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JUNGLE TALES
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
“Mrs. Croker has already achieved a secure foothold in that temple of
Anglo-Indian fiction whereof Mr. Rudyard Kipling is the high-priest.
Her tales have a freshness and piquancy that are all their own....
So long as the author of ‘Diana Barrington’ can produce works of the
quality of ‘Village Tales and Jungle Tragedies,’ she will assuredly not
lack an audience.”--_Athenæum._
“These tales are really original and excellent work. Mrs. Croker knows
her India minutely, and proves her knowledge by a thousand delicate
touches.”--_Woman._
“Mrs. Croker writes of India as one knowing it well, and with deep
sympathy for the people among whom her time was spent, for the village
sorrows and tragedies she was able to share. And in a considerable
measure she succeeds in bringing home to readers at home the daily life
of the East.”--_Glasgow Herald._
“The stories are all written from a peculiar knowledge of the life
they describe, and with a lively eye directed to its picturesqueness.
They make an interesting and entertaining book, which will be heartily
enjoyed by every one who reads it.”--_Scotsman._
“The magician’s car of fiction next transports us to India, the
magician being that very competent and attractive writer Mrs. B. M.
Croker. Her ‘Village Tales’ are so good that they bracket her, in our
judgment, with Mrs. F. A. Steel in comprehension of native Indian life
and character.”--_Times._
“Mrs. Croker makes the tales interesting and attractive, and her ready
sympathy with the Indian people, whom we are gradually coming to know
through the interpretation of some of our very best writers, strikes
the reader afresh in this volume.”--_World._
“Mrs. Croker shows once more a pretty talent, and her volume is
replete with sentiment and romance. Her animal stories are really
touching.”--_Globe._
“Mrs. Croker’s volume is bright and readable. She has done good work
already in other fields; one expects a story of hers to be at any rate
pleasant reading. These Indian tales are no exception.”--_North British
Mail._
“Mrs. Croker’s stories show her grasp of Indian character, and her
realisation of the nameless charm which casts its glamour over the
East and its peoples.... ‘Two Little Travellers,’ the last story, is
exquisitely pathetic.”--_Star._
“The stories are among the best of their kind. The author knows equally
well how to write of Anglo-Indian or purely native life.”--_Morning
Post._
“Mrs. Croker, who knows India exceptionally well, and is a practised
writer, has handled this variety of subjects in a spirited and
entertaining style.”--_Literary World._
“A prettily got-up book containing seven Indian tales, well told,
with abundant evidence of a thorough knowledge of the country and its
people.... There is not a dull line in the book, and in its perusal the
desire for more keeps growing, even to the end of the last beautiful
tale of Indian life.”--_Asiatic Quarterly Review._
“Mrs. Croker’s seven little tales of native India are such very quick
and easy reading that many persons will probably overlook the skill
to which the result is due. The authoress evidently knows both what a
short story ought to be, and how to make one.”--_Graphic._
“Brilliant pictures of Indian life and manners. Mrs. Croker possesses
the pen of a ready writer united to the imagination of a true
artist.”--_Liberal._
“The tales are simple in themselves and plainly told, with an
unmistakable atmosphere of truth and reality about them.”--_Guardian._
“The quality of Mrs. Croker’s work is at this time sufficiently well
known, and it is enough to say that in her last volume are to be found
all those qualities which have secured for its predecessors a welcome
at the hands of the public.”--_Tablet._
[Illustration: HER BLACK EYES BLAZED WITH EXCITEMENT.]
JUNGLE TALES
BY B. M. CROKER
_Author of_
‘_Pretty Miss Neville_,’
‘_Diana Barrington_,’
‘_The Spanish Necklace_,’
‘_In Old Madras_,’
_etc._
A NEW IMPRESSION WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY JOHN CHARLTON
LONDON HOLDEN & HARDINGHAM 1913
“Ah! what a warning for thoughtless man,
Could field or grove, could any spot of earth,
Show to his eye an image of the pangs
Which it hath witnessed!”
Wordsworth.
THESE TALES ARE INSCRIBED
TO
OLD FRIENDS
IN THE CENTRAL AND NORTH-WEST PROVINCES
IN MEMORY OF
MANY PLEASANT HOURS IN CAMP AND CANTONMENT.
B. M. C.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
A Free-Will Offering 1
“The Missus.” A Dog Tragedy 37
The Betrayal of Shere Bahadur 63
“Proven or not Proven?” The True Story of Naim Sing, Rajpoot 96
An Outcast of the People 124
An Appeal to the Gods 146
Two Little Travellers 166
VILLAGE TALES
AND
JUNGLE TRAGEDIES.
A FREE-WILL OFFERING.
“Kismiss,” as the natives call it, is anything but a jovial and merry
season to me, and I heartily sympathize with those prudent souls who
flee from the station or cantonment, and bury themselves afar off
in the jungle, until the festive season has been succeeded by the
practical New Year! Christmas in India is an expensive anniversary to
a needy subaltern such as I am. Putting aside the necessary tips to
the mess-servants, the letter-corporal, and colour-sergeant, I have my
own retinue (about ten in number), who overwhelm me with wreaths and
flowers culled from my garden, and who expect, in return, solid rupees
of the realm. This is reasonable enough; but it passes the limits of
reason and patience when other peopled body-servants, peons, syces,
and all the barrack dhobies, and every “dog” boy in the station, lie
in ambush in order to thrust evil-smelling marigolds under my nose,
with expectant salaams! Last Christmas cost me nearly the price of a
pony--this Christmas, I resolved to fly betimes with my house-mate,
Jones of the D.P.W. We would put in for a week’s leave, and eat our
plum-pudding at least sixty miles from Kori.
Alas! my thrifty little scheme was knocked on the head by a letter
from my cousin Algy Langley. He is the eldest son of an eldest son;
I am the younger son of a second son: and whereas I am a sub. in an
infantry regiment, grilling on the plains of India, and working for my
daily bread, Algy has run out for one cold weather, merely in search of
variety and amusement.
“Why on earth should relations think it necessary to meet on one
particular day, in order to eat a tasteless bird and an indigestible
pudding?”
I put this question to Jones, as we sat in our mutual verandah, opening
the midday dâk.
“Just look at this; it’s a beastly nuisance!” and I handed him Algy’s
note, which said--
“Dear old Perky (my Christian name is Perkin),--This is to give notice
that I am coming to eat my Christmas dinner with you. I arrive on the
21st, per mail train.--Yours,
“A. Langley.”
“What is your cousin like?” inquired Jones.
“Oh, a regular young London swell, who has never roughed it in his
life. I suppose I shall have to turn out of my room,” I grumbled; “and
I must borrow Robinson’s bamboo cart to meet him, for I believe he
would faint if I put him in a bullock tonga at first--he must arrive at
that by degrees!”
“Is there no chance of our getting off to Karwassa? Wouldn’t he come
and have a try for the man-eater?” urged Jones.
“Not he!” I rejoined emphatically; “he is a lady-killer--that is his
only kind of sport. I’m glad I have not put in for my leave; you and I
will go later--the tiger will wait.”
“Yes, he has waited a good while,” retorted Jones, sarcastically;
“nearly three years, and about a dozen shikar parties have been got up
for his destruction, and still he keeps his skin! But, somehow, I have
a presentiment that _we_ shall get him.”
* * * * *
The next day Jones and I met Algy at the station. He had brought three
servants, a pile of luggage, and looked quite beautiful as he stepped
out on the platform, wearing a creaseless suit, Russia-leather boots,
gloves, and a white gauze veil to keep off the dust. His handkerchief
was suggestive of the most “up-to-date” delicate scent, as he passed
it languidly over his forehead, and gave directions to have his late
compartment cleared.
As books, an ice-box, fruit, a fan, cushions, and a banjo, were handed
out one by one, I gathered, from Jones’s expressive glance, that he
granted that my cousin was a hopeless subject for the jungle.
“Well, Perky,” he said, slapping me on the back, “I’ve got everything
now--what are you waiting for?”
“Your lady’s-maid,” I promptly answered, as I nodded at the banjo,
pillows, and fan.
“I like to be comfortable,” he confessed. “One may as well take one’s
ease as not; it has an excellent and soothing effect on the temper.”
But I noticed that he caught sight of Jones’s grin, and coloured
deeply--whether with rage or shame, I could not guess. As I drove my
guest up to our lines, I secretly marvelled as to what had brought him
to our little Mofussil station, a two days’ railway journey through
the flattest, ugliest country. He had been staying at Government
House, Calcutta, at various splendid Residencies, and had had every
opportunity of seeing India from the most commanding and luxurious
point of view. Why had he sought _me_ out?
Later on, as we sprawled in long chairs in my portico overlooking a
sun-baked compound,--with a view chiefly consisting of the back of my
neighbour’s stables, and Jones’s little brown bear, mowing and moping,
under a scraggy mango tree,--I put the inevitable question:
“Well, Algy, what do you think of India?”
“Not much,” he answered. “It is not a bit like what I have expected:
it is not as Eastern as Egypt. The scenery that I have seen consists
of bushes, boulders, and terra-cotta plains. I don’t care about ruins
and buildings; what I want to come at are the people and customs of the
land--so far, it’s all England, not India: England at the sea-side,
dressing, dancing, racing, flirting; clothes are thinner, manners are
easier; but it’s England--England--England!”
I did what I could for him. I took him to a garden-party, to call on
the beauty of the station, to write his name in the general’s book,
to mess, to a soldier’s sing-song; and still he was discontented. He
had been faintly amused with our “pot” gardens and trotting bullocks;
nevertheless, he continued to grumble in this style--
“Your band plays the last new coster song, your ladies believe that
they wear the latest fashions, your men read the latest news not two
days old, your servants speak English and speak it fluently. Your
butler plays the fiddle, and he told me this morning that my banjo was
‘awfully nice.’ I desire that you will introduce me (if you can) to
India without European clothes--stripped and naked. I want to get below
the surface, below officialdom, and general orders, and precedence;
scrape the skin, and show me Hindostan.”
“Show me something out of the common.” This was his querulous
parrot-cry.
“Would you care to come out into the jungle sixty miles away,” I
ventured, “to a place that has no English attributes, and help to shoot
a notorious man-eating tiger? There is a reward of five hundred rupees
for his skin. For the last two years he has devastated the country.”
“Like it!” cried Algy, suddenly, sitting erect, “why, it’s the very
thing. I’ll go like a shot. I am ready to start to-night. What’s the
name of the place?”
“Karwassa. This man-eater has killed, they say, more than a hundred
people, and if we shoot him, we cover ourselves with glory; if we fail,
we are no worse than half the regiment, and most of the station.”
Algy figuratively leapt at the idea; he was out of his chair, pacing
the verandah, long ere I had ceased to speak.
“How soon could we start?”
“As soon as I obtained leave,” I replied.
“Oh, bother leave!” he retorted, impatiently.
“Still, it is a necessary precaution,” I answered. “If I go without it
I shall be cashiered, and _that_ would be a bother.”
“All right; put in for it at once. The sooner we are off the better,”
cried Algy. “Let us get the first shikari in the province, and if he
puts us fairly on the tiger, the five hundred rupees shall be his. I
pay all expenses.”
“But Jones wants----”
“Yes, Jones, by all means,” he interrupted; “you had better lay your
heads together without delay. He told me he was a born organizer, so
you might, perhaps, leave the transport and commissariat in his hands,
whilst you secure leave, and the keenest and best shikari. Money _no_
object.”
“You are keen enough, Algy,” I remarked; “but, of course, you have no
experience of big game. _Can_ you shoot?”
“I can hit a stag, and I’ve accounted for crocodile, but I have never
seen a tiger in a wild state.”
“Ah! and you’ll find a tiger is quite another pair of shoes,” I assured
him impressively.
The day before Christmas we started in the highest spirits. Algy wore a
serviceable shikar suit, strong blue putties, and shooting-boots, and
looked as workmanlike as possible. Our destination, Karwassa, lay sixty
miles due north, and we travelled forty-five miles along the smooth
trunk road in a dogcart, with relays of horses, and arrived early in
the afternoon at Munser Dâk Bungalow--a neat white building, in a
neat little compound, that was almost swallowed up by the surrounding
jungle. Here we experienced our first breakdown. Jones prided himself
on doing everything on a “system”--but the system failed ignominiously.
Our luggage and servants were fifteen miles behind, and we could not
proceed that night, so we resigned ourselves into the hands of the
Dâk bungalow khansamah, who slew the usual Dâk bungalow dinner for
our behoof. There was a fair going on in the village, and we strolled
across to inspect it. A fair of the kind was no novelty to me; but
Algy was childishly delighted with all he witnessed, and stood gazing
in profound amazement at the stalls of Huka heads, pewter anklets,
bangles, and coarse, bright native cloths for turbans and sarees; the
money was chiefly copper pice and cowrie shells--the shell currency
was a complete revelation to our Londoner, as was a tangle-haired,
ash-bedaubed fakir, with his head thrust through a square iron frame,
so devised that rest was impossible. He could never lean back, never
lie down, never know ease. He had worn this instrument of torture for
twelve years, and was a most holy man--so Nuddoo, the shikari, informed
us.
“But what is the good of it?” demanded Algy. “What the dickens does he
do it for?”
“For a vow,” was the solemn reply.
“I’d rather be dead than have to wear an iron gate round my neck,”
rejoined Algy. “But I suppose he thinks he is doing the right thing,
and probably he is a good sort.”
And he gave the good sort five rupees.
Next morning we started in real earnest, for the real jungle--each on
a separate little cart or chukrun, drawn by a pair of small trotting
bullocks; the driver rode on the pole, and behind him there was just
room for one person, if he curled himself up, and sat cross-legged. We
formed quite a long procession, as we passed down the village street,
and all the population came out to speed the sahibs, “who were going
to try and shoot the Karwassa man-eater.” Judging by their looks, they
were by no means sanguine of our success.
Our road was a mere track, up and down the sides of shallow
water-courses, across the dry beds of great rivers, over low hills,
and through heavy jungle. The country grew wilder and wilder; here and
there we scared a jackal, here and there a herd of deer; villages were
very few and far between, and we had passed two that were absolutely
deserted: melancholy hamlets, with broken chatties, abandoned ploughs,
and grass-grown hearths--now the abode of wild dogs. We were gradually
approaching our destination, a cattle country, below a long range of
densely wooded hills; having halted at midday to rest our animals for a
few hours, we then set out again. But twenty miles is a long distance
for a little trotting bullock, especially if his head be turned from
home. The eager canter, or brisk trot, had now become a mere spasmodic
crawl; for the last mile Algy--the most keen and energetic of the
party--had been belabouring and shouting at his pair. What a sight for
his club friends, could they have beheld him, the elegant Algy, hoarse,
coatless, and breathless! In spite of his desperate exertions, his
cattle came to a full stop, and suddenly lay down--an example promptly
followed by others. “Darkness was coming,” urged Nuddoo, pointing to
the yellow sunset. “We were near an evil country, and it was about
_his_ usual time. Karwassa was two koss further, and we had best camp
and light fires, and spend the night where we had halted. The sahibs
could sleep under the carts, their servants were in waiting, also their
food--all would be well.”
I must honestly confess that I thought this a most sensible
proposition; but Algy, who had suddenly developed an entirely new
character, would not listen to it. During his short sojourn in India,
he had picked up a wonderful amount of useful Hindostani words,
which he strung together recklessly, and by means of some of them,
accompanied by frantic gesticulation, he informed all present that
“_he_ was not going to sleep under a cart, but was resolved to spend
the night at Karwassa. He would walk there.”
After a short, but stormy, altercation, my cousin carried his point,
and set out, accompanied (with great reluctance) by Jones, Nuddoo the
shikari, and myself. Algy took command of the party, and got over
the ground at an astonishing pace. The yellow light faded and faded,
and was succeeded by a grey deathly pallor that rapidly settled down
upon the whole face of nature. We marched two and two, along the
grass-grown, neglected roads, glancing askance at every bush, at every
big tuft of elephant grass (at least, I speak for myself). At last,
to my intense relief, the smoke and fires of a village came in view.
It proved to be Karwassa--Karwassa strongly entrenched behind its mud
walls and a bamboo palisade. After some parley we were admitted by the
chowkidar (or watchman), and presently surrounded by the villagers, a
poverty-stricken crew, with a depressed, hunted look.
“Once more a party of sahibs come to shoot the man-eaters,” they
exclaimed. “Ah, many sahibs had come and come and gone, and naught
availed them against the Bagh. He was no Janwar--but an evil spirit.”
“But two days ago,” said the Malgoozar, or head-man--a high-caste
Brahmin, with a high-bred face--“he had taken a boy from before his
mother’s eyes, as she tilled the patch of vegetables; the screams of
the child--he had heard them himself. Ah, ye-yo!”
And he shook his enormous orange turban, and his handsome dignified
head, in a truly melancholy fashion. “Moreover, the tiger had taken the
woman’s husband--there was not a house in the village that had not lost
at least one inmate.”
“Why did they not go away?” I asked.
“Yea--truly, others had abandoned their houses and lands, and fled--but
to what avail? The thing was not a Janwar, but a devil.”
A murmur of assent signified that the villagers had accepted their
scourge, with the apathetic fatalism of their race. We were presently
conducted to an empty hut, provided with broad string beds--and a
light. Our Christmas dinner was simple; it consisted of chuppatties
and well water, and our spirits were in keeping with our fare; the
surrounding misery had infected us. We were even indebted for our
present lodgings to the tiger--he had dined upon its former tenant
about a month previously. By all accounts he was old, and lame of one
hind leg, and had discovered that a human being is a far easier prey
than nimble cattle, or fleeting deer. He had studied the habits of his
victims, and would stalk the unwary, or the loiterer, like a great
cat. Alas! many were the tragedies; with success he had grown bolder,
and even broad noonday, and the interior of the village itself, now
afforded no protection from his horrible incursions.
The next morning our carts arrived, and we unpacked (the salt, tea,
and corkscrew had been forgotten). Afterwards we set out to explore,
first the vegetable patches, then the meagre crops, and finally we were
shown the dry river bed, the tiger’s high-road to Karwassa. We tracked
him easily in the soft, fine, white sand; there were his three huge
paws, and a fainter impression of the fourth. Also, there were marks of
something dragged, and several dark brown splashes; it was here that he
had carried off the wife of one of our present guides, who had looked
on,--being powerless to save her.
Needless to say, we were filled with a raging thirst for the blood of
this beast--Algy especially. He jawed, he bribed, he gesticulated, he
held long conferences with the villagers, with Nuddoo the shikari--an
active, leather-skinned man, with a cast in his left eye, who spoke
English fluently, and wore a tiger charm. Algy accommodated himself to
circumstances with astonishing facility. Most of the night we sat up
in a machan, or platform in a tree, over a fat young buffalo, hoping
to tempt the man-eater after dark. Subsequently Algy slept soundly on
his native charpoy, breakfasted on milk and chuppatties, and sallied
forth, gun on shoulder, to tramp miles over the surrounding country.
He was indefatigable, and easily wore _me_ out. As I frankly explained,
I could not burn the candle at both ends, and sit curled up in a
tree till two o’clock in the morning, and then walk down game that
self-same afternoon. He never seemed to tire, and he left the champagne
and whisky to us, and shot on milk or cold cocoa. His newly acquired
Spartan taste declined our imported dainties (tinned and otherwise),
and professed to prefer, in deference to our surroundings, a purely
vegetable diet.
It was an odd fancy, which I made no effort to combat. Naturally there
was more truffled turkey and _pâté de foie gras_ and boar’s head for
_us_! Algy was a successful shot, and reaped the reward of his energy
in respectable bags of black buck, hares, sand grouse, chickhira,
bustard, peacock--no, though sorely tempted, he refrained from bagging
the bird specially sacred to his hosts. Days and nights went by, and
so far we were as unsuccessful as our forerunners. In spite of our
fat and enticing young buffalo, whom we sometimes sat over from sunset
until the pale wintry dawn glimmered along the horizon, we never caught
one glimpse of the object of our expedition. Algy was restless, Nuddoo
at his wits’ end, whilst Jones had given up the quest as a bad job!
One evening we all gathered round the big fire in the village “chowk”
(for the nights were chilly), having a “bukh” with the elders, and,
being encompassed by a closely investing audience of the entire
population--including, of course, infants in arms--our principal topic
was the brute that had so successfully eluded us.
“He will never be caught save by one bait,” remarked a venerable man,
wagging his long white beard.
“And what is that, O my father?” I asked.
“A man or a woman,” was the startling reply; “and those we cannot give.”
“Yea, but we can!” cried a shrill voice. There was a sudden movement
in the crowd, and a tall female figure broke out of the throng, and
pushed her way into the open space and the full light of the fire.
She wore the usual dark red petticoat, short-sleeved jacket, and blue
cloth or veil over her head. This she suddenly tossed aside, and, as
she stood revealed before us, her hair was dishevelled, her black
eyes blazed with excitement; but she was magnificently handsome.
No flat-faced Gond this, but a Marathi of six-and-twenty years of
age--supremely beautiful.
“Protectors of the poor,” she cried, flinging out her two modelled
arms, jingling with copper bangles, “here am _I_. I am willing, and
thou shalt give _me_. The shaitan has slain my man and my son. When the
elephant is gone, why keep the goad? This devil of tigers has eaten
more than one hundred of our people, and I gladly offer my life in
exchange for his. Cattle! no”--with scorn. “He seeks not our flocks;
he seeks _us_! Have we not learned that, above all, he prefers women
folk and young? Therefore, behold I give myself”--looking round with a
dramatic gesture of her hand--“to save all these.”
“It is Sassi,” muttered the Malgoozar, “the widow of Gitan. Since seven
days her mind hath departed. She is mad.”
“Nay, my father, but I am wise! Truly, it is the sahib’s shikari who is
foolish, and of but little wit. He knows not the ground. There is the
stream close to the forest and the crops. The sahibs shall sit above
in the old bher tree, with their guns. They shall tie me up below.
Lo, I will sing, yea, loudly, and perchance the tiger will come. He
is now seven days without food from our village. Surely he must be
an-hungered. I will sing, and bring him to the great lords’ feet--even
to his death and mine. Then will my folk be avenged, and my name
remembered--Sassi the Marathi, who gave her life for her people!”
She paused, and every eye was fixed upon her as she stood amidst a
breathless silence, awaiting our answer, as immovable as a statue.
“Truly, what talk is so foolish as the talk of a woman?” began the
Malgoozar, fretfully. “Small mouth, big speech----”
“Nay, my father,” interrupted Nuddoo, eagerly, “but she speaks words
of wisdom, and ’tis I that am the fool. The lord sahib returns in two
days’ time--and we have done naught.”
As he spoke, his best eye was fixed on Sassi with an expression of
ravenous greed not to be described. Apparently he saw the five hundred
rupees now within a measurable distance!
“She can lure him, she shall stand on the stack of Bhoosa that pertains
to Ruckoo, the chowkidar; she will sing--the nights are still. The Bagh
will hear, he will come, and, ere he can approach, the sahibs will
shoot him. After all”--with a contemptuous shrug--“it is but a mad
woman and a widow.”
“Nuddoo,” shouted Algy, “if I ever hear you air those sentiments again,
I’ll shoot you. We don’t want that sort of bait; and, if we did, I
would sooner tie _you_ up, than a woman and a widow.”
Nuddoo’s eager protestations, and Algy’s expostulations, were loud and
long, and during them a stern-faced old hag placed her hand on Sassi’s
shoulder, drew her out of the crowd, and the episode was closed.
