From the Five Rivers

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

Meanwhile Suttu sat on the steps of the tomb, too much disturbed, by this outrageous claim of Hussan's, for sleep. The grounds which he would put forward were easy to guess. He and the Kâzi would post-date the second marriage, and ante-date Murghub, the idiot's birth, so as to make him out her full brother. Besides, they had money for evidence; she had none, and the neighbours were unfriendly. Her only help lay in the Lord, and that, she knew, had nothing to do with a court of justice. Still, it was as well to omit nothing which might be of use; so she brought out the trestle-shaped stool, on which her grandfather's copy of the Koran lay, and began to chant an additional chapter of Holy Writ as a kind of bribe to favour. As she rocked herself backward and forward, her lips busy with the long rhythm in which the unknown words quite lost all identity, her mind was busy over the time when she had learned it all with tears and trouble from the saint, stern on this one point. How fond he had been of divinations!--and Suttu paused in the middle of a pious apothegm to recollections of her grandfather compiling date-names for his neighbours--names, that is to say, which by the values of the composing letters would give the date of birth. What if her own name, Sutara Begum, was one of these, and the idiot's also? That would be proof indeed! Perhaps Shâhbâsh---- She had started to her feet, when she remembered her chapter, in some trepidation, since half a bribe was no bribe. She would just go on chanting till Shâhbâsh came home. It could do no harm, and might do good. Her round, full voice echoed back from the tomb, and out into the date-palms.

"Wâh! if she were really, after all, a pious one, and not a bad walker," said one of the watchers to the other. His companion clucked a denial. "Thchu! 'tis likely she knows the Kâzi is to be here to-night. That is woman's way."

Suttu chanted and chanted till she grew hoarse. Then she stood up and listened. The night was still and silent. Not even the distant thud of the mattock, so Shâhbâsh must be on his way back. She waited with the little oil-lamp in her hand, eager for her question. Then impatience gained the mastery, and still with the oil-cresset in her hand--for the new moon gave little light, and snakes were common--she set off swiftly through the palms towards the cemetery.

"Shâhbâsh!" she cried, but nothing stirred or answered as she picked her way through the short graves. Suddenly she was brought up sharply by something at her feet--something she had deemed another grave. It was the dwarf stretched fast asleep on a white sheet. His grey hair was twined with jasmine blossoms, and a black bottle lay empty by his side. He had been dancing to amuse his fairy. That was no uncommon affair; but whence had he got the inspiration, and the greasy remnants of a feast which the light of the lamp disclosed? What villainy had he been bribed to commit? Something, she felt sure, even if it were nothing more serious than a failure to fulfil the duties of her freehold, by having Deen Ali's bed ready for the saddler's son. If it were that! She seized the shovel, and swinging it over her head brought it down on the ground, where Shâhbâsh had outlined a grave, with a thud which set her arms tingling. The soil was hard, indeed, and surely that was twelve o'clock chiming from the court gong! Not much time left; but softer spots were to be found than the one Shâhbâsh had chosen. She took up the oil-cresset again and wandered round to the extreme edge of the graveyard where it merged into the sandier common.

Thud! thud! The strokes of the mattock echoing through the night made the Kâzi's son smile as, about an hour after midnight, he crept alone to the tomb. A man who is the prey of a purely animal passion does not have his ears boxed for nothing, and his idea of revenge went further than marriage. No one would heed Suttu's cries for help this time, and the watchers were in his pay.

Thud! thud! Suttu's respect for her henchman increased at every stroke. She was well into the grave by this time, digging round and round methodically, though she ached all over. Yet, if she died of it, that grave should be ready. What was that? Metal on metal! The surprise sent a tingle all through her. Then she was down on hands and knees, groping in the loosened soil.

Yes, it was the treasure at last, and no one, no soul alive, except herself, must know of it. She looked round hastily into the darkness and silence. There was no fear of interruption now; there might be afterwards. Her best plan was to finish the grave, so as to obliterate all trace of the spot whence she had taken that heavy brass pot, and then, but not till then, to go home quietly. The next instant the thud of the mattock began again. A lucky decision; for the Kâzi's son, surprised at finding Suttu absent, was beginning to suspect treachery from the silence, when the digging recommenced. Shâhbâsh, then, meant to keep faith, and not seek safety in flight. But Suttu? As the spoiler sat beside the friendly watchman he asked himself if the lies he himself had circulated so diligently about the religious were true, and she had an assignation elsewhere. He gnashed his teeth over the thought and his own rejection.

"A step, my lord! it was a step!" whispered one of the guardians, and the Kâzi's son crept towards the hut. He had not entered it before, being assured it was empty; but now, thinking Suttu might have seen him and slipped into the darkness for safety, he felt his way through the door and so on by the wall.

Then a yell burst from him--a cry once heard never to be forgotten:

"Snake! snake!"