Part 16

Towards this thicket Saraswati, still with the same impassive face, made her way, pausing an instant before the long, low, mud manger where her favourite milch cow stood tethered, to stroke its soft muzzle and give it a few tall stalks of millet from a sheaf resting against the well-wheel. And once more the scene was red and blue and gold, as the broad yellow leaves and blood-streaked stems blent with her dress. There was not a change in her face, as, parting the branches, she disappeared into the thicket, scattering the loose blossoms as she went; not a change, when after a minute or two, she reappeared, carrying a little basket with a domed cover, securely fastened by many strands of raw cotton thread, such as she had been spinning--a basket of wheaten straw festooned with cowries, and tufted with parti-coloured tassels, such as the Jâtni women make for the safe keeping of feminine trifles--an innocent-looking basket, suggestive of beads and trinkets. She paused a moment, holding it to her ear, and then for the first time a faint smile flickered about her mouth as she caught a curious rasping noise, half-purr, half-rustle.

"Death hath a long life," she murmured, as she hid the basket in the voluminous folds of her veil and walked over to the homestead. As she entered by a wide gap in the plaited palisade, the scene within was even as she had imagined it; but the barb had struck home before, and the actual sight did not enhance her resentment.

"It grows late, O Maya," she said coldly. "Leave playing with the child and see to the fire for the cooking of our lord's food. Thou hast scarce left an ember aglow beneath the lentils while I was yonder spinning."

The reproof was no more than what might come with dignity from an elder wife; but Gurditta, lounging his long length in well-earned rest on a string bed, rose, murmuring something of seeing to the plough oxen ere supper time. The big man was dimly dissatisfied with affairs; he felt a vague desire to behave better towards the woman who had been his faithful companion for so many years. But for her, he knew well, things would go but ill in the little homestead by the well. Yet Maya was so pretty. What man, still undulled by age, would not do as he did? For all that, the little capricious thing might be more friendly with Saraswati; there was no need for her to snatch Chujju in her arms whenever the latter looked at the child. But then women--and Maya was a thorough woman--were always so fearful of the evil eye. Fancy her calling that straight-limbed, utterly desirable son, Chujju,[42] as if any one would cast such a gift away in the sweeper's pan! As if the gods themselves, far off as they were, could be deceived by such a palpable fraud, or even by that ridiculous smudge of charcoal on the boy's face which only enhanced instead of detracting from its beauty! Gurditta laughed a deep, broad laugh as he strewed the long manger with corn cobs and green stuff cut from the fodder field by the well.

[Footnote 42: From _chujj_, a sweeper's basket. One of the many opprobrious names given to avert the envious, and therefore evil, eye.]

Meanwhile, within the house yard, Maya was sullenly blowing away at the embers held in the semicircular mud fireplaces ranged along one of the walls. A grass thatch, supported by two forked sticks, protected this, the kitchen of the house, from possible rain and certain sun; while on the other wall a similar screen did like duty to a triple row of niches or pigeon-holes, wherein the household stores in immediate use were kept out of harm's way. For the rest, was a clean-swept expanse of beaten earth set round, after the fashion in a farmer's house, with implements and hive-like stores of grain. Between the one thatch and the other Saraswati moved restlessly, bringing pickles and spices as they were wanted. And still the basket lay tucked away in the folds of her veil.

"The raw sugar is nigh done," she said, stooping with her back towards Maya to reach the lowest row of niches.

"We must use the candy to-night, till I can open the big store. Luckily I bought some when we took the Diwali[43] sweets from Gopal." Then, ere she replaced the cloth in which the sweetmeats were tied, she held out a sugar horse to the child, who was playing by his mother. "Here, Chujju, wilt have one?"

[Footnote 43: For the most part, sugar animals, such as are sold at English fairs.]

Maya was on her feet at once, indignant, vehement.

"Thou shouldst not offer him such things. He shall not take them from thee. I will not have it. Nay, nay, my bird--my heart's delight! Mother will give thee sweets enough. Kick not so, life of my life! Ganesh! how he cries. He will burst: and 'tis thy fault. Hush, hush! See, here is mother's milk. _Ai!_ wicked one! would bite? Ye gods, but 'tis a veritable _Toork_ for temper."

