. Besides it is no use going back now, they would only beat us for getting married. Go on, Nâno--or I'll pinch."

Perhaps it really was fear of the pinching, perhaps it was the conviction that they had gone too far to recede, which finally induced young Lochinvar to give the old mare her head towards home. But even then he showed none of the alacrity displayed beneath him and behind him by the female aiders and abettors. His face grew graver and graver, longer and longer.

"We can't be married until we've taken the seven steps," he said at length. "Look! they have been burning weeds in the field. Let's get down and do it, or the gods will be angry."

Pertâbi clapped her hands. "It will be fun, anyhow, so come along, Nâno."

They tied the old mare to a tree, while, hand tight clasped in hand, just as they had seen it done a hundred times, they circumambulated the sacred fire.

"That's better," sighed Nâno. "Now, I believe, we really are married."

"Tchu!" cried Pertâbi in superior wisdom, "I can tell you heaps and heaps of things. Our dolls do them when we've time; we are always marrying our dolls in the city. But we can ride a bit further first, and when we get tired of Pinky-nose we can just get down and be married another way. That'll rest us."

So through the lengthening shadows, they rode on and got married, rode on, and got married, until Pertâbi's braided head began to nod against Nânuk's back, and she said sleepily:

"We'll keep the gur-ror (sugar-throwing) till tomorrow, Nâno; that'll be fun."

But when, in the deep dusk, the pink-nosed mare drew up of her own accord at the gate of the wide village yard, and drowsy Nânuk just remembered enough of past events to lift his bride across the threshold, and murmur with an awful qualm, "This is my wife," Pertâbi woke up suddenly to plant her little red-trousered legs firmly on the ground, and say, with a nod:

"Yes! and we've been married every way we could think of, haven't we, Nâno? except the sugar-throwing, because we hadn't any; but--we'll--have--plenty--now; won't we, Nâno?" The pauses being filled up by yawns.

It was midnight before Suchêt Singh and Dhyân, forgetful of their enmity in over-mastering anxiety, arrived on the scene. The culprits were then fast asleep, and the deep-chested country-woman, having recovered the shock, was beginning to find a difficulty in telling the tale without smiles. A difficulty which, by degrees, extended itself to her hearers.

"Ho! ho! ho!" exploded Suchêt suddenly; "and so they didn't even forget the forehead mark. I'll be bound that was Nânuk--the rogue."

"Ho! ho! ho!" echoed the armourer; "as like as not it was Pertâb. The sharpest little marionette."

"Well, 'tis done, anyhow," said the woman decisively. "We can't have it said in our family, Dhyân, that the vermilion on a girl's head came save from her husband's fingers. He! he! he! Couldst but have seen them. 'This is my wife,' quoth he. 'And we've been married every way we could think of,' pipes she. 'Haven't we, Nâno?' The prettiest pair--Lord! I shall laugh for ever."

"And--and Gunga?" faltered the armourer.

"Gunga's brain is not addled," retorted her sister-in-law sharply. "Who bruises a plum before taking it to market? What's done is done. We must cook the wedding feast without delay, have in the barber, and keep a still tongue."

So, ere many days were over, Pertâbi and Nânuk, as bride and bridegroom, watched the fire-balloons go up into the cloudless depths of purple sky. The boy watching them shyly, yet with absorbing interest; for did not their course denote the favour or disfavour of the gods?

"The omens are auspicious," he said contentedly; but Pertâbi was in a hurry for the sugar-throwing, in which she aided her bridesmaids with such vigour that Nânuk had a black eye for several days.

"If you were to ask me, and ask me, and ask me to lift you on old Pinky-nose again, I'd never do it--never!" he declared vindictively.

"Oh, yes! you would, Nâno," replied his wife with the utmost confidence, "you would if I asked you; besides you really wanted to be married, you know you did. And then there was the fresh molasses."

[A BIT OF LAND]

He stood in the hot yellow sunshine, his air of modest importance forming a halo round his old rickety figure, as with one hand he clung to a plane-table, old and rickety as himself, and with the other to one of those large-eyed, keen-faced Indian boys who seem to have been sent into the world in order to take scholarships. The old man, on the contrary, was of the monkey type of his race, small, bandy-legged, and inconceivably wrinkled, with a three days' growth of grey beard frosting his brown cheeks; only the wide-set brown eyes had a certain wistful beauty in them.

In front of those appealing eyes sat a ruddy-faced Englishman backed by the white wings of an office tent and deep in the calf-bound books and red-taped files on the table before him. On either side, discreetly drawn apart so as to allow the central group its full picturesque value, were tall figures, massive in beards and wide turbans, in falling folds of dingy white and indigo blue; massive also in broad, capable features, made broader still by capable approving smiles over the old man, the boy, and the plane-table. So standing they were a typical group of Jât peasantry appealing with confidence to English justice for the observance of Indian custom.

"Then the head-men are satisfied with this ad-interim arrangement?" asked the palpably foreign voice. The semicircle of writers and subordinate officials on the striped carpet beyond the table moved their heads like clockwork figures to the circle of peasants, as if giving it permission to speak, and a chorus of guttural voices rose in assent; then, after village fashion, one voice prolonged itself in representative explanation. "It will be but for three years or so, and the Shelter-of-the-World is aware that the fields cannot run away. And old Tulsi knows how to make the Three-Legged-One work; thus there is no fear." The speaker thrust a declamatory hand in the direction of the plane-table, and the chorus of assent rose once more.

So the matter was settled; the matter being, briefly, the appointment of a new putwari, in other words the official who measures the fields, and prepares the yearly harvest-map, showing the area under cultivation on which the Land Revenue has to be paid; in other words again, the man who stands between India and bankruptcy. In this particular case the recently defunct incumbent had left a son who was as yet over young for the hereditary office, and the head-men had proposed putting in the boy's maternal grandfather as a substitute, until the former could pass through the necessary modern training in the Accountants' College at head-quarters. The proposition was fair enough, seeing that Gurditta was sure to pass, as he was already head of the queer little village school which the elders viewed with incredulous tolerance. And, to tell the truth, their doubts were not without some reason; for on that very day when the Englishman was inspecting, the first class had bungled over a simple revenue sum, which any one could do in his head with the aid, of course, of the ten God-given fingers without which the usurer would indeed be king. The master had explained the mistake by saying that it was no fault of the rules, and only arose because the boys had forgotten which was the bigger of two numbers; but that in itself was something over which to chuckle under their breaths and nudge each other on the sly. Ari hai! the lads would be forgetting next which end of the plough to hold, the share or the handle! But Purumeshwar[^[39]] be praised! only upon their slates could they forget it; since a true-born Jât's hand could never lose such knowledge.

So, underlying the manifest convenience of not allowing a stranger's finger in their pie, the elders of the village had a secondary consideration in pleading for old Tulsi Râm's appointment; a desire, namely, to show the world at large and the Presence in particular that there had been putwaries before he came to cast his mantle of protection over the poor. Besides, old Tulsi, though he looked like a monkey, might be Sri Hunumân[^[40]] himself in the wisdom necessary for settling the thousand petty disputes, without which the village would be so dull. Then he was a real saint to boot, all the more saintly because he was willing to forego his preparation for another world in order to keep a place warm for his grandson in this.

And after all it was only for three years! They, and Tulsi, and the Three-Legged-One could surely manage the maps for so long. If not, well, it was no great matter, since the fields could not possibly run away. So they went off contentedly in procession, Tulsi Râm clinging ostentatiously to the plane-table, which, by reason of its straighter, longer legs, looked for all the world as if it were taking charge of him, and not he of it.

It looked still more in possession as it stood decently draped beside the old man as he worked away at the long columns of figures; for the mapping season was over, and nothing remained but addition, subtraction, and division, at all of which old Tulsi was an adept. Had he not indeed dipped far into "Euclidus" in his salad-days when he was the favourite disciple of the renowned anchorite at Janakpur?

Gurditta by this time was away at college, and Kishnu, his widowed mother, as she cooked the millet-cakes in the other corner of the courtyard, wept salt tears at the thought of the unknown dangers he was running. Deadly dangers they were, for had not his father been quite healthy until the Government had insisted on his using the Three-Legged-One? And then, had he not gone down and wrestled with it on the low, misty levels of newly reclaimed land by the river-side, and caught the chills of which he had eventually died? Thus when the rainy season came on, and the plane-table, still decently draped, was set aside for shelter in the darkest corner of the hovel, it looked to poor Kishnu like some malevolent demon ready to spring out upon the little household. And so, naturally enough, when Tulsi went to fetch it out for his first field-measurements, he found it garlanded with yellow marigolds, and set out with little platters of curds and butter. Kishnu had been propitiating it with offerings.

The old man looked at her in mild, superior reproof. "Thou art an ignorant woman, daughter," he said. "This is no devil, but a device of the learned, of much use to such as I who make maps. Thou shouldest have known that the true Gods are angered by false worship; therefore I counsel thee to remember great Mahadeo this day, lest evil befall."

So he passed out into the sunlight, bearing the plane-table in debonair fashion, leaving the abashed Kishnu to gather up the marigolds. Baba-ji, she told herself, was brave, but he had not to bustle about the house all day with that shrouded thing glowering from the corner. However, since for Gurdit's sake it was wise to propitiate everything, she took the platters of curds and butter over to Mahadeo's red stone under the big banyan tree.

Nevertheless, she felt triumphant that evening when old Tulsi came in from the fields dispirited and professing no appetite for his supper. He had in fact discovered that studying text-books and making practical field-measurements were very different things, especially in a treeless, formless plain, where the only land-marks are the mud boundary-cones you are set to verify, and which therefore cannot, or ought not to be considered fixed points.

However, he managed at last to draw two imaginary lines through the village, thanks to Purumeshwar and the big green dome of Mahadeo's banyan tree swelling up into the blue horizon. Indeed he felt so grateful to the latter for showing clear, even over a plane-table, that he sneaked out when Kishnu's back was turned with a platter of curds of his own for the great, many-armed trunk; but this, of course, was very different from making oblation to a trivial plane-table. And that evening he spent all the lingering light in decorating the borders of the map (which was yet to come) with the finest flourishes, just, as he told Kishnu, to show the Protector-of-the-Poor that he had not committed the putwari-ship to unworthy hands.

Yet two days afterwards he replied captiously to his daughter's anxious inquiries as to what was the matter. There was naught wrong; only one of the three legs had no sense of duty, and he must get the carpenter to put a nail to it. Despite the nail, however, the anxiety grew on his face, and when nobody was looking he took to tramping over the ploughs surreptitiously dragging the primeval chain-measure after him; in which occupation he looked like a monkey who had escaped from its owner the plane-table, which, with the old man's mantle draped over it, and his pugree placed on the top, had a very dignified appearance in the corner of the field; for it was hot work dragging the heavy chain about, and old Tulsi, who was too proud to ask for aid and so disclose the fact that he had had to fall back on ancient methods, discarded all the clothing he could.

