Part 6

So much rain, that three months after, when Dada, back from leave, walked through the garden at sunsetting, many of the mango-trees were ankle-deep in water, and a second crop of roses nodded at their own reflection in the still pools. But the graveyard stood purposely on higher ground, and its brick wall was backed by a perfect thicket of date-palms stretching away to the low sand-hills, save on the side marching with the garden. There oleanders and roses and elephant creeper massed themselves into a hedge, and clambered over the arched gateway where Dada paused. The doctor was there too, for fever comes with heavy rain, and the outlying hospitals needed constant inspection. As the gate swung open, they paused again, not at the sight within, but at a sound they seemed to recognize. It was a shady spot. To begin with, great branches swept over it from the garden, and then in the far corner a huge peepul stood quivering its silver-lined leaves. There lay the little grave, solitary in its square of grass, for the place was divided into four by two narrow gravel walks ending abruptly at the walls. Two other graves claimed other squares, the fourth lay vacant. It seemed as if, when that was occupied, the shady spot would refuse another tenant. Yet there were others even now.

"Who's that?" cried the doctor, sharply.

It was Shah Sujah's mouse. He sate propped against the peepul-tree, and over the grass and the cross of quamoclits the squirrels were chasing each other and playing pranks with the crumbs they were scarcely hungry enough to eat, while the other _janowar_ looked at them out of hollow serene eyes.

He shifted his gaze to the new-comers, but did not rise. He could not.

"Good God," muttered the doctor, kneeling down beside him, "the man is a skeleton, and burning with fever. How the mischief-- Well, the first thing is to get him moved to hospital."

When Dada came back with a string bed and four coolies impressed from the garden, he found the doctor looking suspiciously at the crumbs, at a piece of dough-cake and a bag of money. There were ten whole rupees in it, besides odd coins.

"The poor beggar seems starved, and yet he had this and--he was feeding the squirrels. There's something deuced odd about it all."

Odd, but simple, especially in the _ayah's_ eyes. "Master, having given orders for the _janowar_ to go, the police had naturally taken him away. He had come back again and begged--naturally, when the _mem sahiba_ had given him sweet rice every day. But she had given nothing, nothing at all, except information to the police. Then they had taken him away again miles and miles, quite close to the highroad to the shrine, and had bidden him to go home. Even a _janowar_ could have found his way had he chosen; but the obstinate animal had come back after the sweet rice. So then every one had been told not to give the disobedient one anything to eat. Indeed, it was past time for alms to Shah Sujah's mice; they should have been back at the shrine with their earnings. To linger was sacrilege, nothing less, especially when the _Huzoor_ had said he was not wanted any longer. But instead of going, when he was starved out, as every one imagined, he must have hidden in the damp garden and got fever. As to what he was doing on the little king of kings' grave, that was mysterious. Perhaps now the master might believe that _janowars_ were not safe round a sick--"

"_Chuprao_,[9] you fool!" shouted Dada. As the ayah sidled away, still indignant, the two men sat and looked at each other.

[Footnote 9: "Hold your tongue!"]

"I'm afraid it's no use," said the doctor. "Starvation and fever are ill companions; but I'll stay over to-morrow and see what I can do. It is as much my fault as yours, if any one is to blame, but--"

The doctor, being orthodox, paused.

When they went down on the following evening to see the patient in hospital they found the native assistant volubly apologetic. He had seemed so content, not to say weak, that they had left him alone while busy over an accident. Half an hour ago they had missed him from his cot. "Doubtless delirium had supervened with acerbation of fever; but since peons were out in all directions, by the blessing of God--"

"Come on, doctor," said Dada, impatiently interrupting the flow of words.

He was there, face down on the grass, and the squirrels were playing over his dead body and searching for crumbs.

"No!" said Dada, when the coolies came with a string bed again. "Bring a spade or two. I'm going to bury him here."

The doctor, having religious views, looked doubtful. "I--I wonder if it is consecrated ground?"

"I hope to God it is!" said Dada, fervently.

As they lingered at the gate when the work was over, a squirrel hung head downward on the peepul-trunk, eying the new-turned earth suspiciously. Then another with bushy tail erect came hopping fearlessly over the grass--

"Cher ip--a pip--pip--pip!"

