"Thou art worse than a peacock which cries even after rain has fallen," finished the big villager testily. "What is it to me if women come or go? Dhyân is a man of mettle and word."
Yet in his heart he knew well that the armourer had no more to say to such matters in the narrow city court, than he had in the wide village yard, where the kine stood in rows, and Nânuk's tumbler pigeons never lacked a grain of corn at which to peck.
As for Mai Gunga, her wrath became finally voluble at the hint thrown out by big Dhyân, that if she went no more to the village, folk might talk of Pertâb being slighted. Slighted, indeed, with half the eligible mothers agog with envy! Slighted, when but for this cripple--yea! Dhyân need not make four eyes at her--she said cripple, and meant it. He had a broken leg, and that to a man of sense was sufficient excuse for breach of betrothals. If, indeed, there ever had been such a thing as a betrothal; which for her part she denied.
Dhyân Singh swore many big oaths, vowed many mighty vows that he would have naught to do with such woman's work. Not even if it became clear that, as his wife hinted, his little Pertâb would not be welcome in his sister's house. Yet he scowled over the idea, twisted his beard tighter over his ears, as became a man, and looked very fierce. And when a month or two later Suchêt Singh's wife met his halting apology for Mai Gunga's absence with a distinct sniff and a cool remark that she really did not care,--Nânuk could no doubt do better in brides,--he came home in a towering passion to his anvil and made a paper knife fit for a brigand. To have such a thing said to him, even in jest, when he, for his sister's sake, had been willing to waive the fact of Nânuk being a cripple!
"Cripple indeed!" shrieked the boy's mother, when Suchêt came back from the city one day with Dhyân's remark enlarged and illustrated by friendly gossip. "Lo, husband! That is an end. Whose fault if he limps?--only in running, mind, not in walking. Whose indeed! Whose but that immodest, wicked, ill-brought-up hussy's! Was it not to get her another squirrel, because she cried so for his, that he climbed? Let her have her girl; we will have damages."
So when sugar-baking time came round again, Suchêt and Dhyân, rather to their own surprise, found themselves claimant and defendant in a breach of betrothal case for the recovery of fifteen hundred rupees spent in preliminary expenses. Yet, despite their surprise, they were both beside themselves with rage. Dhyân because of the unscrupulous claim when not one penny had been spent, Suchêt because of the slur cast on his boy's straight limbs by the secondary plea in defence; that even if there had been a betrothal and not a family understanding, the crippled condition of the bridegroom was sufficient excuse for the breach of contract. The actual point of the betrothal being so effectually overlaid by these lies as to be obscured even from the litigant's own eyes.
It was one gorgeous blue day in December that Suchêt rode in to the city on his pink-nosed mare, with Nânuk on the crupper to bear witness in Court to his own perfections. A handsome, soft-eyed lad of ten, glad enough of the ride, sorry for the separation, even for one day, from the village toffee-making; but with a great lump of raw sugar stowed away in his turban as partial consolation. For the rest, he had a childish and yet grave acquiescence. Pertâbi apparently had been a naughty girl, and Mammi Gunga had never been nice. Yet the "jej-sahib"[[38]] might say they were married; since, after all, he, Nânuk, could run as fast as ever. Tchu! he would like to show Pertâbi that it was so.
The court-house compound was full of suitors and flies, the case of Suchêt versus Dhyân Singh late in the list, so the former bade his son tie the mare in the furthest corner behind the wall, in the shade of a spreading tree, and keep watch, while he went about from group to group in order to discuss his wrongs with various old friends--that being half the joy of going to law; grave groups of reverend bearded faces round a central pipe, grave, slow voices rising in wise saws from the close-set circles of huge turbans and massive blue and white draperies.
Meanwhile Nânuk ate sugar till it began to taste sickly, and then he sat looking at the remaining lump and thinking, not without a certain malice, how Pertâbi would have enjoyed it. Then suddenly, from behind, a small brown hand reached out and snatched it. "One two, that's for you; two three, that's for me; three four, sugar galore; the Rajah begs, with a broken leg----" The singing voice paused, the little figure munching, as it sang, with vindictive eyes upon the boy, paused too in its tantalising dance.
"Did it hurt much, Nâno? I'm so sorry. And mother wouldn't let me keep the squirrel, Nâno; but I howled, I howled like--like a bhut (devil)."