Part 2

At last on a bright morning they reached the city with its narrow, black streets lined with dirty-white, plastered houses and tiny shops. As the streets were full of people crowding this way and that, Shama Sahai kept as close to her parents as she could. At once the little company hurried to the great temple which was by far the most wonderful building that Shama had ever seen. It was enclosed by high walls and above the gate was a tower tapering upward many stories, on each story of which stood figures of gods, many of whom the girl knew and feared, but others whom she had never seen before. Passing under this tower they entered a court and from there went under another tower to another court and on until, entering a covered building in the centre, they found the god, a great black figure, reeking with oil and garlanded with flowers. All around were young girls, no older than Shama herself, who, with faces shamelessly uncovered, stood there alone, without their parents. Priests, almost naked, were going through ceremonies before the idol. So dark and weird did it all seem and so many strange looking people were passing back and forth that Shama Sahai was half frightened.

After the little company had presented its offerings to the gods and the father had spoken aside to a big fat priest who kept looking at Shama Sahai, the mother announced that they must bathe in the sacred pool. So they returned to the outer court of the temple where was a tank about two hundred feet square containing foul and slimy, but none the less exceedingly sacred, water. Into this tank they stepped and with prayers and the reciting of charms bathed with the throng of worshippers. Carefully they washed out their mouths with the filthy water and then drank of it. During all this time the fat priest kept close to them and it seemed to Shama that his eyes were always upon her. His were not attractive eyes nor was his face pleasing and the girl was thoroughly frightened when, after the cleansing ceremony, he bade them good-bye with a caressing hand upon her shoulder while a bestial smile distorted his face.

That night Shama Sahai was not happy although she had reached the place where she had so longed to be. The memory of the priest's face haunted her and she could not keep from thinking of those girls in the temple. Towards morning her mother was taken ill. And the groans of the woman kept her awake. She stole out upon the door-step, but the sounds of the city were so strange that, little country girl that she was, she drew back and preferred to lie down again beside her moaning mother.

The mother was no better in the morning. Then the man of whom they rented the lodging suggested that Shama Sahai should go up to the house of a white memsahib who could make people well and ask for help. The memsahib could do wonderful things, the man said, and without doubt would cure the sick woman. Although very timid, Shama could not refuse to go for her mother's sake. So, taking her baby brother on her hip and guided by the landlord's child, she took her way along the narrow streets until she came to a high brick wall with a large open gateway. Within she saw a number of people standing before a long, low building. The boy, her guide, having pointed to that building and by so doing having done his whole duty, set himself to the pleasant task of chasing some chickens which were running at large in the compound. Shama Sahai had to approach the building alone. As she came nearer the little knot of people, she noticed that every one of them looked ill and almost every one carried a little bottle in his hand. Through the open door of the building she could see a white memsahib in a blue striped dress, sitting at a little table, writing slips of paper and handing them out to the sick people. Occasionally the lady would touch one of the patients and he would run out his tongue. It was all very queer but interesting to Shama and even the baby watched quietly. When Shama's turn came to enter, she was so embarrassed that she could hardly speak, but, encouraged by the memsahib's speaking kindly to her in her own tongue, she finally stammered out a brief but none too lucid account of her mother's illness. But the lady seemed to understand. After writing in a book and speaking to a native woman who stood behind a sort of table near by, with more kind words she put a small bottle of medicine into the girl's hands. Assured that her mother would soon be well and with orders to come the next day and report the condition of the patient, Shama Sahai went home very much pleased.

But the mother did not get well at once and for several days the girl paid a daily visit to the dispensary, each time losing a little of her timidity and each time being more attracted by the white lady who was so kind to her and called her by name and who, one day when there had been but a few patients and Shama Sahai had lingered behind, had told her beautiful stories about a new god that was not an ugly black image.

However, after a while the mother did get so much better that she could go to the temple again and Shama Sahai's visits to the dispensary ceased. She hoped that they would soon go home. By this time so frightened had the girl become in the great city that she was almost as anxious to leave Kamadabad as she had been to reach there.

One night as she lay, apparently asleep, in her corner of the room near the outside door, she heard her father and mother talking as they came up on the door-step. She opened her eyes and listened.

"We'll go home to-morrow. I made final arrangements with the priest to-day. My, but he's a hard one to drive a bargain with! We will settle the money part in the morning so that we can get a good start before night," said her father.

Shama Sahai gave a sigh of relief at the prospects of an early start for home and was about to close her eyes so that she might sleep and be rested for the journey, when she heard her mother say: "Where are we to leave her?"

"The priest said to take her to the inner court of the red temple with the offerings. He will perform the necessary ceremonies in a short time and we can leave her there," answered the man. "I wanted it done to-day so that we could get off on the road in the cool of the morning, but he would not have it so."