Our expedition that night was, as usual, fruitless. We climbed into
our tree platform, the now accustomed buffalo dozed in his place
undisturbed. Evidently Algy’s mind dwelt on the recent scene at the
chowk, and he harangued me from time to time, in an excited whisper, on
the subject of Sassi’s heroism, her wonderful beauty, and Nuddoo’s base
suggestion. He was still whispering, when I fell asleep. And now it
had come to our last day but one. Jones looked upon further effort as
supreme folly. He wanted, for once, a night’s unbroken rest, and at six
o’clock we left him lying on his string bed, on the flat of his back,
smoking cigarettes and reading a two-shilling novel--a novel dealing
with smart folk in high life--a book that carried his thoughts far, far
from a miserable mud village in the C.P. and its living scourge. How I
envied Jones! I would thankfully have excused myself, but Algy was _my_
cousin; he had taken command of the trip, and of me, ever since we had
quitted the great trunk road--and I was entirely under his orders.
Nuddoo was not above accepting a hint; this time our machan was lashed
into a big pepul tree on the border of the forest, and the edge of a
stream that had its home in the hills. We were about two miles from
Karwassa as the crow flies, and, as we were rather early, we had
ample time to look about us; the scene was a typical landscape in
the Central Provinces. To our left lay the hills, covered with dense
woodlands, from whose gloomy depths emerged the now shallow river,
which trickled gently past us over its bed of dark blue rock and
gravel. Beyond the stream, and exactly facing us, lay a vast expanse of
grain--_jawarri_, _gram_, and vetches--as far as the eye could reach,
the monotonous stretch being broken, here and there, by a gigantic and
solitary jungle tree. To the right, and on our side of the bank, was
an exquisite sylvan glade, a suitable spot to which the forest fairies
might issue invitations to the neighbouring elves to “come and dance
in the moonbeams.” Between the great trees, the waving crops, and the
murmuring brook, I could almost have imagined myself in the midlands
of England--save for certain tracks in the sand beneath our tree. Its
enormous roots were twisted among rocks and boulders, and, where a spit
of gravel ran out into the clear water, were many footprints, which
showed where the bear, hyena, tiger, and jackal had come to slake their
thirst. I noticed that Nuddoo seemed restless and strange, and that his
explanations and answers were incoherent, not to say foolish.
“This looks a likely enough place,” said Algy, with the confidence of
a man who had been after tiger for years. “But, I say, Nuddoo, where’s
the chap with the buffalo--where is our tie-up?”
“Buffalo never started yet--plenty time--coming by-and-by, at
moonrise,” stammered Nuddoo; and, as I climbed into the machan, and he
took his place next me, with our rifles, it struck me that Nuddoo was
not sober. He smelt powerfully of raw whisky--our whisky--his lips were
cracked and dry, and his hand shook visibly. What had he been doing?
“It will be an awful sell if there is no tie-up, and the tiger happens
to go by,” said Algy, irritably.
“The gara will be here without fail, your honour’s worship. It will be
all right, I swear it by the head of my son. Moreover, we will get the
tiger--to-night he touches his last hour.”
There was no question that Nuddoo, for the first time in my experience,
was very drunk indeed. Presently the full moon rose up and illuminated
the lonely landscape, the haunted jungle, the crops, the glade, and
turned the forest stream to molten silver. It was nine o’clock, and,
whilst Nuddoo slumbered, Algy and I held our breath, as we watched
a noble sambur stag come and drink below us. He was succeeded by an
old boar, next came a hyena; it was a popular resort; in short, every
animal appeared but the one we wanted--and _he_ was undoubtedly in the
neighbourhood, for the deer seemed uneasy.
It was already after ten, and Algy was naturally impatient, and eagerly
looking out for our devoted “gara.” He and I were bending forward,
listening anxiously; the forest behind us seemed full of stealthy
noises, but we strained our ears in vain for the longed-for sound of
buffalo hoofs advancing from the front. Nuddoo still slept soundly, and
at last Algy, in great exasperation, leant over and shook him roughly.
“Ay,” he muttered, in a sleepy grunt, “it is all right, sahib, the gara
will come without fail.”
Even whilst he spoke, we heard, not fifty yards away, the voice of a
woman singing in the glade, and Nuddoo now started up erect, and began
to tremble violently.
It was light as day, as we beheld Sassi advancing slowly in our
direction, singing in a loud clear voice an invocation to Mahadeo the
Destroyer!
When she had approached within earshot she halted, and, raising her
statuesque face to her namesake the moon, chanted--
“O great lords in the pepul tree, whereto Nuddoo, the drunkard,
hath led you,
Behold, according to my promise, lo! I have come.
I sing to my gods, and perchance I will bring the tiger to your
honours’ feet.”
For the space of three heart-beats, we remained motionless--paralyzed
with horror,--and then Nuddoo, who was gibbering with most mysterious
terror, gave me a sudden and an involuntary push.
There, to the left, was _something_ coming rapidly through the crops!
The grain parted and waved wildly as it passed; in a moment a huge
striped animal, the size of a calf, had crossed the river with a
hurried limp.
“Kubberdar! Bagh! Bagh!” roared Algy to the woman. To me, “You’ve got
him!”
Undoubtedly it was _my_ shot, but I was excessively flurried--it was
new to me to have a human life hanging on my trigger; as he sprang
into the open glade I fired--and missed. I heard my cousin draw in
his breath hard; I saw the woman turn and face us. The tiger’s spring
and Algy’s shot seemed simultaneous; as the echo died away, there
was not another sound--the great brute lay dead across the corpse
of his victim. I was now shaking as much as Nuddoo; my bad aim had
had a frightful result. Before I could scramble down, Algy, with
inconceivable rashness, was already beside the bodies, where they lay
in the middle of the glade--the monster stretched above his voluntary
prey.
The news spread to the village in some miraculous manner. Had the
birds of the air carried the great tidings? The entire community were
instantly roused by the intelligence. Man, woman, yea, and child, came
streaming forth, beating tom-toms and shouting themselves hoarse with
joy. They collected about the tiger--who was evidently of far more
account than the woman--they kicked him, cursed him, spat on him, and
secretly stole his whiskers for a charm against the evil eye. They
thrummed the tom-toms madly as they marched round and round Algy--the
hero of the hour.
Nuddoo had now entirely forgotten his tremors, he was almost delirious
with excitement; the five hundred rupees were his, he could live on
them--and on his reputation as the slayer of the great Karwassa
man-eater--for the remainder of his existence. He talked till he
frothed at the corners of his mouth, he boasted here, he boasted
there. He declared that “_he_ had encouraged Sassi, and given her an
appointment as the gara, or tie-up. Yea, she had spoken truly--there
was no other means!”
Released from his honours and the transports of the tom-toms, these
fatal words fell on Algy’s ears, and he went straight for Nuddoo. What
he said or did, I know not, but this I know, that from that moment I
never saw Nuddoo again until weeks later, when he came to me by stealth
in Kori, exceedingly humble and sober, and received, according to
Algy’s instructions, “five hundred rupees; but if he asks you for a
chit,” wrote Algy, “kick him out of the compound.”
The tiger was big and heavy, he required twenty coolies to carry him
back to Karwassa--for his last visit. Sassi was borne on the frame of
our machan--ere she was placed there, an old hag covered the beautiful
dead face with her veil, and slipped off her sole ornaments, the copper
bangles, in a business-like fashion.
“Give me one of those,” said Algy, who was standing by. “I will pay you
well. Were you her mother?”
“Her grandmother,” replied the crone. “She was mad. Lo, now she is
gone, I shall surely starve!” and she began to whimper for the first
time. Truly, she knew this sahib was both rich and open-handed.
Algy and I slept soundly for the remainder of that eventful night;
but it is my opinion that the villagers never went to rest at all.
The moment we set foot in the street the next morning, a vast crowd
surged round my cousin; every one of them carried a string of flowers
or--highest compliment--a gilded lime. Women brought their children,
from the youngest upwards, and Algy was soon the centre of the village
nursery. All these little people were solemnly requested “to look well
upon that honoured lord, and to remember when they were old, and to
tell it to their children, that their own eyes had rested on the great
sahib who had killed the shaitan of Karwassa.”
Algy was loaded with honours and flowers; I must confess that he bore
them modestly, and he, on his side, paid high tribute to Sassi the
Marathi. He commanded that she should have a splendid funeral. The
most costly pyre that was ever seen in those parts was erected, the
memory of the oldest inhabitant was vainly racked to recall anything
approaching its magnificence. The village resources, and the resources
of three other hamlets, were strained to the utmost tension to provide
sandal-wood, oil, jewels, and dress. If Algy’s London “pals” could hear
of him spending fifty pounds on the burning of a native woman, how they
would laugh and chaff him! I hinted as much, and got a distinctly nasty
reply. He was quite right; roughing it _had_ a bad effect upon his
temper. At sundown the whole population assembled by the river bank to
witness the obsequies of Sassi the widow of Gitan; they marvelled much
(and so did I) to behold my cousin standing by, bare-headed, during the
entire ceremony.
We set out on our return journey that same evening--travelling by
moonlight had no dangers now! Algy distributed immense largesse among
his friends, viz. the entire community (he also paid all our expenses
like a prince). He and the inhabitants of Karwassa parted with many
good wishes and mutual reluctance; indeed, a body of them formed a
running accompaniment to us for nearly a dozen miles. Our spoil, the
tiger’s skin, was a poor specimen. The stripes had a dull, faded
appearance; but it measured, without stretching, a good honest ten
feet from nose to tip of tail. Once we were out of the jungle, and
back in the land of bungalows, daily posts, and baker’s bread, Algy
relapsed from a keen and intrepid sportsman into an indolent, drawling
dandy. The day after our return to Kori, he took leave of me in these
remarkable words--
“Well, good-bye, Perky. You are not a bad sort, though you are not much
of a chap to shoot or rough it. However, I have to thank you for taking
me off the beaten track, and showing me something which I shall never
forget,--and that was entirely out of the common.”
“THE MISSUS.”
A DOG TRAGEDY.
When the Royal British Skirmishers were quartered in Bombay, their
second in command was Major Bowen, a spare, grizzled, self-contained
little soldier, who lived alone in one of those thatched bungalows
that resemble so many monstrous mushrooms, bordering the racecourse.
“The Major,” as he was called _par excellence_, was best described by
negatives. He was not married. He was not a ladies’ man. Nor was he
a sportsman; nor handsome, young, rich, nor even clever--in short,
he was not remarkable for anything except, perhaps, his dog. No one
could dispute the fact that Major Bowen was the owner of an uncommon
animal. He and this dog had exchanged into “the Skirmishers” from
another regiment six years previously, and though the pair were at
first but coldly received, they adapted themselves so admirably to
their new surroundings that ere long they had gained the esteem and
goodwill of both rank and file; and, as time wore on, there actually
arose an ill-concealed jealousy of their old corps, and a disposition
to ignore the fact that they had not always been part and parcel of
the gallant Skirmishers. Although poor, and having but little besides
his pay, the Major was liberal--both just and generous; and if he was
mean or close-fisted with any one, that person’s name was Reginald
Bowen. He had an extremely lofty standard of honour and of the value of
his lightest word. He gave a good tone to the mess, and though he was
strict with the youngsters, they all liked him. Inflexible as he could
look on parade or in the orderly-room, elsewhere he received half the
confidences of the regiment; and many a subaltern had been extricated
from a scrape, thanks to the little Major’s assistance--monetary and
otherwise. He was a smart officer and a capital horseman, and here was
another source of his popularity. He lent his horses and ponies, with
ungrudging good faith, to those impecunious youths who boasted but
the one hard-worked barrack “tat;” and many a happy hour with hounds,
or on the polo-ground, was spent on the back of the Major’s cattle.
Major Bowen did not race or hunt, and rarely played polo; in fact, he
was not much interested in anything--although upwards of forty, he was
supremely indifferent to his dinner!--the one thing he really cared
about was his _dog_: a sharp, well-bred fox-terrier, with bright eyes
and lemon-coloured ears,--who, in spite of the fact that her original
name was “Minnie,” had been known as “the Missus” for the last five
years. This name was given to her in joke, and in acknowledgment of her
accomplishments; the agreeable manner in which she did the honours of
her master’s bungalow, and the extraordinary care she took of him, and
all his property. It was truly absurd to see this little creature--of
at most sixteen pounds’ weight--gravely lying, with crossed paws, in
front of the Major’s sixteen hands “waler,” whilst he was going round
barracks, or occupied in the orderly-room. Her pose of self-importance
distinctly said, “The horse and syce are in _my_ charge!”
She went about the compound early every morning, and rigorously turned
out vagrants, suspicious-looking visitors to the servants’ quarters,
and all dogs and goats! She accompanied her master to mess, and fetched
him home, no matter how late the hour--and through the rains (and they
are no joke in Bombay) it was just the same; there was the chokedar,
with his mackintosh and lantern; and there was also, invariably, the
shivering, sleepy little Missus. It was of no avail to tie her up at
home; not only were her heartrending howls audible for a quarter of a
mile, but on one occasion she actually arrived under the dinner-table,
chain and all, to the discomfort of the Colonel’s legs, the great
scandal of the mess-sergeant, and her own everlasting disgrace! So
she was eventually suffered--like wilful woman--to have her way.
Her master’s friends were her friends, and took the Missus quite
seriously--but she drew the line at dogs. It must be admitted that her
manners to her own species were--not nice. She had an unladylike habit
of suddenly sitting down when she descried one afar off, and sniffing
the, so to speak, tainted air, that was nothing more nor less than a
deliberate insult to any animal with the commonest self-respect; many a
battle was fought, many a bite was given and received. The Missus was
undeniably accomplished; she fetched papers and slippers, gave the paw,
and in the new style--on a level with her head, walked briskly on her
hind legs, could strum on the piano, and sing, accompanying herself to
a clear, somewhat shrill, soprano. There was a little old pianette in
the Major’s sitting-room, on which she performed amid great applause.
It was _not_ true that the instrument had been purchased solely for her
use, or that she practised industriously for two hours a day. No--the
pianette had been handed over to her master by a young man (who had
subsequently gone to the dogs) as the only available payment of a sum
the Major had advanced for him. Battered old tin kettle as it was, that
despised piano had cost one hundred pounds! But no one dreamt of _this_
when they laughed at its shortcomings. The Missus was passionately fond
of music, and escorted her owner to the band; but she escorted him
almost everywhere--to the club, round the barracks, the racecourse,
to church--here she was ignominiously secured in the syce’s “cupra,”
as she had a way of stealthily peeping in at the various open doors,
and endeavouring to focus her idol, which manœuvre--joined with her
occasional assistance in the chanting--proved a little trying to the
gravity of the congregation. Of course she went to the hills--where she
had an immense acquaintance; she had also been on active service on the
Black Mountain, and when one night a prowling Afridi crept on his hands
and knees into the Major’s tent, he found himself unexpectedly pinned
by a set of sharp teeth,--he carried the mark of that bite to his grave.
Major Bowen was not the least ashamed of his affection for his dog.
She was his weak point--even the very Company’s dhobies approached him
through her favour. He was president of the mess, and in an excellent
manner had officiated for years in that difficult and thankless
office; a good man of business--prompt, clear-headed, methodical, and
conscientious. No scamping of accounts, no peculations overlooked, a
martinet to the servants, and possibly less loved than feared. But
this is a digression from the Missus. Her master was foolishly proud of
her good looks--very sensitive respecting her little foibles (which he
clumsily endeavoured to conceal), and actually touchy about her age!
When the Missus had her first, and only, family, it was quite a great
local event. The Major’s establishment was turned completely upside
down; there was racing and chasing to procure two milch goats for
the use of the infants and their mother, and a most elegant wadded
basket was provided as a cradle. But, alas! the Missus proved a most
indifferent parent. She deserted her little encumbrances at the end
of one day, and followed her master to the Gymkana ground. He was
heartily ashamed of her, and positively used to remain indoors for the
sake of keeping up appearances. He could not go to the club, and have
the Missus waiting conspicuously outside with the pony, when all the
world knew that she had no business to be there, but had four young
and helpless belongings squealing for her at home! She accorded them
but little of her company, and appeared to think that her nursery cares
were entirely the affair of the two milch goats! One of her neglected
children pined, and dwindled, and eventually died, was placed in a
cigar-box, and buried in a neat little grave under a rose-bush in the
compound, whilst its unnatural mamma looked on from afar off, a totally
uninterested spectator! The three survivors were handsome puppies, and
the Major exhibited them with pride to numerous callers, and finally
bestowed them among his friends (entirely to please their mother,
whom they bored to death). They were gratefully accepted, not merely
on their own merits, but also as being a public testimonial of their
donor’s high opinion and esteem.
* * * * *
It was towards the end of the monsoon, when the compound was almost
afloat, and querulous frogs croaked in every corner of the verandahs,
that Major Bowen became seriously ill with low malarious fever. He had
been out ten years--“five years too long,” the doctor declared; “he
must go home at once, and never return to India.” This was bad news for
the regiment, and still worse for the invalid, who helped a widowed
sister with all he could spare from his colonial allowances. There
would not be much margin on English pay!
He was dangerously ill in that lofty, bare, whitewashed bedroom in
Infantry Lines. He would not be the first to die there. No,--not by
many. His friends were devoted and anxious. The Missus was devoted and
distracted. She lay all day long at the foot of his cot, watching and
listening, and following his slightest movement with a pair of agonized
eyes.
At length there was a change--and for the better. The patient was
promoted into a cane lounge in the sitting-room, to solids, and to
society--as represented by half the regiment. He looked round his
meagrely furnished little room with interested eyes. There was not
a speck of dust to be seen, everything was in its place, to the
letter-weight on the writing-table, and the old faded photos in their
shabby leather frames. Missus’s basket was pushed into a far corner.
She had not used it for weeks. He and Missus were going home, and would
soon say good-bye for ever to the steep-roofed thatched bungalow,
the creaking cane chairs, the red saloo purdahs, to the verandahs,
embowered in pale lilac “railway” creeper, to the neat little
garden--to the regiment--to Bombay. Their passages were taken. They
were off in the _Arcadia_ in three days.
* * * * *
That afternoon, the Major had all his kit and personal property paraded
in his sitting-room, in order that the packing of his belongings (he
was a very tidy man) should take place under his own eyes. The bearer
was in attendance, and with him his slave and scapegoat--the chokra.
The bearer was a stolid, impassive-looking Mahomedan, with a square
black beard, and a somewhat sullen eye.
“Abdul,” said his master, as his gaze travelled languidly from one
neatly folded pile of clothes to another--from guns in cases to
guns not in cases, to clocks, revolvers, watches, candlesticks--the
collection of ten years, parting gifts, bargains, and legacies--“you
have been my servant for six years, and have served me well. I have
twice raised your wages, and you have made a very good thing out of me,
I believe, and can, no doubt, retire and set up a ticca gharry, or a
shop. I am going away, and never coming back, and I want to give you
something of mine as a remembrance--something to remember me by, you
understand?”
The bearer deliberately unfolded his arms, and salaamed in silence.
“You may choose anything you like out of this room,” continued the
Major, with unexampled recklessness.
Abdul’s eyes glittered curiously--it was as if a torch had suddenly
illumined two inky-black pools.
“Sahib never making joke--sahib making really earnest?”--casting on
him a glance of almost desperate eagerness. The glance was lost on his
master, whose attention was fixed on a discarded gold-laced tunic and
mess-jacket.
“Of course,” he said to himself, “Abdul will choose them,” for gold
lace is ever dear to a native heart, it sells so well in the bazaar,
and melts down to such advantage.
“Making earnest!” repeated the invalid, irritably. “Do I ever do
otherwise? Look sharp, and take your choice.”
“Salaam, sahib,” he answered, and turned quickly to where the Missus
was coiled up in a chair. “I take my choice of anything in this room.
Then I take--the--dog.”
“The--_dog_!” repeated her owner, with a half-stupefied air.
“Verily, I am fond of Missy. Missy fond of master. The dog and I will
remember the sahib together, when he is far away.”
The sahib felt as if some one had suddenly plunged a knife in his
heart. In Abdul’s bold gaze, in Abdul’s petition, he, too late,
recalled the solemn (but despised) warning of a brother-officer:
“That bearer of yours is a vindictive brute; you got his son turned out
of the mess, and serve him right, for a drunken, thieving hound! But
sleek as he looks, Abdul will have it in for you yet;” and this was
accomplished, when he said, “The dog and I, sahib, will remember you
together.”
Major Bowen was still desperately weak, and he had just been dealt
a crushing blow; but the spirit that holds India was present in
that puny, wasted frame, and, with a superhuman effort, he boldly
confronted the two natives--the open-mouthed, gaping chokra, the
respectfully exultant bearer--and said, “Atcha” (that is to say,
“good”), “it is well;” and then he feebly waved to the pair to depart
from him, for he was tired.
Truly it was anything but “good.” It seemed the worst calamity that
could have befallen him. He was alone, and face to face with a terrible
situation. He must either forfeit his word, or his dog,--which was it
to be?
In all his life, to the best of his knowledge, he had never broken his
faith, and now to do it to a native!--that was absolutely out of the
question. But his dog--his friend--his companion--with whom he never
meant to part, as long as she lived (for _she_ had given her to him).
He sat erect, and looked over at the Missus, where she lay curled up;
her expressive eyes met his eagerly.
Little, O Missus, do you guess the fatal promise that has just been
made, nor how largely it concerns _you_. Her master lay back with
a groan, and turned his face away from the light, a truly miserable
man! His faithful Missus!--to have to part with her to one of the
regiment would have been grief enough; but to a Mahomedan, with their
unconcealed scorn of dogs! He must have been mad when he made that rash
offer; but then, in justification, his common sense urged, “How was
he to suppose that Abdul would choose anything but a silver watch, a
gun, or the worth of fifty rupees?” Major Bowen was far from being an
imaginative man, but as he lay awake all night long, and listened to
the wild roof-cats stealing down the thatch, and heard them pattering
back at dawn, one mental picture stood out as distinctly as if he was
looking at it with his bodily sight, and it was actually before him.
A low, squalid mud hut in a bazaar; a native string bed, and tied to
it by a cord--_the Missus_. “The Missus,” with thin ribs, a staring
coat, and misery depicted on her little face, the sport of the children
and the flies--starved, forlorn, heartbroken--dumbly wondering what had
happened to her master, and why he had so cruelly deserted her! Oh,
when was he coming to fetch her? Not knowing, she was at least spared
_this_--that he would never come.
What an insane promise! As he recalled it, he clenched his hands in
intolerable agony. Why did he not _offer_ his watch--his rifle? he
would give Abdul a thousand rupees, gladly, to redeem the dog, but his
inner consciousness assured him that Abdul, thanks to him, was already
well-to-do, and that his revenge was worth more to him than money. This
would not be the case with most natives, but he knew, to his cost, that
Abdul’s was a stern, tenacious, relentless nature. At one moment, he
had decided to poison the Missus with his own hands--prussic acid was
speedy; at another, he had resolved to remain in India, doctors or no
doctors.
“And sacrifice your life?” again breathed common sense. “Die for a
dog!” True, but the dog was not a dog to him. She was his comrade,
his sympathizer, his friend. Meanwhile, the object of all these
mental wrestlings and agonies slept the sleep of the just, innocent,
and ignorant; but in any case, it is a question if a dog’s anxieties
ever keep it awake. Her master never closed his eyes; he saw the dawn
glimmer through the bamboo chicks; he saw Abdul, the avenger, appear
with his early tea, and Abdul found him in high fever; perhaps Abdul
was not greatly surprised!
Friends and brother-officers flocked in that day, and sat with the
Major, and they noted with concern that he looked worse than he had
done at any period of his illness. His naturally pinched face was
worn and haggard to a startling degree. Moreover, in spite of the
news of the high prices his horses had fetched, he was terribly
“down,” and why? A man going home, after ten years of India, is
generally intolerably cheerful. They did their best to enliven him,
these good-hearted comrades, and--unfailing topic of interest--they
discoursed volubly and incessantly of the Missus.