And after all he had to give in. "Gurdit's father did it field by field," said the head-men carelessly when he sought their advice. "Fret not thyself, Baba-ji. 'Twill come right; thou art a better scholar than ever he was."

"Field by field!" echoed Tulsi aghast. "But the book prohibits it, seeing that there is not verification, since none can know if the boundaries be right."

A broad chuckle ran round the circle of elders. "Is that all, Sri Tulsi?" cried the head-man. "That is soon settled. A Jât knows his own land, I warrant; and each man of us will verify his fields, seeing that never before have we had such a settling-day as thine. Not an error, not an injustice! Purumeshwar send Gurditta to be as good a putwari when he comes!"

"Nay, 'tis Gurdit who is putwari already," replied Tulsi uneasily; "and therefore must there be no mistake. So I will do field by field; peradventure when they are drawn on paper it may seem more like the book where things do not move. Then I can begin again by rule."

There was quite a pleasurable excitement over the attested measurement of the fields, and old Munnia, the parcher of corn, said it was almost as good as a fair to her trade. Each man clanked the chain round his own boundary, while his neighbours stood in the now sprouting wheat to see fair play and talk over the past history of the claim; Tulsi Râm meanwhile squatting on the ground and drawing away as for dear life. Even the children went forth to see the show, munching popped corn and sidling gingerly past the Three-Legged-One which, to say sooth, looked gigantic with half the spare clothes of the community piled on to it; indeed the village women, peeping from afar, declared Kishnu to have been quite right, and urged a further secret oblation as prudent, if not absolutely necessary.

So she took to hanging the marigolds again, taking care to remove them ere the old man rose in the morning. And the result was eminently satisfactory, for as he put one field-plan after another away in the portfolio Tulsi Râm's face cleared. They were so beautifully green, far greener than those in the book; so surely there could be no mistake. But alas! when he came to try and fit them together as they should be on the map, they resolutely refused to do anything of the kind. It was a judgment, he felt, for having disobeyed the text-book; and so the next morning he rose at the peep of day determined to have it out legitimately with the Three-Legged-One. And lo! it was garlanded with marigolds and set out once more with platters of curds and butter.

"Thou hast undone me, ignorant woman!" he said with a mixture of anger and relief. "Now is it clear! The true Gods in despite of thy false worship have sent a devil into this thing to destroy me." So despite Kishnu's terror and tears he threw the offerings into the fire, and dragged the plane-table out into the fields with ignominy.

But even this protestation failed, and poor old Tulsi, one vast wrinkle of perplexity, was obliged once more to refer to the circle of head-men.

"Gurdit's father managed, and thou hast twice his mettle," they replied, vaguely interested. "Sure the devil must indeed be in it, seeing that the land cannot run away of itself."

"It hath not run away," said Tulsi dejectedly. "There is not too little, but too much of it."

Too much land! The idea was at first bewildering to these Jât peasants, and then sent them into open laughter. Here was a mistake indeed! and yet the lust of land, so typical of their race, showed in their eyes as they crowded round the map which Tulsi Ram spread on the ground. It was a model of neatness: the fields were greener than the greenest wheat; but right in the middle of them was a white patch of no-man's-land.

"Trra!" rolled the broadest of the party after an instant's stupefaction. "That settles it. 'Tis a mistake, for look you, 'tis next my fields, and if 'twere there my plough would have been in it long ago." A sigh of conviction and relief passed through the circle, for the mere suggestion had been disturbing. Nevertheless, since Gurdit's father's map had never indulged in white spots, Tulsi's must be purged from them also. "Look you," said one of the youngest; "'tis as when the children make a puzzle of torn leaves. He has fitted them askew, so let each cut his own field out of the paper and set it aright."

Then ensued an hour of sheer puzzledom, since if the white spot were driven from one place it re-appeared differently shaped in another. The devil was in it, they said at last, somewhat alarmed; since he who brought land might be reasonably suspected of the power of taking it away. They would offer a scapegoat; and meanwhile old Tulsi need not talk of calling in the aid of the new putwari in the next village, for he was one of the new-fangled sort, an empty drum making a big noise, and, as likely as not, would make them pay double, if there really was extra land, because it had not come into the schedule before. No! they would ask the schoolmaster first, since he had experience in finding excuse for mistakes. Nor was their trust unfounded, for the master not only had an excuse in something he called "a reasonable margin of error," but also a remedy which, he declared, the late putwari had always adopted; briefly a snip here, a bulge there, and a general fudging with the old settlement-maps.

The elders clapped old Tulsi on the back with fresh laughter bidding him not try to be cleverer than others, and so sent him back to his drawing-board. But long after the dusk had fallen that evening, the old man sat staring stupidly at the great sheet of blank paper on which he had not drawn a line. It was no business of his what Gurdit's father had done, seeing that he too was of the old school inwardly, if not outwardly; but Gurdit himself, when he returned, would allow of no such dishonesties, and he, Tulsi, was in the boy's place. There was time yet, a month at least before inspection, in which to have it out with the plane-table. So when the wild geese from the mudbanks came with the first streak of dawn to feed on the wheat, they found old Tulsi and his attendant demon there already, at work on the dewy fields; and when sunset warned the grey crane that it was time to wing their flight riverwards, they left Tulsi and the Three-Legged-One still struggling with the margin of error.

Then he would sit up of nights plotting and planning till a dim, dazed look came into his bright old eyes, and he had to borrow a pair of horn spectacles from the widow of a dead friend. He was getting old, he told Kishnu (who was in despair), as men must get old, no matter how many marigolds ignorant women wasted on false gods; for she had taken boldly, and unchecked, to the oblations again.

But in the end inspection-day found that white bit of land white as ever, nay, whiter against the dark finger which pointed at it accusingly; since, as ill-luck would have it, what only the natives themselves may call a Black Judge was the inspecting officer. A most admirable young Bachelor of Arts from the Calcutta University, full to the brim of solid virtue, and utterly devoid of any sneaking sentimental sympathy with the quips and cranks of poor humanity; those lichens of life which make its rough rocks and water-worn boulders so beautiful to the seeing eye. "This must not occur," he said, speaking, after the manner of the alien, in English to his clerk in order to enhance his dignity. "It is gross negligence of common orders. Write as warning that if better map be not forthcoming, locum tenens loses appointment with adverse influence on hereditary claims."

Adverse influence on hereditary claims! The words, translated brutally, as only clerks can translate, sent poor old Tulsi into an agony of remorse and resolve.

A month afterwards Kishnu spoke to the headmen. "The Three-Legged-One hath driven the putwari crazy," she said. "Remove it from him or he will die. Justice! Justice!"

So it was removed and hidden away with obloquy in an outhouse; whereupon he sat and cried that he had ruined Gurdit--Gurdit the light of his eyes!

"Heed not the Bengali," they said at last in sheer despair. "He is a fool. Thou shalt come with us to the big Sahib. He will understand, seeing that he is more our race than the other."

That is how it came to pass that Tulsi Râm sat on the stucco steps of an Englishman's house, pointing with a trembling but truthful finger at a white spot among the green, while a circle of bearded Jâts informed the Presence that Sri Hunumân himself was not wiser nor better than their putwari.

"And how do you account for it? I mean what do you think it is?" asked the foreign voice curiously.

The wrinkles on Tulsi's forehead grew deeper, his bright yet dim eyes looked wistfully at the master of his fate. "'Tis an over-large margin of error, Huzoor, owing to lack of control over the plane-table. That is what the book says; that is what Gurdit will say."

"But what do you say? How do you think that bit of land came into your village?"

Tulsi hesitated, gained confidence somehow from the blue eyes: "Unless Purumeshwar sent a bit of another world?" he suggested meekly.

The Englishman stood for a moment looking down on the wizened monkey-like face, the truthful finger, the accusing white spot. "I think he has," he said at last. "Go home, Tulsi, and colour it blue. I'll pass it as a bit of Paradise."

So that year there was a blue patch, like a tank where no tank should be, upon the village map, and the old putwari's conscience found peace in the correct total of the columns of figures which he added together; while the Three-Legged-One, released from durance vile at his special request, stood in the corner garlanded with the marigolds of thanksgiving. Perhaps that was the reason why, next mapping season, the patch of Paradise had shrunk to half its original size; or perhaps it was that he really had more control over the plane-table. At any rate he treated it more as a friend by spreading its legs very wide apart, covering it with his white cotton shawl, and so using it as a tent, when the sun was over hot.

And yet when, on Gurdit's return from college with a first-class surveyor's certificate, Paradise became absorbed in a legitimate margin of error, there was a certain wistful regret in old Tulsi's pride, and he said that, being an ignorant old man, it was time he returned to find Paradise in another way.

"But thou shalt not leave us for the wilderness as before," swore the Jâts in council. "Lo! Gurdit is young and hasty, and thou wilt be needed to settle the disputes; so we will give thee a saintly sitting of thy very own in our village."

But Tulsi objected. The fields were the fields, he said, and the houses were the houses; it only led to difficulties to put odd bits of land into a map, and he would be quite satisfied to sit anywhere. In the end, however, he had to give in, for when he died, after many years spent in settling disputes, some one suggested that he really had been Sri Hunumân himself; at any rate, he was a saint. So the white spot marking a shrine reappeared in the map, to show whence the old man had passed to the Better Land.

[THE SORROWFUL HOUR]

It was one of those blue days which come to the plains of Upper India when the rains of early September have ceased, leaving the heat-weary, dust-soiled world regenerate by baptism.

A light breeze sent westering ripples along the pools of water filling each shallow depression, and stirred the fine fretwork of an acacia set thick with little odorous puffs, sweet as a violet. Despite the ruddy glow of the sinking sun, the shadows, far and near, still kept their marvellous blue--a clear porcelain blue, showing the purity of the rain-washed air. A painter need have used but three colours in reproducing the scene--red and blue and yellow in the sky; russet and blue and gold in the tall battalions of maize and millet half-conquered by the sickle, which stood in shadowed squares or lay in sunlit reaches, right away to the level horizon.

Russet and blue and gold, also, in the dress of a woman who was crouching against the palisade of plaited tiger-grass, which formed two sides of the well-homestead. Seen upon this dull gold diaper, her madder-red veil and blue petticoat, with their corn-coloured embroideries, seemed to blend and be lost in the harvest scene beyond, even the pools of water finding counterpart in the bits of looking-glass gleaming here and there among her ample drapery. She was a woman who in other countries would have been accounted in the prime of life; in India, past it. Yet, as she crouched--her whole body tense in the effort of listening--every line of her strong face and form showed that she was not past the prime of passion.

