Part 2

"At Punjtârni we met the returning pilgrims; among others Victor, very sick and sorry for himself physically, but of intolerable moral strength. He told us, between the intervals of petitions for pills and potions, that the remaining fourteen miles to the Cave were unusually difficult, and had been singularly fatal that year. On hearing this, Taylor, knowing my dislike to horrors, proposed taking a path across the hills instead of keeping to the orthodox route. Owing to scarcity of water and fuel, the servants and tents could only go some five miles farther along the ravine, so this suggestion would involve no change of plan. He added that there would also be a greater chance of finding 'that blessed anemone.' I don't think I ever saw so much drunkenness or so much devotion as I saw that evening at Punjtârni. It was hard indeed to tell where the one began and the other ended; for excitement, danger, and privation lent their aid to drugs, and a sense of relief to both. The very cliffs and glaciers resounded with enthusiasm, and I saw Sukya and Premi taking their part with the rest as if nothing had happened.

"Taylor and I started alone next morning. We were to make a long round in search of the Flower of Forgiveness, and come back upon the Cave towards afternoon. The path, if path it could be called, was fearful. Taylor, however, was untiring, and at the slightest hint of hope would strike off up the most break-neck places, leaving me to rejoin him as best I could. Yet not a trace did we find of the anemone. Taylor grew fretful, and when we reached the snow slope leading to the Cave, he declared it would be sheer waste of time for him to go up.

"'Get rid of your sins, if you want to, by all means,' he said; 'I've seen photographs of the place, and it's a wretched imposture even as a spectacle. You have only to keep up the snow for a mile and turn to the left. You'll find me somewhere about these cliffs on your return; and don't be long, for the going before us is difficult.' So I left him poking into every crack and cranny.

"I could scarcely make up my mind if I was impressed or disappointed with the Cave. Its extreme insignificance was, it is true, almost ludicrous. Save for a patch of red paint and a shockingly bad attempt at a stone image of Siva's bull, there was nothing to distinguish this hollow in the rock from a thousand similar ones all over the Himalayas. But this very insignificance gave mystery to the fact that hundreds of thousands of the conscience-stricken had found consolation here. '_What went ye out into the wilderness to see?_' As I stood for an instant at the entrance before retracing my steps, I could not but think that here was a wilderness indeed--a wilderness of treacherous snow and icebound rivers, peaked and piled up tumultuously like frozen waves against the darkening sky. The memory of Taylor's warning not to be late made me try what seemed a shorter and easier path than the one by which I had come; but ere long the usual difficulties of short cuts cropped up, and I had eventually to limp back to the slope with a badly cut ankle, which bled profusely despite my rough efforts at bandaging. The loss of blood was sufficient to make me feel quite sick and faint, so that it startled me to come suddenly on Taylor sooner than I expected. He was half kneeling, half sitting on the snow; his coat was off, and his face bent over something propped against his arm.

"'It's that boy,' he said shortly, as I came up. 'I found him just after you left, lying here--to rest, he says. It seems he has been making his way to the Cave ever since that day, without bite or sup, by the hills,--God knows how,--to avoid being turned back by the others. And now he is dying, and there's an end of it.'

"'The boy--not Amra!' I cried, bending in my turn.

"Sure enough, on Taylor's arm, with Taylor's coat over his wasted body, lay the young disciple. His great, luminous eyes looked out of a face whence even death could not drive the beauty, and his breath came in laboured gasps.

"'Brandy! I have some here,' I suggested in hot haste, moved to the idiotic suggestion by that horror of standing helpless which besets us all in presence of the Destroyer.

"Taylor looked at the boy with a grave smile and shook his head. 'To begin with, he wouldn't touch it; besides, he is past all that sort of thing. No one could help him now.' He paused, shifting the weight a little on his arm.

"'The Presence will grow tired holding me,' gasped the young voice feebly. 'If the _sahib_ will put a stone under my head and cover me with some snow, I will be able to crawl on by and by when I am rested. For it is close--quite close.'