Hushing the child in her arms, she walked up and down, followed by Saraswati's calm, big black eyes.

"Thou art a fool, Maya," she said slowly, putting down the sugar horse. "Gopal's sweets would not have hurt the child so much as thy spitefulness." Then she turned to her work again among the niches. When she rose the basket was in her hand, the threads were broken, and the cover tilted as if something slender and supple had been allowed to slip out. Perhaps it had, for behind the sugar horse, standing in the lowermost niche, two specks of fire gleamed from the shadow. It was growing dark now, but the harvest moon riding high in the heavens and the now flaming fire aided the dying daylight, and a curious radiance, backed by velvety shadows, lay on everything.

"I must sweep out the niches thoroughly tomorrow," she said indifferently. "Methought just now I heard the rustle as of a _jelabi_.[44] They love to hide in such places, and therefore I bid thee but yesterday see to their cleansing, But, sure, what work is done in this house mine must be the hand to do it. See to your lentils, sister; methinks they burn at the bottom."

[Footnote 44: _Echis carinata_, the Indian viper. It lies coiled in a true-lover's knot, rustling its scales one against the other. It is the most vicious and irritable of all Indian snakes.]

Maya, with a petulant shrug of her shoulders, set down the child.

"Such work spoils my hands, and--and--folk like them pretty."

Even she, town born and town bred, did not dare before this grave-eyed peasant woman to name her husband's name in such a connection,[45] but Saraswati understood the allusion, and the simple, straightforward naturalism drawn from ages of rural life which was her heritage, rose up in arms against such depravity. But even as she lashed herself to revenge by the thought, everything that was stable seemed to shift, all that moved to stand still. Her heart ceased beating, the walls span round, the moon quivered, the flames grew rigid. Ah, no! one thing that moved would not pause. Chujju had caught sight of the sugar horse, and was creeping towards it, now on his little fat hands, now tottering on his little fat feet, his glistening eyes fixed on the niche which held those gleaming specks of fire.

[Footnote 45: A husband's name should never be mentioned by a wife, especially in matters referring to herself.]

No! nothing was too bad for Maya; and Dhunnu, the wise woman, had been right when she said that the charm lay in the child. It must be so--and death was naught. There! he was close now, one little hand stretched out, the dimples showing--the---- Ah!

A cry, fierce, almost imperative, and Saraswati had him in her arms, while something slim and grey fell from the niche in its spring, and wriggled behind a pile of brushwood.

"I saw its eyes," she gasped, still straining the child to her ample bosom, when Gurditta, brought thither by Maya's screams of "Snake! snake!" stood beside her, his breath coming fast, his manliness stirred to its depths.

Maya saw the danger swiftly. "Give him to me," she clamoured. "O husband, make her give him to me. She would kill him if she could. She put it there--I saw her put it there--I swear it."

Saraswati turned on her in calm contempt. "Thou liest, O Maya; since Time began, spirit of deceit and mother of illusion. Thou didst _not_ see me put it there."

Then, with the same dignity, she turned to the man.

"Master! Take the child. He is safe. This much is true, I saved him."

That night, when the moon still shone in the cloudless sky, Saraswati, her veil wrapped closely round her, stole softly from the homestead. Past the resting oxen, out among the serried battalions of maize and millet, where the tall sheaves, lying prone on the ground, looked like the bodies of those who had fallen in the day's fight; down on the sun-cracked borders of the tank, whence the water was sinking swiftly, now the rain had ceased; by the ghostly peepul trees, shorn of their branches which the camels love, and looking weird and human with great arms stretched skywards; so on to the burning ghât beyond, with its little cones of mud marking the spot of each funeral pyre, and the twinkling lights set here and there by pious survivors. Saraswati drew her veil tighter and sped faster as she passed through the more recent ashes, as yet uncovered, but swept into little heaps; and there--horrible sight!--still scattered, with the uncalcined bones gleaming in the moonlight, and a faint line of smoke still circling upwards, lay the most recent of all. That must be old Anant Ram, the _khuttri_ (merchant) who had died that morning: an evil man, come to his end.