“She is looking uncommonly fit,” said young Stradbrooke, the owner of
one of her neglected children. “She knows she is going to England. She
was quite grand with me just now! She hates boating like the devil! I
wonder how she will stand fourteen days at sea?”
There was a perceptible silence after this question, and then the Major
said in a queer voice--
“She is--not--going.”
“Not going?” An incredulous pause, and then some one exclaimed: “Come,
Major, you know you would just as soon leave your head behind.”
“All the same--I am leaving her----”
“And which of us is to have her?” cried the Adjutant. “Take notice,
all, that I speak first. You won’t pass over me, sir. Missus and I
were always very chummy, and I want her to look after my chargers and
servants, fetch my slippers, bring me home from mess--and to take care
of me and keep me straight.”
“I have already given her away to----” the rest of the sentence seemed
to stick in the Major’s throat, and his face worked painfully.
“Away to whom?” repeated young Stradbrooke. “Say it’s to _me_, sir.
I’ve one of the family already--and Missus likes me. I know her pet
biscuits, and there are heaps of rats in my stables--such whoppers!”
“Given her--to the bearer--Abdul,” he answered, stoutly enough, though
there was still a little nervous quivering of the lower lip.
If the ceiling had parted asunder and straightway tumbled down on
their heads, the Major’s audience would not have been half so much
dumfoundered. For a whole minute they sat agape, and then one burst
out--
“I say, Major, it’s a joke--you would not give her out of the regiment;
she is on the _strength_.”
“She is promised,” replied the Major, in a sort of husky whisper.
Every one knew that the Major’s promises were a serious matter, and
after this answer there ensued a long dismayed silence. The visitors
eventually turned the topic, and tried to talk of other matters--the
last gazette, the new regimental ribbon, of anything but of what every
mind was full, to wit, “the Missus.”
The news respecting her bestowal created quite a sensation that evening
at the mess--far more than that occasioned by a newly announced
engagement, for there was an element of mystery about _this_ topic. Why
had the Missus been given away?
“Bowen must be off his chump,” was the general verdict, “poor old chap,
to give the dog to that rascal Abdul, of all people!” (One curious
feature in Anglo-Indian life, is the low opinion people generally
entertain of their friends’ servants.) “The proper thing was, of
course, to buy the dog, and keep her in the regiment; and when the
Major came to his right senses, how glad he would be, dear old man!”
The Adjutant waylaid Abdul in the road, and said, curtly--
“Is this true, about the dog?--that your sahib has given her to you?”
Abdul salaamed. How convenient and non-committal is that gesture!
“What will you take for her?”
“I never selling master’s present,” rejoined the bearer, with superb
dignity.
“What does a nigger want with a dog?” demanded the officer, scornfully.
“Well, then, swop her--_that_ won’t hurt your delicate sense of honour.
I’ll get you an old pariah out of the bazaar, and give you fifty rupees
to buy him a collar!”
“I have refused to-day one thousand rupees for the Missy,” said Abdul,
with increased hauteur.
“You lie, Abdul,” said the officer, sternly; “or else you have been
dealing with a stark, staring madman.”
“I telling true, Captain Sahib. I swear by the beard of the Prophet.”
“Who made the offer?”
“Major Bone”--the natives always called him “Major Bone.”
“Great Scott! Poor dear old chap” (to himself): “I had no idea he was
so badly touched. It is well he is going home, or it would be a case of
four orderlies and a padded room. So much for this beastly country!”
Then to Abdul, “Look here; don’t say a word about that offer, and come
over to my quarters, and I’ll give you some dibs--the sun has been too
much for your sahib--and mind you be kind to the Missus; if not, I’ll
come and shoot her, and thrash you within an inch of your life.”
“Gentlemen Sahib never beating servants. Sahib touch me, I summon in
police-court, and I bring report to regimental commanding officer.
Also, I going my own country, Bareilly, and I never, never selling kind
master’s present.”
“I know lots of Sahibs in a pultoon (_i.e._ regiment) at Bareilly, and
I shall get them to look out for you and the dog, Mr. Abdul. You treat
‘kind master’s present’ well, and it will be well with you,--if not, by
Jove, you will find that I have got a long arm. I am a man of my word,
so keep your mouth shut about the Major. To-night my bearer will give
you ten rupees.” And he walked on.
“Bowen must be in a real bad way, when he gives his beloved dog to a
native, and next day wants to buy it back for a thousand rupees,” said
Captain Young to himself. “I thought he looked queer yesterday, but I
never guessed that he was as mad as twenty hatters.”
* * * * *
The hour of the Major’s departure arrived; he had entreated, as a
special favour, that no one would come to see him off. This request
was looked upon as more of his eccentricity, and not worthy of serious
consideration; he would get all right as soon as he was at sea, and
the officers who were not on duty hurried down to see the last of
their popular comrade. He drove up late, looking like death, his
face so withered, drawn, and grey, and got out of a gharry, promptly
followed by Abdul, carrying the Missus. The steam-launch lay puffing
and snorting at the steps--the other passengers were aboard--there was
not a moment to lose. The Major bade each and all a hurried farewell;
he took leave of the Missus last. She was still in Abdul’s arms, and
believed in her simple dog mind that her master was merely bound for
one of those detestable sails up the harbour. As she offered him an
eager paw, little did she guess that it was good-bye for ever, or that
she was gazing after him for the last time, as he feebly descended the
steps and took his place in the tender that was to convey him to the P.
and O. steamer.
He watched the crowd of friends wildly waving handkerchiefs; but he
watched, above all, with a long, long gaze of inarticulate grief, a
dark turbaned figure, that stood conspicuously apart, with a small
white object in his arms: watched almost breathlessly, till it faded
away into one general blur. The Bengal civilian who sat next to Major
Bowen in the tender, stared at him in contemptuous astonishment. He
had been twenty-five years in the country (mitigating his exile with
as much furlough--sick, privilege, and otherwise--as he could possibly
obtain), and this was the first time he had seen a man quit the shores
of India--with _tears in his eyes_!
THE BETRAYAL OF SHERE BAHADUR.
I am merely the wife of a British subaltern, whereas my aunt Jane is
the consort of a commissioner. One must go to India, to realize the
enormous and unfathomable gulf which yawns between these two positions.
Take, for instance, that important difference--the difference in pay.
On the first of each month, Aunt Jane’s lord and master receives
several thousand and odd rupees--a heavy load for two staggering peons
to carry from the treasury--whereas my husband’s poor little pittance,
of two hundred and fifty-six rupees and odd annas, our bearer swings in
a lean canvas bag, and in one hand, with an air of jaunty contempt!
At dinner-parties and other grand functions, I see my aunt’s
round-shouldered back, and well-known yellow satin, leading the van,
with her hand on the host’s arm, whilst I humbly bring up the rear--one
of the last joints in the tail of precedence.
Afterwards--after coffee, conversation, and music--not a woman in
the room may venture to stir, until my little fat relative has “made
the move” and waddled off to her carriage. Mr. Radcliffe, my uncle
by marriage, rules over a large district; he is a stout, puffy,
imposing-looking man, attended by much pomp and circumstance, and many
scarlet-clad chuprassis. His wife rules him--as well as the station;
manages every one’s affairs, acts as the censor of public morals, and
may be implicitly relied upon to utter the disagreeable things that
_ought_ to be said, but that no one but herself is willing to say. The
Radcliffes have no family, and therefore she has ample time to indulge
her fine powers of observation, organization, and conversation. When I
married, and was about to come to India, a year ago, my people remarked
on an average once a week--
“If you are going to Luckmee, you will be quite close to your aunt Jane
at Rajapore, and only think how delightful that will be for you!” but I
was by no means so confident of this supreme future joy. Rajapore is a
large mixed military and civil station; Luckmee is on the same line of
rail, a run of a couple of hours; a small and insignificant cantonment,
which looks up to Rajapore as its metropolis, and does all its shopping
there. No, I did not find it at all delightful, being within such easy
hail of Aunt Jane. She made unexpected descents--as a rule, early in
the morning--driving up from the station in a rickety “ticca gharry,”
to spend what she called “a good long day.” First of all, she went
over the bungalow precisely as if it was to let furnished, and she was
the incoming tenant; then she cross-examined me closely, read my home
letters, looked at my bazaar account, sniffed at my new frocks, snubbed
my friends, and departed by the last train in the highest spirits,
leaving me struggling with the idea that I was _still_ a rather
troublesome schoolgirl in short frocks and a pig-tail. Now and then
I returned the visit--by command--drove with Aunt Jane in her state
barouche, in which she sat supported by a pair of rather faded Berlin
wool cushions, great eyesores to my critical English taste, which
largely discounted the fine carriage, big bay walers, fat coachman (an
Indian Jehu of any pretension must be corpulent), the running syces,
and splendid silver-mounted chowries or yâk tails.
I also was present at various heavy tiffins and dinners, in the
capacity of deputy assistant hostess and niece. I had come in now, to
wait upon Aunt Jane and “take leave,” as she was just off to England,
and had imperatively summoned me to report myself ere she started. I
found the great square white bungalow externally gay with _Bignonia
vinusta_, internally in the utmost confusion. The hall was littered
with straw and bits of newspapers, the drawing-room was full of
packing-cases, half the contents of the cellar were paraded on the
floor, and dozens of tins of “Europe” stores were also on review, all
being for sale. Aunt Jane was seated at a writing-table, revising lists
with a rapid pen.
“You discover me,” she exclaimed, offering a plump cheek, “sitting like
Marius among the ruins of Carthage.”
I was dumb. I had no idea until now that Marius was a stout little
elderly woman, wearing a shapeless grey wide-awake and blue spectacles.
“I feel almost fit for the poggle khana (mad-house),” she continued.
“Just look here! Here is my list of furniture, come back from
making the round of the station, and all that has been taken is a
watering-pot, six finger-glasses, and a pie-dish!” (The truth was
that people were tired of my aunt’s lists.) “And here are dozens
of servants clamouring for chits--and a man waiting to buy the
cows. I wish to goodness some one would buy your uncle’s shikar
camel,”--reading aloud from list,--“‘young, strong, easy trot and walk,
with saddle, Rs. 200.’ Your uncle is going to chum with Mr. Jones. He
does not intend shooting this season--even _he_ finds it an expensive
pursuit,” this in a significant parenthesis. “I’ve not put away the
ornaments, nor sold off my stores, nor packed one of my own things.”
I muttered some sympathetic remark, but I knew that Aunt Jane enjoyed
these “earthquakings” immensely. She was constantly uprooting her
establishment, and taking what she called “a run home.”
“And you go on Monday?” I inquired.
“Yes, child; though I don’t believe I shall ever be ready. Your mother,
of course, will want to know how you are? I must candidly tell her that
you are looking dreadfully pasty. Ah! I see you have got a parcel.”
“Only a very little one,” I pleaded apologetically.
“Well, well, I suppose I must _try_ and take it; and now what are your
plans?”
“Tom has got two months’ leave, and Charlie is coming up from Madras;
we are going away on a trip into the real jungle.”
“For what?” she asked tartly.
“Well, to see something different from the routine of cantonment life,
something different from the band-stand and D.W.P. pattern church--to
see _real_ India.”
“What folly! Real India, indeed!” she snorted; “as if you would _ever_
see it! It makes me wild to hear of people talking, and worse still,
writing about India, as if one person could grasp even a small corner
of it. Here am I, twenty-five years in the country, speaking the
language fluently, and what do I know?” she paused dramatically. “The
bazaar prices, the names of the local trees and flowers, the rents of
the principal houses up at Simla.” (I have reason to believe that my
aunt did herself gross injustice; she knew the private affairs of half
the civilians in the provinces, and was on intimate terms with their
“family skeletons.”) “As to the character of the people! I cannot even
fathom my own ayah, and she is with me eleven years.”
“I believe some people know a great deal about India,” I ventured to
protest.
“Stuff!” she interrupted. “One person may know a little of one part
of the continent, but there are twenty Indias!--all different, with
different climates, customs, and people. What resemblance is there
between a Moplah on the west coast and a Leucha from Darjeeling, a
little stunted Andamanese and a Sikh; a Gond from the C.P. and a Pathan
from the frontier; a Bengali Baboo and a bold Rohilla?” (Aunt Jane
was now mounted on her hobby, and I had nothing to do but to look and
listen.) “Every one thinks his own little corner is India. You, as an
officer’s wife--the wife of a subaltern in a marching regiment”--(she
always insisted on the prefix “marching”)--“have better chances than a
civilian, for they live in one groove; you are shot about from Colombo
to Peshawar. However, much good it will do you, for you are naturally
dull, and have no talent for observation.”
“No, not like _you_, Aunt Jane,” I ventured with mild sarcasm: was she
not going home?
“And where are you bound for?” she pursued.
“About a hundred miles out, due north.”
“That is the Merween district, I know it well. We were in that division
years ago. Had you consulted _me_, before making your plans, your uncle
might have arranged about elephants for you. It’s too late now,” with a
somewhat triumphant air.
“But we don’t want elephants,” I protested; “we have our ponies.”
“Id----” correcting herself, “simpleton! I meant for shooting from.
The district is full of long grass. Tom will get no deer, nor indeed
any game on foot. You may have the shikar camel, if you like, for his
keep, and the Oontwallah’s pay--no?” as I shook my head emphatically.
“Well, I can give you one tip: take plenty of tinned stores; the
villages are scattered, and Brahmin. You won’t get an egg, much less
a fowl--at most a little ghee and flour; but I strongly advise you to
take your own poultry, and a couple of milch goats, also _plenty_ of
quinine and cholera mixture; parts of the country are very marshy and
unhealthy. I suppose you have tents? _We_ cannot lend you any.”
“Yes, we have three, thank you.”
“And so your brother Charles is going with you! Tell him that _I_ think
he had much better have stayed quietly with his regiment, and worked
for the higher standard--a boy only out two years. Of course _you_ are
paying his expenses?”
I nodded. Tom was moderately well off; though we were not rich, we were
not exactly poor, and I always had a firm conviction that Aunt Jane
would have liked me _much_ better if I had been a pauper! As it was,
she considered me dangerously independent.
“Of course you think you know your own business best!” removing her
spectacles as she spoke, “but mark my words, you will find this trip
a great deal more costly than you imagine. With us civilians it is
different, a sort of royal progress; but with you--well, well,” shaking
her head, “you must buy your own experience!”
A week later we had set forth, Tom, Charlie, and myself. We took Aunt
Jane’s advice (it was all she had given us), and despatched our tents
and carts twenty-four hours’ ahead, so as to give them a good start.
We cantered out after them, a fifteen-mile ride, the following day.
It was my first experience of camp life, and perfectly delightful;
the tent under the trees felt so cool and fresh, in comparison with a
sun-baked bungalow. Our servants, who appeared quite at home, had built
a mud fireplace, and were cooking the dinner; the milch goats were
browsing, and the poultry picking about in the adaptable manner of an
Indian bazaar fowl. Our next halt was to be twenty miles farther on, at
an engineer’s bungalow, which was splendidly situated between a forest
swarming with game and a river teeming with fish. Here we intended
to remain for some time; we should be in the territory of the Rajah
of Betwa, and were bearers of a letter asking for his assistance, in
the way of procuring provisions in the villages. At midday we halted
for several hours in a mango tope, the home of thousands of monkeys,
and went forward again about four o’clock. Our road was bordered at
either side by a golden sea of gently waving crops, for we were in the
heart of a great wheat country. Presently we passed through the town
of Betwa, which chiefly consisted of a long dirty bazaar, an ancient
fort, and a high mud wall, enclosing the palace of the rajah. About a
mile beyond the outskirts, we beheld a cloud of yellow dust rapidly
approaching.
“I’ll bet ten to one it’s the rajah,” said Tom, as he abruptly pulled
up his pony.
I felt intensely excited. I had never seen a real live rajah in my
life; and I held myself in readiness for any amount of pomp and
splendour, from milk-white arabs with gold trappings, to a glass coach.
But what was this that I beheld, as we drew respectfully to one side?
I could scarcely believe my own eyes, as there thundered by a most
dilapidated waggonette, drawn by one huge bony horse and a pony, truly
sorry steeds; the harness was tied up with rope, and even rags! Seated
in front was a spare dark man, with a disagreeable expression, dressed
in a stuff coat, the colour of Reckitt’s blue, and a gold skull-cap.
He salaamed to us in a condescending manner, and was presumably the
rajah. A fat pock-marked driver held the reins; in the body of the
waggonette were six men (the suite), and their united weight gave the
vehicle a dangerous tilt backwards. The equipage was accompanied by
four ragamuffins, with long spears, riding miserable old screws with
bell-rope bridles. They kept up a steady tittuping canter, raising a
cloud of suffocating dust, in which they presently vanished.
“I can’t believe that _that_ is a rajah, much less _our_ rajah,” I
remarked to my companions.
“I can,” said Tom, emphatically. “He looks what he is--an unmitigated
scoundrel, and a miser. Did you notice how close his eyes were
together? He is a rich man, too; is lord of the soil as far as your
eyes can see. His grandfather owned a great deal more before the
Mutiny, but it was shorn from him, and he was thankful to be left with
an acre--or his life.”
“Why?” asked Charlie and I in a breath.
“He came out of that bad business very badly. When the inhabitants of
Luckmee were surprised, they sent their women and children to him for
protection, he being, as they supposed, their very good friend; but
he simply bundled them all out, and they were every one massacred. The
rajah then believed that the mutineers would carry everything before
them, but after the fall of Delhi he changed his tune, and sent on a
charger the head of the chief leader in these parts--his own nephew,
as it happened, but this is a detail--in order to make his peace. Of
course, he saved his skin, but he had a bad record, and his grandson is
a chip of the old block.”
“Who told you all this?” I inquired.
“The collector. He says this man grinds down the ryots shamelessly, and
does many a queer thing that ought to land him in a court of law. Here
is the forest, and here, thank goodness, is _the_ bungalow at last.”
Our halting-place proved to be a thatched stone cottage, containing
three rooms, and bath-rooms; there was a deep verandah all round,
excellent servants’ quarters and stables--in short, it was the beau
idéal of a jungle residence. One verandah looked towards the forest,
with its cool, dark recesses, the other commanded the river, and beyond
it, faintly on the sky line, glimmered the snows.
The bungalow was surrounded by about twenty acres of park-like pasture,
through which ran a public road leading to a fine bridge. We took in
these details as we lounged about in the moonlight after dinner, and
unanimously agreed that our present quarters were quite perfect in
every respect.
The next day we fished--a nice, lazy, unexciting occupation. I
sauntered home early in the afternoon--not being a particularly
enthusiastic angler--and disposed myself in a comfortable deep straw
chair in the verandah, in order to enjoy a novel and what I considered
a well-earned cup of tea. As I reclined at my ease, devouring fiction
and cake, sandwich fashion, my attention was arrested by a sound of
loud crashing and smashing of branches in the usually death-like
stillness of the forest. I sat erect, gazing intently at the violent
storm among the leaves, expecting to see emerge a deer, a pig, or, at
the very worst, a peacock! But after staring steadily for some time, I
found that I was looking at the back of a remarkably tall elephant.
The ayah, who was also watching, pointed and called out, “Hathi, mem
sahib, burra hathi,” as if I did not know an elephant when I saw one!
Presently I descended the steps, strolled across the green, and pushed
aside the bushes. There I beheld a lean native, all ribs and turban,
busily engaged in baking his chupatties over a fire of sticks--a little
wizened man, with a sharp cruel face, and close behind him stood a
huge gaunt elephant, or rather the framework of one, for the animal
was shockingly thin. Its poor backbone was as sharp as a razor; its
skin hung in great wrinkles; its eye--an elephant’s eye is small and
ugly--this beast’s eye gave expression to its whole body, and had a
woful look of inarticulate misery, of almost desperate, human
appeal.
The mahout stood up and salaamed, and forthwith he and I began to
converse--that is to say, we made frantic endeavours to understand one
another--the ayah, whose curiosity had dragged her forth, now and then
throwing in a missing word.
“By my favour, it was the rajah’s state elephant; he had also three
others; he sent them into the forest to feed and to rest, when he did
not require them. This, Shere Bahadur (brave lion), was the great
processional elephant, and had a superb cloth-of-gold canopy that
covered him from head to tail.”
(“Poor brute!” I said to myself, “otherwise he would be a terribly
distressing spectacle.”)
“Why is he so thin?” I demanded anxiously.
“Because he is old,” was the ready answer, “more than one hundred
years. He had been, so folk said, a war-elephant taken in battle. He
was worth thousands and thousands of rupees once. He knew no fear, and
no fatigue. Moreover, he was a great shikar elephant--many tigers had
he faced”--and here the mahout proudly showed me the traces of some
ancient scars--“even now the Sahib Log borrowed him as an honour.”
“And what had he to eat?” I inquired.
“More than he could swallow--twelve large chupatties twice a day--this
size”--holding his skinny arms wide apart--“also ghoor, and sugar-cane,
and spice.”
I looked about. I saw no sign of anything but a few branches of neem
tree, and the preparations for the mahout’s own meagre meal.
“Hazoor, he has had his khana--he has dined like a prince,” reiterated
the mahout. “Kuda ka Kussum,” that is to say, “so help me God.”
Nevertheless I remained incredulous. I went over to the bungalow and
brought out a loaf, to the extreme consternation of our khansamah--we
being forty miles from the nearest bazaar bakery--this I broke in two
pieces, and presented it to Shere Bahadur, who seized it ravenously. Of
course it was a mere crumb, and the wrinkled eager trunk was piteously
held out for more; but more I dared not give, for I was in these days
entirely under the yoke of my domestics! I related my little adventure
during dinner--small episodes become great ones in the jungle, where
we had no news, no dâk. Afterwards we took our usual stroll in the
moonlight, and Charlie and I went to visit my new acquaintance. He was
alone. The mahout was away, probably smoking at a panchayet in the
nearest village. In a short time we were joined by Tom, who, as he came
up, exclaimed--
“By Jove, he _is_ thin! I’ve just been hearing all about the beast
from the shikarri; he knows him well. He was a magnificent fellow in
his day. The rajah has not the heart to feed him in his old age, and
turns him out to pick up a living, or starve--whichever he likes.
_He_ is not going to pay for his keep, and so the poor brute is dying
by inches. Every now and then, when there is a ‘tamasha,’ he is sent
for--for a rajah without elephants is like a society woman without
diamonds.”
“And the twelve chupatties, and spices, and sugar?” I exclaimed.
“All moonshine!” was the laconic reply.
I thought a great deal of that miserable famishing animal. He preyed on
my mind, in the watches of the night: I could hear him through the open
window, moving restlessly among the bushes. I was sorely tempted to
rise and steal my own loaves, and give him every crumb in the larder!
Next morning I boldly commanded four enormous cakes to be made, and
took them to him myself. He seemed to know me, and swallowed them down
with wolfish avidity.
When we were fishing that same evening I noticed the elephant down
in the shallows of the river, standing knee-deep in the rushes; his
figure, in profile against the orange sunset, looked exactly like the
arch of a bridge, so wasted was he.
In the course of a day or two we had firmly cemented our acquaintance.
Shere Bahadur came up to the verandah for sugar-cane and bread, and
salaamed to me ostentatiously whenever we met.
“As we are feeding the beast, we may as well make use of him,” remarked
Tom, one morning. “The mahout declares that the rajah will let us have
him for his keep, and his own wages--six rupees a month. We can have a
howdah, and the elephant will be very useful when we get among the long
grass and the deer.”
“Yes, do let us have him,” I gladly agreed. I could not endure to leave
him behind, to return to his ration of neem leaves and semi-starvation.
