A MEREDITH TO THE RESCUE
In the belt of fertile land about Heerut the work of irrigation for the khareef had already begun. Half-naked men and women in gay-coloured chudders laboured in the slanting ruts which stretched down from the river and criss-crossed over the wide fields in a maze of intricate cunningly calculated lines. They worked in complete silence, like a colony of ants, hurrying backwards and forwards, their lean, fragile-looking bodies bent under crushing burdens of freshly turned earth, their faces set in patient acceptance. So much depended on the khareef—a meagre sufficiency or a dearth that was always complete—an avalanche of famine sweeping whole communities from existence. Not that life or death was of much significance. They fought for life half instinctively, half because the Sahibs willed it so. It was a hard business either way, and that much they realized dimly.
Tristram drew rein to watch them. Beyond the river the white ungarnered corn lay in its silver fields awaiting its long-delayed hour. He remembered how in the winter months all Heerut had laboured at its irrigation—even as they laboured now—thinking of the harvest. And now the harvest was there and had begun to rot. Disease and the dreaded, docilely accepted quarantine had stayed the hands which should have gathered it. Now those who survived turned to the more pressing task—to the crumbling canals which were to bring life to the summer rice-crop. What was lost was lost. The past was past; but the grim, forbidding shadow of the future remained always.
Therein lay the tragedy of the unresting, patient figures—the labour that was so often foredoomed to fruitlessness, the struggle against an enemy who could never be wholly vanquished, the hope of a victory that could never be more than a breathing-space, a mere margin of life. But the greater tragedy was their patience, their passive acceptance of life as suffering.
It was that tragedy which Tristram saw as he watched them. For him it blotted out what was lovely and full of promise in the scene—the gay colours, the rich, deep sunlight on the fruitful fields, the semblance of prosperity. It made his greeting to those who passed him somewhat grim and less cheery than was its wont. The men and women nodded to him and smiled gravely in return. There was no formal, deferential salutation such as the Burra Sahib would have expected and received. He was less and greater than any of the Sahibs who ruled their destinies, and they merely smiled at him. No other man was to them what he had become. Rough and ready of tongue, imperious sometimes, occasionally ruthless, he yet was never the representative of a ruling race. Other Sahibs they feared and worshipped—the great warriors, the myth figures of the rulers beyond the unknown, but Tristram was the man of their daily lives, of their great sorrows and little happinesses, the man who sat under the council-tree at night and listened to the last village scandal, or to some wonderful tale told by the village story-teller, who tracked his way down the contaminated stream of their faith to its pure source and drank with them. And they who had known little of pity and less of love came through him to a dim, faltering knowledge.
Through the busy stillness there sounded a shrill trumpeting and the rustle and crack of the high grasses before swift and headlong passage of an elephant. Tristram drew Arabella to one side. Already in the distance he had seen the glitter and flash of the Rajah's gaudy howdah, and was not unprepared for the procession which, now bore down towards the river. There were five elephants in all, the first showily caparisoned with a mahout in splendid livery, the others more seriously equipped for the hunt. Rasaldû and his guest, the new Colonel, whose face was overshadowed by his helmet, rode in the first, and, seeing Tristram, nodded with a cheerful condescension and held up two fat fingers to indicate the success of their expedition. Then the procession rumbled past like a noisy, gorgeous carnival of life leaving a cloud of sullen dust and the grey bed-rock of reality.
An old man who had taken refuge under Arabella's lee put up a palsied hand and pointed in fierce scorn after the disappearing Rajah.
"His father—a cowherd——" he stammered. "His father served mine and betrayed him to the English."
Tristram nodded.
"And the Rajah who then was?"