"'Very close,' muttered the doctor under his breath. Suddenly he looked up at me, saying in a half-apologetic way, 'I was wondering if you and I couldn't get him up there--to Amar-nâth I mean. Life has been hard on him; he deserves an easy death.'

"'Of course we can,' I cried in a rush of content at the suggestion, as I hobbled round to get to the other side, and so help the lad to his legs.

"'Hollo,' asked Taylor, with a quick professional glance, 'what have you done to your ankle? Sit down and let me overhaul it.'

"In vain I made light of it, in vain I appealed to him. He peremptorily forbade my stirring for another hour, asserting that I had injured a small artery, and without caution might find difficulty in reaching the tents, as it would be impossible for him to help me much on the sort of ground over which we had to travel.

"'But the boy, Taylor!--the boy!' I pleaded. 'It would be awful to leave him here.'

"'Who said he was to be left?' retorted the doctor crossly. 'I'm going to carry him up as soon as I've finished bandaging your leg. Don't be in such a blessed hurry.'

"'Carry him! You can't do it up that slope, strong as you are, Taylor--I know you can't.'

"'Can't?' he echoed, as he stood up from his labours. 'Look at him and say can't again--if you can.'

"I looked and saw that the boy, but half conscious, yet restored to the memory of his object by the touch of the snow on which Taylor had laid him while engaged in bandaging my foot, had raised himself painfully on his hands and knees, and was struggling upwards, blindly, doggedly.

"'Damn it all,' continued the doctor fiercely, 'isn't that sight enough to haunt a man if he doesn't try? Besides, I may find that precious flower,--who knows?'

"As he spoke he stooped with the gentleness, not so much of sympathy, as of long practice in suffering, over the figure which, exhausted by its brief effort, already lay prostrate on the snow.

"'What is--the Presence--going--to do?' moaned Amra doubtfully, as he felt the strong arms close round him.

"'You and I are going to find the remission of sins together at Amar-nâth,' replied the Presence with a bitter laugh.

"The boy's head fell back on the doctor's shoulder as if accustomed to the resting-place. 'Amar-nâth!' he murmured. 'Yes! I am Amar-nâth.'

"So I sat there helpless, and watched them up the slope. Every slip, every stumble, seemed as if it were my own. I clenched my hands and set my teeth as if I too had part in the supreme effort, and when the straining figure passed out of sight I hid my face and tried not to think. It was the longest hour I ever spent before Taylor's voice holloing from the cliff above roused me to the certainty of success.

"'And the boy?' I asked eagerly.

"'Dead by this time, I expect,' replied the doctor shortly. 'Come on,--there's a good fellow,--we haven't a moment to lose. I must look again for the flower to-morrow.'

"But letters awaiting our return to camp recalled him to duty on account of cholera in the regiment; so there was an end of anemone hunting. The 101st suffered terribly, and Taylor was in consequence hotter than ever over experiments. The result you know."

"Yes, poor fellow! but the anemone? I don't understand how it came here."

My friend paused. "That is the odd thing. I was looking after the funeral and all that, for Taylor and I were great friends--he left me that herbarium in memory of our time in Cashmere. Well, when I went over to the house about an hour before to see everything done properly, his bearer brought me one of those little flat straw baskets the natives use. It had been left during my absence, he said, by a young Brahman, who assured him that it contained something which the great doctor _sahib_ had been very anxious to possess, and which was now sent by some one to whom he had been very kind.

"'You told him the _sahib_ was dead, I suppose?' I asked.

"'This slave informed him that the master had gained freedom, but he replied it was no matter, as all his task was this.' On opening the basket I found a gourd such as the disciples carry round for alms, and in it, planted among gypsum debris, was that anemone; or rather that is a part of it, for I put some in Taylor's coffin."

"Ah! I presume the _gosain_--Victor Emanuel, I think you called him--sent the plant; he knew of the doctor's desire?"

"Perhaps. The bearer said the Brahman was a very handsome boy, very fair, dressed in the usual black antelope skin of the disciple. It is a queer story anyhow--is it not?"

HARVEST.

