In the Permanent Way

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

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.