Tom therefore despatched a “chit” by the mahout to the rajah, and the
next day Shere Bahadur came shuffling back, carrying a howdah and his
owner’s sanction, also a paper which Tom was requested to sign.
This document (written on the leaf of a copy-book, in English, with
immense flourishes) set forth--“That Tom would guarantee to hand Shere
Bahadur back, in good condition, at the end of two months, and that
if anything happened to the elephant, short of natural death, Tom was
responsible for the value of the animal, and the sum of two thousand
rupees.”
“Well,” said Tom, “it is fair enough, though I doubt if the poor old
bag of bones is worth two hundred rupees. He will be well fed, and
returned in good case, and if he dies now on our hands, after living a
century, it will be a base piece of ingratitude for all your kindness;
however, there is life in the old boy yet. You and he are great chums.
He is a splendid shikar elephant, though a bit slow. I think it is a
capital bunderbast.” And he signed.
The mahout (now our servant) was full of zeal and zest, and came and
laid his head on my feet, and assured me that “I was his father and his
mother, and that he was my slave.”
I took care to see Shere Bahadur fed daily. He now really received a
dozen thick chupatties, and plenty of sugar-cane and ghoor, and his
expression lost its look of anguish and famine, though it was early
days to expect any improvement in his figure. When we marched, he
accompanied us, and I rode in the howdah and enjoyed it. He picked his
way so cleverly, and thrust branches aside from our path so carefully,
and seemed (though this may be a wild flight of imagination) to _like_
to work for me. He was capital at going through jungle, or over rough
ground, but in marshy places the poor dear old gentleman seemed to have
great difficulty in getting along, and to have but little power in his
hind quarters.
Six weeks of our leave had melted away, as it were--time had passed
but too rapidly. Shere Bahadur proved invaluable out shooting. Thanks
to him, Tom had got a fine tigress, and Charlie some splendid head of
deer. They looked so odd in the high elephant grass--no elephant to
be seen, but merely two men, as it were sailing along in a howdah. Our
last days were, alas! drawing near; our stores were becoming perilously
low. It was the end of March, the grass and leaves were dry as tinder
and brittle as glass, as the hot winds swept over them. Yes, it was
imperative to exchange these charming tents for the thick cat-haunted
thatch of our commonplace bungalow. We were all sunburnt, happy, and
somewhat shabby. I had contrived to see something of India, after all.
I knew the habits of some of the birds and beasts--the names of flowers
and trees. I had gazed at my own reflection in lonely forest pools,
that were half covered with water-lilies, and from whose sedgy margin
flocks of bright-plumaged water-fowl had flashed.
I had met the peacock and his wives leisurely sauntering home after a
night of pillage in the grain fields. I had seen, in a sunny glade, a
wild dog playing with her puppies. I had watched the big rohu turning
lazily over in the river; the sly grey alligator lying log-like on the
bank; the blue-bull, or nilgai, dashing through the undergrowth. In
short, I had seen a good deal, though I _was_ dull.
Twice a day I visited my dear friend Shere Bahadur. I had become quite
attached to him, and I firmly believe that he loved me devotedly.
One evening I arrived rather earlier than usual on my rounds, and
discovered the mahout in deep converse with another man, a stranger,
who brought his visit to an abrupt close, and said, as he hurried away,
“Teen Roze” (_i.e._ “three days”), to which the mahout responded,
“Bahout Atcha” (_i.e._ “good”).
“It is my Bhai,” he explained. Every one seems to be every one else’s
brother, especially suspicious-looking acquaintances. “He has come a
long journey with a message from my father--my father plenty sick,
calling for me.” An every-day excuse for “taking leave,” only second
to the death of the delinquent’s grandmother.
On the afternoon of the third day we found it too hot to go out early,
and were sitting in our dining-room tent fanning ourselves vigorously
and playing “spoof,” when we suddenly heard a great commotion--a sound
of shouting and running and trumpeting. A tiger, or a “must” elephant,
was my first idea. Yes, there it was! A cry of “The elephant! the
elephant!” It was an elephant--_my_ elephant. We hurried to where a
crowd of all our retainers had collected. A quarter of a mile away
there was a sudden dip in the ground, a half-dried-up pool of water,
covered with a glaze of dark blue scum, surrounded by an expanse of
black oozy mud, fringed with rushes and great water-reeds,--the sort of
place that was the sure haunt of malarious fever--and struggling in the
midst of the quagmire was Shere Bahadur. He had already sunk up to his
shoulders, whilst his mahout lay on the bank tearing his hair, beating
his head upon the ground, and shrieking at intervals, “My life is
departing! my life is departing!” Tom angrily ordered him to arise, and
get to his place on the animal’s back, and endeavour to guide him out
at the safest part; but it appeared to be all quagmire, and quivered
for yards at every movement of the elephant. The mahout gibbered, and
sobbed, but complied. He scrambled on to Shere Bahadur’s neck, and
yelled, gesticulated, urged, and goaded. No need; the poor brute was
aware of the danger--he was labouring now, not for other people’s
profit or pleasure, but for his own life. Every one ran for wood,
wine-cases, or branches, and flung them to the elephant; and it was
pitiful to see how eagerly he snatched at them, and placed them beneath
him, and endeavoured to build himself a foothold. After long and
truly desperate exertions, he got his forelegs right up on the sound
ground, ropes were thrown to him, but, alas! it was all of no avail;
the morass was a peculiarly bad one, and his powerless hind quarters
were unable to complete the effort and land him safely. No, the cruel
quagmire slowly, surely, and remorselessly sucked him down; and, after
a most determined effort on the part of the spectators, and a frenzied
but impotent struggle on his own, Tom turned to me and exclaimed--
“Poor old boy! it’s not a bit of good; he will have to go!”
“Go where?” I cried. “He can be saved; he must be saved,” I added,
hysterically.
“Impossible; he has not sufficient power to raise himself; the ground
is a sort of quicksand. If there was another elephant here, we might
manage to haul him out; but, as it is, it is a mere question of
time--he will be gone in half an hour.”
I wept, implored, ran about like one demented, begging, bribing,
entreating the natives to help. And, I must confess, they all did
their very best, nobly led by Tom and Charlie. But their efforts were
fruitless. Shere Bahadur’s hour had come. He had escaped bullets,
grape-shot, and tiger, to be gradually swallowed down by that slimy
black quagmire, and--horrible thought--buried alive! At the end of
a quarter of an hour he had sunk up to his ears, and had ceased to
struggle. His trunk was still above the mud. His poor hidden sides!--we
could hear them going like the paddle-wheels of a steamer. It appeared
to me that his eye sought mine!
Oh, I could endure the scene no longer. I left the crowd to see the
very end, rushed back to the tent, flung myself on my bed, covered
up my head, and wept myself nearly blind. It seemed hours and
hours--twenty-four hours--before Tom came in, and said, as solemnly as
if he were announcing the death of a friend, “It is all over.”
* * * * *
The detestable mahout over-acted his part; at first he simulated
frenzy, his grief far surpassed mine, he gibbered, wept, and beat
his breast, and rolled upon the ground at our feet in a paroxysm of
anguish, as he assured us that the rajah was a ruthless lord, and
that when he returned to Betwa without the Hathi he would certainly
be put to torture, and subsequently to death. And then Tom suddenly
bethought himself of the terms of the agreement. The elephant had _not_
died a natural death. No, he had “gone down quick into the pit.” He
was dead, and Tom was bound to pay two thousand rupees (about £150).
He looked exceedingly glum, but there was no other alternative; yes,
he must pay--even if he could not contrive to look pleasant. He most
reluctantly sent the rajah a cheque for the amount on the Bank of
Bengal, and the mahout departed with somewhat suspicious alacrity,
leaving the howdah behind him.
Afterwards, we became acquainted with two extraordinary facts. One was
that the rajah had carefully arranged for the death of the elephant,
even before we left our first camp; that the mahout’s so-called
brother was simply a special messenger, who had been despatched to
“hurry up” the tragedy. Discovery the second, that the mahout had been
seen by our shikarri and several other men deliberately goading and
urging the elephant into the quagmire. The wise animal had at first
steadily resisted, but putting implicit faith in his rider--who had
driven him for years--and being the most docile of his race, he had
ultimately yielded, and obediently waded in to his death. At first we
indignantly refused to credit these stories, and declared that they
were merely the ordinary malicious native slander; but subsequently a
slip of copy-book paper was discovered in the pocket of the howdah,
which, being interpreted by Tom, read as follows--
“Make no delay. Bad quagmire. Give fifty rupees.--Betwa.”
And Shere Bahadur was betrayed for that sum.
We received in due time an effusive letter from the Rajah of Betwa,
written, as usual, on the leaf of a copy-book, and inscribed with
numerous ornamental flourishes. He also enclosed a formal stamped
receipt, which is on my bill-file at the present moment, and is not the
least remarkable of the many curious documents there impaled. It says--
“Received from Mister Captain Thomas Hay, the sum of two thousand
government rupees, the value of one War elephant--lost!”
“PROVEN OR NOT PROVEN?”
THE TRUE STORY OF NAIM SING, RAJPOOT.
Look around, and above, with your mind’s eye, and behold high hills
and deep narrow valleys--valleys overflowing with corn, and hills
speckled with flocks; no, these are not the Alps,--nor yet the Andes;
the sturdy brown people have the Tartar type of face, their stubborn,
shaggy ponies are of Thibetan breed. You stand on the borders of
Nepaul, and among the lower slopes of the great Himalayas--a remote
district, but tolerably populated and prosperous. There are many
snug, flat-roofed houses scattered up and down the niches in these
staircase-like heights, encompassed with cowsheds, melon gardens,
groves of walnut trees, and a few almost perpendicular acres of murga
(grain); their proprietors are well-to-do, their wants inconsiderable,
the possession of a pony, half a dozen goats, and a couple of milch
buffaloes, constitutes a man of means, who is as happy in his way as,
perhaps happier than, the English or Irish owner of a great landed
estate. Moreover, this pastoral life has its pleasures: there are
holy festivals, fairs, feasts, wrestling-matches,--and occasionally a
little gambling and cock-fighting. But even in these primitive mountain
regions, life is not _all_ Arcadian simplicity; there are black spots
on the sun of its existence, such as envy, hatred, malice, jealousy,
false-witness, and murder.
Peaceful, even to sleepiness, as the district appears, serene and
immovable as the grand outline of its lofty white horizon, nevertheless
this remote corner of the world has been the scene of a renowned
trial--a trial which outrivalled many a notorious case in far-away
Europe for exciting violent disputes, disturbances, and bloodshed--a
trial which convulsed Kumaon, Kali Kumaon, and Gurwalh--whose effects,
as it were the ripples from a stone cast into still waters, are
experienced to the present hour in the shape of curses, collisions, and
feuds. At the root of the trouble was, as usual, a woman.
Durali (which signifies ‘darling’) was the grandchild and only
surviving relative of Ahmed Dutt, a thriftless, shrivelled old
hill-man, who smoked serrus (or Indian hemp) until he brought himself
into a condition of imbecility, and suffered his worldly affairs to
go to ruin; his hungry cattle and goats strayed over his neighbours’
lands, he cared not for crops, nor yet for wor-hos (boundary marks),
he cared for nought but his huka, and his warm padded quilt, and
abandoned the beautiful Durali, like the cattle, to her own devices.
Now, according to Durali, these devices were supremely innocent: she
spun wool, kept fowl, laboured somewhat fitfully in the fields, and
tended the jungle of dahlias and marigolds which threatened to swallow
up the little slab-roofed dwelling--that was all. So said Ahmed Dutt’s
granddaughter, but public opinion held a different view; it lifted
up its voice (in a shrill treble), and declared that Durali, being
by general consent the most beautiful woman in Kumaon, had wrung the
hearts of half the young--ay, and old--men in the province; that of a
truth her suitors were legion; but that she turned her back on all of
them--as she would have fools to believe--no!
Her grandfather was indigent, as who could deny? Whence, then, the rich
silver necklet, the bangles, the great belt of uncut turquoise, blue
as the spring sky--whence the strong Bhootia pony? Had Ahmed Dutt been
otherwise than a smoke-sodden idiot and a dotard, he had, according
to custom, sold this valuable chattel a full year ago, and received
as her price three hundred rupees, yea, and young asses, perchance,
and buffaloes. As it was, Durali ruled him tyrannically, flouted all
humble pretenders for her hand, and at eighteen years of age was her
own mistress, fancy-free, poor, ambitious, and beautiful--miraculously
beautiful! since her wondrous loveliness stirred even the leathern
hearts of these hill-men; and she possessed a face, figure, craft, and
coquetry, amply warranted to set the whole of Kumaon in a blaze. Yea,
the saying that “to be her friend was unfortunate, to be her suitor
beckoned death,” deterred but few. It was undeniable that Farid Khan
had fallen over the khud, on the bad road to Pura; do not his bones
lie, to this day, unburied and bleaching, at the foot of that awful
precipice? _Who_ said that his rival, Jye Bhan, had pushed him in the
dark? Who could prove it? At any rate, he was no more. As was also
Kalio Thapa, carried away by a mighty flood in the Sardah river--how
it befell, who could say? And there was, moreover, Phulia, who had
certainly hanged himself because Durali had spurned him.
Many were her adorers, and exceedingly bitter the hatred they bore to
one another.
Durali was tall, erect, and Juno-like, with a skin like new wheat,
features of a bold Greek type, abundant jet-black hair, and a pair
of magnificent eyes. Other women declared that there was magic in
these--certainly they spoke with tongues, they commanded, exhorted,
entreated, dazzled, and bewitched.
But Durali owed nothing to the fine feathers which enhance the
attractions of so many fine birds. She wore a dark-blue petticoat and
short cotton jacket, a few bangles and a copper charm--the ordinary
attire of an ordinary Pahari girl; dress could add but little to her
superb personality.
The handsome granddaughter of Ahmed Dutt was well known by reputation
in the surrounding villages, her name was in every one’s mouth, her
fame had penetrated even as far as Almora itself. At the sacred feast
of the Dusserah, where crowds assemble to behold the yearly sacrifice,
there Durali appeared for the first time, and in gala costume, wearing
a short-sleeved red velveteen bodice, an enviable silver necklet, and
a flower behind each ear. The eyes of half the multitude were riveted
on the hill beauty--instead of the devoted buffalo, which had been tied
up for days, at the quarter guard of the Ghoorkas, and now innocently
awaited its impending fate.
Yes, people actually thronged, and pressed, and pushed, and strove,
in order to obtain a good look at the famous Durali, for whom men had
contended, and fought--ay, and died.
* * * * *
There was a sudden lull in the loud hum of voluble Pahari tongues,
and all attention was concentrated on a renowned athlete, who stepped
forward with the huge Nepaulese sacrificial knife in his hand, and with
one swift dexterous blow severed the buffalo’s ponderous head from his
body. Immediately ensued a frenzied rush on the part of the spectators,
in order to dip a piece of cloth in the smoking blood. There was also
a determined, nay, a ferocious struggle between two young men, as to
which should have the privilege of plunging Durali’s handkerchief, on
her behalf, into the holy stream. This coveted office fell to Naim
Sing, who wrung the cloth from the feebler grasp of Johar, the son of
Turroo. This contest over a blood-stained rag was noted at the time.
It was an evil omen, and more than one old crone shook her grey head,
as she muttered, “Mark ye, my sisters, there will be yet more trouble
between the strivers--yea, bloodshed.”
The victor was the son of Bhowan Sing, who lived in the village of
Beebadak, and cultivated a considerable amount of fertile land. He had
three sons--Umed Sing, Rattan Sing, and Naim Sing; the latter was the
Benjamin of the family, a handsome youth, with a lithe, symmetrical
figure, bold eloquent grey eyes, and crisp black locks, the champion
wrestler of his pergunnah (and of the district); possessed not merely
of an active and powerful body, but an active and powerful mind. His
appearance, his age, and his stronger character, were not the only
reasons that made him looked up to by his brethren and neighbours,
and a ruler in his father’s house; some two years previously, whilst
digging a well, he had discovered a pot of coins, and was now the owner
of twenty pairs of pearls, fifty gold mohurs, four ponies, and a herd
of milch buffaloes. Happy the woman whom Naim Sing would take to wife!
Johar, the son of Turroo, was a sturdy, square-faced youth, honest and
cheerful, who had nought to cast into the balance against prowess,
ponies, and pearls, save one slender accomplishment, and his heart--he
played somewhat skilfully on a whistle, which was fashioned out of the
thigh-bone of a man, and profusely studded with great rough turquoises.
He was in much request at all the revellings within thirty miles--that
is to say, Johar with his whistle.
Not long after the Dusserah, the venerable Ahmed Dutt smoked himself
peacefully out of this world, and was duly burnt, with every necessary
formality. His granddaughter being left forlorn, now took an old woman
to live with her in the little stone house under the edge of the Almora
road, as you go to Loher Ghât. Durali was in straitened circumstances;
the murga crop had failed, three of her lean kine were dead, but she
was befriended by Naim Sing, who evinced much sympathy for her desolate
condition; and it was a matter of whispered gossip that Johar was also
secretly performing acts of kindness--secretly, indeed, for none dared
to put themselves into competition with the formidable Naim Sing,--and
it was believed that he was the favoured suitor.
At harvest-time, Naim Sing was compelled to be absent for ten days,
on an urgent mission to the foot of the hills. Immediately on his
return, he hastened to Durali’s hut, and found her absent. Wearied by a
rapid march of thirty miles, he cast himself down among the long rice
stalks at the foot of a choora tree, and there impatiently awaited the
reappearance of his divinity. As he lay half dozing in the heat, his
practised ear heard steps and voices, and looking through the rice
stalks he beheld a couple leisurely approaching. The man was playing on
a bone whistle, and the woman carried sheaves of wheat upon her stately
head. There was no difficulty in recognizing Durali and Johar. The
jealous watcher lay still, listening eagerly with quick-coming breath.
It appeared to him that the beguiling Durali by no means discouraged
her companion’s advances, which were couched in the usual flowery
terms of Oriental flattery. “Oh, woman, thou hast sheaves on thy head,
but they appear like clusters of pomegranates on thy shoulders. There
is none like thee. The light of thy beauty hath illumined my soul!
As for Naim Sing, he is a seller of dog’s flesh! an owl, the son of
an owl; he is vain as the sandpiper, who sleeps with his legs up, in
order to support the sky at night. Listen, O core of my heart! it hath
come to mine ears, that trade and barter have nought to do with his
hasty excursions to the plains--he hath a wife at Huldwani--hence his
journeys.”
This was too much for the endurance of his enraged listener, who,
leaping furiously upon Johar, clove his head with his heavy tulwar
(sword). Johar staggered, blinded with blood, and defenceless, then,
turning, ran for his life; but his infuriated enemy, flinging the
shrieking girl to one side, swiftly pursued the wounded wretch to
where he had sought refuge in a cowshed, dashed in the frail door,
and there despatched him. Presently he returned, fierce-eyed, savage,
blood-stained, to confront the horror-stricken and trembling Durali.
“Woman,” he cried hoarsely, “I have slain him--thine the sin. His
death be on thy head!”
But she, with many tears and vows, vociferously protested her
innocence, and in a surprisingly short time appeased Naim Sing’s wrath.
Now that the rage of his jealousy and vengeance had been satisfied, he
began to realize the result of his passion; he had slain a man--not
the first who had met his death at his hands. He had once killed
an antagonist in a wrestling-match--that was a misadventure; this
was--well, the Sirkar would call it--murder.
The shades of evening had not yet fallen, and until then he dared not
set about concealing the corpse. He found Durali a cunning adviser and
an unscrupulous accomplice. Men die hard, especially wiry hill-men, and
Johar had not passed away in silence; his expiring groans were heard by
Bucko, the old woman, and Naim Sing was therefore compelled to admit
her into the secret.
When the moon rose, the three conspirators bound up the body and
carried it down to one of the fields, there they carefully uprooted
each stalk, each distinct plant, growing over the surface of what was
to form the future grave, which was next excavated, and Johar, the son
of Turroo, was dropped into the hole, his whistle flung contemptuously
after him, and both were presently covered up with earth--and wheat.
The burying-party returned to the hut, where Naim Sing inflicted a
small wound on his leg with a cut of his tulwar, in order to support
the statement he proposed making to the authorities, that Johar had
attacked him with murderous intent, and, having failed in his effort,
fled. Next morning Naim Sing called on the Tehel-seldhar and made his
report, and the Tehel-seldhar despatched a tokdar (responsible official
for a cluster of villages) to take steps for the capture of Johar, the
son of Turroo. But Johar was not to be found, or even heard of, and
his own family became seriously alarmed, and suspected foul play. If
he had fled and departed on a long journey, wherefore had he left his
boots, clothes, and money behind? The connections of Naim Sing were
powerful, their pirohet, or family priest, his personal friend--rumour
and suspicion were strangled--but there were grave whispers round the
fires in the huts, all over the hills: what had befallen Johar, the son
of Turroo?
However, a murder was a common event. Blood-feuds were acknowledged,
and soon the circumstance was allowed to fade into oblivion by all but
Rateeban, a lame man, Johar’s twin brother, who took a solemn oath
at Gutkoo temple to avenge him. He suspected Durali; he watched her
and her house by stealth. Why was one small corner of the wheat-field
uncut? He made her overtures of friendship, he flattered, he fawned;
by dint of judicious questions, and even more judicious information,
Rateeban gained his end. Oh, false love! Oh, treachery! Oh, woman! it
was the beautiful Durali who led Rateeban to his brother’s grave,
who showed him the blood splashes on the cowshed walls, who told him
the truth. Yes, jealousy is doubtless as cruel as the grave. Durali
had capitulated and given her long-beleaguered heart wholly to Naim
Sing--his eloquence, good looks, prowess,--ay, and presents,--had
carried the citadel, and lo! the dead man’s words were verified. Naim
Sing had already a wife at Huldwani, a bold dark woman of the plains,
to whom he was secretly wed by strictest and securest ceremonial.
To the amazement and indignation of himself and his kinsmen, Naim Sing
was arrested and carried to Almora jail, there to await his trial; his
friends and connections (who were many and powerful) made a desperate
attempt to secure his release; bribes, and even threats, were used; but
what could avail against the evidence of the treacherous Durali?--and
the evidence of the dead body? Yes, Naim Sing, the champion wrestler,
the leading youth in his district, handsome, popular, rich, in the
full zenith of his days and vigour, was bound to be despatched to
the dark muggy shores of the Salween river, and end his existence
ingloriously in Moulmein jail. Never again would he take part in a
wrestling-match, or breast his native mountains and chase the ibex
and makor; his beloved hills, and his ancestral home, would know him
no more. Rateeban, Johar’s lame brother, would have preferred the
blood of his enemy, but was fain to be contented with his sentence,
“Transportation for life.” He exulted savagely in his revenge, and
actually accompanied the gang of wretched prisoners the whole march of
ninety miles to the railroad--on foot--in order that he might enjoy the
ecstasy of gloating over his foe in chains! Each day at sundown, when
the party halted, Rateeban came and stood opposite to Naim Sing, and,
leaning on his stick, mocked him. It was rumoured that Rateeban was
not the sole voluntary escort, but that a woman, veiled, and riding a
stout grey pony, stealthily followed the party afar off! It was Durali,
who, when it was too late, was distracted with penitence and anguish.
Her remorse was eating away her very heart--but to what avail now?
Huldwani is a large, populous native town on the edge of the Terai,
a few miles from the foot of the hills, and here a frantic creature
awaited the prisoners, or rather the prisoner Naim Sing. She tore
her hair, she beat her head upon the ground, and Naim Sing was not
unmoved--no. Then she lifted up her hands and her voice, and cursed
with hideous screaming curses “that woman who had wrought this great
shame and wickedness--that other woman on the hills!” And the other
woman, having heard with her ears and seen with her eyes, turned back
and retraced those weary ninety miles, _now_ more in anger than in
sorrow,--for such is human nature.