[Respectfully dedicated to our law-makers in India, who, by giving to the soldier-peasants of the Punjab the novel right of alienating their ancestral holdings, are fast throwing the land, and with it the balance of power, into the hands of money-grubbers; thus reducing those who stood by us in our time of trouble to the position of serfs.]

"_Ai!_ Daughter of thy grandmother," muttered old Jaimul gently, as one of his yoke wavered, making the handle waver also. The offender was a barren buffalo doomed temporarily to the plough, in the hopes of inducing her to look more favourably on the first duty of the female sex, so she started beneath the unaccustomed goad.

"_Ari!_ sister, fret not," muttered Jaimul again, turning from obscure abuse to palpable flattery, as being more likely to gain his object; and once more the tilted soil glided between his feet, traced straight by his steady hand. In that vast expanse of bare brown field left by or waiting for the plough, each new furrow seemed a fresh diameter of the earth-circle which lay set in the bare blue horizon--a circle centring always on Jaimul and his plough. A brown dot for the buffalo, a white dot for the ox, a brown and white dot for the old peasant with his lanky brown limbs and straight white drapery, his brown face, and long white beard. Brown, and white, and blue, with the promise of harvest sometime if the blue was kind. That was all Jaimul knew or cared. The empire beyond, hanging on the hope of harvest, lay far from his simple imaginings; and yet he, the old peasant with his steady hand of patient control, held the reins of government over how many million square miles? That is the province of the Blue Book, and Jaimul's blue book was the sky.

"Bitter blue sky with no fleck of a cloud, Ho! brother ox! make the plough speed. [_Ai! soorin!_ straight, I say!] 'Tis the usurers' bellies wax fat and proud When poor folk are in need."

The rude guttural chant following these silent, earth-deadened footsteps was the only sound breaking the stillness of the wide plain.

"Sky dappled grey like a partridge's breast, Ho! brother ox! drive the plough deep. [Steady, my sister, steady!] The peasants work, but the usurers rest Till harvest's ripe to reap."

So on and on interminably, the chant and the furrow, the furrow and the chant, both bringing the same refrain of flattery and abuse, the same antithesis--the peasant and the usurer face to face in conflict, and above them both the fateful sky, changeless or changeful as it chooses.

The sun climbed up and up till the blue hardened into brass, and the mere thought of rain seemed lost in the blaze of light. Yet Jaimul, as he finally unhitched his plough, chanted away in serene confidence--

"Merry drops slanting from west to east, Ho! brother ox! drive home the wain; 'Tis the usurer's belly that gets the least When Râm sends poor folk rain."

The home whither he drove the lagging yoke was but a whitish-brown mound on the bare earth-circle, not far removed from an ant-hill to alien eyes; for all that, home to the uttermost. Civilisation, education, culture could produce none better. A home bright with the welcome of women, the laughter of children. Old Kishnu, mother of them all, wielding a relentless despotism tempered by profound affection over every one save her aged husband. Pertâbi, widow of the eldest son, but saved from degradation in this life and damnation in the next by the tall lad whose grasp had already closed on his grandfather's plough-handle. Târadevi, whose soldier-husband was away guarding some scientific or unscientific frontier, while she reared up, in the ancestral home, a tribe of sturdy youngsters to follow in his footsteps. Fighting and ploughing, ploughing and fighting; here was life epitomised for these long-limbed, grave-eyed peasants whose tongues never faltered over the shibboleth which showed their claim to courage.[3]