"Have you bought our food yet? We won't need so much rice without Shama, you know," said the mother.

"I haven't forgotten that when that's just what we are getting rid of her for, you may be sure. Yes, I bought it this afternoon. We'll miss the girl in carrying the load, I suppose, but you can carry it and the baby too just as well as not. How much better it is to get rid of a widow in this way and have one less to feed than to have the cursed creature always around in the way. We'll not go hungry now. A good business we've done here at Kamadabad, old woman, although you did waste a lot of time and money by being sick, for of course we had to pay extra for the longer stay. That old rupee-snatcher of a landlord wouldn't give in an anna because you had been sick. He said that he really ought to have charged more, for when people are sick they lie down longer and so wear out his floor more quickly. You were a fine one, you were, to get sick!" the man snarled.

"Yes, but you wouldn't have been here at all or have thought of bringing the girl, if I hadn't suggested it," snapped the old woman in her turn.

Shama Sahai lay perfectly quiet as the couple, still mumbling unkind remarks at each other, came in and lay down on the floor. She scarcely breathed for fear that they should find out that she was awake. But when she knew that they were asleep, she crept out-of-doors and darting around a corner sank down upon some steps. She knew from what she had overheard that her parents-in-law were planning to go home in the morning without her and that the priest was to have her. As she remembered the evil, swollen face of the man who had watched her that first day at the temple, she shuddered and, drawing her sari more closely about her, crept farther back into the doorway.

Only one thought would come--she must run away where the priest could not get her and she must go at once. Peeping out from the doorway, she looked up and down the street. No one was astir; only a quiet form here and there on the little porches could be seen in the dim light of the street lamps. She would go to the white memsahib. The memsahib and the new god would surely save her.

Like a spirit the girl took her flight through the streets, the lightness of her footfall awaking not the most restless of the sleepers.

When she reached the familiar compound, she did not hesitate, but, running up to the veranda, shook the sleeping chokidar.

"Where is the memsahib? Quick, tell me, quick!"

The watchman, ashamed at having been caught asleep and thinking it nothing strange that a girl should call the doctor in the night, hastened to show Shama Sahai the stairs leading to the roof of the bungalow.

"You'll find her up there. She always sleeps on the roof in the hot weather."

The girl was soon beside the doctor's cot and with frightened sobs was telling her story. "I've come to you and you must save me," were her final words.

Events happen quickly sometimes, especially when an energetic woman is helping them along. As the earliest morning train pulled out from Kamadabad for Mattera, a native Christian woman with a Hindu girl, disguised in the slightly different garb of a Christian, was on board, and the white doctor-memsahib was taking her chota hazri with fear in her heart.

What would be the fate of the poor young girl who had fled to her for refuge? That was the question which was troubling the doctor that morning. Although she was used to witnessing crises in people's lives with real, professional calm, this morning her outward calmness was assumed, for this was a case which her degree of M. D. had, perhaps, not qualified her to handle.

Throughout the long day the doctor waited expecting searchers for the girl, but no one came to make any inquiries of her. As she was leaving her compound gate towards evening for her daily exercise, she met a man and a woman, the latter carrying on her hip a baby whom the doctor recognized. The man was saying in Hindustani to the woman:

"The priest stole her. I know he stole her! Well, it's much the same after all, I suppose, for we're rid of her anyway. Of course he pretended he had not seen her and was angry because I had not brought her. Well, well; it's hard to deal with the priests."

"Whoever has her, may bad luck go with her!" exclaimed the woman.

But the woman's malediction did not bring fear to the doctor who, stopping short in her walk, could scarcely restrain a shout of joy. For this man and woman were Shama Sahai's parents-in-law going home without her, believing that the priest had stolen the girl. Instead of going on to the river for her usual evening constitutional, the doctor-memsahib hastened to the station where she caught the last afternoon train for Mattera that she might tell Shama Sahai that she was safe.

III

Old Sarah

"Here comes Old Sarah!" A shrill voice shouted the news through the open door into the mud house where the small boy's mother squatted at work, with one long, rounded stone crushing the curry seeds upon another large, flat stone that stood on the mud floor. At the call the mother dropped the long stone from her hand and, springing to her feet, hastily followed her naked boy out upon the street of the village. Old Sarah was a new friend who recently had come often to the village, telling the people stories and singing songs to them. But she never had come oftener than twice a week and she had been there only the day before. So the woman wondered what could have brought her back so soon.

The boy, meantime, had been running up and down the short street, clapping his hands and shouting, "Old Sarah has come! Old Sarah has come!" as Old Sarah herself had taught him to do at her arrival so that the people might know at once that she had come and she might not have to wait for an audience.