In less than twelve months, the news came to the hills that Naim Sing
had died in Moulmein prison, the death certificate said of atrophia,
but his father and brethren called it a broken heart. “He was ever too
wild a bird for a cage,” proclaimed his kinsmen and friends; and within
a short time he was as completely forgotten as Johar, whom he had
slain, and Durali, whom he had deceived, and who had disappeared.
* * * * *
After a lapse of twenty years, two men belonging to the village where
Rateeban lived, returned from a pilgrimage, and announced that at the
great fair at Hardwar, on the Ganges, they had seen _Naim Sing_--who
had saluted them as Brahmins. He had with him three horses, and a
woman--his wife--and looked in good health, and prosperous. Rateeban,
at first angrily incredulous, finally determined to investigate
this matter in person, and once more travelled the wearisome ninety
miles which lay between his home and the railway. Though every step
was painful, he heeded it not, such is the power of hate! With
inexhaustible patience, he followed clue after clue; he searched for
nearly three months, and was at last rewarded by success. Back up
to the hills, to a distant village in Gurwalh, among the spectators
at a great wrestling-match, he tracked and found Naim Sing!--Naim
Sing, surprisingly little changed. Where were the signs of convict
labour, the marks of irons, and of that life that burns into a man’s
soul? He looked somewhat older, his temples were bald, but his figure
was as upright, his foot as firm, his eye as keen as ever. Rateeban
swore to him, with fervour, as an escaped convict, and had him
instantly arrested. There was no doubt of his identity; there was the
self-inflicted scar on his leg, the bone in his arm which had been
broken by wrestling. The criminal was brought back to Almora, in order
to be arraigned for unlawful return from transportation, and tried
under section 226 of the Indian Penal Code.
The tidings of the resurrection and return of Naim Sing was passed by
word of mouth from village to village. His father and brethren, his
friends and relations, and those of Johar and Rateeban, and, in short,
everybody’s friends, flocked into Almora to attend the trial. The case
was heard in the court-house, which stands within the old fort; and
not only was the court itself crammed to suffocation, but the crowds
overflowed the surrounding enclosure, even down the narrow stone steps,
and away into the streets. Thousands and thousands were assembled,
and as the days went on the interest quickened, and the case became a
matter of furious contention between two factions--for and against:
the party who declared the culprit was indeed the real, true, and only
Naim Sing, and the party who swore that he was _not_. Fierce feuds were
engendered, torrents of abuse and angry blows were exchanged,--blood
was freely shed.
All Kumaon and Gurwalh had encompassed Almora like an invading army,
and Kumaon, Gurwalh, and the respectable Goorka station itself, were in
an uproar, and seething like a witches’ cauldron.
The prisoner stood up boldly, as befitted the namesake of the lion,
and confronted his accusers with a haughty and impassive mien. But
surely--surely those keen grey eyes were the eyes of Naim Sing!
“I am not the criminal,” he declared. “Who is this Naim Sing--this
murderer? and what hath he to do with me? Behold I am Krookia, and
my father is Rusool Sing, who lives in the village of Tolee; my star
is Jeshta and Ras, and my horoscope is with Gunga Josh, if he be yet
alive.”
Moreover, he brought witnesses, and the certificate of Naim Sing’s
death in Moulmein jail.
“The people of the pergunnah, which you aver that you belong to, do not
know you,” said the Crown prosecutor. “But Rateeban recognized you; how
can you explain that?”
“There be two Rateebans,” was the glib answer, “and one is mine enemy.”
“Strange that Rateeban, the enemy of Naim Sing, is your enemy also.”
“I doubt not that the lame dog--may his race be exterminated!--hath
many foes. I know him not. He hath been the means of sending one man to
prison for life, and now, behold, he would despatch another. It is a
vicious ambition. As for the people of my village, lo! many years ago,
I found a treasure, and my neighbours quarrelled and beat and robbed
me. They have no desire to recall their own black deeds, nor my face. I
fled to the plains, where I have taken road contracts for the Sirkar,
and prospered.”
“Naim Sing also found a treasure,” said the advocate. “Does the land in
these hills yield so many of these crops?”
“By your honour’s favour, I cannot tell. I found one treasure, to my
cost. Money is a man-slayer.”
Many witnesses recognized or repudiated the prisoner, and there was
hard swearing on both sides.
At length a young Baboo from Allahabad was put forward--a keen,
intelligent, brisk-looking youth, wearing a velvet cap and patent
leather boots, embellished with mother-of-pearl buttons.
“Twenty years ago I dwelt in Bareilly,” he said. “There were four of
us children, my mother, and my father, who was sick unto death. The
jail daroga, who was his kinsman, came to him privily one night, and
whispered long. I was awake, being an-hungered, and heard all that was
said.
“‘Lo! Gunesheb, thou art my kinsman. Thou art poor and sick, thy days
are numbered; wouldst thou die a rich man?’
“‘Would I die in Paradise?’ said my father.
“‘A gang of convicts pass here to-morrow, on their way to Calcutta
and Moulmein beyond the sea. Wilt thou take the place of one of them?
Thou art his size and height; thou hast not long to live, he has a
strong young life; and in return for thy miserable body he will give
four hundred rupees, ten pairs of pearls, one pair of gold bangles, and
three ponies.’
“My father went forth that same hour with the jail daroga, and returned
no more. Next day my mother wept sore; yea, even though she had gold
bangles on her arms, very solid, and pearls and silver in a cloth;
also there were three ponies, strong and fat, in our yard. Later, she
took us to see when the convicts passed along the road, and we rode
on the ponies beside them for two days. She told the warders she had
a brother, falsely accused, who was in the gang. He wore a square cap
pulled far over his eyes, and he coughed as he marched. As we left,
he embraced me tenderly, by favour of the warders. I knew he was my
father. Afterwards we went south, and returned to Bareilly no more.”
Thus Gunesheb had bartered away his few remaining months of life for
the benefit of his family, and Naim Sing had spread a bold free wing,
and enjoyed his liberty for twenty years! He had the ceaseless craving
of a born hill-man to return to the mountains. The line of snows edging
the burnt-up plains had drawn him like a magnet. Slowly but surely,
becoming reckless with time and impunity, he had cast fear and caution
to the winds, as once more the smell of the pine-needles and of the
wood smoke crept into his blood!
As he sat in the dock, the prisoner deliberately scanned every face
with an air of lofty indifference. He swore to the last that “he
was Krookia, the son of Rusool Sing,” but no respectable land-owner
identified him under that name. Moreover, the wife of Naim Sing had
been recognized at her native place wearing her rings and bangles, sure
and certain token that her husband was _alive_; and in the face of
overwhelming evidence, the culprit was sentenced for the second time on
the same spot to be transported beyond the seas for the term of his
natural life.
Then Naim Sing arose, tall and erect, a dignified and impressive
figure, carrying his two-score years with grace, and made a most
powerful and thrilling appeal in his own defence--an appeal for an
innocent man, who was about to be banished for ever from his home
and country, because, forsooth, his features had the ill fortune to
resemble those of a dead murderer!
During his speech, one could almost hear a leaf fall outside the court.
The previous quiet had now changed to what resembled a hush of awe.
The audience within and without--the windows and doors stood wide, and
exhibited an immense sea of human heads--hung with avidity on each
sonorous syllable. Not a gesture, not a glance was lost. So stirring
and impassioned was his eloquence, that every heart was shaken, and
many were moved to tears. But the condemned man pleaded his cause in
vain; in fact, his silver tongue afforded but yet another proof of his
identity. His fate was sealed. Fearing a public tumult, he was removed
secretly ere dawn, marched down the mountain sides for the last time,
despatched to the Andamans,--and there he died.
So ended a trial that lasted many days, that was more discussed and
fought over than any law-suit of the period; a case which is fiercely
argued and hotly debated even to the present hour; a cause which has
divided scores of households and separated chief friends. For there are
some who declare that the real Naim Sing expired in Moulmein jail khana
nineteen years previously, and that the vengeance of Rateeban demanded
two lives for one; also that the heavily bribed son of Gunesheb had
borne black false witness, his father having died in his own house; and
that, of a truth, an innocent man was condemned to transportation and
death: but there be some who think otherwise.
AN OUTCAST OF THE PEOPLE.
“Pushed by a power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.”
Sir A. Lyall.
Jasoda was seventeen years of age, and fair as a sunrise on the snows.
She dwelt in a district not far from the Goomptee river, among the
wheat and poppy fields that are scattered over Rohilcund.
As a little girl, all had gone well with her; she was petted and
caressed; she played daily in the sun with other village children,
erecting palaces and temples with dust and blossoms; her hair was
carefully plaited and plastered with cocoanut oil; she wore a big
nose-ring, anklets, and bangles--not brass or pewter, but real silver
ones, for she was married to the heir of a rich thakur, a delicate,
puny boy of her own age. But one rains he died, and there was sore,
sore lamentation. Had Jasoda realized what his death signified to her,
she would have wailed ten times louder than any paid mourner; but
ignorance was surely bliss, and she was not _very_ sorry, for Sapona
had been greedy, fretful, and tyrannical. He had often struck her,
pinched her, and pulled her long plaits, or run screaming with tales
to his mother--a fat woman with a shrill tongue and a heavy arm--whom
Jasoda feared.
But after Sapona had been carried away to the burning ghâut, all
seemed changed; every one appeared to hate Jasoda, yea, even her own
grandmother. Her ornaments were taken off, her head was shorn, her
cloth, though white, was coarse and old; there were no more games under
the tamarind trees, and no more sweets. Jasoda’s life was blighted
in the bud, for, at the tender age of six, she was that miserable
outcast, a Braminee widow. Poor pariah! she would stand aloof, with
wide-open wistful eyes (ostentatiously shunned by the other children
in the courtyard), and wonder what it all meant. She would piteously
inquire of her grandmother, as the crone sat spinning cotton, “What she
had done. Wherefore might she not eat with her, and why did Jooplee
push her, and strike her, if she approached her? and wherefore did
her mother-in-law, and other women, hold aside their clothes lest she
should touch them as she passed?”
“The shadow of a widow is to be dreaded, and--it is the custom, it
is our religion,” muttered the old woman, as if speaking to herself.
No doubt the days of suttee were better; then the girl had one grand
hour, applauded by the world; she was holy and sanctified, and hers was
a glorious triumph as she walked in procession behind the tom-toms,
whilst thousands looked on with awe, and the devout pressed forward to
touch her garments. Was not a moment like that worth years of drudgery
and misery, blows and scorn? True, at the end of the march, there was
the funeral pyre under the peepul tree; but if there was oil among
the faggots, and the wood was not too green, and the priests plied
the suttee with sufficient bhang, it was nought! And her screams were
always drowned in the shouting and the tom-toms. She herself had seen
a suttee; yes, and the girl was forced into it. She had no spirit; she
wept, and shrieked, and struggled,--so people had whispered,--but her
relations drove her to the faggots, for the family of a suttee are held
in much esteem! Truly it were better for Jasoda, this child with the
beautiful face, to have died for the honour of her people than to live
to be their scapegoat and their slave!
As years went on, and hot weather, monsoon, and cold season passed,
and crops were sown and cut, and there were births and marriages and
deaths, Jasoda grew up. She was now seventeen, and very fair to see.
Her mother-in-law hated her, as did also her brother; and, more than
all, her brother’s wife, and her sisters-in-law. In spite of their fine
silk sarees and gold ornaments, they were but little stars, whilst this
accursed girl was as the sun at noonday!
Jasoda was the drudge of the family,--a large clan, dwelling, as
is customary, within the same enclosure. These courtyards, built
irregularly, somewhat resemble a child’s house of cards; narrow
footpaths between the mud walls compose the village streets. You may
steer your way among these beaten tracks, and beneath these sun-baked
entrenchments, and never see a single house; merely various postern
doors which enclose a space, possibly containing ten hovels, and as
many families. One of the largest courtyards in the village belonged
to Padooram, the brother of Jasoda; he was the richest man in the
whole pergunnah, owned land and cattle and plough bullocks, and had
no bunnia’s claims to disquiet his sleep. His wife, a fat, pock-marked
woman, boasted real gold bangles, and a jewelled nose-ring, and was
the envy of her sex. There was Jasoda’s father and mother-in-law, and
Monnee and Puthao, their married daughters; her younger brother; his
wife and family; also her old grandmother; and Jasoda was the servant
of them all. Truly they were hard masters and merciless mistresses.
She, their slave, arose at dawn. She drew water till her arms ached.
She ground meal, and cooked, and polished the brass cooking-vessels;
she carried the clothes of these households to the ghât, and washed
them; she minded the children, and milked the buffaloes, and herded
the cattle. More than this, when one of the plough bullocks was sick,
her brother placed the yoke on Jasoda’s shoulders, and drove her as
companion to the spotted ox, up and down the long furrows, and in the
sight of all people. To them it was as nought; no one cried shame,
or pitied her--she was only a _widow_. In the harvest season there
was much to do, from daylight till dusk, cutting cane and corn, and
carrying and stacking, and working at the sugar-press. Sometimes,
strong girl as she was, Jasoda wept from sheer weariness. Yet, for all
this toil, she barely got enough to keep her from semi-starvation. She
was flung the scraps that were left from meals, as well as the rags of
the family. Nor did she ever receive one kind word or look, not even
from her grandmother. However, she was amply compensated for this cruel
indifference from another source. Many were the kind words and looks
bestowed on her by the young men of the village; but Jasoda was proud.
Jooplee, her sister-in-law, famed for the most evil mind and wicked
tongue within many koss, even _she_ could find no cause of offence in
her drudge, save that she was the fairest maiden in all the taluka, and
this fault she punished with the zeal and vigour of an envious and ugly
woman! Jasoda was desperately unhappy. What had she done to men or
gods, to be treated thus cruelly? And there was nothing to look forward
to, even in twenty years’ time. Her present lot would only be altered
by death--and after death? There was no future existence for such as
_she_. Many a time she crept away, and poured out all her wrongs to
the squat stone idol daubed with red paint, whose temple was the shade
of the peepul tree. She asked him, “Why women were ever born into the
land?” and besought his help with tears and passionate pleadings. In
vain she cried, “Ram, ram,” and took him offerings of flowers, and
gashed her arm with a sickle, and shed her hot young blood before him.
He maintained his habitual placid pose, his vacant stare, his graven
grin, and gave no sign. No, at the end of six weary moons there was
still no answer to her prayers. Heart-sick, Jasoda now went and gazed
longingly at the river. She stole away to visit it whilst her relations
took their midday rest in the cane-fields. Alas! it was very low, and
fat muggers lay upon its grey mud banks, as lazy as so many logs of
wood, though their evil little eyes were active enough--watching for
floating corpses. No, no; a big rapid torrent in the rains, with a
strong flood, fed by the far-away snows, rushing boldly onward, bearing
great blocks of foam on its brown bosom,--into _that_ she could cast
herself, but not into one of these slow, slimy channels, creeping past
greasy banks, whereon ravenous alligators would battle for her body.
As time advanced, the tyranny of the family became more oppressive,
and Jasoda threw patience to the winds--indeed, it had long been
threadbare. To be sent five or six koss in the burning June sun, to
gratify the momentary whim of Taramonnee, a child, or, rather, imp
of five, was beyond endurance, and represented the proverbial “last
straw.” The domestic martyr being hopeless and desperate, now turned
on her tormentors, as a leopardess at bay. Why should she be as an
ox, a beast of burthen, all her days? She gave shrill invective for
invective, accepted curses and blows with sullen indifference, and
refused to work beyond a certain portion. Yea, they might kill her, if
they so willed; it would be all the better; and she oscillated between
fits of hot passion and moods of cold obstinacy. Her aged grandmother
could not imagine what had happened to the household slave. She was
usually so long-suffering, so easily driven and abused. The hag and
the other women put their heads together and took counsel, whilst the
rebel sat aloof in a dark corner of her hut, like some wild animal in
its den, her fixed dark eyes staring out on the glaring white courtyard
with an expression of intense, hopeless despair. She hated every one.
She felt that she could almost kill them. Truly she had been born in an
evil hour and under an evil star, and she cursed both hour and planet.
There were Junia and Talloo, girls who had played with her: each had
a husband and babies and bangles; yea, and cows of their own. Why was
she beaten and half starved, and treated like a stray pariah dog? She
was handsomer than either. Isa, the son of Ganga, had told her that her
eyes were stars, her teeth as seed pearls, and her lips like the bud
of the pomegranate; yet these fat, ugly women slept at ease on their
charpoys, whilst she toiled in the cold grey dawn or in the scorching
noonday heat!
Above all creatures who breathed, she detested Jooplee, her
sister-in-law, the mother of Taramonnee; and next to her, Taramonnee,
a shrill-voiced, malignant imp, who pinched and bit her secretly, and
who once--when she was tied up and beaten--danced before her, and made
mouths at her and mocked her, clapping her hands with fiendish ecstasy.
For many months a great fire had been smouldering in Jasoda’s
heart, and woe be to the hand that stirred it! Once more it was the
cane-cutting season, and she was toiling hard all day, reaping and
carrying and stacking. She was very very weary, and whilst the carts
lumbered villagewards with the last load, she sat down under a peepul
tree to rest. It was the soft hour of sunset, the cattle were going
home, bats were flickering to and fro, the low evening smoke lay like
a pale blue veil over the land: smoke from fires where many hungry
people were baking the universal chupatti. Jasoda fell fast asleep, and
dreamt. Her dreams were pleasant, for she dreamt that she was dead.
Suddenly she was rudely awoke by an agonizing pain. No, it was not a
snake-bite; it was a pinch from the sharp strong fingers of Jooplee’s
daughter, who, gazing intently into her face, cried with malicious
glee--
“Ah, lazy one, arise and work! I shall tell of thee, and to-night thou
shalt be beaten. The neighbours refuse to believe that father beats
thee, because thou dost not scream. Mother said so. But thou shalt
scream to-night, so that thy cries can be heard as far as the bunnia’s
shop. Get up, pig!” And she pushed her with her foot.
It needed but a touch like this to rouse the sleeping flame. Instantly
Jasoda sprang erect, rage in her heart and murder in her eye. At least
she would rid herself of this insect, and, snatching up a stone, she
dashed it at the child with all the force of a muscular arm, and
with the fury of years of repressed passion. The aim was true, and
Taramonnee fell. For a second her limbs twitched convulsively, and then
she lay still--oh, tragically still.
“Rise!” screamed Jasoda. “Rise! and may thine eyes be darkened, thou
little devil!”
But there was no movement; Taramonnee was evidently stunned. Jasoda
stooped and raised her, whilst a terrible fear crept over her. The
child’s head fell back, her hand dropped. Was it possible? Could she
be _dead_? Yes, she was dead, though she had not meant to kill her;
and, since she could not bring her to life, what was she to do? She
gazed with horror at this awful, motionless thing, whose life she
herself had taken, oh, how easily! She could no longer endure those
staring, glazing eyes, she must put them out of her sight. Raising
the limp body with a supreme effort, she carried it in her arms to a
dry well at some distance, and then averting her face, she threw it
down. It struck against the sides, with a dull muffled sound, and fell
to the bottom with a hideous crash that made her shudder. As Jasoda
went slowly homewards, she was conscious that she was now the same as
Moola, the son of Maldhu, who had cut his wife’s throat with a sickle;
or the city girl, who drowned her baby in the tank in the Mango tope.
She cooked the evening meal as usual, and heard Jooplee inquire for
Taramonnee, and send to seek her at a neighbour’s; presently she became
anxious, talked of snakes, hyenas, and devils, and even went herself
to each postern door, and called, “Taramonnee, Taramonnee;” but she
never once thought of inquiring about her from the sullen girl who was
washing the cooking-pots. The old grandmother said soothingly, “Surely
she hath gone with Almonee, who lives across the river.” But this did
not satisfy her anxious parent, and the neighbourhood was summoned, and
a great search made. It was full moon--a splendid harvest moon--and
bright as day. All night long Jasoda lay awake, watching the moonbeams
and listening to the melancholy howl of the jackals, and the heavy thud
of the ripe banka fruit as it fell in the courtyard. Should she run
away or stay? she asked herself. She debated the vital question long,
and finally resolved that she would abide and await her fate! She was
weary of life. Why prolong it? The river was low; best perish by the
rope, and thus end all. At least she would have rest and peace, and
perhaps a new and better life in another world.
At daybreak, the body of Taramonnee was brought in and laid before her
mother, who tore her hair in a frenzy, and beat her head against the
wall. The hakim was summoned, and solemnly declared that the child had
not met her death by accident. No; behold, there was the blow on her
temple; of a surety, she had been murdered,--and by whom? Jooplee read
the answer in Jasoda’s eyes.
“Yes, I struck her,” admitted the girl boldly. “She came to me by the
cane-field, and pinched me sorely when I was asleep. I am _glad_ she is
dead.”
She repeated the same story to four police, who arrived at noon,
and bound her arms, and led her away to jail. She suffered it to be
believed that she had murdered the child in cold blood, and thrown
her down the well. Jasoda’s case was unusually simple; there was but
a brief trial. The culprit offered no defence, and had apparently no
friends. It was known that she had always hated Taramonnee and her
mother; she had found the former alone, had slain her,--and was glad.
Her own mouth destroyed her. The village was in a ferment. The court
was crowded; Jooplee and her people were ravening for revenge. As for
Jasoda’s kindred, they knew she must be hanged--which thing was worse
than suttee--disgrace instead of glory would cover them! When asked if
she had aught to say, Jasoda stood up before the judge, a beautiful
young creature, with the passionate dark eyes and the regular features
of her race, and the form of a Grecian nymph, and answered distinctly--
“No, my lord sahib, I care not for my life; and, if it is the will of
the sirkar, let them take it.” To herself she said, “Better this end
than the other; the river is low.”
As Jasoda lay under sentence of death, her venerable grandmother
bestirred herself to save her. She was a shrivelled, hideous old hag,
with a ragged red chuddah over her head, and she sat at the gate of the
judge’s compound daily, and cried for the space of two hours without
ceasing.
“Do hai! Do hai! Do hai!” _i.e._ “Mercy! mercy! mercy!” She then
adjourned to the cantonment magistrate’s abode, and shrieked the same
prayer outside his gates; and finally to the civil surgeon’s, who
was also the jail superintendent; and to him, for this reason, she
devoted one hour extra, and her voice never once failed. Thus much for
being the scold of the village! There was intense excitement in the
neighbourhood as the day of execution drew nigh, and lo! one evening,
when a great gallows was raised on the maidan, there were already
collected thousands of people, precisely as if it were some holy spot,
a scene of pilgrimage--all attracted by the same desire--to see a woman
hanged!
It was indeed a grand tamasha. The crowds far surpassed in numbers
those who assembled at the yearly feast. The local inhabitants noted
with complacency the hundreds of total strangers who came for many
miles on foot, on ponies, or in ekkas. Old Sona ceased now to scream
and beat her breast. She felt like one of the actors in a tremendous
tragedy, and was the object of a certain amount of curiosity and
attention--a position that was entirely novel, and--alas! alas! that
it must be chronicled--secretly enjoyed. The sun rose on the fatal
day--the last sunrise Jasoda would ever see--the great prison gates
opened, and a body of police marched slowly forth. Then came Jasoda,
walking between two warders. There was a murmur among the throng. She
was surprisingly fair to behold, and for once in her life she wore a
dress like girls of her class. A wealthy and eccentric woman in the
city had sent it to her. Yes, she was as fair as the newly risen dawn.