The home itself lay bare for the most part to the blue sky; only a few shallow outhouses, half room, half verandah, giving shelter from noon-day heat or winter frosts. The rest was courtyard, serving amply for all the needs of the household. In one corner a pile of golden chaff, ready for the milch kine which came in to be fed from the mud mangers ranged against the wall; in another a heap of fuel, and the tall, beehive-like mud receptacles for grain. On every side stores of something brought into existence by the plough--corn-cobs for husking, millet-stalks for the cattle, cotton awaiting deft fingers and the lacquered spinning-wheels which stand, cocked on end, against the wall. Târadevi sits on the white sheet spread beneath the quern, while her eldest daughter, a girl about ten years of age, lends slight aid to the revolving stones whence the coarse flour falls ready for the mid-day meal. Pertâbi, down by the grain-bunkers, rakes more wheat from the funnel-like opening into her flat basket, and as she rises flings a handful to the pigeons sidling on the wall. A fluttering of white wings, a glint of sunlight on opaline necks, while the children cease playing to watch their favourites tumble and strut over the feast. Even old Kishnu looks up from her preparation of curds without a word of warning against waste; for to be short of grain is beyond her experience. Wherefore was the usurer brought into the world save to supply grain in advance when the blue sky sided with capital against labour for a dry year or two?

"The land is ready," said old Jaimul over his pipe. "'Tis time for the seed, therefore I will seek Anunt Râm at sunset and set my seal to the paper."

That was how the transaction presented itself to his accustomed eyes. Seed grain in exchange for yet another seal to be set in the long row which he and his forbears had planted regularly, year by year, in the usurer's field of accounts. As for the harvests of such sowings? Bah! there never were any. A real crop of solid, hard, red wheat was worth them all, and that came sometimes--might come any time if the blue sky was kind. He knew nothing of Statutes of Limitation or judgments of the Chief Court, and his inherited wisdom drew a broad line of demarcation between paper and plain facts.

Anunt Râm, the usurer, however, was of another school. A comparatively young man, he had brought into his father's ancestral business the modern selfishness which laughs to scorn all considerations save that for Number One. He and his forbears had made much out of Jaimul and his fellows; but was that any reason against making more, if more was to be made?

And more _was_ indubitably to be made if Jaimul and his kind were reduced to the level of labourers. That handful of grain, for instance, thrown so recklessly to the pigeons--that might be the usurer's, and so might the plenty which went to build up the long, strong limbs of Târadevi's tribe of young soldiers--idle young scamps who thrashed the usurer's boys as diligently during play-time as they were beaten by those clever, weedy lads during school-hours.

"Seed grain," he echoed sulkily to the old peasant's calm demand. "Sure last harvest I left thee more wheat than most men in my place would have done; for the account grows, O Jaimul! and the land is mortgaged to the uttermost."

"Mayhap! but it must be sown for all that, else _thou_ wilt suffer as much as I. So quit idle words, and give the seed as thou hast since time began. What do I know of accounts who can neither read nor write? 'Tis thy business, not mine."

"'Tis not my business to give ought for nought--"

"For nought," broke in Jaimul, with the hoarse chuckle of the peasant availing himself of a time-worn joke. "Thou canst add that nought to thy figures, O _bunniah-ji!_[4] So bring the paper and have done with words. If Râm sends rain--and the omens are auspicious--thou canst take all but food and jewels for the women."

"Report saith thy house is rich enough in them already," suggested the usurer after a pause.

Jaimul's big white eyebrows met over his broad nose. "What then, _bunniah-ji?_" he asked haughtily.

Anunt Râm made haste to change the subject, whereat Jaimul, smiling softly, told the usurer that maybe more jewels would be needed with next seed grain, since if the auguries were once more propitious, the women purposed bringing home his grandson's bride ere another year had sped. The usurer smiled an evil smile.

"Set thy seal to this also," he said, when the seed grain had been measured; "the rules demand it. A plague, say I, on all these new-fangled papers the _sahib-logue_ ask of us. Look you! how I have to pay for the stamps and fees; and then you old ones say we new ones are extortionate. We must live, O _zemindar-ji!_[5] even as thou livest."

"Live!" retorted the old man with another chuckle. "Wherefore not! The land is good enough for you and for me. There is no fault in the land!"

"Ay! it is good enough for me and for you," echoed the usurer slowly. He inverted the pronouns--that was all.

So Jaimul, as he had done ever since he could remember, walked over the bare plain with noiseless feet, and watched the sun flash on the golden grain as it flew from his thin brown fingers. And once again the guttural chant kept time to his silent steps.