"Where is she?" called the mother after the running child, for she had looked up and down the road and failed to see the old woman.

"Why, there she is!" said the boy coming up. "Don't you see her sitting there by the road?"

"That's not Old Sarah! I never saw her sitting by the road like that."

"Yes it is! Yes it is!" and the boy danced off in the direction of the sitting figure, kicking up the dust with his bare feet in his eagerness to reach the side of the old lady who always had some sweet for him hidden away in her bag. His mother followed after him and several other people, also, who had come from their homes at his familiar call.

"Why, it is Old Sarah, sure enough! What can be the matter with her?" exclaimed the woman to a neighbour as they approached.

The exclamation was not unnatural, for the usually active old lady who, unwearied, had come trudging into their village week after week, after a walk of five miles, now sat all bent over on the ground with her sari-covered head bowed upon her arms.

The noise of the little crowd as it drew near aroused the old woman, who, letting the sari slide back from a head well sprinkled with gray, raised to them a face white and drawn. The people were astounded, for never in their acquaintance had she shown them aught but a face full of life and joy. Now she looked weak and haggard.

"I am sick," she said, answering the unasked question which she saw in their faces. "You are my good friends; so I came to you for help."

"Oh, let me help her!" cried one.

"Bring her to my house!" called another.

"I will care for her myself," said the child's mother as several women stepped up to raise the old woman to her feet.

They had helped her along some little way and the children were following close behind or crowding ahead to tell the rest of the villagers, when the head man met them.

Looking at the old woman, he said sharply, "What is the matter with her?"

The crowd stopped, out of respect to the head man, and each looked at the other, not knowing what to say. Then the old woman herself looked up. With a feeble attempt at the usual gay salaam with which she always greeted the chief, she answered his question.

"It is the cholera," she said.

"The cholera!" frightened voices screamed.

The hands that had so tenderly been guiding the woman's feeble steps were suddenly withdrawn. The women fled from her, dragging their children with them while the larger youngsters ran down the street, crying, "Old Sarah has the cholera! Old Sarah has the cholera!"

The cry was passed on from one person to another for miles along the road, for never are the roads of India, except in the hottest part of the day, without a throng of travellers.

The old woman, who, thus suddenly left unsupported, had fallen in a limp heap in the middle of the road, lay there for some time until the sun became unendurable and made its rays felt even in her acute suffering. She raised her head. Not a person was in sight. The little village was deserted. It consisted only of a few palm-leaf huts on each side of the street, shaded by cocoanut trees, and could be taken in at a glance. Old Sarah's head fell upon her hands. What could she do? If she stayed in the road her suffering would be more intense; although she expected to die now that her friends had deserted her, still she wanted to die with as little torture as possible.

About six feet away from her was the open door of a tiny hut. The shade within looked very inviting. Summoning all the strength she had, Old Sarah crawled upon her hands and knees, slowly, painfully, to the door and dropped at full length on the hard mud floor. It was cool there but, oh, how lonely! No one to care for her! no one to supply her wants! no one to be with her when she should die! and no one to give her body Christian burial before the pariah dogs should tear it to pieces! She heard a noise at the door. With a flash of joy in her heart to think that some one had returned to help her, painfully turning her head, she saw--only the sacred bull of the village sticking an inquiring nose into the door. Perhaps there might be something within that he might feed upon, for he, according to Hindu custom, was privileged to help himself to whatever he could find anywhere. With disappointed heart, Old Sarah let her head roll back and closed her eyes, although the thought passed through her mind that the bull might enter the house and trample upon her in his search for food in the tiny room; but if he should, it would bring her only a quick release from her pain. Then the pain and suffering became so great that she could not even think. The bull, however, evidently seeing nothing to please his appetite within the hut, turned away from the door and went on down the street, nosing along the front of every house until he reached the last one where a woman in her haste to flee from the cholera had overturned a basket of pea-pods and left them in a heap on the mud floor of the porch before the house--a fine meal for a hungry bull.

The minutes flew by and became hours; only the moaning from the house near the middle of the street disturbed the hot hush of the midday.

A cat crept into the hut and sniffed at the woman's feet; a dog peered in at the dark object on the floor; but no human being came near.

When the sun was no more than an hour from setting, there sounded the rumble of wheels. A wooden ox-cart, driven by a scantily-clad, very dark native, and drawn by a pair of the gray, humped bullocks of the district, entered the street at the head of the village. The bullocks were brought to a halt at once and a woman's head appeared from under the rounded straw covering of the cart.

"Where is she? Do you see her?" she asked the man.

"There is no one in sight," he replied. "But, hark, I hear a moan!"

"She must be in that house there," he added after listening a moment, pointing as he spoke with a thin, black finger to the house into which Old Sarah had crawled.

