The home whither he drove the lagging yoke was but a whitish-brown mound on the bare earth-circle, not far removed from an ant-hill to alien eyes; for all that, home to the uttermost. Civilisation, education, culture could produce none better. A home bright with the welcome of women, the laughter of children. Old Kishnu, mother of them all, wielding a relentless despotism tempered by profound affection over every one save her aged husband. Pertâbi, widow of the eldest son, but saved from degradation in this life and damnation in the next by the tall lad whose grasp had already closed on his grandfather's plough-handle. Târadevi, whose soldier-husband was away guarding some scientific or unscientific frontier, while she reared up, in the ancestral home, a tribe of sturdy youngsters to follow in his footsteps. Fighting and ploughing, ploughing and fighting; here was life epitomised for these long-limbed, grave-eyed peasants whose tongues never faltered over the shibboleth which showed their claim to courage.[[3]]
The home itself lay bare for the most part to the blue sky; only a few shallow outhouses, half room, half verandah, giving shelter from noon-day heat or winter frosts. The rest was courtyard, serving amply for all the needs of the household. In one corner a pile of golden chaff, ready for the milch kine which came in to be fed from the mud mangers ranged against the wall; in another a heap of fuel, and the tall, beehive-like mud receptacles for grain. On every side stores of something brought into existence by the plough--corn-cobs for husking, millet-stalks for the cattle, cotton awaiting deft fingers and the lacquered spinning-wheels which stand, cocked on end, against the wall. Târadevi sits on the white sheet spread beneath the quern, while her eldest daughter, a girl about ten years of age, lends slight aid to the revolving stones whence the coarse flour falls ready for the mid-day meal. Pertâbi, down by the grain-bunkers, rakes more wheat from the funnel-like opening into her flat basket, and as she rises flings a handful to the pigeons sidling on the wall. A fluttering of white wings, a glint of sunlight on opaline necks, while the children cease playing to watch their favourites tumble and strut over the feast. Even old Kishnu looks up from her preparation of curds without a word of warning against waste; for to be short of grain is beyond her experience. Wherefore was the usurer brought into the world save to supply grain in advance when the blue sky sided with capital against labour for a dry year or two?
"The land is ready," said old Jaimul over his pipe. "'Tis time for the seed, therefore I will seek Anunt Râm at sunset and set my seal to the paper."
That was how the transaction presented itself to his accustomed eyes. Seed grain in exchange for yet another seal to be set in the long row which he and his forbears had planted regularly, year by year, in the usurer's field of accounts. As for the harvests of such sowings? Bah! there never were any. A real crop of solid, hard, red wheat was worth them all, and that came sometimes--might come any time if the blue sky was kind. He knew nothing of Statutes of Limitation or judgments of the Chief Court, and his inherited wisdom drew a broad line of demarcation between paper and plain facts.
Anunt Râm, the usurer, however, was of another school. A comparatively young man, he had brought into his father's ancestral business the modern selfishness which laughs to scorn all considerations save that for Number One. He and his forbears had made much out of Jaimul and his fellows; but was that any reason against making more, if more was to be made?
And more was indubitably to be made if Jaimul and his kind were reduced to the level of labourers. That handful of grain, for instance, thrown so recklessly to the pigeons--that might be the usurer's, and so might the plenty which went to build up the long, strong limbs of Târadevi's tribe of young soldiers--idle young scamps who thrashed the usurer's boys as diligently during play-time as they were beaten by those clever, weedy lads during school-hours.
"Seed grain," he echoed sulkily to the old peasant's calm demand. "Sure last harvest I left thee more wheat than most men in my place would have done; for the account grows, O Jaimul! and the land is mortgaged to the uttermost."
"Mayhap! but it must be sown for all that, else thou wilt suffer as much as I. So quit idle words, and give the seed as thou hast since time began. What do I know of accounts who can neither read nor write? 'Tis thy business, not mine."
"'Tis not my business to give ought for nought--"
"For nought," broke in Jaimul, with the hoarse chuckle of the peasant availing himself of a time-worn joke. "Thou canst add that nought to thy figures, O bunniah-ji![[4]] So bring the paper and have done with words. If Râm sends rain--and the omens are auspicious--thou canst take all but food and jewels for the women."