"Wheat grains grow to wheat, And the seed of a tare to tare; Who knows if man's soul will meet Man's body to wear.

Great Râm, grant me life From the grain of a golden deed; Sink not my soul in the strife To wake as a weed."

After that his work in the fields was over. Only at sunrise and sunset his tall, gaunt figure stood out against the circling sky as he wandered through the sprouting wheat waiting for the rain which never came. Not for the first time in his long life of waiting, so he took the want calmly, soberly.

"It is a bad year," he said, "the next will be better. For the sake of the boy's marriage I would it had been otherwise; but Anunt Râm must advance the money. It is his business."

Whereat Jodha, the youngest son, better versed than his father in new ways, shook his head doubtfully. "Have a care of Anunt, O _baba-ji_,"[6] he suggested with diffidence. "Folk say he is sharper than ever his father was."

"'Tis a trick sons have, or think they have, nowadays," retorted old Jaimul wrathfully. "Anunt can wait for payment as his fathers waited. God knows the interest is enough to stand a dry season or two."

In truth fifty per cent, and payment in kind at the lowest harvest rates, with a free hand in regard to the cooking of accounts, should have satisfied even a usurer's soul. But Anunt Râm wanted that handful of grain for the pigeons and the youngsters' mess of pottage. He wanted the land, in fact, and so the long row of dibbled-in seals dotting the unending scroll of accounts began to sprout and bear fruit. Drought gave them life, while it brought death to many a better seed.

"Not give the money for the boy's wedding!" shrilled old Kishnu six months after in high displeasure. "Is the man mad? When the fields are the best in all the country side."

"True enough, O wife! but he says the value under these new rules the _sahib-logue_ make is gone already. That he must wait another harvest, or have a new seal of me."

"Is that all, O Jaimul Singh! and thou causing my liver to melt with fear? A seal--what is a seal or two more against the son of thy son's marriage?"

"'Tis a new seal," muttered Jaimul uneasily, "and I like not new things. Perhaps 'twere better to wait the harvest."

"Wait the harvest and lose the auspicious time the _purohit_[7] hath found written in the stars? _Ai_, Târadevi! _Ai!_ Pertâbi! there is to be no marriage, hark you! The boy's strength is to go for nought, and the bride is to languish alone because the father of his father is afraid of a usurer! _Haè, Haè!_"

The women wept the easy tears of their race, mingled with half-real, half-pretended fears lest the Great Ones might resent such disregard of their good omens--the old man sitting silent meanwhile, for there is no tyranny like the tyranny of those we love. Despite all this his native shrewdness held his tenderness in check. They would get over it, he told himself, and a good harvest would do wonders--ay! even the wonders which the _purohit_ was always finding in the skies. Trust a good fee for that! So he hardened his heart, went back to Anunt Râm, and told him that he had decided on postponing the marriage. The usurer's face fell. To be so near the seal which would make it possible for him to foreclose the mortgages, and yet to fail! He had counted on this marriage for years; the blue sky itself had fought for him so far, and now--what if the coming harvest were a bumper?

"But I will seal for the seed grain," said old Jaimul; "I have done that before, and I will do it again--we know that bargain of old."

Anunt Râm closed his pen-tray with a snap. "There is no seed grain for you, _baba-ji_, this year either," he replied calmly.

Ten days afterwards, Kishnu, Pertâbi, and Târadevi were bustling about the courtyard with the untiring energy which fills the Indian woman over the mere thought of a wedding, and Jaimul, out in the fields, was chanting as he scattered the grain into the furrows--

"Wrinkles and seams and sears On the face of our mother earth; There are ever sorrows and tears At the gates of birth."

The mere thought of the land lying fallow had been too much for him; so safe in the usurer's strong-box lay a deed with the old man's seal sitting cheek by jowl beside Anunt Râm's brand-new English signature. And Jaimul knew, in a vague, unrestful way, that this harvest differed from other harvests, in that more depended upon it. So he wandered oftener than ever over the brown expanse of field where a flush of green showed that Mother Earth had done her part, and was waiting for Heaven to take up the task.