But Tulsi objected. The fields were the fields, he said, and the houses were the houses; it only led to difficulties to put odd bits of land into a map, and he would be quite satisfied to sit anywhere. In the end, however, he had to give in, for when he died, after many years spent in settling disputes, some one suggested that he really had been Sri Hunumân himself; at any rate, he was a saint. So the white spot marking a shrine reappeared in the map, to show whence the old man had passed to the Better Land.
[THE SORROWFUL HOUR]
It was one of those blue days which come to the plains of Upper India when the rains of early September have ceased, leaving the heat-weary, dust-soiled world regenerate by baptism.
A light breeze sent westering ripples along the pools of water filling each shallow depression, and stirred the fine fretwork of an acacia set thick with little odorous puffs, sweet as a violet. Despite the ruddy glow of the sinking sun, the shadows, far and near, still kept their marvellous blue--a clear porcelain blue, showing the purity of the rain-washed air. A painter need have used but three colours in reproducing the scene--red and blue and yellow in the sky; russet and blue and gold in the tall battalions of maize and millet half-conquered by the sickle, which stood in shadowed squares or lay in sunlit reaches, right away to the level horizon.
Russet and blue and gold, also, in the dress of a woman who was crouching against the palisade of plaited tiger-grass, which formed two sides of the well-homestead. Seen upon this dull gold diaper, her madder-red veil and blue petticoat, with their corn-coloured embroideries, seemed to blend and be lost in the harvest scene beyond, even the pools of water finding counterpart in the bits of looking-glass gleaming here and there among her ample drapery. She was a woman who in other countries would have been accounted in the prime of life; in India, past it. Yet, as she crouched--her whole body tense in the effort of listening--every line of her strong face and form showed that she was not past the prime of passion.
"Ari! Heart's delight! See, O father! Yon is his fifth step, and still he totters not. What! wouldst crawl again? Oh! fie upon such laziness." The high, girlish voice from within the palisade paused in a gurgle of girlish laughter. "Say, O father! looks he not, thus poised hands and feet, for all the world like the monkey people in Gopal's shop when they would be at the sweets? Ai! my brother! what hast found in the dust? Cry not, heart's life. Mother will give it back to Chujju again. So, that is good! Holy Ganeshji! Naught but a grain of corn! Art so hungry as all that, my little pecking pigeon, my little bird from heaven?"
"Little glutton, thou meanest," chuckled a base voice. "Still, of a truth, O Maya, the boy grows."
"Grows? I tell thee he hath grown. See you not this two-year-old hath turned farmer already? He comes to bargain with thee, having his corn in his hand. Give him a good price, to handsel his luck, O Gurditta Lumberdar."[[41]]
"I will pay thee for him, O wife! Sure, hast thou not given me the boy, and shall I not pay my debt? Nay, I am not foolish, as thou sayest. What! Wouldst have me kiss thee also, little rogue? So! Yet do I love mother best--best of all."
The woman behind the palisade stood up suddenly. Tall as she was, the feathery tops of the tiger-grass rose taller; so she could stand, even as she had crouched, unseen. Unseeing also. Other women might have lent eyes to aid their ears, but Saraswati was no spy--no eavesdropper by intent, either. The lacquered spinning-wheel, the wheat-straw basket piled with downy cotton cards which lay on the ground beside her, testified to what her occupation had been, till something--Heaven knows what, for she heard such light-hearted babble every day--in those careless voices roused her pent-up jealousy beyond the dead level of patience. She was not jealous of the child. Ah, no! not of the child. Was it not for the sake of such a one that three years before she had given Maya, his mother, a dignified welcome to the childless home? But Maya? Ah! well was she called Maya--the woman prolific of deceit and illusion, of whom the pundits spoke; woman, not content with being the child-bringer, but seeking---- Saraswati's large, capable hands closed in upon themselves tightly. She did not need to peer through the plaited chinks to know the scene within. She saw it burnt in upon her slow, constant brain. The tall bearded man of her own age--her own type--her kinsman--the patient, kindly husband of her youth; the child--his naked brown limbs dimpled still more by silver circlets on wrists and ankles; those curving, dimpling limbs, which, somehow, made her heart glad; and between them, degrading them both, Maya, with her petty, pretty face, her petty, pretty ways.