It was a challenge. The next moment they were chasing each other over the cross of quamoclits.

Dada closed the gate softly.

"Lovely, lovely 'quilth,'" he murmured to himself.

The lump had come back to his throat, and the doctor gave something between a laugh and a sob.

But they neither of them said anything about the other _janowar_. Perhaps because there was a difficulty in finding an epithet to suit Shah Sujah's mouse.

SUTTU.

I.

A grove of date-palms; each cluster of carved stems set in its feathery crown and base, separated from its neighbours by sandy spaces, where the snakes sunned themselves right in the wayfarer's path. Finding few victims, however; for the _karait_, stretched out like a blue whip-lash, curved back to the prickly cover at the distant step, and though the dusk-coloured vipers tied in true-lovers' knots held their ground, their evil temper gave warning of their presence as scale rustled on scale in the angry sliding of the watchful coil.

Day and night the sweeping fringes overhead swayed softly, even when no breath stirred the tangle below. But now, when the coming of dawn sent that curious whisper of wind through the world, as if warning it of what the sun may disclose, the leaves tossed their long arms wildly.

A stretch of level land curved inward to the palm-grove; outward till it merged on the village common with its grey-spined caper-bushes set with coral buds. In the distance, shadowy in the half light, was a native town, flat-roofed against the sky. Close at hand an open grave, with a man and woman standing beside it. A queer couple. The old man, dwarfed to distortion, grotesquely ugly; the woman young, straight as a palm, supremely handsome.

"Lo, they come, Shâhbâsh!" she said, in a bold, mellow voice which fitted her appearance. As she shaded her eyes with her hand, the coarse madder veil she wore fell from her broad shoulders as if cut in stone.

"_Wah illah!_ Thou hast sight to boast of, Mother Suttu," replied her companion. She might have been his daughter in age, but he used the title of respect due to all decent women from one not of their own blood.

"Yea, 'tis true," she echoed, carelessly. "The Potter's hand slipped not when he made me. I have naught to bring against him." It was perhaps a heartless truism, considering her company.

But then Shâhbâsh was bucklered against bitter thoughts by an ingenious theory accounting for his own ill looks. A fairy, he held, had fallen in love with him as a babe, when (as might be augured from his name, which meant 'Well done! Bravo!') he must have been possessed of extraordinary beauty. Her jealous determination to keep his perfections to herself had attained its object in roundabout fashion, by preventing the eyes of others seeing him as he really was. Hence the distortion lay with them.

"I would thine eyes were as sharp for the future as they are for the present," he said, thoughtfully, leaning on his adze-like shovel.

"'Twere better they were sharp enough to see through dust," she answered, smiling broadly into the grave at her feet. "So thou didst not find it after all, Shâhbâsh."

"Not a cowrie, not a _dumri!_ And I swear 'tis into the tenth dozen of graves I have dug--with texts of the holy Koran pouring from me the while without stint. Good sound texts, hard as melted solder on a body's teeth. And to no good, except to pave a blessed bed for another sinner. For they pay worse and worse, _mai_ Suttu. When old Feroz Shah buried his son, last week, he left but a rupee's worth of clothes on the corpse for perquisite. Look you! If I take not the very winding-sheet which decency would leave e'en to the dead, thou and the holy saint yonder will starve--to say naught of servant Shâhbâsh, who needs muscle to sow men in this hard soil."

He let his shovel fall on the hard ground to show how it echoed to the clang.

Suttu laughed. "If dead men do not pay, there are the dates still. They will ripen ere long."

"Aye, but how long can they be kept? If the saint dies without speaking, the others will find their tongues. A woman needs gold--or a man. Thou wilt have neither unless thou wilt give up the religious vow and marry the Kâzi's son. He is willing."

Suttu laughed.

"So are others that be not pock-marked and one eye to boot."

"_Tobah!_ And thou virtuous and a widow! Lo, he is a man, and beauty is not safe for us. Was not I, Shâhbâsh, the handsomest--"

She interrupted him remorselessly. "'Tis safe for me, anyhow. The grandfather may rouse any day and tell me where the gold is hidden. Once it is found, none will covet the graveyard."