She was trembling ere she reached the hut where Dhun Devi, the wise woman, kept watch and ward over the ashes. It was a miserable shanty, where she found the old woman asleep before a large iron pot, supported on a trivet. Beneath it some cowdung cakes smouldered slowly, yet not so slowly but that every now and again a blood-red bubble showed on the contents of the pot. A flaring oil-lamp, filched, doubtless, from those outside, stood in a smoke-blackened niche, and by its light you could see festoons of dank, blood-red drapery clinging, to a rope, while, with a drip, drip, drip, something fell upon the floor--something which ran in rills right out to the moonlight, and, sinking into the sand, stained it blood-red; a ghastly setting to the wise woman's crouching figure, even though Saraswati knew that Mai Dhunnu was engaged in no more nefarious occupation than dyeing the webs of her ignorant neighbours with madder.

The old crone stood up hastily, then sank to her low stool again when she had peered into her visitor's face. "Thou wilt not tell," she whispered in a hoarse croak, which, coming in reality from a throat affection, vastly enhanced her claims to wisdom in the eyes of the villagers. "Thou art of the old style; not like these apes of to-day, with their dog-eared books and their dyes which fade before a January sun." The chuckle she gave suited her surroundings well; so did the claw-like hand she laid suddenly on Saraswati's firm arm. "Well, daughter! Hast plucked up courage? Hast learnt to trust the wisdom of old Dhun Devi?"

Saraswati shook her head. "Thou must find other wisdom for me, mother," she said briefly. "Such is not for me."

"Obstinate! I tell thee 'tis the glamour of the child."

"'Tis not the child, though the gods know the poison hath bit deeper somehow since he came. Lo! I have tried it, and 'tis not my way. Nor would I kill her. That were too trivial, seeing she is not worth life. I want but my share. It is empty here, emptier than ever, somehow, since the boy was born."

She clasped her strong hands above her heart. The glow of the fire, spreading as the old woman fanned it with the tremulous breath of age, lit up the big black brows knit above the puzzled black eyes.

Dhun Devi straightened her bent back, and looked at her companion critically.

"Life is more than the shadow of a passing bird to such as thou, O Saraswati! 'Tis not wise. For death is naught, and life is naught. The soul of man circles ever, like the potter's wheel, upon its pivot. Have I not seen it? Have I not known it? Did I not go through the night of a thousand dangers myself, and bring five stalwart sons into the day? Where are they? Have they not passed into the dark again? Have not my hands piloted many through the Sorrowful Hour and sent many from it? Lo! the snake would not have harmed the child."

"I care not if thou speakest truth or not, O mother, though thou art learned above women in such thoughts, I know," muttered Saraswati sullenly, with drooping head. "Only this I know, that way is not mine. There must be others. See! I have brought thee my golden armlet. _Dhun_[46] was ever as a sign-post to Dhun Devi. Is't not so?"

[Footnote 46: Worldly-wealth.]

The old dame's fingers closed greedily on the bribe, careless of the open sneer which accompanied it. "Ways?" she echoed. "Of a surety there are ways, but none so simple as death."

"Ay," said Saraswati quietly, "I have thought of that. The well is deep, and the little feathery ferns in the crannies look kind. But they would say Saraswati, the Jâtni, had been ousted from her own well-land by a stranger, and that is not so. I heed not the girl; deceit is her portion. 'Tis something here." Again she laid her hand on her heart with a puzzled look. "Nor do I want _him_ only. Couldst thou not turn the child's mind to me, so that, seeing his love, Gurditta would hold me dearer also?"

Dhun Devi shook her head, but her keen, bright old eyes were on the other's face.

"There is a way," she whispered, after a pause, "but death lurks in it often with such as thou."

"Whose death?"

"Thine own. Do not all women know how the Sorrowful Hour----"

Saraswati caught the withered wrist in a fierce clasp.

"_Mai!_" she panted; "Mai Dhunnu! Dost speak of the Sorrowful Hour to me--to me--after all these years! Is there hope--hope even yet?"