He drove his bullocks on down the narrow street until he pulled up in front of the hut. Then the young woman, for it was a young Tamil woman in the cart, with beautiful face and straight, lithe figure, leapt to the ground and ran into the house, her pretty red sari fluttering behind her. The man in the cart sat still, watching the open door, the eternal sadness of the Hindu in his face.

The woman was gone for some time but, finally, looked out of the door. "I have done all I can for her. She is very bad. I think we had better take her to the hospital in the city, for there they may be able to save her life. Get the cart ready," she called.

As she disappeared again, the man got down slowly from the front of the cart and, having got in at the back, arranged some blankets so as to make it as comfortable as possible for the sick woman. Then he went into the house with another blanket in his arms. And in a few minutes the two came out again, carrying Old Sarah in the blanket between them, and they laid her as carefully as they could in the cart.

All this was not done in silence, for all of the time the young woman kept talking, sometimes addressing the sufferer, sometimes the driver, and sometimes herself. "Poor old woman!" she said. "To think that the cowards all ran away and left her like this after the kindness she had shown them. She has walked those five miles, really ten, there and back, day after day, to tell them about her new religion and to help them; for she never came that she did not help the women in their work, or bring the children some sweets, or teach the people something new. Dear old soul! And after all the love you have given them, just in your hour of need they all forsook you! Just wait until I get a chance and I'll tell them what I think about such actions; indeed, what every decent person would think! They pretended to be so fond of her too; she really thought they loved her as much as if she had been their mother. That's the way with these black heathen!"

"Why didn't she come to you?" asked the man as they got the old woman settled with her head on the young woman's lap and he had climbed up in front to prod the bullocks to a start.

"Poor old soul, I never gave her any reason to think that I believed her preachings although she has come faithfully every week to visit me. I liked to tease her and hear her funny answers. I liked to ask her hard questions about her new religion. She would pucker her face all up and think and think until she had answered every one. Alas, I never let her know that her religion touched my heart and that I believe in Jesus Christ! I never even let her know that I loved her. Of course she would not come to me for help. But I do love her. She was so funny and so full of life and odd sayings that I just had to tease her, that was all. Now, now I fear it is too late to tell her!" she ended with a sob.

"I don't believe she will live, do you?" she asked the servant a moment later as he had turned around to look at the old woman and they both were gazing down upon her face, drawn and haggard, with lips parted in a moan.

"I fear not," said the man. "Have you given her from the bottle?"

"Yes, the very medicine she brought me a month ago when the cholera threatened our village." She pulled a bottle from the bosom of her sari. "I'll give her another dose now; surely if one dose is good, two will be better."

She tipped the bottle to the old woman's lips who mechanically swallowed a very little. It seemed to revive her for she opened her eyes and murmured: "Who is this? Where am I?"

The other, bending over her, answered, "This is Jessa. Don't you know Jessa? I've come to take care of you. You will be all right soon."

"Jessa! Who is Jessa?" the weak voice asked while the big eyes stared up at the girl, unseeing.

"Don't you know Jessa, the girl at Bindy, the chief's daughter whom you go to teach every week?"

"Yes, but she wouldn't come to help me. She doesn't love me and she makes fun of my God."

"Sarah, dear Old Sarah!" the young woman raised the old woman's head from her lap and, gazing into her eyes, seemed to draw her back to sight. "Sarah, it is Jessa and she loves you, and--and--Sarah," the girl added softly, "she loves your God."

A brightness as of renewed life suffused the face of the old woman. "God be thanked!" she tried to shout, but the shout fell away into a murmur and the hands, which she had tried to clap as was her custom when overjoyed, fell back at her sides. But although she became again unconscious, the smile of joy remained upon her face and lighted up the thin, dark features surrounded by the straggling gray locks and made her face beautiful, as beautiful for the moment as the face, young and perfect of feature, that bent over her.

"She is dying!" said the man. Stopping his bullocks as he spoke he slid from his seat and began to fumble under the blankets.

"What are you doing, Nado?" called the girl.

"Here is a shrine. I will pray for the life of the old woman and offer a handful of rice to the god."

"Nado," a slim brown hand was laid on his big black one and prevented him from opening the rice bag, "Nado, she is a Christian. I, too, am a Christian now. We cannot pray for her life at a heathen shrine. Sit in your place, Nado, and I will pray to our God."

The man did not get up into his place but stood and with wide, interested eyes watched the girl as, laying the old woman's head gently back in her lap, she freed her hands and clasping them to heaven, raised her eyes and prayed. The words were the words of the young girl herself but the gestures were copied from Old Sarah as she had prayed many, many times in the girl's presence. One, not impressed by the solemnity of the moment, would have laughed at the grotesque motions of her hands and head as she prayed.