Shâhbâsh wrinkled his hideous face to an appalling frown.

"God knows! If not, then it is a case of digging graves all my life till I get over-scant of breath for texts and mattock together. If only the sickness would come, 'twould give more chance. For the fox of a father-in-law will be claiming shares of treasure with thee if I dig aught but graves. Lo! _mai_ Suttu, I tell thee, 'tis ghoul-like work. I watch the old folk in the village, and my fingers itch to give them a blessed bed in Deen Ali's yard. 'Tis destroying my soul. Thou must marry, or I am damned!"

"Sure the fairy will make thee a paradise anywhere," laughed Suttu. "Lo, they come! Is all prepared? Alms or no alms, Deen Ali's bed must be ready for the faithful. 'Tis in the bond."

She spoke with a grave dignity quite apart from her previous manner.

"Would God they had put the alms in the bond likewise!" grumbled the dwarf as he slid into the shallow grave to sweep some loosened soil from the niche hollowed in the hard ground to one side for the uncoffined tenant. Then he swung himself out again by his brawny arms and strained his shortsighted eyes toward the advancing procession.

"'Tis well," he muttered, as a sudden braying of shawms, beating of drums, and skirling of songs rent the still dawn. "At least they remember that the burying of the old is as a bridal. Sure it may be better than I feared, and they will not send the decent patriarch back to his friends half naked."

It was an odd funeral. The bier, covered by a tissue-paper canopy, swayed as it was borne shoulder-high at a slow trot. The crowd laughed and sang. The streamers fluttered, flying round that still, muslin-swathed form bound with tinsel. Only Suttu seemed in keeping with it, as she stood forward welcoming it to Deen Ali's bed.

But the next instant, as she stepped aside to let it pass, a malicious look of amusement was on her face as she returned the greeting of a pock-marked man with one eye.

Then, her _rôle_ of hostess being over, she walked away to the date-grove followed by admiring eyes. For Suttu, the _fakeerni_, if somewhat outrageous, was distinctly attractive. That made her vow of celibacy all the more unnatural.

She sat down on the edge of a back channel of the river, which, after creeping tortuously in a deep, narrow bed, expanded here during the rains to a broad, shallow lake, dotted by clumps of pillared palms, beneath whose fringed crowns great bunches of fruit were ripening fast. Each islet was reflected so clearly in the water that it needed sharp eyes to see where reality ended and unreality began. Here and there, showing where the perennial pools lay beneath the temporary flood, stretched a green carpet of lotus-leaves, where the flowers rose in varying height; the buds, still resting on the water; the full-blown flowers flaunting between them and the mace-like stems on which the hidden "jewel in the lotus" stood disclosed, while the fallen petals floated like shells on the water, or lay piled up in little pink heaps on the green carpet. A faint scent, as of bitter almonds, perfumed the breeze which now and again ruffled the lake and slid a fresh gift of rolling, sparkling water diamonds into the leaf-cups. Beyond this was a golden sunrise, cloudless, serene.

Suttu, seated on the edge of grass which grew just as far as the moisture filtered through the sand, and no farther, nodded at the scene approvingly. The Potter had made no mistake here either; she liked it, liked her own freedom purchased by an easy vow. The idea of giving it up in favour of another ten years or more of marriage in a stifling city quarter was absurd.

A kingfisher flashed down into the water like a sapphire, and her quick eyes followed it.

"_Shâhbâsh!_" she cried, gleefully, as the bird came up with a bar of silver in its purple bill.

"'Tis not Shâhbâsh," said a voice behind her. "'Tis I, come to ask--"

She leaped to her feet, confronting the Kâzi's son in real wrath.

"So! Will not even death keep thy mind from marriage? Why hast crept here to see me alone? 'Tis not decent--far worse, 'tis not even pleasant. Have I not told thee--aye, and others--that I am a pious widow?" She drew a corner of her veil across her eyes and hid the suggestion of a smile under the semblance of tears. "A pious widow vowed to the sonless shrine of my ancestors."

The Kâzi's son drew a step nearer.

"Thou art too young and too well favoured for a religious. Every one says so," he began.

"The Lord looks not at beauty, Mir Sahib," retorted Suttu, gravely; "and 'tis well for some of us that it is so."