"If thou art not afraid----"

"Afraid!"

* * * * *

It was sunrise in the homestead, and a new harvest was waiting in battalions for the sickle. The jasmine fountain showered its green stems to the ground, but it was bare of blossoms. They hung in chaplets from the thatch screen beneath which, on that stifling August night, a woman had been passing through her Sorrowful Hour. In the dim dawn the little oil-lamps set about the bed flickered uncertainly in the breeze which heralds the day, and glinted now and again on the lucky knife suspended by the twist of lucky threads above the pillow. In a brazier hard by some pungent spices scattered upon charcoal sent up a clear blue line, like the last faint smoke from a funeral pyre. All that wisdom could do Dhun Devi had done, but a dead girl-baby lay between Saraswati and the harvest visible through the gap in the plaited palisade. The midwife shook her head as she peered into the unconscious face on the pillow.

"Only a girl, after all the fuss," came Maya's high, clear voice, as she sat cuddling Chujju in her soft round arms--Chujju, whom the gods had spared. "To die for a girl--for a dead girl, too--what foolishness! But 'twas her own fault. 'Tis bad enough for us young ones, and dear payment, after all, for the fun; and she had escaped all these years----"

Dhun Devi's claw-like fingers stopped the liquid flow of words.

"Go, infamous!" she whispered fiercely. "Such as thou are not mothers. Thou art Maya, the desire of the flesh. Go, lest I curse the child for thy sake."

With a little shriek of dismay, half-real, half-pretended, the girl gathered the sleeping child in her arms and disappeared into the huts.

"The wheel slackens on its pivot," muttered the old woman, stooping again over the still form on the bed. "I must get her to Mother Earth, as a seed to the soil, ere it stops."

She stood at the gap and called. The fine fretwork of the acacia branches showed against the growing blue of the sky. The little golden puffs sent their violet perfume into the air. A bird sat among them, chirruping to its mate.

"Come," she said, and the tall bearded man followed her meekly. Together--he at the head, she at the feet--they laid Saraswati on the ground with the dead child, half-hidden in her veil, still between her and the great stretch of harvest beyond.

Suddenly, roused by the movement, she stirred slightly, and the big black eyes opened. Dhun Devi gripped the man's hand as if to detain him.

"The child--is it well with the child?" came in a faint voice.

Dhun Devi's clasp gripped firmer; a look recalling long past years came to her face.

"_Yea, mother, it is well; thy son sleeps in thine arms_."

Then, craning up from her crooked old age to reach his ear, she whispered swiftly:

"Say 'tis so if thou art a man, and bid her God-speed on her journey."

So, with her husband's hand in hers, a child in her arms, and a smile on her face, came the end of Saraswati's Sorrowful Hour.

A DANGER SIGNAL

They were an odd couple. The very trains as they sped past level crossing Number 57 gave a low whistle as if the oddities struck them afresh each time, and Craddock always went to the side of the cab, whence he could see those two motionless figures on either side of the regulation barrier which stood so causelessly in the middle of the sandy waste.

There must have been a road somewhere, of course, else there would have been no level crossing, but it was not visible to the passing eye. Perhaps the drifting sand had covered it up; perhaps no traffic ever did come that way, and there really was no need for old Dhunnu and his granddaughter to stand like ill-matched heraldic supporters displaying a safety signal. But they did.

They had done so ever since Dhunni--for the name had descended to her in the feminine gender--was steady enough on her feet to stand alone, and before that, even, she had given "line clear" from her grandfather's arms. For it was always "line clear." No train ever stopped at level crossing Number 57 of the desert section. Why should they? There was nothing to be seen far or near save sand, and the little square concrete-roofed, red-hot furnace of a place, suggestive of a crematorium, which happened on that particular railway to be the approved pattern for a gatekeeper's shelter.

