From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

The news thrilled the adjoining township with brief enthusiasm. Then a bustling Hindu assistant surgeon got wind of the case, and sanctity vanished before science. From that day, several years past, matters had gone from bad to worse. A railway appeared, reducing offerings to the lowest ebb; for, as Shâhbâsh declared with mingled truth and tears, the pilgrims counted their third-class return tickets as offerings to the shrine, and the traffic department charged dead against charity in the extortionate fares for sheep, goats, and fowls. On the other hand, the railway had certainly brought cholera three years in succession--an unheard-of event--and that had increased the chances of finding the gold in the digging of graves--graves, however, for which the perquisites lessened month by month. That was due to the village accountant's spite; spite born of family matters which went back to the time when Suttu was born.

Inâm Ali, briefly, had lived for six months in hopes that a posthumous child of his only son would be an heir to the saintship; and in his first disappointment had been only too glad to get rid of mother and child, by the former's marriage to the accountant and the latter's betrothal to her stepfather's son. After a time, however, he had bought the child back, with bribes, to keep him company, and thereinafter had spent years in spoiling her. Consequently, when the inevitable fulfilment of the betrothal came round, Suttu was dragged off to zenana life, struggling like a wild animal. She failed, however, to fulfil her duty of bringing a son to inherit, through her, the date-palms and the hidden treasure; and after one baby, born when she was thirteen, ceased its feeble efforts to live, she settled down--well, as a leopardess might settle in its cage.

Ten years after, she paid her first visit to the cemetery, in order to cool her newly buried husband's grave with decorous tears. She went there calmly, and then as calmly refused to return. She had made up her mind to become a religious, she said. Now this fell in with both the old man's and her father-in-law's views. The former was willing, as before, to pay for her companionship; and the latter, with an eye to a future when he should have Suttu entirely under his control, thought it as well she should keep in with her grandfather and the hidden treasure. So a religious she became, somewhat to the scandal of the neighbourhood. Then came the paralysis, leaving Hussan minus his monthly payment, and quite uncertain whether Suttu said truth when she denied all knowledge of the hoard. In truth, the position was awkward. The saint might recover speech, and then, if he found that Suttu had been violently used, he might resent it and make away with the treasure. If, however, by starving her out, Suttu could be induced to break her vow and marry, Hussan could no doubt get himself appointed guardian of the shrine, and so have an opportunity of searching where he chose. The task was not a difficult one, since the people around were easily led to believe that her ways and works were anything but what a fakeerni's should be. So the offerings grew less and less, the complaints of mischance or neglect more frequent; yet still Suttu held her head jauntily and laughed when, of an evening, she met her father-in-law prowling around the graveyard. It had a fascination for him; and often when his feet were not there, his finger was tracing its outline on the village map. There, within that little space, lay the treasure, and a horrible conjunction of a half-dead old man and a very much alive young woman prevented him from getting hold of it. The thought kept him from sleeping when there had been a death in the village, and he knew Shâhbâsh was digging and delving. And when he slept he dreamed that the old saint sat up and spoke, but that no one could hear a word he said. He did not know that Suttu and her henchman had gone the crucial length of spreading the holy carpet Mecca-ways, and setting the old saint's feet upon it, more than once, at sunrising and sunsetting. In vain; the miracle would not work for gold; so they had lifted him back again to the high wooden bed.

Shâhbâsh was really losing his temper over his part of the business. Lotus-beans for breakfast were all very well, but you could not dig graves on lotus-beans. Besides, the black bottle was always empty.

"Lo, mai, I grow thin," he grumbled; "then the fairy will cease to care for me, and that is an end. Women are not to be trusted."

As he set to work on a baby's grave, he went on grumbling and muttering to himself. He had been her father's foster-brother, and she was the apple of his eye. For all that, he must eat. Some day her enemy would tempt him to treason when he ached with hunger, and who could be faithful on an empty stomach? He blubbered at the thought of his own betrayal.

Thus, on the evening of the day when Suttu slapped the Kâzi's son, matters were approaching a crisis all round; even Hussan, prowling about the graveyard in the vague disquiet which beset him after every fresh excavation of the soil, made up his mind to a bolder game. As he picked his way through the short mud mounds, a sort of thrill shot up his legs at the thought that he might be treading on gold; for the hope of buried treasure takes possession of men, body and soul. He found no one in the reed thatched-hut; but a savory smell of curried beans from the fire-place showed that its mistress would soon be back to supper. So he went over to the tomb where the saint lay on the wooden bed under the dome, in which the faint breathing of the old man swelled to a murmuring echo like a swarm of bees. Hussan stood beside the bed, full of rage, malice, and greed. If he could only crack that bald old noddle and pick out the kernel!

Suddenly the thought came that perhaps now--this moment or the next--was the one appointed from all eternity in which speech would return, and he stood petrified by expectation. Perhaps a call might rouse the sleeping soul. He started as his own hoarse whisper grew to a roar in the echoing dome. That should wake the dead. Then, as the sound died ineffectually to silence, the desire to crack the old man's skull at all costs returned. The kernel might take care of itself.

Something of this must have showed in his face, for Suttu, coming in behind him, passed softly to the bed and raised a menacing hand. Only for an instant. Then she sat down on the edge and laughed.

"Well! did he tell you?"