"A sharp weapon is no weapon against enemies, and thou hast enemies. My house would protect you. Think! I am the Kâzi's son."

"Lo, why should I forget my lord's merit?" smiled Suttu, sweetly. "He has not so many."

He bit his lip. Repartee of that sort he knew, but not from the lips of reputable women. The whole affair had the intoxication of an intrigue, and its defiance of conventionalities set his pulses throbbing.

"Listen, O Suttu!" he said, curbing his passion. "Hussan, thy dead husband's father, will claim the land when the saint dies, and God knows how the case may go against a woman! Marry me, and I will gain it, were thy father-in-law fifty times over the village accountant. Hast heard the saying, 'Only the Kâzi can fight the Putwâri'?"

"Lo, if I came to thy house, there would be fighting enow to fill thy stomach, without going to a neighbour."

She drew the coarse veil which she had slipped from her head back to its place, with wide-spread arms, as she spoke; and the action displayed the full vigour of her finely moulded form. He cursed her bigness and boldness inwardly, but schooled himself to another and more tender appeal.

"Why not, O Suttu? Lo, I am rich, I am young. I--I lie awake o' nights thinking of it. Yea, I swear it! I get no good from my food. I love you. If I died, the very houris in paradise would not tempt me.

"But I would make thy grave gladly, Mir sahib, and then may be thou wouldst find rest."

It was too much. He seized her by the wrist and glared at her, every evil instinct roused to fury. "Then I will buy thee. Thy father-in-law has the right, for the saint is half dead already. Listen! I will buy thee to be my slave. What dost say now?"

"That even slaves have naught to do with pockmarks and one eye." Her free right hand came down on one cheek with a resounding slap, making him stagger. Her left, thus released, followed suit on the other. "Go!" she cried, "or I will make Shâhbâsh yonder strangle thee with his monkey arms. Go! And remember that Suttu, the _fakeerni_, hath slapped thee in the face!"

The Kâzi's son, entangled in the trail of his turban, which had fallen off, caught sight of the gravedigger within call, and felt that his chance was over. He stalked away, trying to look dignified as he wound his head-dress on again, but conscious of a suppressed titter behind him, making him grind his teeth and swear vengeance.

When he had gone, Suttu sat down again on the grass and slipped her hands into the cool water. They tingled unpleasantly.

"Yonder beans look ripe," she murmured, "and they would eke out a meal."

Five minutes after, her sleek black head was rising and falling, her round arms gleaming in the overhead stroke which sent her straight to a lily-field. A couple of moor-hens fled, leaving a rippling streak of silver behind them. As she entered the leaf carpet it took in great waves of water over the edges--waves which broke into dew-drops that ran races with each other for first place in the leafy hollows.

The dragon-flies darted around her, timid but persistent; and myriads of tiny insects, disturbed from the sweet stems, rose in clouds, attracting the swift swooping of the bronze-winged fly-catchers.

Shâbâsh was waiting for her on the bank as she came back wading, her arms full of blown lotus, her track marked by drifting petals. As she approached he flung a few yards of tinsel and muslin on the ground in extravagant, theatrical disgust.

"That is all," he cried; "by the faith of my fathers, six ells of false tinsel and four of twopenny muslin for digging a grave in _kunker_[10] soil. God and his Prophet! why didst not send them to be born Hindus? Then 'twould have taken ten rupees of fire-wood to save them from being burned in hell. And last night, look you, I cut a sleeping snake in two as I dug, and both ends fell at my toes. _Ari!_ A riddle indeed in the dark, which be head and which be tail? And I am to go through such moments for six ells of tinsel and four of such muslin. No, _mai_ Suttu. 'Tis the Kâzi's son, or starvation."

[Footnote 10: Nodulated limestone.]

Suttu smiled as she stooped to wring the water from her scant petticoat.

"Not so, Shâhbâsh. The Kâzi's son doth not like me. And lotus-beans are good till the dates ripen. Then the gold! It may be in the next grave."

He scratched his thick grey hair, on which he wore no turban, doubtfully.

