In the Guardianship of God

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

But before the question at issue could be decided, that came about which dried up every cow in the village, and made even old Gopi's brass lotah cease to brim.

There was no rain. Even in December and January, though the skies were dappled as the partridge's breast, the clouds carried their moisture elsewhere. Where, did not affect the villagers. It was not here, and that was all they knew. The autumn crop, which means fodder, had been a scant one, the cattle were thrown entirely on the still scantier growth of grass in the waste land; and when that failed, custom did not fail. The herds were driven forth from the thorn enclosures every morning to the wilderness and taken back from it at eve, just as if that wilderness were still a grazing-ground. What else could be done, seeing that when cattle starve it is not a famine? That is a time when help is given by the new master. God knows why, since the old masters never gave any.

Such time of help must come, of course, ere long, if the clouds remained dry; but meanwhile the flocks and herds went out to graze on mud, and if some failed to return in the evening, what else was to be expected?

So the long dry days dragged on. That spring-harvest old Gopâl's share of garnered grain was scarcely worth the bringing home. The squirrel's hoard in the little courtyard was scanty indeed, and very soon he had to stint his own share, and rise an hour earlier to go weed-grubbing, and return an hour later, so that Surâbhi should not low her discontent at short commons. For that would be shame unutterable, even though the brown cow had long since been driven from high-class seclusion to fend for herself with the common herd from dawn to eve.

Thus old Gopâl's lank anatomy was appreciably more lank, more skeleton-like, when one day the headman of the village, as he smoked his pipe in front of the house of faith where strangers were lodged, announced that the famine had really come at last. Over in Chotia Aluwala there were piles of baskets and spades. Some Huzoors were there in white tents, so doubtless ere long, God knows why, they would begin digging earth from one place and putting it in another, so that a distribution of grain could be made in the evening.

That was the headman's idea of relief-works, and his hearers had no other.

Now, Chotia Aluwala was ten miles at least from Surâbhi's stall, but of late Gopi had scarce found a weed within twice that distance.

So the very next day, when, backed by a pile of forlorn-looking earth on one side and a not much smaller pile of baskets with which the earth had, during the day's toil been conveyed to its present resting-place, one hungry face after another came up in file to the distribution of food, old Gopi's frosted head was among the number. But he was bitterly disappointed at his dole of cooked dough-cake. He had expected grain. Though more than enough for his old appetite, what would Surâbhi, with her seven stomachs, say to such concentrated food?

After his long trudge home he passed a miserable night seeking, by every means in his power, to supply the bulk necessary for the satisfying of those clamorous stomachs. He even chopped up the grass twine of his string bed and tempted the old cow to chew it by soaking the fibre in some of her own milk.

Thus, once more, he came off second best, for the milk should have been his share. So he could scarcely manage to stagger along with his basket next day. Not that this mattered, for already the Englishmen, who, in their khaki clothes and huge pith helmets were supervising the work, were saying tentatively, with a glance at the totterers, that it might have been better to start relief a little sooner. And down in one hollow Gopi saw a woman being carried away, while the babe which had been at her breast yelled feebly in an orderly's arms.