"Ari! Heart's delight! See, O father! Yon is his fifth step, and still he totters not. What! wouldst crawl again? Oh! fie upon such laziness." The high, girlish voice from within the palisade paused in a gurgle of girlish laughter. "Say, O father! looks he not, thus poised hands and feet, for all the world like the monkey people in Gopal's shop when they would be at the sweets? Ai! my brother! what hast found in the dust? Cry not, heart's life. Mother will give it back to Chujju again. So, that is good! Holy Ganeshji! Naught but a grain of corn! Art so hungry as all that, my little pecking pigeon, my little bird from heaven?"

"Little glutton, thou meanest," chuckled a base voice. "Still, of a truth, O Maya, the boy grows."

"Grows? I tell thee he hath grown. See you not this two-year-old hath turned farmer already? He comes to bargain with thee, having his corn in his hand. Give him a good price, to handsel his luck, O Gurditta Lumberdar."[^[41]]

"I will pay thee for him, O wife! Sure, hast thou not given me the boy, and shall I not pay my debt? Nay, I am not foolish, as thou sayest. What! Wouldst have me kiss thee also, little rogue? So! Yet do I love mother best--best of all."

The woman behind the palisade stood up suddenly. Tall as she was, the feathery tops of the tiger-grass rose taller; so she could stand, even as she had crouched, unseen. Unseeing also. Other women might have lent eyes to aid their ears, but Saraswati was no spy--no eavesdropper by intent, either. The lacquered spinning-wheel, the wheat-straw basket piled with downy cotton cards which lay on the ground beside her, testified to what her occupation had been, till something--Heaven knows what, for she heard such light-hearted babble every day--in those careless voices roused her pent-up jealousy beyond the dead level of patience. She was not jealous of the child. Ah, no! not of the child. Was it not for the sake of such a one that three years before she had given Maya, his mother, a dignified welcome to the childless home? But Maya? Ah! well was she called Maya--the woman prolific of deceit and illusion, of whom the pundits spoke; woman, not content with being the child-bringer, but seeking---- Saraswati's large, capable hands closed in upon themselves tightly. She did not need to peer through the plaited chinks to know the scene within. She saw it burnt in upon her slow, constant brain. The tall bearded man of her own age--her own type--her kinsman--the patient, kindly husband of her youth; the child--his naked brown limbs dimpled still more by silver circlets on wrists and ankles; those curving, dimpling limbs, which, somehow, made her heart glad; and between them, degrading them both, Maya, with her petty, pretty face, her petty, pretty ways.

Suddenly, as it had come, the passion passed--passed into that curious resignation, that impassive acquiescence, which does more to separate East from West than all the seas which lie between England and India.

"Old Dhunnu said sooth," she muttered, stooping to gather up her wheel and bobbins methodically. "'Tis the child which makes him love her, and I have been a fool to doubt it. I will delay no longer."

Behind the low mud houses, angled so as to form two sides of the square, four or five jujube trees clustered thickly, and beneath them the dark green whips of the jasmine bushes curved to the ground like a fountain set with blossoms. Hence, and from the straggling rose hard by, the women in the early dawn gathered flowers for the chaplets used in the worship of the gods. There were so many occasions requiring such offerings; sorrowful hours and joyful hours, whether they were of birth, or marriage, or death. Who could say, till the end came, whether they were one or the other? Only this was certain, flowers were needed for them all.

Towards this thicket Saraswati, still with the same impassive face, made her way, pausing an instant before the long, low, mud manger where her favourite milch cow stood tethered, to stroke its soft muzzle and give it a few tall stalks of millet from a sheaf resting against the well-wheel. And once more the scene was red and blue and gold, as the broad yellow leaves and blood-streaked stems blent with her dress. There was not a change in her face, as, parting the branches, she disappeared into the thicket, scattering the loose blossoms as she went; not a change, when after a minute or two, she reappeared, carrying a little basket with a domed cover, securely fastened by many strands of raw cotton thread, such as she had been spinning--a basket of wheaten straw festooned with cowries, and tufted with parti-coloured tassels, such as the Jâtni women make for the safe keeping of feminine trifles--an innocent-looking basket, suggestive of beads and trinkets. She paused a moment, holding it to her ear, and then for the first time a faint smile flickered about her mouth as she caught a curious rasping noise, half-purr, half-rustle.

"Death hath a long life," she murmured, as she hid the basket in the voluminous folds of her veil and walked over to the homestead. As she entered by a wide gap in the plaited palisade, the scene within was even as she had imagined it; but the barb had struck home before, and the actual sight did not enhance her resentment.

"It grows late, O Maya," she said coldly. "Leave playing with the child and see to the fire for the cooking of our lord's food. Thou hast scarce left an ember aglow beneath the lentils while I was yonder spinning."

The reproof was no more than what might come with dignity from an elder wife; but Gurditta, lounging his long length in well-earned rest on a string bed, rose, murmuring something of seeing to the plough oxen ere supper time. The big man was dimly dissatisfied with affairs; he felt a vague desire to behave better towards the woman who had been his faithful companion for so many years. But for her, he knew well, things would go but ill in the little homestead by the well. Yet Maya was so pretty. What man, still undulled by age, would not do as he did? For all that, the little capricious thing might be more friendly with Saraswati; there was no need for her to snatch Chujju in her arms whenever the latter looked at the child. But then women--and Maya was a thorough woman--were always so fearful of the evil eye. Fancy her calling that straight-limbed, utterly desirable son, Chujju,[^[42]] as if any one would cast such a gift away in the sweeper's pan! As if the gods themselves, far off as they were, could be deceived by such a palpable fraud, or even by that ridiculous smudge of charcoal on the boy's face which only enhanced instead of detracting from its beauty! Gurditta laughed a deep, broad laugh as he strewed the long manger with corn cobs and green stuff cut from the fodder field by the well.

Meanwhile, within the house yard, Maya was sullenly blowing away at the embers held in the semicircular mud fireplaces ranged along one of the walls. A grass thatch, supported by two forked sticks, protected this, the kitchen of the house, from possible rain and certain sun; while on the other wall a similar screen did like duty to a triple row of niches or pigeon-holes, wherein the household stores in immediate use were kept out of harm's way. For the rest, was a clean-swept expanse of beaten earth set round, after the fashion in a farmer's house, with implements and hive-like stores of grain. Between the one thatch and the other Saraswati moved restlessly, bringing pickles and spices as they were wanted. And still the basket lay tucked away in the folds of her veil.

"The raw sugar is nigh done," she said, stooping with her back towards Maya to reach the lowest row of niches.

"We must use the candy to-night, till I can open the big store. Luckily I bought some when we took the Diwali[^[43]] sweets from Gopal." Then, ere she replaced the cloth in which the sweetmeats were tied, she held out a sugar horse to the child, who was playing by his mother. "Here, Chujju, wilt have one?"

Maya was on her feet at once, indignant, vehement.

"Thou shouldst not offer him such things. He shall not take them from thee. I will not have it. Nay, nay, my bird--my heart's delight! Mother will give thee sweets enough. Kick not so, life of my life! Ganesh! how he cries. He will burst: and 'tis thy fault. Hush, hush! See, here is mother's milk. Ai! wicked one! would bite? Ye gods, but 'tis a veritable Toork for temper."

Hushing the child in her arms, she walked up and down, followed by Saraswati's calm, big black eyes.

"Thou art a fool, Maya," she said slowly, putting down the sugar horse. "Gopal's sweets would not have hurt the child so much as thy spitefulness." Then she turned to her work again among the niches. When she rose the basket was in her hand, the threads were broken, and the cover tilted as if something slender and supple had been allowed to slip out. Perhaps it had, for behind the sugar horse, standing in the lowermost niche, two specks of fire gleamed from the shadow. It was growing dark now, but the harvest moon riding high in the heavens and the now flaming fire aided the dying daylight, and a curious radiance, backed by velvety shadows, lay on everything.

"I must sweep out the niches thoroughly tomorrow," she said indifferently. "Methought just now I heard the rustle as of a jelabi.[^[44]] They love to hide in such places, and therefore I bid thee but yesterday see to their cleansing, But, sure, what work is done in this house mine must be the hand to do it. See to your lentils, sister; methinks they burn at the bottom."

Maya, with a petulant shrug of her shoulders, set down the child.

"Such work spoils my hands, and--and--folk like them pretty."

Even she, town born and town bred, did not dare before this grave-eyed peasant woman to name her husband's name in such a connection,[^[45]] but Saraswati understood the allusion, and the simple, straightforward naturalism drawn from ages of rural life which was her heritage, rose up in arms against such depravity. But even as she lashed herself to revenge by the thought, everything that was stable seemed to shift, all that moved to stand still. Her heart ceased beating, the walls span round, the moon quivered, the flames grew rigid. Ah, no! one thing that moved would not pause. Chujju had caught sight of the sugar horse, and was creeping towards it, now on his little fat hands, now tottering on his little fat feet, his glistening eyes fixed on the niche which held those gleaming specks of fire.

No! nothing was too bad for Maya; and Dhunnu, the wise woman, had been right when she said that the charm lay in the child. It must be so--and death was naught. There! he was close now, one little hand stretched out, the dimples showing--the---- Ah!

A cry, fierce, almost imperative, and Saraswati had him in her arms, while something slim and grey fell from the niche in its spring, and wriggled behind a pile of brushwood.

"I saw its eyes," she gasped, still straining the child to her ample bosom, when Gurditta, brought thither by Maya's screams of "Snake! snake!" stood beside her, his breath coming fast, his manliness stirred to its depths.

Maya saw the danger swiftly. "Give him to me," she clamoured. "O husband, make her give him to me. She would kill him if she could. She put it there--I saw her put it there--I swear it."

Saraswati turned on her in calm contempt. "Thou liest, O Maya; since Time began, spirit of deceit and mother of illusion. Thou didst not see me put it there."

Then, with the same dignity, she turned to the man.

"Master! Take the child. He is safe. This much is true, I saved him."