"God knows! Every full moon I stretch my sheet on the ground and dance to please my fairy. Then when I fall into the trance I ask the old question, 'Where is Deen Ali's gold?' But there is no answer in the morning. Now, if the fairy cannot tell--"

Suttu laughed. "Dost not, may be, forget the answer? The black bottle steals thy brains--"

'"Tis not the bottle," muttered Shâhbâsh, sulkily, as he gathered up his perquisites. "'Tis the fairy steals my brains. For sure there be not rum enough in it nowadays--"

So they walked home to the mosque-like tomb in the date-grove, she with her sheaf of lotus, he with his shovel and shroud.

II.

Suttu's great-great-grandfather had been a saint of the first water--a double-distilled, above-proof performer of miracles; his holiness being strong enough to stand two generations of dilution and still leave spiritual distinction to his descendants. Yet the difference in the saintship of Deen Ali, the original, and Inâm Ali, the present incumbent of the shrine, lay more in their surroundings than in themselves. The former, according to tradition, had lived for ten years in a trance, oblivious of all save the touch of a certain prayer-carpet on his feet; a carpet brought from holy Mecca, which had been used--again according to tradition--by the Prophet himself. Then sight, speech, action, were restored to Deen Ali for a space, and while earth and sky wore the glorious apparel of sunrise and sunset, his soul came back in praise and prayer.

Inâm Ali inherited the trance, but folk called it paralysis, and the death in life yielded to carnal, not spiritual, food. Doubtless physiologically it was quite as wonderful that twice a day, regularly as clock-work, the half-dead organism should accept nourishment; practically it was not so impressive.

But other things had changed too in the seventy-and-odd years since Deen Ali had planted the Arabian date-stones he had also brought back from holy Mecca in the land granted to his saintship. Curious holdings these, burdened at times by quaint conditions in return for official canonization; for in those days saintship paid. In this case the offerings of the faithful had taken visible shape in the blue-tiled tomb where Deen Ali's body lay under a stucco roly-poly twelve feet long. Whether this length awarded to saintly tombs, which contrasts so oddly with the curtness of those allowed to the laity, has reference to the extent of piety, or whether some Mohammedan exemplar of old really was of unusual stature, is a moot point. Certain it is that in upper India, as elsewhere, the "unco guid" are tedious even when at rest.

The blue-green dome of the saint's tomb, therefore, soared up into the green-grey plumes of the palms, as a record of past munificence; and round it the green-blue parrots circled and swept till the wearied eye sought relief in the gold clusters of dates above and the gold sand below.

Gold! If report said true, golden indeed with other records of munificence. But where? That secret lay hid in Inâm Ali's paralyzed brain. He must have known; for, despite the slackness of modern offerings, there had never been any want in the mud hovel hitched on to the tomb; until Suttu, coming in one evening with her veil full of dates, had found the old man quite unconscious on the saint's high wooden bed, which still stood over the grave under the dome.

The news thrilled the adjoining township with brief enthusiasm. Then a bustling Hindu assistant surgeon got wind of the case, and sanctity vanished before science. From that day, several years past, matters had gone from bad to worse. A railway appeared, reducing offerings to the lowest ebb; for, as Shâhbâsh declared with mingled truth and tears, the pilgrims counted their third-class return tickets as offerings to the shrine, and the traffic department charged dead against charity in the extortionate fares for sheep, goats, and fowls. On the other hand, the railway had certainly brought cholera three years in succession--an unheard-of event--and that had increased the chances of finding the gold in the digging of graves--graves, however, for which the perquisites lessened month by month. That was due to the village accountant's spite; spite born of family matters which went back to the time when Suttu was born.

Inâm Ali, briefly, had lived for six months in hopes that a posthumous child of his only son would be an heir to the saintship; and in his first disappointment had been only too glad to get rid of mother and child, by the former's marriage to the accountant and the latter's betrothal to her stepfather's son. After a time, however, he had bought the child back, with bribes, to keep him company, and thereinafter had spent years in spoiling her. Consequently, when the inevitable fulfilment of the betrothal came round, Suttu was dragged off to _zenana_ life, struggling like a wild animal. She failed, however, to fulfil her duty of bringing a son to inherit, through her, the date-palms and the hidden treasure; and after one baby, born when she was thirteen, ceased its feeble efforts to live, she settled down--well, as a leopardess might settle in its cage.