She stood and steadily surveyed the immense expectant multitude. She
recognized the eyes of many people from her own village fixed upon her
with a mixture of interest and awe. She beheld her old grandmother,
and her brother, and Moonee, and Pathoo, and Jai Singh, the son of
Herk Singh, who had compared her to Parbutti herself and to the new
moon. It seemed to her that to be the centre of interest to so vast a
throng was almost as fine as a suttee! The last moment arrived, and the
superintendent asked her if she had anything to say, any bequests to
make.
“Bequests!” and she almost laughed. “Truly I have nothing in the world
save a few rags. But thou mayest give my body to my grandmother; she
seems sorry. I have nothing to say. The child hurt me, and I struck
her. I meant not to kill her; nevertheless, she died; that is all. She
is dead, and I shall soon be dead also.”
Jasoda’s fortitude did not fail her--no, not when her arms were
pinioned, her petticoats tied about her feet, the cap drawn over her
face. She never once quailed or trembled.
* * * * *
When the body had been cut down, and the crowd had dispersed, the
superintendent sent for the old grandmother, who came, dry-eyed and
fierce.
“It is somewhat against rules,” he said, “but I am going to grant you
the girl’s only request: she said you were to have her body--take it
away, and burn it!”
“I!” shrieked the harridan. “_I_ touch her after the dones (hangmen)
have laid their hands on her! _I_, a high-caste Braminee! Do with the
carrion as thou wilt!” and she spat on the ground and went her way.
Thus, after death, neglect and scorn pursued poor hot-tempered Jasoda,
even to the grave.
Nevertheless, had she but known it, her wrongs were most amply avenged.
Who was there to do the work of the family--nay, of five families?
She who had been their slave for years was sorely missed. The lazy,
useless womenkind had now to cook and bake, draw water and feed cows,
and grumbled loudly and quarrelled savagely among themselves--yea, even
to blows--though the task of one was now portioned among so many. The
patient, graceful figure, toiling to and from the well, or laden with
wood or fodder, was no longer to be met, and was missed by more than
her own household.
“She was the fairest girl in all the district,” said Gopal, the
bunnia’s son. “There was no joy in her life, she seemed glad to die.
Truly her execution was a grand tamasha, and brought many strangers
from afar.”
This was her epitaph.
Jasoda’s name is still green in the memory of the villagers of
Sharsheo; not that they acknowledge any special claim on her part
to beauty, virtue, or martyrdom, but simply because it is not easy
to forget that Jasoda, the daughter of Akin-alloo, and the widow of
Sapona, was hanged.
AN APPEAL TO THE GODS.
“We be the gods of the East,
Older than all;
Masters of mourning and feast,
How shall we fall?”
Within forty miles of where the Himalayas rise from the plains,
and the sunrise unveils the blushing snows--and precisely half a
koss from the Kanāt river--lies the hamlet of Haru, surrounded by
a tangle of castor-oil plants, mango trees, and tamarinds, and
standing in the midst of a fertile tract of cane, corn, and poppy. The
scarlet-and-white poppies, the stiff, green cane, the waving yellow
wheat, also the village (which boasted nine hundred souls at the last
census), were the joint property of two wealthy zemindars. The northern
part of Haru--including the crops sown for the opium department--was
the inheritance of Durga Pershad, a tall, dark, gaunt man, with an
unpleasant and sinister expression. The wheat, cane, and southern
end of the town belonged to Golab Rai Sing, who bore but a scant
resemblance to his name--“the King of Roses;” he was, in fact, a stout,
smiling, pock-marked person, with a glib tongue, and a close fist.
These two zemindars hated one another as thoroughly as men in their
position were not only bound, but born to do. They had not merely been
bequeathed adjoining lands, and a whole village between them, but a
venerable blood feud, which had been conscientiously handed down from
generation to generation.
In good old days--days within living memory--there had been desperate
outbreaks, dacoities, and murders, attended with the usual sequel:
hanging or imprisonment beyond the seas. Now, in more civilized times
(although the vital question of the well by the temple was yet in
abeyance, passed on from collector to collector), the rival factions
were content with pounding each other’s cattle, burning each other’s
fodder, and blackening each other’s characters. Both had a large
following of tenants, relations, parasites; and he who brought tidings
that evil had befallen the enemy was a truly welcome guest! When the
great men met, they simply scowled and passed on their way, and their
women-folk laid every sin to the charge of their neighbours that it is
possible for the depraved imagination of a practised native slanderer
to conceive.
Golab Rai Sing was the richer of the two zemindars, though Durga
Pershad owned a larger extent of ground; but it was whispered that he
had lost much money in a law-suit, and that Muttra Dass (the soucar)
held a mortgage on his best crops; nevertheless, he carried his head
high, and his wife had real silver tyres to the wheels of her ekka!
It was the first moon in the new year, and the collector’s camp was
pitched under the mango tope, between the village and the river; he
had but recently returned from two years’ furlough, and from the whirl
of politics and the turmoil of life at high pressure; also, he was new
to the district.
As he stood meditating on the river bank at dawn, and saw the snows
rise on the horizon with the sun, watched the strings of cattle soberly
threading their way to pasture, heard the doves cooing in the woods,
and the rippling of the river through the water plants, he said to
himself, “Here at least is rest and peace.” Casting his eyes toward the
red-roofed houses, half concealed among bananas and cachar trees,--with
their exquisite purple flowers--
“I am not sure that these people have not six to four the best of
it,” he remarked aloud (no one but his dog received this startling
confidence), as he gazed enviously at a group of lean brown Brahmins
who were dipping piously in the Kanāt, and pouring water from their
brass lotahs; he thought of his own tailor’s and other bills, his
wife’s insane extravagance, her flirtations, his hard work, his years
of enforced exile.
“Yes,” he continued, “_we_ know nothing about it. We wear ourselves
out running after phantoms. Here is contentment, assurance of future
happiness, and present peace.”
But then, you see, he was a new man--a visionary--and was totally
ignorant of the internal condition of this picturesque and primitive
hamlet.
The same day, as in duty bound, the two zemindars, each mounted on a
pony, and followed by a crowd of retainers, waited upon the collector
sahib, apparently on the most amicable terms. Just once a year they
were compelled to masquerade as friends, though when they had the
collector’s ear in private audience, their mutual complaints were both
numerous and bitter. They bore, as offerings, fruit and wreaths of
evil-smelling marigolds (that noxious flower so amazingly dear to the
native of India); also Golab Rai Sing carried with him one thing which
his rival lacked, and that was his son and only child, Soonder--_i.e._
“the beautiful”--a lively boy of five years, who was gaily attired
in a rose-coloured satin coat, and wore a purple velvet cap and gold
bangles. He was a sharp and unquestionably spoiled urchin. He sat with
his father and friends, or with his mother and her associates, and
listening open-eared, like the proverbial little pitcher, heard many
things that were not good for his morals--heard perpetual ridicule and
abuse of the enemy of his house; therefore, when he encountered Durga
Pershad in fields or byways, he made hideous grimaces at him, squinted
significantly, and called him “dog,” “pig,” “robber”--behaviour that
naturally endeared him to Pershad, who yearned with irrepressible
craving to find him alone! Subsequently the heir of Golab Rai Sing
would return to his fond parents, boast of his performance, and receive
as reward and encouragement lumps of sticky cocoanut and deliciously
long, wormy native sweets.
On the supreme occasion of the yearly reception, the child Soonder was
as prettily behaved and hypocritical as his elders. The collector’s
lady noticed him--and that publicly. She knew better than to say he
was a handsome boy (for, if she had no fear of the evil eye, it was
otherwise with her audience), but she gave him a picture paper, and
a battledore and shuttlecock, and his father swelled, beamed, and
literally shone with pride--for was not the presentation made in the
face of childless Durga Pershad, and all the elders of the people?
And greater glory was yet in store for this fortunate zemindar. The
collector, having looked over various papers, and heard witnesses (many
false), actually deigned to visit the well in person, and concluded
what he considered a shamefully procrastinated case, and finally made
over the Kooah well, and all its rights, to Golab Rai Sing and his
heirs for ever!
That night Golab made a great feast to all his followers, and bitter
were the thoughts of his defeated rival, as he lay sleepless on his
string charpoy, listening to the devilish exultation implied by the
ceaseless tom-toms.
As days went on, his thoughts became still more poignant; it seemed
to him that his friends were showing defection. Golab Rai had fine
crops, on which there was no lien; he had a son to light the torch of
his funeral pyre; he had the well. Of a truth, he had _too_ much! And
he, Pershad, had been flung in the dust, like a broken gurrah. Thus he
reflected as he sat brooding on the river-bank at sundown. The cattle
were strolling home through the marshes, the cranes were wheeling
overhead, close by a fierce, lean, black pariah gnawed some mysterious
and ghastly meal among the rushes, and on a sandbank lay three huge
alligators--motionless as logs of wood--crafty as foxes, voracious as
South Sea sharks. Durga Pershad glanced indifferently at the cattle,
at the cranes, but as his eyes fell on the alligators they kindled,
they blazed with a truly sinister flash--the alligators had offered him
an idea!
* * * * *
It was the feast of lights or lanterns, the festival of Lucksmi, wife
of Vishnu, and the goddess of festival. She, however, brought naught
but sore misfortune to the house of Golab Rai, for since sundown the
child was missing--was gone, without leaving a trace. Amongst the busy
excitement of preparing the illuminations and decorations, he had
vanished. His mother supposed he was with his father, and his father
believed him to be with his mother. Every house, byre, and nook--yea,
even the well, was searched in vain. Durga Pershad was humbly appealed
to, as he sat on his chabootra stolidly smoking his huka.
“Why question me?” he replied. “How should I know aught of the brat?
What child’s talk is this?”
A whole day--twenty-four long hours--elapsed, and suspicion pointed a
steady finger at Durga Pershad. Of late it was noticed that he and the
child had been friends--that he had given Soonder sweets--yea, and a
toy. One man averred that he saw a pair resembling them going towards
the river about sundown. The child was jumping for joy, and had a green
air-balloon in his hand.
This, Durga Pershad swore, was a black lie; he had never left the
village; his kinsman could speak.
“For how much?” scoffed the other side. “What fool will credit a man’s
relations?”
Four days passed, and Golab Rai had aged by twenty years. His round,
fat face was drawn and shrivelled; he was bent like an aged man, and
tottered as he walked.
As for his wife, she had almost lost her senses, though both she and
her husband clung wildly to hope, and he had lavished money unsparingly
in rewards and horse-flesh. As a last resource, the miserable mother
of Soonder came and cast her dishevelled person at the feet of Durga
Pershad--Durga Pershad, whom all her life she had mocked, reviled, and
figuratively spat upon.
“Take all I possess!” she cried--“my jewels, my eyes, my very life; but
tell me what thou hast done with him? Doth he yet live? My life, all
thou wilt, for his!”
As she spoke, a little cap was brought--a velvet cap, soaking with
water. It had been found by a fisherman three miles down the river.
This was sufficient answer to the question, “Doth he yet live?” The
child was no more, his cap bore witness; and Gindia, his mother,
swooned as one that was dead.
Yes, Soonder had been thrown to the alligators, without doubt; cast
into their jaws, like a kid or a dog. In their mind’s eye, the
villagers beheld the hideous scene, they heard the shriek, saw the
splash, and the ensuing scuffle. What death should Durga Pershad die?
The whole place was in an uproar; excitement was at fever heat. The
police were sent for to Hassanpore, the nearest large station, and the
suspected zemindar was marched away, and lodged in the Jail Khana; even
his own people were dumb.
Durga Pershad stoutly avowed his innocence by every oath under a
Hindoo heaven. He engaged, at enormous expense, an English pleader
from Lucknow. He paid much money elsewhere. There was no case. If one
man swore he met him with the child at sundown on the feast of lights,
there were five unshaken witnesses who had seen him at the same hour in
the village.
Therefore Durga Pershad was acquitted; and, moreover, in the words of
the Sudder judge, “without a stain on his character!”
Nevertheless, matters were not made equally agreeable for him at
home. His own partisans--save his tenants--held aloof with expressive
significance, and those who were wont to assemble on his chabootra of
an evening to smoke, argue, and bukh, were reduced by more than half.
But he held his head as high as ever, whilst that of his enemy lay low,
even to the dust. Of what avail now to Golab Rai were his crops, his
rents, his great jars of “ghoor” (coarse sugar), even his well, when he
had no longer a child--a son and heir?
The immediate effects of the tragedy gradually faded away; it had
ceased to be the sole daily topic, and it was again winter-time. One
chill, starlight evening, as Durga Pershad was riding home alone among
the cane-fields, he was suddenly set upon by a number of men, who had
lain in ambush in the crops. A cloth was thrown over his head, he
was dragged off his pony, and hustled into a doolie, which set off
immediately, and at great speed. There were many riding and running
beside it--the terrified prisoner heard the sound of steps and hoofs
and muttered voices. It seemed to him that he travelled for days; but,
in truth, he had only journeyed twenty hours, when he was suddenly
set down, the sliding door was pushed back, and he was hauled forth.
He found himself standing in a temple (an unknown temple), and by the
light of blazing torches he recognized at least one hundred familiar
faces, including those of Golab Rai and the priest of the village of
Haru. He was so cramped and dazed that at first he could only stagger
and blink; but as his hands were untied, he found his voice.
“What foul deed is this?” he demanded hoarsely. “Where am I?”
“Thou art within the most holy temple of Gola-Gokeranath,” answered
the priest, impressively. “We have appealed to man for justice--and in
vain. Therefore, we now approach the gods! Is it not so, my brothers?”
The reply was a prolonged murmur of hoarse assent from the quiet,
fierce-eyed crowd.
“Behold the image of Mahadeo, the destroyer!” continued the priest,
pointing to a conical stone in the middle of the temple, on which
the holy Ganges water dripped without ceasing. “Here is the mark of
Hanuman’s thumb, where he rested on his way to Ceylon to war against
the great giant Ravan.”
A venerable Mahant, or high-priest of the Gosains, now advanced, and
said, in a voice tremulous with age--
“Lay thy hand upon this spot, O Durga Pershad, and swear as I shall
speak.”
Durga Pershad held back instinctively, but the pressure of fifty arms
constrained him, and he yielded.
“If I have had part or lot in the death of Soonder, the son of Golab
Rai Sing----”
There was an expressive pause for a full moment, and no sound was
audible save the slow, monotonous dripping of the sacred stream.
Durga Pershad shuddered, but repeated the sentence somewhat unsteadily.
“--I call upon Mahadeo, the most holy, the destroyer, to smite me with
the black leprosy in the sight of all men, and that within three
moons. May I die in torture, and by piecemeal. May I be abhorrent
alike to men and gods, and after death, may I hang by my feet for one
thousand years above a fire of chaff.”
Durga Pershad echoed this hideous sentence with recovered composure.
Truly, it was a vast relief to find that his end was not yet--his life
in no present danger.
Here was a weird and ghostly scene! The dark, damp temple, at dead of
night, the crowd of stern, accusing countenances, lit up by flashes
of torchlight, the austere high-priest in his robe of office, and
the haggard culprit, the central figure, glaring defiance, with his
uplifted hand upon the cold wet stone! There seemed to the wretched
accused some accursed power in this holy image; the stone clung
tenaciously to his trembling flesh, and he was sensible of an awful,
death-like chill that penetrated to the very marrow of his bones.
* * * * *
In a few minutes the lights were extinguished, the wolfish-faced crowd
had melted away, and Durga Pershad found himself alone. He stumbled
out of the shrine, and by the cold, keen starlight descried the edge
of a large tank, which was surrounded by temples. He had never visited
the place of his own free will, but he recognized it from description
as undoubtedly the most holy Gola, where two hundred thousand pilgrims
flocked to worship once a year.
At daybreak he made his way to the bazaar, and there sold a silver
chain,--for he had no money. It might be imagination, but he believed
that people looked upon him with suspicious eyes. Three days later, he
was at home once more. He told no one that he had been kidnapped--no,
not even his mother or his wife.
By the end of a month, Durga Pershad had become an altered man. He
looked wofully lean and haggard, he scarcely ate, slept, or smoked, and
appeared dreadfully depressed. He now cared nought for taxes, rents,
or crops, and complained of a strange numbness in his limbs. Much to
the surprise of his household, he undertook a pilgrimage to Hurdwar,
the source of the Ganges (some one had suggested most holy Gola--some
one ignorant of Durga’s enforced expedition). He had barely returned
from Hurdwar when, as if possessed by a fever of piety, he set forth
for Badrinath, in the Himalayas. After that long and arduous journey,
he passed rapidly down to Benares. From thence, concluding an absence
of four months, he returned finally to Haru, and shut himself up within
his own courtyard and in his own house, refusing to see even his
nearest of kin. And now it began to be whispered about from ear to ear
that Durga Pershad, the son of Govindoo Pershad, was smitten with the
kôrh--or black leprosy.
Yes, the grasp of that terrible disease was upon him. His features
altered, thickened, and took the fatal and unmistakable leonine look.
In a surprisingly short time he had lost the fingers of both hands.
To show himself abroad would simply be to proclaim his guilt, and the
judgment of Mahadeo--whose wrath he had invoked. For weeks and weeks he
successfully evaded his enemies, fortified within his own house, and
protected by his wife and mother, whose shrill tongues garrisoned it
effectually.
When it became known that the hours of Durga Pershad were numbered,
a body of the elders, led by the village priest, came and sternly
demanded an entrance. They would take _no_ denial. After frantic
clamour and frenzied resistance, they gained admittance--admittance to
the very presence of the leper, who lay in a darkened room, huddled up
on a string bed.
“Behold,” cried the priest in a sonorous voice, “the finger of Mahadeo,
and the punishment of the slayer of a child! Speak, ere your tongue rot
away, and declare unto us what befell the boy at thy hands, O Durga
Pershad, leper!”
“Begone!” screamed his wife. “Depart, devil, born with the evil eye,
come to mock at the afflicted of the gods!”
“When he hath spoken, we will go our ways,” answered a solemn voice;
“but otherwise, we remain until the end.”
Durga Pershad raised himself laboriously on his charpoy; his head was
muffled up in a brown blanket, he was nearly blind, and cried aloud, in
a shrill, piercing falsetto--
“Yea, here is the answer--the god’s answer”--and he thrust out a
leprous arm--“I did it.”
“How? Hasten to speak, O vile one!”
“I long desired his life,” he panted. “He came with me to the
river-bank of his own accord, for I had promised him a rare spectacle.
My heart was hot within me--yea, as a red-hot horse-shoe. Even as he
clamoured for my promise, I flung him to the alligators. It was over in
a minute--but--I hear his scream now!”
Then Durga Pershad covered his face, and lo! as he turned to the wall,
he died.
TWO LITTLE TRAVELLERS.
CHAPTER I.
Gram had fallen to nine seers for the rupee, which affected the
sahibs who kept horses and polo ponies; and rice was down to eight
measures--this affected the villagers and ryots. The rains due at
Christmas had failed. There was talk of a great scarcity and a sore
famine in the land, especially among the sleek, crafty bunnias, who
bought up every ounce of grain in the district when it was cheap,
and at the first whisper of failing crops--often a rumour started by
themselves--locked it up relentlessly, in hopes of starvation prices,
refusing to sell save at exorbitant rates.
What is a road coolie to do under these conditions?--a man whose daily
wage never exceeds one anna and a half, no matter how markets may
fluctuate. Three rupees’ worth of grain will keep him alive for twenty
days; but how is he to exist for the remainder of the month? How is he
to feed his children, to pay his tiny rental, and the village tax?
This was a problem that Chūnnee pondered over, as he sat on a heap of
stones at the side of the road, with his empty basket at his feet,
and a look of despair upon his handsome, and usually good-humoured,
countenance.
Alas! Chūnnee had been born under an evil star. Scorpio was his
constellation, and all the luck had ebbed from him, as surely as it had
flowed towards his half-brother Zālim Sing.
Now, Zālim Sing was prosperous and well-to-do, the proprietor of a good
mud house, a patch of castor oil, and two biggahs of land, planted
in rape and linseed; he also owned a huge milch buffalo, a pair of
plough bullocks, and the only ekka within three koss. Yes, an ekka that
came to him with his wife, all lavishly decorated with brass knobs and
ornamental work, an ekka that had yellow curtains, and was drawn by
a bay tat (a bazaar pony), with six rows of blue beads round her ewe
neck. Zālim Sing was prouder of his turn-out than any parvenu’s wife
with her first equipage; and perhaps it was on the strength of this,
more than his store of linseed and his plot of land, that the village
elders hearkened to him with respect. He was a lean, shrewd-looking
man, with a cast in his eye and a halt in his gait. Nevertheless, he
had prospered, and the world had gone well with him, whereas it had
gone ill with his half-brother.
But Chūnnee was not wise in his generation; he had bartered away his
share of the ancestral home for two cows, a grindstone, and some brass
cooking-pots. The cows had died the rains before last, the cooking-pots
were pawned to the local soucar; his crop of one mango tree had
failed, he had no capital except his sturdy frame, two horny hands, and
his coolie basket.
In his hovel there were his children--Girunda, a boy aged ten, and
Gyannia, a girl of four. There was also a mat, an old charpoy, a
reaping-hook, a couple of earthen pots, and a white cat. This was all
that Chūnnee possessed in the wide world. It might have sufficed, had
he had wisdom like his brother; but, alas! he had no brains. There he
sat, on the kunker heap, that glaring February afternoon. The land was
still covered with cane crops; the barley was green, and in the ear;
dry leaves were whirling along the road; the banka tree was dropping
red flowers from its grey, leafless branches; the mango tree was in
blossom. Yes, the hot weather, the time of parching and scarcity, would
be on them soon. Suddenly he heard a rattling, and felt a cloud of
warm yellow dust. It was his brother’s ekka. Zālim Sing and a friend
tore past at a gallop, and scarcely noticed the coolie on the side of
the road, beyond a hoarse laugh of derision. Why had fortune been kind
to one brother and cruel to another? Why had his cows died?--his wife
been bitten by a “karite” as she cut vetches, and expired at sundown in
agonies? Ah, Junia was a loss--nigh as great as the cows. She cooked,
and minded the children; she earned one anna a day for reaping; she was
fortunate to die young; she had never lived to know hunger. Why had
some people stores and treasures, to whom they were of no use, whilst
others lacked a morsel to keep them from perishing?
Chūnnee sat for half an hour with his arms loosely folded on his
breast, and pondered this question in his heart. Presently he arose,
and picked up his basket, and took the path towards his village, where
its brown mud walls and straw roofs stood out in strong relief against
a noble tope of mango trees; but these mangoes were the property of the
sirkar (government). Many an envious eye had been cast on them and
their fine yearly harvests. Despite bazaar rumours about scarcity, it
was surely what is called a bunnia’s famine; for this hungry, handsome
Rajpoot, with the form and sinews of some Greek god, made his way
homewards between marvellous crops at either side of the well-beaten
path. The self-same rich land was yielding gram, rape, linseed; whilst
barley towered high above all. Where else will the earth yield four
harvests with little manure or care? But not an inch of this fertile
soil called Chūnnee master! And what to him was all this fertility?
As he strode along, a fierce temptation kept pace with his steps, and
whispered eagerly in his ear--
“There is old Turroo, thy great-uncle; he is nigh ninety years of age,
and rich; his head was grey in the mutiny year. True, he favours Zālim
Sing. They say he hath even advanced him money for seeds, because he
is prosperous; and he will not look at thee, because thou art poor,
much less suffer thee to cross his threshold. They declare he hath
a treasure buried--some that he came upon in the mutiny year. What
avails it to him? He hath his huka and his opium, his warm bedding, and
brass cooking-pots. He only enjoys money when he looks at it--and thy
children are starving. They say that thousands of rupees are hidden
under his floor, and one hundred rupees would make thee a rich man.