That night, when the moon still shone in the cloudless sky, Saraswati, her veil wrapped closely round her, stole softly from the homestead. Past the resting oxen, out among the serried battalions of maize and millet, where the tall sheaves, lying prone on the ground, looked like the bodies of those who had fallen in the day's fight; down on the sun-cracked borders of the tank, whence the water was sinking swiftly, now the rain had ceased; by the ghostly peepul trees, shorn of their branches which the camels love, and looking weird and human with great arms stretched skywards; so on to the burning ghât beyond, with its little cones of mud marking the spot of each funeral pyre, and the twinkling lights set here and there by pious survivors. Saraswati drew her veil tighter and sped faster as she passed through the more recent ashes, as yet uncovered, but swept into little heaps; and there--horrible sight!--still scattered, with the uncalcined bones gleaming in the moonlight, and a faint line of smoke still circling upwards, lay the most recent of all. That must be old Anant Ram, the khuttri (merchant) who had died that morning: an evil man, come to his end.

She was trembling ere she reached the hut where Dhun Devi, the wise woman, kept watch and ward over the ashes. It was a miserable shanty, where she found the old woman asleep before a large iron pot, supported on a trivet. Beneath it some cowdung cakes smouldered slowly, yet not so slowly but that every now and again a blood-red bubble showed on the contents of the pot. A flaring oil-lamp, filched, doubtless, from those outside, stood in a smoke-blackened niche, and by its light you could see festoons of dank, blood-red drapery clinging, to a rope, while, with a drip, drip, drip, something fell upon the floor--something which ran in rills right out to the moonlight, and, sinking into the sand, stained it blood-red; a ghastly setting to the wise woman's crouching figure, even though Saraswati knew that Mai Dhunnu was engaged in no more nefarious occupation than dyeing the webs of her ignorant neighbours with madder.

The old crone stood up hastily, then sank to her low stool again when she had peered into her visitor's face. "Thou wilt not tell," she whispered in a hoarse croak, which, coming in reality from a throat affection, vastly enhanced her claims to wisdom in the eyes of the villagers. "Thou art of the old style; not like these apes of to-day, with their dog-eared books and their dyes which fade before a January sun." The chuckle she gave suited her surroundings well; so did the claw-like hand she laid suddenly on Saraswati's firm arm. "Well, daughter! Hast plucked up courage? Hast learnt to trust the wisdom of old Dhun Devi?"

Saraswati shook her head. "Thou must find other wisdom for me, mother," she said briefly. "Such is not for me."

"Obstinate! I tell thee 'tis the glamour of the child."

"'Tis not the child, though the gods know the poison hath bit deeper somehow since he came. Lo! I have tried it, and 'tis not my way. Nor would I kill her. That were too trivial, seeing she is not worth life. I want but my share. It is empty here, emptier than ever, somehow, since the boy was born."

She clasped her strong hands above her heart. The glow of the fire, spreading as the old woman fanned it with the tremulous breath of age, lit up the big black brows knit above the puzzled black eyes.

Dhun Devi straightened her bent back, and looked at her companion critically.

"Life is more than the shadow of a passing bird to such as thou, O Saraswati! 'Tis not wise. For death is naught, and life is naught. The soul of man circles ever, like the potter's wheel, upon its pivot. Have I not seen it? Have I not known it? Did I not go through the night of a thousand dangers myself, and bring five stalwart sons into the day? Where are they? Have they not passed into the dark again? Have not my hands piloted many through the Sorrowful Hour and sent many from it? Lo! the snake would not have harmed the child."

"I care not if thou speakest truth or not, O mother, though thou art learned above women in such thoughts, I know," muttered Saraswati sullenly, with drooping head. "Only this I know, that way is not mine. There must be others. See! I have brought thee my golden armlet. Dhun[^[46]] was ever as a sign-post to Dhun Devi. Is't not so?"

The old dame's fingers closed greedily on the bribe, careless of the open sneer which accompanied it. "Ways?" she echoed. "Of a surety there are ways, but none so simple as death."

"Ay," said Saraswati quietly, "I have thought of that. The well is deep, and the little feathery ferns in the crannies look kind. But they would say Saraswati, the Jâtni, had been ousted from her own well-land by a stranger, and that is not so. I heed not the girl; deceit is her portion. 'Tis something here." Again she laid her hand on her heart with a puzzled look. "Nor do I want him only. Couldst thou not turn the child's mind to me, so that, seeing his love, Gurditta would hold me dearer also?"

Dhun Devi shook her head, but her keen, bright old eyes were on the other's face.

"There is a way," she whispered, after a pause, "but death lurks in it often with such as thou."

"Whose death?"

"Thine own. Do not all women know how the Sorrowful Hour----"

Saraswati caught the withered wrist in a fierce clasp.

"Mai!" she panted; "Mai Dhunnu! Dost speak of the Sorrowful Hour to me--to me--after all these years! Is there hope--hope even yet?"

"If thou art not afraid----"

"Afraid!"

* * * * *

It was sunrise in the homestead, and a new harvest was waiting in battalions for the sickle. The jasmine fountain showered its green stems to the ground, but it was bare of blossoms. They hung in chaplets from the thatch screen beneath which, on that stifling August night, a woman had been passing through her Sorrowful Hour. In the dim dawn the little oil-lamps set about the bed flickered uncertainly in the breeze which heralds the day, and glinted now and again on the lucky knife suspended by the twist of lucky threads above the pillow. In a brazier hard by some pungent spices scattered upon charcoal sent up a clear blue line, like the last faint smoke from a funeral pyre. All that wisdom could do Dhun Devi had done, but a dead girl-baby lay between Saraswati and the harvest visible through the gap in the plaited palisade. The midwife shook her head as she peered into the unconscious face on the pillow.

"Only a girl, after all the fuss," came Maya's high, clear voice, as she sat cuddling Chujju in her soft round arms--Chujju, whom the gods had spared. "To die for a girl--for a dead girl, too--what foolishness! But 'twas her own fault. 'Tis bad enough for us young ones, and dear payment, after all, for the fun; and she had escaped all these years----"

Dhun Devi's claw-like fingers stopped the liquid flow of words.

"Go, infamous!" she whispered fiercely. "Such as thou are not mothers. Thou art Maya, the desire of the flesh. Go, lest I curse the child for thy sake."

With a little shriek of dismay, half-real, half-pretended, the girl gathered the sleeping child in her arms and disappeared into the huts.

"The wheel slackens on its pivot," muttered the old woman, stooping again over the still form on the bed. "I must get her to Mother Earth, as a seed to the soil, ere it stops."

She stood at the gap and called. The fine fretwork of the acacia branches showed against the growing blue of the sky. The little golden puffs sent their violet perfume into the air. A bird sat among them, chirruping to its mate.

"Come," she said, and the tall bearded man followed her meekly. Together--he at the head, she at the feet--they laid Saraswati on the ground with the dead child, half-hidden in her veil, still between her and the great stretch of harvest beyond.

Suddenly, roused by the movement, she stirred slightly, and the big black eyes opened. Dhun Devi gripped the man's hand as if to detain him.

"The child--is it well with the child?" came in a faint voice.

Dhun Devi's clasp gripped firmer; a look recalling long past years came to her face.

"Yea, mother, it is well; thy son sleeps in thine arms."

Then, craning up from her crooked old age to reach his ear, she whispered swiftly:

"Say 'tis so if thou art a man, and bid her God-speed on her journey."

So, with her husband's hand in hers, a child in her arms, and a smile on her face, came the end of Saraswati's Sorrowful Hour.

[A DANGER SIGNAL]

They were an odd couple. The very trains as they sped past level crossing Number 57 gave a low whistle as if the oddities struck them afresh each time, and Craddock always went to the side of the cab, whence he could see those two motionless figures on either side of the regulation barrier which stood so causelessly in the middle of the sandy waste.

There must have been a road somewhere, of course, else there would have been no level crossing, but it was not visible to the passing eye. Perhaps the drifting sand had covered it up; perhaps no traffic ever did come that way, and there really was no need for old Dhunnu and his granddaughter to stand like ill-matched heraldic supporters displaying a safety signal. But they did.

They had done so ever since Dhunni--for the name had descended to her in the feminine gender--was steady enough on her feet to stand alone, and before that, even, she had given "line clear" from her grandfather's arms. For it was always "line clear." No train ever stopped at level crossing Number 57 of the desert section. Why should they? There was nothing to be seen far or near save sand, and the little square concrete-roofed, red-hot furnace of a place, suggestive of a crematorium, which happened on that particular railway to be the approved pattern for a gatekeeper's shelter.

It was very hot in summer, very cold in winter, and that was perhaps the reason why old Dhunnu suffered so much from malarial fever in the autumn months; those months which might otherwise have been so pleasant in the returning cool of their nights, and their promise of another harvest. The old man used to resent this fever in a dull sort of way, because it was so unnecessary in that rainless tract. To quiver and shake in a quartian ague when the battalions of maize are pluming themselves on their own growth, and the millet-seeds, tired of cuddling close to each other, are beginning to start on lengthening stemlets to see the world, was legitimate; but it was quite another thing to find a difficulty in keeping a signal steady when there was not a drop of moisture for miles and miles, save in the little round well which had been dug for the gatekeeper's use.

Dhunnu, however, had served the Sirkar for long years in the malarial tracts under the hills before he came as a pensioner to level crossing 57, and when once the marsh-monarch lays firm hold of a man he claims him as a subject for all time. It was this difficulty, no doubt, in keeping a signal steady which, joined to the intense pleasure it gave to the child, had first led to little Dhunni holding the green flag, while Dhunnu on the other side of the gate kept the furled red one in his shaking hand ready for emergencies. Then the train would sweep past like a great caterpillar with red and green eyes, and red and green lights in its tail, and Craddock would look out of the cab, and say to himself that time must be passing, since the child was shooting up into a girl. And still it was always the green flag; always "line clear."

It became monotonous even to Dhunni who had been brought up to it, and while her chubby hand clutched the baton firmly she would look resentfully across at the furled red flag in her grandfather's shaking hand.

"Lo! nânna," she said spitefully, "some day it will shake so that the cloth will shake itself out, and then----"

He interrupted her with dignity, but in the tone in which a tit-mouse might reproach a tiger-cat; for Dhunni, as he knew to his cost, had a temper.

"By God's blessing, oh Dhun devi, that will never be, since east and west is there no cause sufficient to check progress; and as that is by order the green flag, so the green flag it will be."

Dhunni made no reply in words. She simply flung the safety signal in the dust and danced on it with a certain pompous vigour which made the whity-brown rag of a petticoat she wore as sole garment, cease even its pretensions to be called a covering. For they were very poor, these two; that was evident from the lack of colour in their clothing, which made them mere dusty brown shadows on the background of brownish dust.

"It shall be the red one some day, nânna! Yea! some day it shall be the red flag, and then the train will stop, and then--and then," she gave one vindictive stamp to clinch the matter and walked off with her head in the air. The old man watched her retreating figure with shocked admiration, then picked up the dishonoured flag, dusted it, and rolled it up laboriously.

