In Kali's Country: Tales from Sunny India

by Emily Churchill Thompson Sheets

When the sun was no more than an hour from setting, there sounded the rumble of wheels. A wooden ox-cart, driven by a scantily-clad, very dark native, and drawn by a pair of the gray, humped bullocks of the district, entered the street at the head of the village. The bullocks were brought to a halt at once and a woman's head appeared from under the rounded straw covering of the cart.

"Where is she? Do you see her?" she asked the man.

"There is no one in sight," he replied. "But, hark, I hear a moan!"

"She must be in that house there," he added after listening a moment, pointing as he spoke with a thin, black finger to the house into which Old Sarah had crawled.

He drove his bullocks on down the narrow street until he pulled up in front of the hut. Then the young woman, for it was a young Tamil woman in the cart, with beautiful face and straight, lithe figure, leapt to the ground and ran into the house, her pretty red sari fluttering behind her. The man in the cart sat still, watching the open door, the eternal sadness of the Hindu in his face.

The woman was gone for some time but, finally, looked out of the door. "I have done all I can for her. She is very bad. I think we had better take her to the hospital in the city, for there they may be able to save her life. Get the cart ready," she called.

As she disappeared again, the man got down slowly from the front of the cart and, having got in at the back, arranged some blankets so as to make it as comfortable as possible for the sick woman. Then he went into the house with another blanket in his arms. And in a few minutes the two came out again, carrying Old Sarah in the blanket between them, and they laid her as carefully as they could in the cart.

All this was not done in silence, for all of the time the young woman kept talking, sometimes addressing the sufferer, sometimes the driver, and sometimes herself. "Poor old woman!" she said. "To think that the cowards all ran away and left her like this after the kindness she had shown them. She has walked those five miles, really ten, there and back, day after day, to tell them about her new religion and to help them; for she never came that she did not help the women in their work, or bring the children some sweets, or teach the people something new. Dear old soul! And after all the love you have given them, just in your hour of need they all forsook you! Just wait until I get a chance and I'll tell them what I think about such actions; indeed, what every decent person would think! They pretended to be so fond of her too; she really thought they loved her as much as if she had been their mother. That's the way with these black heathen!"

"Why didn't she come to you?" asked the man as they got the old woman settled with her head on the young woman's lap and he had climbed up in front to prod the bullocks to a start.

"Poor old soul, I never gave her any reason to think that I believed her preachings although she has come faithfully every week to visit me. I liked to tease her and hear her funny answers. I liked to ask her hard questions about her new religion. She would pucker her face all up and think and think until she had answered every one. Alas, I never let her know that her religion touched my heart and that I believe in Jesus Christ! I never even let her know that I loved her. Of course she would not come to me for help. But I do love her. She was so funny and so full of life and odd sayings that I just had to tease her, that was all. Now, now I fear it is too late to tell her!" she ended with a sob.