Thou mightest till that plot of ground near the big baal tree, and buy
two plough bullocks for twenty-five rupees. Krisna would then lend
thee his plough. Set grain--not linseed, having no mill--grain at even
twelve seers next year, and thou wilt be a wealthy man; yea, and better
than Zālim Sing, who will no longer scoff at thee or cover thee with
dust. Thou wilt have no need to go out as coolie. Thou wilt have plenty
of flour, and dál, and fresh tobacco in thy huka. It is easy--as easy
as breathing. But to rob--to rob an old man?” inquired conscience.
“True; but thine own kinsman, who cannot carry his money to the
burning ghâut, it ought to be thine some day. Thou art his heir, though
he hates thee--men often hate their next-of-kin. His hoarding--it is of
no use to him--it will save thee and thine from death.”
“But how--how can I take it?” inquired Chūnnee of the tempter.
“Behold, the nights are dark, the moon doth not rise till morn; thou
hast thy krooplie still; dig through the mud wall. They say the box is
buried near the hearth; open it, and carry away what thou wilt in thy
cloth. The old man sleeps as though a corpse--he drinks opium. He has
no one in the house, no dog. It is so easy; truly, it is a marvel he
hath not been robbed before! Take it; be bold. Truly, it is half thine.
Thou canst keep a pony, too, and buy silver bangles for Gyannia.”
“But how can I account for this sudden wealth? All the world knows that
I am but a beggar.”
“Carry it forth and hide it, bury it in a hole far away; for doubtless
there will be a great search. Some weeks later, take a few rupees, and
go by rail to Lucknow; and come back, and say thy wife’s grandmother
hath died, and left thee one hundred rupees. The gold and jewels thou
wilt take in a roll of bedding to Lucknow, and sell. It will all be
easy; have no fear.”
As these ideas were working in his brain, and he was the sport of two
conflicting feelings, Chūnnee was rapidly approaching his little hovel,
which lay on the outskirts of the village of Paroor. It was a small
hamlet of mud houses, huddled together most irregularly. There was no
main street, nor even an attempt at one; no chief entrance--merely half
a dozen footpaths running into the village from various directions.
There would be a high mud wall and doorway leading into an enclosure,
containing twenty small huts, and as many families, all connected;
here were also ponies, calves, fowl, the property of the clan, and
perchance a bullock-cart or a sugar-press. These enclosures were set
down indiscriminately, and joined together; the only village street, an
irregular path, that threaded its way between them. There were “sets”
even here, as in higher circles; inmates of one mud courtyard, who
owned a sugar-press, looked down on the inmates of those who had none.
Most people looked down on Chūnnee, the coolie--even the women,
although he was a handsome, well-made fellow. What are looks, when a
man has not a pice, and owns nought save two crying children? Chūnnee
made his way past a crowd collected round a khooloo, or sugar-mill--a
rude, wooden affair, turned by two bullocks, fed with bits of raw cane,
which it squeezes into a receptacle in the ground, and subsequently
empties into another vat indoors, where the sugar is boiled, and
finally poured off into huge jars (similar to those which contained the
forty thieves), and sent to middlemen, who thereby reap much profit.
Paroor was in the midst of a sugar country, and boasted half a dozen
of these rude sugar-mills.
Chūnnee passed through the scattered strips of cane, basket in
hand--there were no greetings for him--and, turning a corner, dived
between two mud walls into a small hut that stood by itself. A slim,
nearly naked lad ran out to meet him, with a look of expectation on his
intelligent face, but, alas! his father was empty-handed. On the mat
lay a little girl with curly hair and a fair but puny face. She was
fast asleep, holding in her arms a miserably thin bazaar kitten--or it
might be a full-grown cat stunted in size.
“She was hungry; I fetched her some banka fruit from cows--now she is
asleep,” explained the boy. “There is a little barley--the last--I made
it,” and he pointed to a cake, a very small one, baking on some embers.
“Father, what shall we do to-morrow?” he asked, as his father devoured
the only food he had seen that day.
“There is still the reaping-hook.”
“Gunesh offers two annas for it.”
“And it cost a rupee and a half.”
“I went to-day to old Turroo, to ask him for a few cowries, or a bit
of a chupatti for Gyannia--she was crying with hunger, and calling for
food.”
“And what did he give thee?”
“He smote me a blow on the back with his staff”--pointing to a weal on
his shoulder. “He said I was a devil’s spawn, good for nothing; like
thee--a beggar.”
“I would not be as I am, but I have never had a chance--never one
chance.” And, ravenous as he was, Chūnnee the famished yielded half his
cake in answer to his son’s wistful and expectant eyes.
When darkness had fallen on the village, the inhabitants went to bed
like the birds--it saved oil--though there were a few budmashes who sat
up all night and gambled; each visiting the other’s house in turn, and
providing light and drink. Yes, drink--drink, from the fatal mowra
tree. The fever of gambling seemed to be all over the land. Some
gambled away their money, clothes, tools, cattle, but this gang kept
their proceedings secret--yea, even from their nearest neighbours.
Chūnnee had never gambled.
As, by degrees, the children were called in, and the houses shut, the
village grew dark and quiet. About twelve o’clock, Chūnnee rose, and
felt for his krooplie (a mattock with a short handle); then he opened
the door and looked forth; there was not a sound to be heard, save the
breathing of the children and the distant howling of a pack of jackals.
There were the clear cold stars in the sky, showing above the opposite
wall. Should he do it? Oh, if Heaven would but send him a sign! It
seemed to him that his devout wish was instantly fulfilled, for at that
moment Gyannia turned in her sleep, moaning her frequent and pitiful
cry when awake, “I am hungry.”
CHAPTER II.
Chūnnee had now received his answer; he stole forth, and crept like a
shadow from wall to wall, down a series of narrow paths, till he came
to a house standing alone in an open space--a notable abode, for a tree
grew through the roof. There was no gate to the outer yard, no dog. The
door was closed--needless to try it; he must work his way through the
mud wall at the back, and crawl in. The baking of many seasons’ suns
had effectually hardened this impediment, and he strove for an hour,
listening for sounds with intense trepidation, whilst the sweat poured
down his face. At last he had scraped a sufficiently large aperture--he
was slender to leanness. He crept through, but his usual bad luck
pursued him; his head came violently against a brass chattie that fell
with a clang enough to waken the dead. It effectually aroused the old
man, who awoke and struck a match, and showed Chūnnee that he had come
too late!
The light displayed a deep hole in the floor, an empty hole. The door
was ajar; the treasure was already stolen; and Chūnnee stood there,
krooplie in hand, with the cavity in the wall to speak for him--the
convicted thief!
Old Turroo’s piercing shrieks of “murder” and “dacoity” assembled
a dozen people in less than three minutes. Yea, truly, he had
been robbed! A box lay outside empty, and Chūnnee the coolie, the
ne’er-do-well, had come to this!
He was caught like a rat in a trap! There was the opening in the
wall, the muddy krooplie in his grasp; he stood plainly convicted.
The criminal hung his head--of what avail to speak, and aver his
innocence?--he was not innocent! Others had got the booty, he would
suffer for them. As he had been toiling and labouring they had been
within, and had carried off what he too had come to seek.
Perhaps he was served rightly; but he never got a chance--no, not even
to rob.
Meanwhile old Turroo literally rent his clothes, and tore his scanty
white beard, and howled, cursed, and gesticulated like a madman. Zālim
Sing stood foremost amongst sympathizers (for the venerable relative
still possessed a house, cattle, and lands), and said “that truly it
did not surprise him to find that the thief was his blood-brother.”
Nevertheless, it did astonish most of the assembly, for Chūnnee, if
miserably poor, had ever been known to be scrupulously honest. They
were amazed, moreover, that he should _begin_ on such a large scale!
Chūnnee offered no resistance; he was led away, and shut up in a
cowhouse, whilst Zālim Sing’s brother-in-law, full of zeal, ran all the
way to Bugwa to fetch the police.
The police arrived at daybreak--two men and an inspector, in their
blue tunics and red turbans--all looking excessively wise; but their
searching and cross-examining, discovered nothing beyond the empty box.
How had Chūnnee spirited away the treasures? Who was his accomplice?
“Let him be beaten till he speaks,” implored the venerable creature
who had been ravished of his treasure. “Let the soles of his feet be
roasted until he opens his mouth. Where hath he hidden them?”--and he
shouted to the whole assembled village--“the two bags of rupees, the
golden bangles, the anklets, the strings of pearls--forty pair without
blemish? If he will only give me the pearls!”--and the old man lifted
up his voice and wept.
A dirty, half-naked old man, how strange it seemed, to behold him
weeping for his pearls! Now, had it been a young and lovely woman, the
grief would have seemed natural. And who would have believed that old
Turroo had such treasures? Ay, he was a sly fox.
“Give me my pearls, yea, and my gold mohurs. Thou mayst keep the rest,
and go free,” he declared magnanimously.
But Chūnnee could not give what he had not got, and therefore held his
peace. His children screamed when they saw their father’s arms pinioned
with ropes, the iron things on his hands, and heard he was going away
to the Jail Khana--screamed from fear and hunger.
Meanwhile old Turroo howled and raved like one possessed, and, pointing
to his grand-nephew, besought the police to put him to torture by fire,
then and there. In former days strange things were done under the
mantle of the law; but in these enlightened times no policeman dare
venture, even for a large bribe, to practise the question by torture.
So Chūnnee was led away captive, followed as far as the high-road by
fully half the village; and for more than a mile along that dusty
track, two little weeping creatures pattered behind him. At length the
girl could go no further, and fell exhausted. Her father halted between
his guard, and said--
“Girunda, take care of thy sister. Go to thy uncle; he will feed thee
till I come back. Go now, ere nightfall.”
And if he doth not receive them, what is to become of them? was a
thought that harassed him all the weary march. At a turn of the road he
turned and looked back, and saw the two small forlorn figures standing
in the straight, white highway, watching him to the last.
Chūnnee was brought up before the magistrate that day. He had been
taken red-handed, and had not denied his guilt. He was silent with
respect to the treasure. It had been a most daring dacoity, but, as
it was his first offence, he would be only sentenced to two years’
imprisonment in Shahjhanpur jail.
“And his two children?” he ventured to ask. “Who would care for them?
How were they to live?” (There are no poor-houses in India.)
“Oh, the neighbours, or your relations,” said the Sudder judge, knowing
how immensely generous, good, and charitable the very poorest are to
one another. “You have a brother, of course--he will take them.”
Chūnnee was by no means so sanguine on this point.
He was sent on foot to jail--a distance of sixty miles--and there put
in leg-irons, and a convict sacking-coat, with a square cap to cover
his shaven head. He was set to work to pick oakum. He worked steadily,
though with a face and air of dogged despair. But what was the good
of giving trouble? What was the good of anything? The jail fare was
not jail fare to him--it was better than he had at home; and now that
he had sufficient to eat, he grew strong. But how were his children
faring? Were they starving? Other convicts--robbers, gamblers,
dacoits--thought Chūnnee proud and sullen, he was so silent; or surely
he was in for some great crime?
Luckily for him, the jail daroga liked him, and promoted him to
basket-making, and thence to the vegetable garden. His percentage on
his earnings he did not take out in money, or even in the Sunday smoke.
No; all went to the remission of his sentence. Truly, life was not so
bad, save for the hangings--every convict was forced to attend--and
these executions were not infrequent, for Shahjhanpur was in the centre
of a district notorious for murders. It was a veritable case of “Satan
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.”
When all the grain of this most fertile tract is harvested, and the
sugar-cane brakes have been cut and carried away on bullock-carts, when
the linseed is pressed, and the sugar sold, and the wheat threshed and
ground, it is the hot weather; no sowing or ploughing can be done.
People must wait for the first burst of the rains, to soften the
stone-like ground. And, oh, how sweet to the nostrils is the smell of
earth after the first wild downpour!
Meanwhile, they have money in their hands--the fruit of their labour.
They have long, hot, idle days, and no occupation, so they rake up old
land-feuds, old blood-feuds, old jealousies, and the result is but too
frequently a man’s body found in a nullah, killed by a sickle or a
lathi (heavy stick), or a woman’s corpse drawn out of some abandoned
well.
The jail gardens supplied all the vegetables to the station, and
the mem sahibs, when the vegetable “doli” came late, knew well the
reason--there had been a hanging.
Chūnnee attended the first execution with apparently more trepidation
than the criminal himself, who walked to his fate with a jaunty air,
and on being asked if he had arranged all his affairs said--
“By your favour, yea;” and then, on second thoughts, added, with
amazing vivacity, “There is one small brass lotah which I forgot. I
desire that it be given to my sister-in-law.” And so, singing a song to
Nirvana, he ascended the gallows and calmly met his fate.
Another young man’s demeanour was outrivalled by that of his own father
and the kinsfolk who had come to take leave of him.
The execution was at half-past six, and the official in charge--a
tender-hearted gentleman--stood waiting till the farewells were over,
watch in hand. Time was up, but he would give this vigorous young
Brahmin yet a few more minutes of life. He was engaged in eager
conversation with his relatives, and it was commonly reported and
suspected that he had actually confessed to the crime, and sacrificed
himself in order to save a near kinsman. The official glanced at his
watch once more, and was astounded to catch the eye of the culprit’s
father, and hear him say, in a most matter-of-fact tone--
“Yea, truly, my son, time is up. Thou hadst better go at once, for,
remember, we have fifteen koss to carry thee to the Ganges to burn--and
we shall not get home till dark, and the moon is old!”
The son, without a word, salaamed to this more than Roman parent, and
then turned to meet his fate without an instant’s hesitation. Chūnnee
had beheld many heroes of this type, but he had also seen others who
had not had it in them to encounter death with similar fortitude. He
had noted the wandering, terrified eye, the ashen lips drawn back from
the chattering teeth, the twitching knee-caps, as the man was led
forth to die like a dog; he had seen it, and the sight had made his
heart melt like wax within him, and his limbs shake as if he had been
stricken with palsy. It was his one horror, to be warned to attend an
execution.
And then there was the ever-haunting fear about his two desolate,
helpless children--were they well or ill, alive or dead? He was
seventy-six miles from his own pergunnah--no one ever visited him with
tidings from home, no one came to see him, and brought him bazaar
news, and sweets, a tin pot to drink from, or even a bit of a wheaten
chupatti. No, he had no friends, either within the jail, or beyond its
walls.
CHAPTER III.
Meanwhile the desolate little couple had toiled painfully back to
Paroor, and halted outside their uncle’s enclosure. They dared not
venture in, and they crouched timidly without the battered wooden
doorway, whilst Zālim Sing laid down the law, expounded his own
virtues, and denounced Chūnnee to more than half the village. He
had always been secretly jealous of his good-looking brother, who,
moreover, was the father of a son, whilst his wife had borne him,
instead of the much-desired heir, no fewer than seven daughters, of
whom four survived; and Zālim’s enemies said among themselves that
his sins must be many, or he would never have been punished with
seven girls! He talked freely, knowing there was no one to defend the
absent, and the starving pair heard that their father was a liar,
a dacoit, a budmash, a thief, and the most ungrateful kinsman to a
noble-hearted brother that ever drew the breath of life--one cannot
talk for ever; and as the listeners gradually dropped off, notice
was naturally attracted by the two wretched little beggars in the
lane--what was to become of them?--their home was empty, save for a
reaping-hook, a charpoy, and a cat.
Zālim Sing pulled his beard, and scowled; his crooked eye rolled
fiercely, till a woman in the crowd exclaimed in a loud clear voice--
“Since thou sayest thou art a benevolent man, and the most generous of
kinsmen, why dost thou stare at the starving ones, instead of taking
them in?”
Their dusty feet and hunger-stricken faces touched the crowd--as easily
swayed as the branch of a tree to this side and that, by whatever wind
may blow.
There was a hoarse murmur, which the crafty Zālim quickly interpreted;
now was the time to pose as a noble benefactor--or never; and he drew
the two children over the threshold of the door, and shut himself in
with his detested encumbrances.
He gave them some coarse food and water, and showed them a sort of shed
where they might sleep. “But thou mayst not enter my house,” he said,
“or play with my children; thy father is a wicked man, therefore ye are
pariahs, but I and my children are good.”
The next day he went to his brother’s abode and sold the old charpoy,
reaping-hook, and house for the sum of seven rupees; but he could
neither sell nor kill the cat--she sat serenely aloft in a neem tree,
far out of his reach. Presently she discovered her old owners, or they
discovered her; they hid her secretly in their miserable shelter, and
begged a little milk in the village. Alas! she was their only friend.
Their cousins--four sallow, ugly children, two of whom had inherited
their parent’s violent squint, and all of whom were laden with anklets
and bangles, and a vast sense of their own importance--condescended
to come and patronize the two wicked beggars who lived in the old
goat-shed in a corner of the enclosure. They experienced an intense
and novel delight in patronizing, teasing, pinching, and threatening
these little pariahs, who were better fun, and afforded more scope
for amusement, than any of their usual games, and their sense of
their own superiority swelled to enormous proportions. They visited
the unfortunates at all hours; but the cat knew their voices, and
hid hastily among the thatch. Bazaar cats are wonderfully active and
cunning, they are also marvellous thieves, and the cat throve.
Presently Zālim Sing’s wife discovered that Girunda was old enough to
be of use. She set him to do the work of two servants, or one pony. He
had to draw water and carry it home from the well, to grind corn, to
cut fodder, whilst his little sister cried herself to sleep alone,
for she dared not leave the cat, lest her ever-prying cousins should
discover it and throw it down the well. Certainly its appearance was
against it; it was lean and long and dirty-white, with a thin rat tail;
and a sharp-pointed face--a pure village type--hungry, and careless of
its appearance, a merciless mouser, but a faithful adherent.
Poor Girunda now toiled early and late, he received nought but blows,
abuse, and the coarsest fare. Much of his utility was unknown to his
uncle--who was frequently from home--but who scowled every time that
his glance fell upon him.
Affairs were not going quite as smoothly as hitherto with Zālim
Sing. The prices had risen in everything, save in his own particular
commodity, linseed. There was the prospect of an unusually hot, scarce
season, and his pony was sick. He vented all his ill humour on the two
oppressed children “within his gates”--a most excellent, comprehensive,
and Eastern expression--meaning within the mud or stone enclosure,
where the master is supreme, where he can shut out all the world save
his household, his oxen, and servants--shut it out by merely closing
to the street an iron-knobbed wooden door. Within Zālim’s gates his
nephew became a slave; he was made to tend the furnace in the wall, at
the other side of which boiled an enormous receptacle of linseed oil.
This duty was murderous in the glaring, breathless month of April;
it was worse than a fireman’s work in June in the Red Sea--and the
fireman is relieved at his post; no one ever relieved Girunda--the name
signified “thick bread;” but of any bread his share was small--and then
he fell sick. For two days he lay in his shed, burning with fever, his
uncle beat him repeatedly with a thick stick for his laziness--beat
him savagely too--but the boy made no moan, only his little sister
screamed, and the screams attracted the neighbours.
“He is a lazy, idle, good-for-nothing pig!” explained the uncle to
an eager inquirer; “he will not work aught save his teeth. And she is
half-witted.”
“True,” said the listener; “and it is only a charitable man like
thyself, O Zālim Sing, who would keep the beggar’s brats, and with a
dearth in the land, too; and wheat rising every week.”
Then she went back to her spinning of coarse country cloth; Girunda lay
and buried his head in his hands, and Gyannia sobbed in a corner; but
his tormentor went into the house, to confer with his wife.
“If the boy would not work, neither should he eat. Was _he_ himself to
mind the furnace?” he demanded angrily.
“The boy is sickening,” said the woman. “I have seen it coming--it is
something bad--maybe the cholera, maybe the smallpox. It is surely some
heavy sickness.”
“And he may die?”
“Yea, having given it to us and ours. What shall we do?”
“Behold, to-night, when the village is quiet, I will take the two of
them, and set them on the high-road. Thou canst bake some chupattis,
and I will give them four annas, and tell them to begone, to return
here no more, for if they do, of a surety I will kill them.”
“They will believe thee!” said his wife with a laugh.
“Yea. Why should they not beg, as others do? And soon the boy can work,
and earn an anna a day.”
“Yea, he will soon be able to work,” agreed this treacherous woman.
The children were surprised to be left in peace till sunset, and then
to receive some fried beans and a chupatti--most sumptuous fare for
them! But when it was dark, save for a dying moon, Zālim Sing entered
their hut, staff in hand, and awoke them roughly.
“Arise quickly, and come with me; thou shalt no more remain under my
roof. I have fed thee for three moons, now thou mayst go forth and
feed thyselves. I will set thee on the road, and give thee food for
two days and a little money; get thee to some town, and appeal to the
charitable. Return here, and I will slay thee.”
The children rose trembling; they had not much delay in dressing,
but Gyannia smuggled the cat under her bit of blue cloth (once her
mother’s), and without one word the wretched pair meekly followed their
uncle across the enclosure, past the oil-press, the sleeping bullocks,
out of the postern, and through the silent village, then away to the
high-road. Their kinsman walked along behind them in the powdery-white
dust, stick in hand, for nearly two miles. It was nigh dawn; already
the yellow light glimmered in the east; he must return; so he halted
abruptly, and gave the boy some chupattis rolled in plantain leaves,
and a four-anna piece (five-pence), and then said, “There lieth thy
road out into the world; get thee gone, and never let me behold thy
face again,” and turning, he walked rapidly homewards.
The soft tap of his stick gradually died away, and then the children
were quite alone. They sat down, and began to whisper. It was not a
dream; their uncle had come to them in the middle of the night, and
brought them along the high-road in the dark, and given them food, and
told them to begone, and never let him see them again.
After their first feeling of astonishment had abated, they devoured
a chupatti, sharing it with the cat; and then, as the dawn of light
showed red along the horizon, they rose and went forward.
“If they had to walk, best make the journey now,” thought the boy, who
was wonderfully sensible for his years.
“Brother, whither are we going?” asked Gyannia presently.
“We have no one to go to but father,” he replied. “We will go to
him--to the Jail Khana.”
But he did not tell her, nor would she have understood, that the
jail in which their father lay imprisoned was seventy miles away.
Hand-in-hand the two outcasts went slowly along the shadeless white
roads; several villagers on the way to their work met them, and halted
and stared at the party--a ragged little boy and girl, with a bazaar
cat running after them.
CHAPTER IV.
That day Girunda and Gyannia walked five miles, resting in a nullah,
under tufts of high grass, in the heat of the sun from nine till
six--during which time the fierce hot winds roared over the land, and
swept the roasted leaves up and down the roads, and shook the branches
of the cork trees. How hot it was--every living thing seemed to have
secured some shelter, save these forlorn children. The air was like
a blast from a furnace, the very stones were scorching to the touch,
and in the shallows, where a great river had rushed in the rains,
there were now but a few shrunken pools in a stony bed; in these pools
wallowed blue buffaloes (their hideous noses scarcely above water),
enjoying a sort of tepid relief.
That night the travellers halted in a village; a gwali’s (cowherd’s)
wife was surprised to see an exhausted-looking boy carrying on his
back a little girl, the little girl in her turn carrying a cat. She
invited them in, and gave them milk, and asked from whence they came.
“Paroor,” replied Girunda.
“Paroor? Lo! it is six koss away. Do thy people know?” She eyed him
with suspicion.
“Yea; our uncle hath turned us out to beg.”
“And where art thou going?”
“To Shahjhanpur, where our father dwells.”
“Shahjhanpur!” with a scream; “why, it is nigh thirty koss, and thou
canst not walk there.”
“There is no other means.”
“Hast thou any money?”
Girunda untied a rag, and proudly displayed his precious four-anna bit.
He had never possessed such a sum in his life.
“It may maintain thee for two or three days,” said the woman dubiously.