"Lo!" he muttered as a half-gratified smile claimed his haggard face, "she is of the very worst sort of woman that the Lord makes. A virtuous man need be prepared for such as she, so 'tis well she is betrothed to a decent house. Meanwhile in the wilderness she can come to no harm."

So far as the displaying of danger signals went, Dhunni herself was forced to admit the truth of this proposition, for even when the old man lay quivering and quaking, he kept the key of the box in which the red flag was locked, safely stowed away in his waistcloth. Once she tried to steal it, and when discovered in the act, took advantage of his prostration to argue the matter out at length,--her position being that the train itself must be as tired of going on, as she was of watching it. Whereupon he explained to her with feverish vividness the terrible consequences which followed on the unrighteous stopping of trains, to all of which she acquiesced with the greatest zest, even suggesting additional horrors, until it became a sort of game of brag between them as whose imagination would go the furthest.

Finally, as she brought him a cup of water from the well, she consoled both herself and him with the reflection that some day he must die of the fever, and then of course it would not matter to him if the train stopped or not, while she could satisfy herself as to whether those funny white people who looked out of the windows were real, or only stuffed dolls.

"Arin budzart!" he whimpered as he lay prostrate and perspiring. "Have I not told thee dozens of times they are sahib logues? have I not seen them? have I----"

"Trra," replied Dhunni derisively, "that may be. I have not, but I mean to some day."

Then the old man, adding tears of weakness to the general dissolution, begged her, if a train must be stopped, to stop a "goods," or even a "mixed." She argued this point also at length, till the fever fiend leaving him, Dhunnu resumed his authority and threatened to whack her, whereupon she ran away, like a wild thing, into the desert.

It was a certain method of escape from the slow retribution of the old man, but as often as not she would return ere his anger had evaporated sooner than miss any one of the four caterpillars with the red and green eyes and the green and red lights in their tails. They had a fascination for her which she could not resist, so she would take her whacking and then stand, bruised and sore, but brimful of curiosity, to give "line clear," as it were, to a whole world of which she knew nothing. Even that was better than having nothing to do with it at all.

And then, as her grandfather grew older and feebler, and required a longer time to fetch the week's supply from the distant hamlet far over the edge of the sandy horizon, there came at last a day when she stood all alone in the very centre of the closed gate holding out the green flag and salaaming obsequiously, for that was what grandfather had done on one or two occasions when, owing to inconceivable wickedness, she had been made to watch the passing of civilisation while tied to a distant bed leg.

Craddock from his cab noticed the grave mimicry and smiled, whereupon Dhunni smiled back brilliantly. And then something happened which curiously enough changed her whole estimate of civilisation, and left her with such an expression on her face that when her grandfather returned half an hour afterwards, his first thought was for the red flag. The key was safe in his waistcloth, yet still he began hurriedly:

"Thou didst not----"

"Nay," she burst out in fury, "I did naught. But they!--nânna, I hate them! I hate them!"

Then it turned out that the white dolls had flung a stone at her--a hard stone--yes, the pink and white child-dolls had flung a stone at her just because she had smiled. So with hands trembling with rage she produced in evidence a large chunk of chocolate.

Dhunnu looked at it in superior wisdom, for there had been white children sometimes in that surveying camp below the hills.

"'Tis no stone," he said; "'tis a foreign sweetmeat. They meant well, being ignorant that we eat not such things. When they first come across the black water they will even fling bread."

As he spoke he threw the offending morsel into the desert and spat piously. Dhunni looked after it with doubt and regret in her eyes.

"I deemed it a stone," she said at last. "Think you it would have been sweet, like our sweetmeats?"

"Ari budzart!" cried the old man again. "Lakshmi be praised thou didst take bread for a stone, else wouldst thou have eaten it and have been a lost soul."

"I would have tried if I liked it, anyhow," said Dhunni shamelessly. And that night, while her grandfather slept in the red-hot furnace to avoid the dullness of dawn, the moon found something else on the wide waste of sand, beside the crematorium and the regulation barrier, to yield her the tribute of a shadow. It was Dhunni on all fours seeking high and low for the chunk of chocolate, and when she found it she sat up with it in her little brown paws and nibbled away at it for all the world like a squirrel. The result of which experiment being that she smiled brilliantly at every train from that time forth, perhaps in hopes of more chocolate, perhaps from gratitude for past chocolate, perhaps because she really was beginning to be more sensible.

"It is being born to her in lavish manner," said old Dhunnu boastfully to an emissary of the future mother-in-law, who came as far as the village to inquire of the future bride's growth and health. "Go, tell them she gives 'line clear' as well as I do, but that she is not yet of an age for the married state."

In his heart of hearts, however, he knew very well that the time could not be far distant when he could no longer delay parting with the girl, who was fast shooting up into a tall slip of a thing. And then what should he do, for the fever fiend had a fast grip on him now--a firmer hold than he had upon life. Sometimes for days and days he could scarcely creep to the gate when the mail train passed, while, as for the "goods" and "mixed," these low-caste trains he left entirely to Dhunni's mercy; and safely, since the desire for the danger signal seemed to have passed with the possession of responsibility--and chocolate!

Thus Dhunni, far from the eyes of the world, which would have sent her remorselessly into the slavery of mother-in-law, grew tall and slender, and even in her old dust-coloured skirt and bodice caused Craddock the engine-driver, as he sped by, an occasional pang of regret as he remembered another tall girl with velvety eyes.

So time passed until, as luck would have it, a wedding-party from the village where the future mother-in-law resided chose to try a short cut over the desert, and actually crossed the line at level crossing Number 57. The result being that Dhunni's readiness for the married state became known, and a fortnight or so afterwards she sat looking at the new suit of clothes and some jewels which had been sent to her, with an intimation that the bridal procession would come for her in a week's time.

The presents were poor enough in themselves, but then Dhunni had never seen anything so bright before; except, of course, the red flag. And though the little round mirror set in the bridal thumb-ring does not allow of much being seen at a time, Dhunni saw enough to make her eyes still more velvety, her smile still more bewitching.

"Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain," grumbled her grandfather in equivalent Hindu, but it had no effect on the girl. All that day she went about with an odd half-dazed look on her face, and when the women who had brought the presents left in the afternoon, she went and sat down by the gate, feeling vaguely that it was some one else and not the old Dhunnu who was sitting there. The mail train had passed an hour before, and the "goods" was not due till midnight, so there was no chance of anything to interrupt the level monotony she knew so well, and yet, as she sat leaning against the gate-post with the green flag beside her, she was waiting for something; for what she did not know. But the certainty that life held something new was thrilling to her very finger tips.

It was a yellow sunset, full of light and peace. Then out of it came suddenly a faint roll, as of distant thunder. She was on her feet in an instant, listening, waiting. Ah! this was new, certainly. This she had never seen before. An engine with a single carriage coming full speed out of the golden west. Was she to give "line clear" to this? or----

The sound of a girl's laugh rang out into the light, and a scarlet veil, deftly twisted round a bâton, hung clear into the line.

"What in the world's the matter?" asked an English boy, as Craddock and the Westinghouse brake combined brought the final quiver to the great shining fly-wheel. He was a tall boy, fair-haired, blue-eyed, imperious. The girl had given a little gasp at the look on his face as he had leapt from the still moving train to come towards her, though she now stood looking at him boldly, the improvised signal still in her hand.

"What is it, Craddock? Ask her. You understand their lingo, I don't."

Craddock, leaning over the side of the cab, surveyed the picture with a magisterial air. "Sorry I brought 'er up, sir, tho' seein' a red rag it's kind o' second natur' when your 'and's within reach o' a brake, sir. And then she never done it before--not all these years."

"But what is it? I don't understand----"

"Saving your presence, sir," replied Craddock cheerfully, "there ain't no reason you shouldn't, for it don't take any knowledge o' the lingo, sir; no more o' any kind o' knowledge but what you're up to, sir, being, as the sayin' is, born o' Adam--o' Adam an' Eve. It's mischief, sir, that's what it is--mischief, and there ain't much difference in the colour o' that, so far as I see, sir."

The boy's face showed nothing but angry, almost incredulous, surprise for an instant, then something else crept into it, softening it. "By George! Craddock," he said argumentatively, "I'd no notion they could look--er--like that. She is really quite a pretty girl." He could not help a smile somehow; whereat, to his surprise, she smiled back at him, the deliberately bewitching smile born of that chunk of chocolate. It recalled him to a sense of injured importance.

"This is most annoying, and when so much depends on my catching up the mail," he continued. "She will be stopping the next train too, I suppose; but it can't be allowed, and she ought to be punished. I'll take her along and leave her at the first station for inquiry, they can easily send another signaller by the down train. Tell her, Craddock."

"Better pukro 'er 'ath,[^[47]] sir," remarked the latter sagely as he prepared to descend, "else she might 'oof it into the wilderness like one of them ravine deer. Just you pukro 'er 'ath, sir, while I samjhaó[^[48]] her."

Dhunni, however, did not attempt to run, she only shrank a little when the boy's white hand closed on hers. After that she stood listening to Craddock's violent recriminations quite calmly. In truth she expected them, for in those old games of brag with nânna they had gone further than words, up to hanging in fact. Yet still not so far as this queer tremor of half-fearful, half-joyful expectation. That was new, but pleasant, and filled her eyes with such light that Craddock stroked his corn-coloured beard and shook his head mournfully.

"She's a deal 'arder than I took 'er for, seein' her always as it were, sir, from a different sp'eer. A deal worse. If I'd a pair o' bracelets ready they might give 'er a turn, but I've told 'er she'll go to 'ell in every lingo I know, for fear she mightn't understand, and I'm blest if she care a hang."

The boy gave a resentful laugh.

"I'll make her care before I've done with her. There! you there!--what's your name?--stick her with you into the cook room. No; shove her into my carriage and I'll do chowkidar[^[49]] till I can hand her over. Now, Craddock, on with the steam or I shall miss my connection. Confound the girl!"

It was easy to confound her in the abstract; easy also to glower at the offender crouched in the off corner before you threw yourself into the arm-chair in the other and began to read the last number of a magazine by the waning light. But what was to be done when it was gradually being borne in on you that a pair of velvety eyes, wild as a young deer's, were watching you fearlessly. She was a good plucked one, at any rate. Craddock had said she was as hard as nails and a bad lot. Well, he ought to know; but she did not look bad, not at all. The eyes were good eyes, full of straightforward curiosity, nothing more. There she was bending down to try the texture of the carpet with her finger, as if nothing had occurred--the little monkey--and what white teeth she had when she met his involuntary smile with another.

