The Flower of Forgiveness

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"And the jewels?"

Once more the frown came quick. "If I bring Faizullah to the Halls of Justice alive, surely the mightiness of the Presence will make him speak. If I bring him dead, can this slave follow him and find speech in the silence of the grave? Say! is it a bargain? Yes or no?"

The anxious brevity of the last question showed the sincerity of the man more than all his measured words, and after some further parley, the conditions were arranged. That is to say, the sum of twelve hundred rupees was forthwith to be paid into the hands of a responsible third party, and the informer was to bring Faizullah to the Deputy Commissioner dead or alive, before reprisals had been taken on the village, when, even if he lost his life in the capture, the reward was to be paid to his heirs and assigns. He positively refused to give either name or designation, asserting with the measure of sound common sense which characterised all his utterances, firstly, that no one would know if he gave a false one; secondly, that if he failed to keep his promise he would prefer to remain in oblivion; thirdly, that if he did succeed in bringing Faizullah to book, the Presence would be sure to recognise his servant and slave. Thus he departed as he came, a nameless stranger.

Three days after an excited crowd rode pell-mell into the magistrate's compound. "Huzoor! we have found him! we have found him!" rose a dozen voices, as the more influential men of the party crushed into the office room.

"Who?"

"Faizullah the Belooch! Faizullah the murderer! The reward is ours, praise be to God and to your honour's opulence. Wah, the glad day! Wah, the great day!"

"Salaam alaikoum, Friend of the Poor Man!" came an urbane voice from their midst. "The dust-like slave of the Presence hath kept his word. Behold! I bring to you Faizullah Khan, Belooch of Birokzai, alive, not dead."

A sudden hush fell on the jostling crew as the prisoner raised his fettered hands in grave obeisance, and then solemnly, vigorously, spat to right and left ere he began: "Snakes gorged to impotence by their own greed! Bullocks with but one set of eyes to seven stomachs! Listen! whilst I recount the tale of your infamies to the ear of this wise judge. Huzoor! I am Faizullah, husband of the virtuous Haiyat, mother of my son, dwelling content in the house of my father. Yea! it is true. For her jewels' sake, her father-in-law bound me by promises, when he found me caught in the meshes. So for her sake I stayed in a strange land, and the fields and the jewels were as his. Then the old man yonder, her uncle, wroth at the marriage, set his son to beguile her; so I beat her till she had no heart to be beguiled. For all that they would not cease from evil ways. Therefore said I to her father-in-law: 'Let me go, for surely if I stay thy daughter-in-law will have to die some day, and then her blood-kin will claim all. Let me go in peace with the Core of my Heart; but keep thou the jewels, for I have no need of them.' So in the night, he consenting, I crept away with her in my arms, for she had eaten her full of the bamboo that day, and could not walk. The Presence knows what came next--how they called me murderer and thief, her blood-kin claiming the land, her father-in-law denying that he had the jewels--and I nursing her to health in the mountains! Huzoor! the sahib-logues are like eagles. They look at the Sun of Justice and see not the maggots it breeds in carrion like these men. Yet what cared I, away in the hills, what men called me here, save that my house wept for her jewels, and I knew not how to get them; for the reward was heavy and oaths are cheap in your land. Then came word that the armies of the Lord of the Universe were to march on this slave's village, and I said, 'What is life to me? I will try and speak them fair.' The Presence knows what came next. When the paper concerning the twelve hundred rupees had been writ, I knew that my house would have her rights anyhow, even if the eyes of the Just Judge were blinded by false oaths, or that I came dead into the Presence. So I said by message to the carrion: 'Dispute no longer among yourselves. Let me buy the jewels at the price ye have put on them. Let one take the money and the other the land, or half-and-half. Only give me the jewels, and say in the Court of Justice,--"Lo! we were mistaken! Faizullah hath not killed his wife. He nursed her back to life, and she hath a right to the jewels and her son after her. But the land is ours by agreement."' And to this they said 'Yea' guilefully. But when I went to the village, trusting them not at all, they seized me and brought me hither for the reward, not knowing that the Presence had deigned to cast his gracious eye on this poor man before, and that the reward was for me, or my son. It is spoken. Let the Presence decide!"

Nothing is more surprising than the rapidity with which a got-up case breaks down when once the judge is seen to have an inkling of the truth. Suave qui peut is then the motto; especially when nothing more is to be gained from consistency. Haiyat's relations professed themselves both astonished and overjoyed at her return to life, and before the inquiry was over had arranged for the discovery of the jewels, which were found carefully hidden away in the house of Haiyat Bibi's female attendant, who had died of cholera the year before, an ingenious incident productive of injured innocence to all the living.

"It has not emptied the purse of the great Queen after all," said Faizullah with a broad smile, as he stood beside the Deputy Commissioner on the crest of a hill, and pointed to a terraced village on the opposite side of the valley. "Nor hath the house of the poor suffered; for the dwelling of this slave will not burn."