“What work is thy father doing in Shahjhanpur?”
“Some one said he was making matting,” rejoined the boy, simply. “He is
in jail.”
“In jail! Oh, ye fathers!”
“Yea; he went three months ago.”
“And what hath he done?--murder--robbery?”
“He hath done naught. They just took him.”
“But surely he must have robbed or plundered?”
“Nay; he was always very poor. He had nothing to leave us but a sickle
and this cat; but old Turroo Sing had all his money stolen.”
“I see. And now it is buried somewhere,” she added significantly. “How
long will thy father be in jail?”
“Two years.”
“A great time! Well, thou art weary, and must need rest. Lie here on
this mat, and to-morrow I will give thee food to take thee on for a
day or two--money I have none--and God will do the rest.”
The next morning the children fared well. That good Samaritan, the
gwali’s wife, secured them seats in a passing bullock-hackery, and thus
they accomplished a considerable distance.
The following day they met no friends, and the heat was frightful--the
air like a flame. Nevertheless, Girunda tottered doggedly forward, with
his sister on his back, for five miles, with long, long rests; and at
sunset they were nearing a large native town--at any rate, it seemed
large to them. They were sent to the serai--a resting-place for native
wayfarers. There was a great entrance gate leading into a wide enclosed
space, with plenty of accommodation for camels, ekkas, and horses,
and little niches, or rooms, all around, for the travellers. This
was indeed a new life to Girunda--his sister was asleep. He went and
watched the hairy Punjaubi dealers watering and feeding their ponies;
the bearded camel-men giving fodder to their screaming, bubbling,
discontented animals; the “purda nashins,” women, hidden behind a
kind of screen in a corner, from whence came much shrill laughing and
chattering. Tired as he was, he was still more curious, and crept
forward and tried to peep, but was rewarded with a stinging blow and
a volume of abuse from a hideous old hag. “They were all ugly,” so he
assured a hawker, who laughed at his discomfiture.
This serai, with its crowds of travellers, and groups of animals, and
imposing entrance, was truly a most novel and wonderful scene to this
ignorant village lad.
A woman, woman-like, once more took pity on the party--the queer little
group of a boy and a girl and a cat, with no one belonging to them, and
not even possessing a bundle of clothes. In reply to their petition, “O
mother, will you help us?” she gave them a ride on her jingling ekka
for about eight miles. Girunda and Gyannia had never been in (to them)
such a splendid equipage before, and were extremely happy as the wiry
chesnut animal between the shafts, who tasted naught but bad grass
or roadside nibblings, kept up a steady canter mile after mile. But,
alas! the ekka’s owner was going in a different direction from theirs,
and at a certain bridge she set them down, and took leave of them,
turning away into a “cutcha” track.
They were now in a different country, where the road ran quite straight
between lines of neem trees, and was bounded with burnt-up, rusty
grass. The landscape was desolate; there were no villages peeping out
of the clumps of trees, no houses by the roadside: but these are always
rare in India.
They halted at sundown, and crept under the arches of a bridge over a
dry watercourse, and ate raw rice and drank water. It was plain that
they must pass the night where they were, and as they were very tired,
they were not long in falling asleep. Gyannia, infant-like, slept
soundly till dawn, but not so her brother. At midnight he was awoke by
a cold, damp nose being poked into his face; he started up trembling,
and a few minutes later he heard his visitor’s melancholy cry--it was
only a prowling jackal. As he sat and stared into the grey light,
his sharpened ears heard another sound that made his heart beat very
fast--the “haunk--haunk” of a hyena. The cat, too, sat up and listened.
If it came their way, he had no weapon; and stories of children
devoured by hyenas were a common topic among the crones of Paroor
village. He had several times seen a hyena skulking round, when he was
driving home the cow--a hideous, high-shouldered, shuffling brute; but
then his father had been near, and he was not afraid. Now, alas! his
father was miles away, and he was almost sick with terror. The cry came
nearer and nearer--oh, fearfully near--now it was directly overhead!
What intense relief! the brute was on the high-road right above them;
yes, and the “haunk--haunk” was dying gradually away in the distance;
but Girunda slept no more that night. Supposing it should come back?
The cat, too, appeared to have anxieties; she did not curl up, but sat
bolt erect beside him. She was a queer animal, attached to people and
not to a place, though the first day she had followed them in a devious
and uncertain manner, uttering low mews of expostulation, and even
sitting down in the middle of the road, and thus remonstrating from
afar, till they were almost out of sight, but subsequently joining them
like a whirlwind, with a long white tail. Lately she had been carried,
and had had “lifts” in the bullock-cart and ekka; so the cat was much
the freshest of the party, and seemed to have become reconciled to the
journey, though she evidently did not approve of sleeping out at night
in the neighbourhood of hyenas.
It was the end of June, just before the rains broke; the sky was
like molten brass, the earth like stone. Who would travel in such a
time?--who but two homeless unfortunates, who must press forward or
else lie down and perish! Girunda staggered along, carrying his sister,
at the rate of three koss a day. The four annas were long exhausted,
and they now openly begged their bread! Some gave them a few handsful
of rice,--which they ate raw--some a few cowries, which they spent at
the little bunnia shops; they could barely keep body and soul together!
Yes, they were like the mendicants that had come to their own door in
the good times Girunda remembered, when his mother was alive--and the
cow.
His mother--he could recollect her well. She had pretty white teeth,
and she laughed often; but one day she came back from the fields
between two women. She was weeping, and so were they, and they sent him
across the river to play; and when he returned, a boy in the village
ran shouting to meet him, and cried, “Thy mother is dead; a snake bit
her.”
Sometimes Girunda thought he would die too; he was so hot, and so
tired, and his feet were so sore. If only he could reach his father
first! But how long the miles had become! How he strained his eyes to
catch sight of the next milestone! and what an enormous time it seemed
before it came into view! The road never varied--never turned to the
right hand or the left; sometimes, as he toiled on, his poor tired
brain imagined that it had taken the form of a great grey serpent,
and was coming towards him to swallow him up. They were now within
five miles of Shahjhanpur city--would he ever reach it? There were
fine trees lining the route; there were plenty of ekkas and ponies;
there was a loud-puffing fire-devil going yonder over a bridge (he
had heard of it), with a lot of black boxes behind it; and still he
was three miles from Shahjhanpur--now two. Oh, he could never arrive
there--never!
CHAPTER V.
About half-past six o’clock the next morning a gang of convicts
were working on the road near the jail, carrying stones with much
chain-clanking, all obtrusively industrious for the moment, as the keen
black eye of the jail burkundaz was fixed upon them; but presently his
gaze was attracted by a little group that approached him: a policeman
escorting two ragged children.
“What are these?” he inquired.
“They were found last night near the police thana on the Futupore Road.
The boy had fainted on the wayside, and I kept them till dawn, when I
brought them in on a passing hackery. They come, they say, from Paroor,
a village seventy miles off. The boy has walked all the way, carrying
the girl on his back--so he says.”
“Truly, but it is a fable! Of a surety, they are beggars from our own
city.”
“We can easily prove them. They have come hither to seek their father,
who is in prison here; they aver that his name is Chūnnee Sing, of
Paroor.”
The convicts lagged to listen, and one whispered to another, “It is the
tall man, who never smiles.”
“Such a one is here for dacoity--two years’ sentence.”
“Where is he?” inquired the burkundaz of one of the gang.
“Working in the jail-garden gang, hazoor” (_i.e._ your highness).
An order was given to fetch him at once.
“They had a cat, too,” continued the policeman; “I left it at the
thana. What do these beggars with a cat?”
Meanwhile a large crowd had collected round the children--the
curly-haired, pretty little girl, and the miserably emaciated boy, with
his lacerated feet tied up in rags--a number of market coolies and
officers’ servants; and the convicts dawdled near--as closely as they
dared.
In a very short time the warder returned, preceded by a tall convict.
The children stared with wistful, questioning eyes; they did not
recognize Chūnnee, at first glance, in the close-fitting cap drawn
well over his ears, his loose dress, and chains; but after a pause of
breathless amazement he cried, “Array khoda! Girunda and Gyannia, my
children, how came you here?”
They rushed to him at the sound of that familiar voice, and broke into
loud cries and sobs--sobs of joy and relief.
“I walked,” panted the boy presently, “and carried her. Uncle thrust
us forth one night; he said he would kill us if we ever went back, so
we came to thee. We will abide with thee; we will never leave thee,”
sobbed the boy, clinging to his hands, whilst Chūnnee took the girl up
in his arms and fondled her.
“We are so tired and hungry, father; may we not go to thy house and
rest?” and Gyannia dropped her head on his shoulder.
The jail official was much perplexed--here was a most unusual case: two
children clamouring for admittance into an establishment which every
one else was averse to entering.
What was he to do with them? Were they to be left at the gates, to be
sent back to Paroor? One thing was positively certain--they could not
be received inside the jail.
A great multitude had now gathered to behold the convict’s boy, who
had walked seventy miles with his sister on his back. It takes but
little at any time to attract an Indian audience. The crowd was about
to be dispersed by the police, when the jail superintendent drove up
in his brougham for his morning inspection, and alighted, and asked in
amazement the reason of the tumult.
In five minutes he was in possession of all the facts--the thread of
the story--much delayed by constant exclamations and additions from
excited women in the throng.
“So these are thy children?” said the superintendent to Chūnnee.
“Yes, my lord; and it was for the sake of these that I tried to commit
that theft.”
“And thy brother hath turned them out?”
“So they say; and it was like him.”
“Why hath he done so?”
“How can I tell thee, protector of the poor, save that he is a bad man?
His name of Zālim Sing fits him but too well; truly he is a tyrannical
lion. If the bountiful sirkar would only feed my children!”
“You cannot, of course, have these children with you; but I will look
after them for you, at any rate, for the present. You shall see them
again to-morrow. Here, burkundaz; send these children down to my house
on an ekka, and let this crowd disperse.”
As soon as the two objects of curiosity had been rattled off in charge
of a warder, the assembly melted away, each to his own avocation.
The superintendent’s wife was a charitable, gentle lady, and accepted
the weary, half-starved wayfarers into her household. A servant--one of
their own caste--shared his “go-down” with them, and they were bathed,
fed, and their sores attended to. In a short time they looked totally
different--such is the effect of kindness. They went to visit their
father at stated periods, and when Girunda related his life of toil and
blows at his uncle’s hands, Chūnnee’s straight brows grew very black.
The charitable lady who had given them a shelter did more than feed
and clothe them; they were included among her servants’ children, who
learnt from a munshi, and were taught at her expense. The munshi, with
his blue spectacles, sat in the midst of them, and every week there
were prizes of fruit, and twice a year of clothes. They were also
permitted to pick withered leaves in the lady’s lovely garden, and
Girunda was proud when he was allowed to carry a pot; and sometimes
their father worked there also, with a few other favoured convicts.
And oh, what a garden that was!--even to a _blasé_ European eye, an
exquisite spot; how much more to two ignorant native children, who have
never seen any flowers but marigolds? The steps from the house led down
into a great spreading lawn, green and smooth as velvet, and surrounded
by wide walks, bordered with bushes of magnificent roses. Beyond the
lawn, and leading straight out of it, lay an avenue of loquat trees,
which was lined with stands of maiden-hair ferns, orchids, arum lilies,
jheel plants--a truly fairy-like scene. There were long alleys overhung
with fruit trees and flowers; there were enormous bushes of yellow
roses--in one tree a pair of bulbuls had their nest--a large, square
plot covered with a dense crop of variegated sweet peas. There was,
moreover, a big vinery, a quantity of fruitful peach trees, a cote of
pigeons, with nearly two hundred in the branches of a mango tree, and
a house full of white rabbits with ruby eyes! Truly, when they were
permitted to enter this garden, Girunda said to his sister, “Behold,
this must be the place the preaching moola meant when he spoke of the
garden of Paradise!”
The wheel of fortune turns, and strange events do occur at times, even
in a mud village, in an obscure locality.
Old Turroo Sing had been wise in his generation; he had not grudged to
offer a considerable reward for news of, or the recovery of, his lost
treasure. For eight weary months no tidings reached him, and he had
almost prepared to await the coming of death, a broken-hearted man,
when, lo! one day six gay policemen--I allude to their red turbans,
yellow trousers, and blue tunics--were once more seen approaching the
village. The inspector had come to see Turroo, to confer with him
privately. When the door was closed fast, the inspector drew forth a
heavy gold bangle, and placed it in the old man’s withered, trembling
hands.
“Is this yours?” he asked.
“It is; it is; it is! Where are the rest?” clamoured Turroo.
“Patience! This was offered for sale in Delhi, and was about to be
melted down. The man who sold it is in the village. He is Goora Dutt,
the brother-in-law of thy nephew, Zālim Sing.”
“May every curse light on him!” screamed the venerable Turroo.
“He was caught and convicted; he hath confessed. Thou wilt get nearly
all thy property back, my father; but thou wilt be liberal to the
police?”
“As I live, I will give much buchseesh, I swear it on the cow’s tail!”
“There is a gang of gamblers here in Paroor. We have known it long.
Goora Dutt is the chiefest among them. They were--for all things are
known to the police--without money; they were in debt, and their
creditors were hungry; therefore they agreed to rob thee, and they
did. They carried off thy money and jewels. Though Chūnnee Sing was
convicted and sentenced for the same, he never fingered a tolah of gold
nor one rupee.”
“And where is it? where is it? Oh, speak!”
“It is buried by a neem tree near Goora Dutt’s garden. They had no time
to carry it farther, and it is convenient to their houses. The rupees
are gone, but the gold and pearls and carbuncles are still mostly
there. They feared to sell them, for the size and number and marks were
known.”
In half an hour’s time Turroo Sing’s treasure, which was buried in a
kerosene-oil tin (oh, to how many uses are those tins put!), was dug
up in the presence of the entire village, and shown to its owner, who
wept with joy as he tore open the parcel and counted his pearls--his
forty pairs without blemish. But there were some very glum faces in the
crowd--four families were implicated in the robbery--and when Zālim
Sing had come to overwhelm his grand-uncle with felicitations, that
fierce old person had spat at him--like an infuriated toddy cat.
“Thou hadst a hand in it, oh, badmash, son of lies!” he screamed,
foaming at the mouth. “Thy brother-in-law, Goora Dutt, is thy shadow.
’Twas he fetched the police for Chūnnee, who hath languished in jail
for thy sins. Take this robber, and release Chūnnee Sing.”
* * * * *
Zālim Sing’s popularity had been on the wane for a considerable
time. He had assured his neighbours in his most plausible manner,
that Girunda and Gyannia had run away, ungrateful wretches that they
were--just like their father, the jail-bird. But the neighbours
believed a wholly different tale. A ryot, living in the nearest
village, had met Zālim, one dark night, driving a pair of children
before him. People began to whisper, and then to talk openly, of
screams heard from Zālim’s house; of the boy Girunda being seen
carrying loads as heavy as a pony’s--and now, after all these months,
public opinion set in, in full tide, in favour of Chūnnee.
Zālim Sing had a presentiment that his good days were leaving him when
he saw his friend Goora Dutt and four other men led away between the
crops, with handcuffs on their wrists; and many a curious glance was
cast at Zālim himself.
“How came his wife to wear a pearl nose-ring? How came he to possess
_four_ bullocks and a Waterbury watch and a pistol? Could any one give
an honest reason? Could his crops have sold at double the rates of
ours?” his neighbours asked one another. Truly, he was as great a thief
as any; but his accomplices had been staunch to him, and had held their
peace.
Of course Chūnnee was released, much to his own surprise. His ragged
coat was restored to him one morning, with a “hookum,” to say that he
was free. His first duty was to return thanks to the benevolent lady
who had rescued his starving children. He laid his head at her feet,
and touched the hem of her gown; and there was a mist in his eyes as
he said, “Now I understand why God suffered me to be put in the Jail
Khana. It was that my children might know you. Eshwar, Eshwar will
bless you always.”
“And where will you go, Chūnnee?” she inquired, ere he took leave.
“Home,” he answered: a native returns to his ancestral village as a
Swiss turns to the mountains. “Back to Paroor and my house. It is true
that I have no friends; but I have no friends anywhere. I was born
there; also my father and grandfather. It is my country, and there will
I die.”
“It is more to the purpose, how will you live, once you are there?”
“I have good-conduct money. I shall hire a little bit of land, and dig
it, and buy seeds. Girunda is growing big, he can help me.”
He was not to be deterred by offers of employment in the city. No, his
heart was set upon Paroor--only Paroor; and his kind patroness fitted
out the children with clothes and food, and they bade farewell to her,
and her enchanted garden, with many bitter tears.
Most of the journey was made by rail, and in the delightful novelty of
the motion of a railway carriage they soon forgot their sorrows. The
last twenty miles had to be accomplished on foot. Girunda stepped out
manfully beside his father, who carried Gyannia. All _he_ had to carry
was the cat; and, moreover, he had now a pair of shoes and a stick.
They reached Paroor at nightfall, and Chūnnee went straight to his own
hut. It was occupied by an old crone, who had bought it from Zālim Sing
for six rupees, and who felt herself a proprietress of some importance.
She thrust him out with a lighted brand, and Chūnnee and his family
passed the night under a stack of straw.
The following morning he went and rapped boldly at his brother’s door,
and confronted him sternly.
“So thou art back, badmash! I wonder thou hast come here!” cried Zālim,
with ill-simulated scorn.
“How daredst thou sell my house?” rejoined the other.
“I sold it to pay for thy children’s food.”
“Speak not of the children you worked as slaves, and beat, and turned
out at night to perish. Restore the money and the house, O villain!”
Hearing loud and angry voices, the inevitable crowd collected. There
was Chūnnee, looking quite well-to-do, and actually speaking in a
commanding tone to his once all-powerful brother!
“Behold, he hath sold my poor hovel, and hath kept the money,”
explained Chūnnee, turning to the eager audience. “He hath beaten and
starved my children, and hath thrust them out to die. Why do ye suffer
such a sinner among you?”
The crowd began to clamour and howl, and Zālim Sing withdrew and barred
his door; but the angry neighbours beat upon it till it shook on its
rusty hinges, and Zālim Sing was forced to shout, “Go! thou shalt have
thy house, O badmash.” And for the first time in all his life, Chūnnee
was beholden to the force of public opinion.
CHAPTER VI.
Old Turroo had heard of Chūnnee’s arrival. Everything is known in
a short time in a small community, save such matters as robbery and
gambling, practised under the cover of darkness.
He sent for his grand-nephew--much to that grand-nephew’s surprise--and
beckoning him in with a long, claw-like finger, commanded him to close
the door, and be seated on a charpoy. He then pushed his huka towards
him, and coughed, and said--
“Thou art back, and I have much to say unto thee. How dost thou mean to
live, and keep thy children, O Chūnnee Sing?”
“I hope to hire that plot of land near Ram Lall’s garden, and till it
by hand, and sow it with cotton, jawarri, and dál. I have recovered my
house which Zālim Sing sold.”
“Wouldst thou leave that dog-kennel, and come and abide here with me?”
“Here--with thee!” he echoed incredulously; he could not believe his
ears.
“Yea. Hearken to me, Chūnnee, the son of Duloo Sing. It is in my mind
to make thee mine heir. Thou hast suffered wrongfully for my treasure;
it shall be thine one day.”
“I did not take the money or jewels, it is true, O Turroo Sing, but
it is true that I desired to steal them--not from love of lucre and
gold, or the vice of robbery, but for the sake of my children, who were
perishing. All that day the little ones tasted naught but cow’s food.
The boy asked thee for a few cowries, and thou gavest him blows; and
an evil spirit tempted me as I walked in the fields at even, and said
in mine ear, ‘Turroo is rich--yea, very rich. He hath a house and land
and cattle, and warm bedding, and brass cooking-pots, and a store
of grain laid up in his granary for many seasons. Moreover, he hath
a great treasure buried beneath his floor, which is of no profit to
him, save to handle and to count. Behold, some of this useless silver
will feed my children and me. I will dig through the wall, and steal,
under the cover of darkness. The man is old; he sleeps fast. I shall
take one hundred rupees, and be happy.’ But I failed, as thou knowest.
Nevertheless, I was guilty.”
“Thou wert hungry, and thy children were crying for food; but Zālim
Sing had no such excuse--he is a shaitan, the son of a she ass. Thou
shalt take his place, and come after me; thou shalt live here now with
thy children. Surely a strong man, with a lathi, is better than an aged
chokedar and a dog! I may be robbed again; with thee I am safe; for
doubtless thou wilt guard thine own. Let the old hag remain in thine
hut, and bring thy children hither.”
So, to the amazement of the village, Chūnnee, the pauper and the
prisoner, was elevated to the right hand of the richest man in Paroor,
and rose proportionately in every one’s estimation. He tilled the land,
and sold the crops, and cut the cane, whilst Girunda spent his time
between the fields and the village munshi--as befitted a boy who would
rise in the world, and perchance go to college!
His grand-uncle was proud of him, and never tired of boasting of
Girunda’s seventy-mile march with his sister on his back.
Gyannia now wears a gold nose-ring, silver bangles, and a chain--which
gauds comprise most of her toilette. She is a happy infant, and passes
her four sallow cousins in the narrowest lane, with her head in the air.
Her cousins and their father have resorted to every description of
clever intrigue to get on terms with their lucky relatives, but in
vain. It is the dream of Zālim Sing’s life to bestow one of his
sallow daughters in marriage on Girunda, and thus keep the fortune in
the family; but it is not probable that the boy--who retains a lively
recollection of the ladies’ nips and blows and floutings--will ever
meet his wishes. Moreover, Turroo has already a bride in view.
The cat prospers, though as lanky and grimy as of old; she must be a
cat of some breeding, or of Chinese extraction, for when, after all
her vicissitudes, she found herself once more in her native village,
she did not exhibit the least surprise--she merely stretched out her
long body, and strolled over and sharpened her claws in the bark of
a familiar tree. She has accepted the transformation from poverty to
wealth with complete equanimity, and sits washing her face outside
Turroo’s door, or surveys the village from the tree that grows through
his roof, as if she had never lived elsewhere; she has also implanted a
wholesome fear of her displeasure in the breast of Chondi the pariah.
But then she is a cat who has travelled and seen the world, and he is
but a common village cur!
Who would recognize Chūnnee Sing now? He wears a handsome turban, and
coolies salaam to him, and address him as “ap.” He rides on a white
horse--yes, a horse, not a pony--with a long pink tail, and is the
leading man in those parts; for all he takes in hand appears to thrive.
As he passes through the villages, coquettish glances from pretty dark
eyes are cast at him, and he is greeted with playful remarks. Chūnnee
is as much sought after now as he was formerly shunned. It is a matter
of common talk that a rich thakur would gladly give him his daughter to
wife; but Chūnnee appears satisfied with his present lot, and shows no
signs of changing his condition.
Our story is ended, and we will now take leave of Chūnnee and his
charger, of Gyannia and her ferret-faced cat, of Girunda--who is
almost as precious to Turroo as the forty pairs of pearls again buried
beneath the floor--of the envious, adder-tongued family of Zālim
Sing--and cast a final glance on the sleepy patriarchal village, where
it lies among its waving crops on the hillside, within sight of a glint
of the sacred Ganges.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Archaic spellings have been retained.
A number of typographical errors have been corrected silently.
Gadrinath was changed to Badrinath. Badrinath is a well known holy city
and no place by the name of Gadrinath could be located.
The following word pairs were normalized to one spelling by
majority vote:
“Chunnee” to “Chūnnee”
“copybook” to “copy-book”
“cocoa-nut” to “cocoanut”
“deathlike” to “death-like”
“hillman” to “hill-man”
“pockmarked” to “pock-marked”
“race-course” to “racecourse”
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 65561 ***