After that, under cover of his book, he watched her furtively. It was what is called an inspection carriage, a regular room on wheels, and the boy, new to the honour and glory of such a thing, had hung pictures on its walls, curtains to its windows. There was even a vase of flowers beside the newly lit lamp on the centre table. The lamp had a pink shade too, which threw a rosy light on everything, above all on that slender figure crouching in the far corner. And outside the golden sunset was fast fading into cold greys.

"You want to know what that is," he said suddenly, in English, laying down his book and pointing in the direction where her eyes had been fixed. An expectant look came to them, and he stood for a moment irresolute. Then he rose with an impatient shrug of his shoulders, crossed to the small harmonium which lay open, set his foot to the pedal and struck a single note. She drew back from the sound just, he thought, as she had drawn back from his hand, and then looked at him as she had looked at him then. By Jove! she had eyes!

Still looking at her he sat down to the instrument and played a chord or two out of sheer curiosity. Her finger went up to her lip, she leaned forward, a picture of glad surprise. And then a sudden fancy seized him. He had a tenor voice, and there was a song upon the desk. Singing in a train, even in a single carriage on a smooth line, was a poor performance, but it would be fun to try.

"The Devout Lover," of all songs in the world! The humour, the bitter irony of it struck him keenly and decided him. And as he sang he felt with a certain anger that he had never sung it better--might never sing it so well again.

When he turned to her again it struck him that she recognised this also, for she was leaning forward half on her knees, her hands stretched out over the seat. No one could have listened more eagerly.

In sudden petulance he rose and went to the window. There was only a bar of gold now on the horizon, and, thank Heaven! they had come faster than he thought--or he wasted more time in tomfoolery--for they were already entering the broken ground. That must be the first ravine, dark as a ditch; so ere long he would be able to get rid of those curious eyes. Powers above! Was fate against him? Was he never to arrive at his destination? And what did Craddock mean by putting the brake hard on again when they were miles away even from a level crossing? He was out on the footboard as they slackened, shouting angry inquiries long before Craddock's voice could possibly come back to him through the lessening rattle.

"Danger signal comin' down the line. On a trolly, I think, sir. Somethin's wrong."

Apparently there was, and yet the English voice which sang out of the darkness had a joyful ring of triumph in it, and the friendly hand which followed the voice, after a minute or two, shook the boy's hand amid warm congratulations on the narrowest escape; for no one had thought it could possibly be done, or that warning could possibly be given in time. It was the veriest piece of luck! Briefly, just after the mail had passed, a big culvert had given not two miles further down the line. They had telegraphed the information both ways of course, though, as no train was due for hours, there was plenty of time for repairs. Then had come the return wire, telling of the boy's start to overtake the mail on urgent business. Every one had said it was too late; and, after all, it had been a matter of five minutes or less. The veriest luck indeed! If they had been five minutes earlier ...

The boy looked solemnly at Craddock, and the light of the red lamp, dim as it was, showed a certain emotion in both faces.

"That's about it, sir," said Craddock, a trifle huskily. "An' I tellin' her she'd go to 'ell! Lordy! ain't it like a woman to have the last word?"

He said no more then, but when it had been decided to return the way they had come, and take a branch line farther down, and when the trolly with its red signal had slipped back silently into the night, he came and stood at the carriage door for a moment. And as he looked at the figure crouching contentedly in the corner, he stroked his beard thoughtfully again, and went on as if no interval had come between his last words and his present ones.

"But she saved our lives, sir, by stoppin' us, that's what she done, sure as my name's Nathaniel James, and when a girl done that, a man's got nothin' left but, as the sayin' is, to act fair an' square by her--fair an' square."

"Just so, Craddock," replied the boy, with a queer stiffness in his voice. "We'll drop her at the gate again, and--and it shall be just--just as if it--as if it hadn't happened." Then he added in a lower voice, "Spin along as fast as you can, man, and let's have done with it."

"I won't leave her a hounce for a whistle, sir," said Craddock laconically.

So the carriage with the rosy light streaming through the windows shot forth into the darkness in front, and the sparks from the engine drifted into the darkness behind, and the roar and the rush drowned all other sounds. Perhaps Craddock whistled in the cab to make up for not being able to whistle on his engine. Perhaps the boy sang songs again in the carriage because he could not speak to the girl. Anyhow, they were both silent when the fly-wheel quivered into rest once more beside level crossing Number 57.

"Stop a bit," said a rather unsteady voice as a girl's figure paused against the rosy light of the open door. "It's too long a step. I'll lift you down."

Craddock, looking over the side, turned away and gave a sympathising little cough as if to cover some slighter sound. Perhaps he knew what would have happened if he had been in the boy's place.

The next instant, some one sprang into the cab and turned the steam hard on, some one with a half-pained, half-glad look on his face.

"Now then, Craddock, right we are!"

And Craddock, as he bent to look at the indicator, answered, "Right it is, sir; fair and square. Full pressure and no mischief come of it."

"I hope not," said the boy softly; "but it is a bit hard to know--to know what is fair and square--with--with some people."

Perhaps he was right; for Dhunni stood gazing after the red and green lights with a dazed look on her face. The danger signal had come into her life--the train had stopped, and then--and?

[AMOR VINCIT OMNIA]

This story began and ended in a public library. An odd, forlorn little offshoot of progress, dibbled out beyond the walls of a far-away Indian city, which drowsed through the sunny to-day as it had drowsed through many a century of sunny yesterdays. True it is that in a certain mimetic and superficial manner Poorânâbad had changed with the changing years. It had evolved a municipal committee, and this in its turn had given birth to various simulacra of civilisation; but in effect the former was but the old council of elders in modern guise, and the latter but Jonah's gourd, springing up in a day or a night at the bidding of some minor prophet from over the seas. They came and went, these minor prophets, each with his theory, his hobby; and even when Poorânâbad knew them no more, it could remember its rulers by the libraries and band-stands, the public gardens, the schools, and the museums they had left behind them.

The library itself stood in the midst of a newly laid-out public garden, which but two summers before had been a most evil-smelling tank--at least, for nine months of the year; the remaining three found it a shining lake flushed with fresh rain and carpeted with pink lotus blossom. But culture of all sorts had stepped in with drainpipes, bricks, mortar, flowers, and books, and the result was a maze of winding walks, stubbly grass, and stunted bushes gathered round a square stuccoed building of one room encircled by an arched verandah. To east and south the deceptive walls and flat mud roofs of the native city looked like towers against the sky. To west and north stood avenues of shìshum trees, with here and there a peep of the white bungalows wherein the minor prophets dwelt and grew gourds.

Within, under the one roof hung with two punkahs, stood two tables, the one littered with English magazines and illustrated papers, the other bare, save for a few leaflets of the native press, with high-sounding names and full of still more lofty sentiments. The two bookcases, one at each end of the room, showed the same well-intentioned, but unsuccessful, impartiality; for the eastern one was nearly empty, while the western overflowed, chiefly with novels; a dozen shelves of them to one of miscellaneous literature, made up for the most part of works on the Central Asian question and missionary reports. The novels, however, had a solid appearance, since most of them had been re-bound by the district-office bookbinder in the legal calf and boards which he used also for the circulars and acts by which India is governed.

Before this bookcase stood the only occupant of the room, a tall weedy boy of about fifteen. A boy with remarkably thin legs, somewhat of a stoop in his narrow shoulders, and a supple brown finger travelling slowly along the ill-spelt titles of the book; ill spelt, because the Government bookbinder could hardly be expected to grapple successfully with the title of a modern novel. The hesitations of this brown finger might have served as an index to the owner's taste, and showed a distinct leaning towards sentiment. It lingered over several suggestive titles, until it finally settled on something writ large in three volumes. After which the boy, crossing to a double desk midway between the tables, wrote in the English register in a fine bold hand any clerk might have envied:

Amor Vincit Omnia. Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

So, with two volumes under his arm, and one held close to his soft, short-sighted black eyes, Govind Sahai, of the tribe of Kyasths, or scribes, made his way citywards down one of the winding paths. Thus strolling along he was typical of the great multitude of Indian boys of his age. Boys who read--great heavens! what do they not read, with their pale intelligent faces close to the lettering? And their thoughts?--that is a mystery.

Govind Sahai's face was no exception to the rule; it was young, yet old; high-featured, yet gentle; the ascetic hollows in the temples belied by the long sweeping curves in the mouth, and both these features neutralised by the feminine oval of the cheek. He was the only son of a widow, who, thanks to his existence, led a busy and contented life in her father-in-law's otherwise childless house; for the honours of motherhood in India are great. Yet she was poor beyond belief to Western ears. Across the black water, in a Christian country, such poverty would have meant misery, but in the old simplicity of Poorânâbad the little household managed to be happy; above all, in its hopes for the future, when Govind's education should be over, and he be free to follow his hereditary trade as a writer. His father had found his ancestral level, oddly enough, in compiling sanitary statistics in an English office, until the cholera added one to the mortality returns by carrying him off as a victim; after which all the interest of life to the inhabitants of the little courtyard and slip of roof which Govind called home centred in the clever boy, who could only follow his father's trade if he succeeded in gaining the necessary pass; for education has undermined heredity. So Govind worked hard for the scholarship which would enable him to go to college. Day after day he absorbed an amount of information which was perfectly prodigious. Month after month found him further and further adrift on the sea of knowledge. Even in play-time he gorged himself on new ideas, as might be seen by the library register. It was not only Amor Vincit Omnia which showed on its pages, but many another similar work:

Lost for Love, Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

Love the Master, " "

My Sweetheart, " "

One Life, One Love, " "

And so on down one column and up another, for the boy read fast.

On this particular hot, dusty May morning he became so interested in his last book that he sat down on the parapet of the city's central sewer, and twining one thin leg round the other plunged headlong into a sentimental scene between two lovers, heedless of his unsavoury environments. The interweaving of intellectual emotion and material sensation pictured on the page seemed to this boy, just verging upon manhood, to be an inspiration, lifting the whole subject into a new world of pure passion. It appealed, as a matter of fact, though he knew it not, both to his inherited instincts and his acquired ideas, thus satisfying both.

"My darling" said Victor, raising her sweet face to his, and pressing a kiss on those pure, pale lips, "love such as ours is eternal. Earth has no power"--et cætera, et cætera, et cætera. The tears positively came into his eyes; he seemed to feel the touch of those lips on his, making him shiver.

The little soft tendrils of her hair stirred with his breath as Una, shrinking to his side, whispered, "I am not afraid when I am with you, my king. I feel so strong! so strong to maintain the Right! Strong to maintain our Love before all the world! For Love is of Heaven, is it not, dear heart?" "Our Love is," murmured Victor, once more raising her pure, pale---- Et cætera, et cætera, et cætera.