It was very hot in summer, very cold in winter, and that was perhaps the reason why old Dhunnu suffered so much from malarial fever in the autumn months; those months which might otherwise have been so pleasant in the returning cool of their nights, and their promise of another harvest. The old man used to resent this fever in a dull sort of way, because it was so unnecessary in that rainless tract. To quiver and shake in a quartian ague when the battalions of maize are pluming themselves on their own growth, and the millet-seeds, tired of cuddling close to each other, are beginning to start on lengthening stemlets to see the world, was legitimate; but it was quite another thing to find a difficulty in keeping a signal steady when there was not a drop of moisture for miles and miles, save in the little round well which had been dug for the gatekeeper's use.

Dhunnu, however, had served the _Sirkar_ for long years in the malarial tracts under the hills before he came as a pensioner to level crossing 57, and when once the marsh-monarch lays firm hold of a man he claims him as a subject for all time. It was this difficulty, no doubt, in keeping a signal steady which, joined to the intense pleasure it gave to the child, had first led to little Dhunni holding the green flag, while Dhunnu on the other side of the gate kept the furled red one in his shaking hand ready for emergencies. Then the train would sweep past like a great caterpillar with red and green eyes, and red and green lights in its tail, and Craddock would look out of the cab, and say to himself that time must be passing, since the child was shooting up into a girl. And still it was always the green flag; always "line clear."

It became monotonous even to Dhunni who had been brought up to it, and while her chubby hand clutched the baton firmly she would look resentfully across at the furled red flag in her grandfather's shaking hand.

"Lo! _nânna_," she said spitefully, "some day it will shake so that the cloth will shake itself out, and then----"

He interrupted her with dignity, but in the tone in which a tit-mouse might reproach a tiger-cat; for Dhunni, as he knew to his cost, had a temper.

"By God's blessing, oh Dhun devi, that will never be, since east and west is there no cause sufficient to check progress; and as that is by order the green flag, so the green flag it will be."

Dhunni made no reply in words. She simply flung the safety signal in the dust and danced on it with a certain pompous vigour which made the whity-brown rag of a petticoat she wore as sole garment, cease even its pretensions to be called a covering. For they were very poor, these two; that was evident from the lack of colour in their clothing, which made them mere dusty brown shadows on the background of brownish dust.

"It shall be the red one some day, _nânna!_ Yea! some day it shall be the red flag, and then the train will stop, and then--and then," she gave one vindictive stamp to clinch the matter and walked off with her head in the air. The old man watched her retreating figure with shocked admiration, then picked up the dishonoured flag, dusted it, and rolled it up laboriously.

"Lo!" he muttered as a half-gratified smile claimed his haggard face, "she is of the very worst sort of woman that the Lord makes. A virtuous man need be prepared for such as she, so 'tis well she is betrothed to a decent house. Meanwhile in the wilderness she can come to no harm."

So far as the displaying of danger signals went, Dhunni herself was forced to admit the truth of this proposition, for even when the old man lay quivering and quaking, he kept the key of the box in which the red flag was locked, safely stowed away in his waistcloth. Once she tried to steal it, and when discovered in the act, took advantage of his prostration to argue the matter out at length,--her position being that the train itself must be as tired of going on, as she was of watching it. Whereupon he explained to her with feverish vividness the terrible consequences which followed on the unrighteous stopping of trains, to all of which she acquiesced with the greatest zest, even suggesting additional horrors, until it became a sort of game of brag between them as whose imagination would go the furthest.

Finally, as she brought him a cup of water from the well, she consoled both herself and him with the reflection that some day he must die of the fever, and then of course it would not matter to him if the train stopped or not, while she could satisfy herself as to whether those funny white people who looked out of the windows were real, or only stuffed dolls.

"_Arin budzart!_" he whimpered as he lay prostrate and perspiring. "Have I not told thee dozens of times they are _sahib logues?_ have I not seen them? have I----"

"_Trra_," replied Dhunni derisively, "that may be. I have not, but I mean to some day."

Then the old man, adding tears of weakness to the general dissolution, begged her, if a train must be stopped, to stop a "goods," or even a "mixed." She argued this point also at length, till the fever fiend leaving him, Dhunnu resumed his authority and threatened to whack her, whereupon she ran away, like a wild thing, into the desert.