Yes, it was very beautiful, very exalting; also very disturbing to this inheritor of a nature built on simpler, more direct lines. That ancestral past of his seemed brutally bald beside this highly decorated castle of chivalry.

"Aha! Good evening, pupil Govind," broke in the accurate voice of Narayan Chand, head master of the district school. "You have, I am glad to see, availed yourself of advantages of public library. With what mental pabulum have you provided yourself this summer's eve?"

As he spoke, he seated himself likewise on the parapet of the sewer, and read over the boy's shoulder, Amor Vincit Omnia. Then his spectacled glance travelled down the page, returning for comfort to the title; that, at least, smacked of learning. "Ah, aha! I see. Light literature. Good for colloquial, and of paramount use in vivâs. So far, well. For superiority of diction, nevertheless, and valuability to grammar studies, give me Tatler, Spectator, and such classics."

Govind closed his book in most unusual irritation. "Even in English literature, master-ji, new things may be better than old."

"Of that there is no possible doubt," quoted master-ji, with cheerful gravity. He was a most diligent reader of the English papers, and used to sit at the library table for hours of an evening devouring the critiques on Gilbert's or Tennyson's last with undiscriminating absorption in the formation and style of the sentence. His quotations were in consequence more various than select. "Of that there can be no possible probable manner of doubt, as a modern poet puts it tersely," he repeated, tilting his embroidered smoking-cap farther from his forehead and drawing the black alpaca tails of his coat round his legs; "yet still, for all that, it is held, that--to speak colloquially--for taking the cake of scholarship the classics----"

Govind Sahai put his feet to the ground and the first volume under his arm.

"Master-ji, when one labours long days at cube roots, then classics in the evening become excessive. Life is not all learning; life is love also."

He was quoting from the book he had been reading.

"Sits the wind in that quarter," began Narayan sagely; then he looked at the boy reflectively and changed manner and language. "That brings to memory, my son," he said in Hindustani. "When comes thy wedding procession? I must speak to the virtuous widow that it come in vacation time, so as not to interfere with study."

A sullen indifference was on Govind's face.

"You need not fear, master-ji; I mean to have the scholarship. The wedding will make no difference."

Narayan Chand smiled a superior smile.

"Nay, my son; it must--it should--for a time. So is the vacation convenient. Thou canst return to school when the festal season is over. Come, I will speak to thy relations even now."

The widow was sifting wheat. A pleasant-faced little dump of a woman, with dimples on her bare brown arms.

"Mother," said Govind calmly, "is grandfather in? The master-ji' hath come about my wedding."

"What have men to say to such things?" she answered, with a shrill laugh; "go tell master--ji, heart of mine eyes, that it is settled for the first week of vacation. Her people were here but now. Hurri hai! but I shall laugh and cry to see thee! There shall be nothing wanting at all! Flowers and sweets and merriment. Thy granny and I have toiled and spun for it. And the bride sweeter than honey. Fie! Govind, be not shy with thy mother! Think of the bride she gives thee, and tell her thou art happy."

She flung her arms round her tall son, kissing him and plying him with questions till he smirked sillily.

"Happy enough, mother," he admitted, then felt Amor Vincit Omnia under his arm, and sighed. "I would much rather not be married; at least, I think not. Oh, mother, I would she had fair hair and blue eyes!"

"Lakshmi! hear him! Wouldst marry a fright, Govind? Wait the auspicious moment; wait till I lift the veil. Oh, the beauty! fresh from the court of Indra, wheat-coloured and languishing with jewels and love."

Govind shook his head.

"Profane not the great name of Love." He quoted to himself, being forced to this secrecy by the fact that the only language his mother understood has no word for love--as he meant it. So he added mournfully, "I am ready for my duty whenever you wish it, mother; that is enough."

Nevertheless, he dreamt dreams that night as he lay curled up on his short string bed, with the second volume of Amor Vincit Omnia under the quilt, so as to be ready for the early summer dawn. Out under the stars in the bare, mud-walled courtyard, destitute to Western eyes of all comfort, he dreamt the dreams of his race--of a gorgeously attired bride, shy, yet alluring, looking at him for the first time.

"Thou hast a nightmare," said his mother crossly, when just before daybreak he woke them all by sitting up in his bed and declaiming, Amor vincit Omnia in a loud voice. "'Tis that book under thy head. Put it aside, and lie as thy forefathers lay; they dreamt not of pillows. So shalt thou sleep sound and let others sleep also."

She went yawning back to bed, and lay awake till dawn brought work, counting over the savings she had made, and calculating how much she could spare for flowers and sweets and spiced dishes, for all the hitherto unknown luxuries which, according to custom, were to make the boy's life a dream of pleasure for a time. Only for a time, since the scholarship had to be gained.

A month afterwards a red-curtained bridal palanquin containing a mysterious bride was carried over the threshold of the little mud courtyard, and Govind Sahai, with a silver triptych on his forehead, his ears tasselled with evil-smelling marigolds, his scented tinsel coat hung with jasmine chaplets, dismounted from a pink-nosed pony amidst an admiring crowd. That was an end of the spectacle as far as the outside world was concerned. Within it was only beginning for those two fond women who had spun and scraped and saved for this great occasion ever since the bridegroom was five years old. Much had to be done ere they would sit down in proud peace knowing that no possible enhancement of delight had been omitted. The boy himself went through the countless ceremonies, all tending towards an apotheosis of the senses, with a certain shy dignity; perhaps the sight of master-ji doing wedding guest in a copper-coloured alpaca coat gave him confidence by reminding him that even the learned stoop to folly. He was pale, partly from the turmeric baths, which are supposed to produce a complexion favourable to feminine eyes, partly because he really felt sick after the unusual sloth and sweets of the last few days. So much for his physical state. Of his mental condition this much may be presaged: that if either his inherited instincts or his acquired convictions had any reality whatever, it must have been chaos.

More chaotic than ever when, far into the night, after endless tests and trials, Nihâli, the mysterious bride, proved beautiful as----as----?

Well, the fact was sure; only the comparison remained doubtful. The inherited instincts said a peri, the acquired convictions an angel. Both, it will be observed, denizens of another world. But then there are more "other worlds" than one.

* * * * *

"Master Narayan Chand hath sent to remind us that school re-opens next week," said Govind's mother when nigh two months had passed; two months during which the path of life had been smoothed, scented, and decorated for the special use of a boy and a girl. Govind Sahai looked up from his work, which was, briefly, holding Nihâli's slim, ring-bedecked fingers. The fact that he did so on pretence of teaching her to write is of secondary importance. She was undoubtedly a very pretty girl, and her delicate, refined face was at that moment full of adoring tenderness for the lad beside her. Not thirteen at the most, she was taller than English girls of that age, but far more slender, with a figure still following the straight lines of childhood. Graceful for all that, since her small head poised well over a round throat, and the want of contour was dexterously hidden by masses of jewellery, gleaming through the tinsel-shot veil. Even from wrist to elbow the thinness of the arm was concealed by the bridal bracelets of white ivory lined with red, whilst the slender ankles beneath the scarlet, gold-bordered petticoat were hung with silver-gilt jingles.

A typical bride briefly, arrayed in all attractions, save for the big nose-ring, with its dangling golden spoon hiding the lip. Govind objected to its presence, his mother to its absence--both, curiously enough, for the same reason--because it served as a check to indiscriminate kissing of the bride. The pious widow used to blush over her son's habit of saying good-bye to his wife when he had to leave her for an hour or two. It might be English fashion, warranted by all the love-literature in creation; it was not decent. Neither did she approve of seeing them, as now, seated together over that ridiculous farce of pothooks. Marriage was one thing, love-making was another, so she spoke sharply.

"Well," answered the boy, utterly unabashed, "dost think I have forgotten, amma jan? (Mother dear.) Nay! Nihâli hath been hearing my holiday task half the morning. Hast not--O Nihâli?"

His arm, under cover of the veil, stole round the girl's waist and remained there--a flagrant breach of decorum which, fortunately for the female accomplice, remained unnoticed by mother-in-law, who was busy over a knot in a thread she was skeining from her unending pirn. Yet Nihâli, despite this awful lapse, looked sweet and good enough to fill the heroine's part in any novel, and her looks did not belie her. The past two months had been a fever of delight to Govind. With the curious apathetic resignation to the limitations of custom so noticeable in clever Indian lads whose brains are full of theories, he had accepted marriage in the spirit of his forebears, only to find that Love (with a big L) such as he had read of in books was actually within his reach. To be sure, in books the object was chosen by the lover; but what did that matter in the end? So he used up all the stock-in-trade of the sentimental novelist for little Nihâli's benefit, and she listened to his rhapsodies on perfect marriage and twin souls, her eyes set wide with wonder, admiration, and belief. No "first lady" in white satin could have played her part more prettily than this Indian child of thirteen, who from her cradle had been taught to venerate her husband as a god, and who now, in a sort of rapture, found herself the object of a sentimental passion absolutely novel and bewildering. She nestled her sleek head on his shoulder, telling him that she believed every word he said. And so she did; had he told her the world was flat, instead of explaining to her with great pomp and precision that she was living on an orange depressed at the poles, it would have been the same to her. The world she lived in was of his creating. Like most Hindu girls of the higher classes, she had a marvellous memory, and Govind had hardly known whether to be pleased or pained at the discovery that, after hearing him read it over a few times, she knew his repetition better than he did himself; yet, shy of her own exploit, she only replied to his laughing reference to the holiday task by a timid squeeze of the hand still holding hers.

Mother-in-law broke the knot with a snap; a habit with the determined little woman, who thereinafter would twirl the ends together as if nothing had happened. One twist of the thumb, and all was as it had been.

"I know not what holiday tasks may mean," she said scornfully. "In my time work was work, and play play. So must it be now. Nihâli's people have sent to ask when she returns to them, after established custom. I have answered, 'When school begins.'"

They had been so supremely, so innocently happy over their pothooks! And now the consternation on their two young faces was quite piteous. Mother-in-law, however, found it scandalous. Did not all decent girls cry to go home long before the honeymoon was over? Had not she herself wept bitterly in her time; and there was Nihâli actually snivelling at the idea of leaving; before her husband, too! And Govind was no better.

"It is so soon," pleaded the boy, too much taken aback for instant revolt; besides, the situation had never come into any of the novels he had read, so he really felt unable to cope with it.

His remark only increased the pitch of his mother's voice. Soon, was it? Had he not had two months of billing and cooing, to gain which she and grannie had spun their fingers to the bone? Soon! Whose fault was it if time had been wasted over alphabets and pothooks? Her shrill tones brought grannie from her labours below, and before these two eminently respectable matrons the guilty pair could only hold each other's hands like the babes in the wood, feeling lost and miserable.

That afternoon he went over to the public library, for the first time since his marriage, and spent hours hunting up precedents on the subject, only to return discomfited and hopeless. Nihâli would revolt, of course, if he bade her follow his lead; but how could he bear to have the finger of scorn pointed at her by those unacquainted with the theory of perfect marriage and twin souls? That night, when the rest of the little household retired from the roof, leaving the luxury of fresh air to the younger people, he and Nihâli sat down under the stars on the still flower-strewn bed, and cried like the children they were.

So with awful swiftness the dawn came when Govind had to put on the pale-pink turban proclaiming him a first-class middle student, and set off to school with his books under his arm; books, on the whole, less disturbing than Amor Vincit Omnia and its congeners. Nothing further had been said about Nihâli's approaching departure. It was inevitable, of course; meanwhile, they must make the most of the time left to them. So Govind looked haggard and feverish as he took his accustomed place; nevertheless, being student by nature, the work beguiled him. By evening he was lighthearted enough to run home and race up the crumbling stairs leading to the roof, full of anecdotes and news for Nihâli. There was no one to receive them. The roof itself had resumed its normal workaday appearance, and in the very place where the little bride had sat on her lacquered bridal stool, squatted his mother, piecing two broken strands of her skein together as if nothing had happened. And nothing out of the common had happened. Whose fault was it if Govind flung himself on his face and wept like a baby for what was beyond his reach?

His mother had expected so much when she planned her coup d'état. But he continued to cry--which she did not expect; for something more complex than simple passion had been aroused in the boy. Of that he might have been ashamed; in this he gloried. Was it not, in short, a legitimate subject for self-glorification? So he wept himself sick in a subdued docile sort of way. Finally, master-ji called one day in consternation to say that, though painstaking as ever, poor Govind could not remember the simplest problem; while as for riders, he just sat and looked at them. The scholarship was thus in danger. She tried scolding the boy in good set terms, but he met her reproaches with an invulnerable superiority before which she stood aghast. What was to be done? Perhaps this spiriting away of the bride in order to avoid a scene had been an error, but was that any reason why she should be requested to return? To begin with, it would be an appalling breach of etiquette, and then there was the risk of consequences much to be deprecated between such very young people. The whole household, including master-ji, puzzled over the difficulty, which seemed all the more puzzling because it was so uncalled for, boys having been married at fifteen and sent to school again afterwards since time began without any fuss. But then, those boys, had not read Amor Vincit Omnia and learnt to mix sentiment with passion.

While matters were at this deadlock, Nihâli's mother arrived on the scene unexpectedly, and, en petit comité with the women-folk, gave a new turn to affairs. The possibility suggested was in a measure disconcerting, but, on the other hand, afforded Govind's mother an opportunity of retreating with dignity, since the girl must not be allowed to fret as she had been fretting.

The result being that a week afterwards Govind Sahai did a difficult rider in a way which made Narayan Chand dream dreams of a future when folk would say, "This eminent man received primary and secondary education at the hands of our most successful teacher of youth, Pundit Narayan Chand." It was a dream he frequently indulged in about his pupils.

The little strip of roof was once more frequented by pigeons, and the snappings and joinings of threads relegated for the most part to the court below. Yet the boy's appetite did not return, and as winter came on he developed a teasing cough in that narrow chest of his. The fact was that he burnt the candle of life at both ends in more ways than one. Perhaps if his soul could have been left in peace he might have passed through the ordeal safely, as many a boy manages to do in India. But it was not. Poor Govind had no rest. He strung himself up to the highest pitch in obedience to the mixed result of his birth and education. Then on this quivering instrument he proceeded to play scales. It was Tausig's exercises on a zither. He had to teach himself, teach Nihâli, think of the coming baby, and go through the whole gamut of intellectual and physical emotion of which he had read. The first string gave way when his mother, laughing, crying, and blessing him all in a breath, put a boy baby into his arms on his return from school one day. He sat down stupidly on the lowest step of the mud stairs, gazing at what he held in a sort of bewildered amaze at finding himself thus, till his mother angrily snatched the child from him, saying he should be ashamed of shedding tears on a newborn baby's face. It was very like Nihâli, he thought, only years older with all those wrinkles. Then he thought helplessly how he had decided, with Nihâli's consent of course, on a thousand contraventions of old customs at this time. Yet there was she upstairs in the hands of the wise women, and the baby ready to be doctored by its grandmother. What could a boy of sixteen do against such odds? So the little proselytising pamphlet he had read was put away with a sigh; and after all Nihâli did very well under the old régime. He found her, when the wise women permitted him, in the seventh heaven over the baby. Was there ever such a doll, with its little sharp nose and pinched-up lips! And would he believe it?--the tiny creature was so lazy that grandmother had to tickle it so--on the mouth--before it would take any interest in the sugar and spices! By and by, when she could nurse it herself, it would be different. She lay smiling at the idea, while downstairs, as they left the house, the gossips were shaking their heads and saying calmly, "It is an unnecessary baby, but a forerunner. Others will come. There is plenty of time."

Even when Nihâli could not nurse the child, and they had recourse to a Maw's feeder, which Govind, with many blushes, bought at the same shop which supplied him with slate pencils, those two young things feared nothing. He used to bring his books to the roof where she lay with the little quiet mouse of a thing tucked away in her veil. Then, while the sun set red over the dusty city, he worked away at all the "ologies"--worked somewhat feverishly, since more depended now on his success. Sometimes Nihâli's smile gurgled over in laughter, and Govind, looking up, would find baby's fingers being clasped round his pen.

"Look you," she would whisper, as if in presence of some great potentate, "I asked my lord if he wished to be a writer too, and see how fast he holds!"

There was one thing, however, to which the baby did not hold fast, and that was life. But not till the very day before the eventful examination, which meant so much to Govind, did those two children read fear in each other's faces about that other child.

"Oh, Govind! what shall we do? what shall we do?" wailed Nihâli, when the grandmother, seeing them wild with anxiety, told them the truth, while the great-grandmother stood by wagging her head and mumbling of others by and by. What was that to them now? How he got through the next day he never knew. He took the papers and went with them to his desk; nay, more, he did his level best with them, nerving himself to the effort chiefly by thoughts of master-ji's disappointment if he failed. But his personal interest in the matter seemed gone; that was centred on a roof in the dusty city where one child sat crying over another. What were plus or minus to him save a world with or without an unnecessary infant?

All that night was passed beside Nihâli, waiting for his mother's voice to say the end had come; but the morning found the little sleeper still in the young mother's arms. Perhaps there was still hope. He hastily swallowed some breakfast, and, delayed by this hint of respite, found himself five minutes late in the examination-room. The first papers had already been given out, and to avoid possibility of fraud none save those present at the issue were allowed to compete. So Govind had to sit idle for a while, knowing he had lost a definite number of chances. Nor was this the worst; the pause gave him time for thought. Hitherto, once within the familiar walls, old habits of attention and forgetfulness had possessed him. Now, with nothing to do, he remembered and yet forgot. So when the order to go up for the second paper came he rose with his brain in a whirl, a wild desire to cry, "Let me alone, my baby is dying!" seeming to blot out everything else in the world. Perhaps had he done so he might have had a chance in the examiners' human pity; as it was he pulled himself together, and failed hopelessly.

In the pause before the vivâ voce he sat looking straight before him, dully conscious that he had done badly.

"Govind has never been the same since he married," whispered one boy, and the other giggled.

"Silence!" cried Narayan Chand fussily. "Govind Sahai, your name is first for vivâ. Come up, Govind Sahai, Kyasth." Then, as the dull yet anxious face passed him, he whispered: "Now for value of light literature. You are best at colloquial, my pupil, so courage, and remember Amor Vincit Omnia and such like things."

Amor Vincit Omnia! The boy's last chance fled before those words. When the ordeal was over, he turned back to his place mechanically. As he passed the master-ji once more, he read his fate in the disappointed face raised to his, then in the confident smile of the boy succeeding him, finally in the surprised nudging of the whole class. Something seemed to snap in his brain; he paused, and, facing the examiners, raised his hand. The rush of thought was too much for him at first; then he broke silence in a gentle, deprecating voice: "If you will be kind enough to excuse me, Sirs, I will beg leave to retire. The exigencies of the case forbid explanation, but this much is admitted--that Amor vincit Omnia."

"That boy speaks better English than I thought for," said one examiner to the other, when the leave had been granted. "Give him five marks more; he's failed, of course, but it's as well to be just."

When Govind reached home Nihâli's arms were empty. There is no need to say more. It was an unnecessary infant to all save those two.

"You have failed, failed badly, my poor pupil, owing, doubtless, to domestic bereavement," said the master-ji, when he called a week or two later full of vexed sympathy. "Such circumstances point to special privilege of entering again next year, for which we will apply. And then, Govind, there must be no killing of birds with one stone. There must be no complicated states of mind, confusing idiom."

But Govind Sahai, Kyasth, did not avail himself of the permission duly given, as the pundit-ji put it, "in consideration of the strictly nonregulation death of his infant at a premature age."

The old grandfather, whose small life-pension had been the prop of the household, died of autumnal fever, and during the ensuing winter the result of his failure to win the scholarship came home to Govind with depressing force, since even from that poor ten rupees a month something might have been spared to stand between those three fond women and the grindstone, that last resort of poverty. Then Nihâli's mother, coming over unexpectedly and finding her daughter at the mill, carried her off in a huff. This time Govind said nothing; the spirit had gone out of him, and for the girl's own sake he gave in to custom. He worked very hard, but as the winter advanced his shoulders seemed to grow narrower and narrower, and the teasing cough became louder. Good food, care, and rest might have done something perhaps; only perhaps, for there is not much to be done when the candle of life is alight at both ends, except to put it out. That is what happened one April morning when the bougainvillea round the arched verandah of the library looked like a crimson drapery. He used to go there every morning before school hours, for the memory of his failure in vivâ voce rankled keenly, and he was possessed by a curious determination to prove Master Narayan Chand wrong in attributing it to Govind's unwise selection of books. So, secure at those hours from interruption, he used to sit and study the idiom of light literature.

"Thou art not fit to go," said his mother tearfully one morning after the boy had been kept awake all night by cough and fever.

"Reading will not hurt me, amma jan," he replied, "and the examination is next month."

They found him two hours afterwards seated at the desk before the ledger, his head resting on a novel he had just been entering in the register. A horrible stain of blood from the blood-vessel he had ruptured blotted the page, but through it you could still see, in his bold handwriting:

Amor Vincit Omnia. Govind Sahai, Kyasth.

[THE WINGS OF A DOVE][^[50]]