Chapter II (1)

There was no lack of life now in the wide courtyards, though the year claimed by Uma's pride had scarcely gone by. And there was more to come ere the sunset, if the gossips said sooth as they passed in and out, setting the iron knife (suspended on a string above the inner door) a-swinging as they elbowed it aside. From within came a babel of voices, striving to speak softly and so sinking into a sort of sibilant hiss, broken by one querulous cry of intermittent complaint. Without, in the bigger courtyard was a cackle and clamour, joyfully excited, round a platter of sugar-drops set for due refreshment of the neighbours. It would be a boy, for sure, they said, the omens being all propitious and _Purm-eshwar_[36] well aware of the worthiness of the household. But, good lack! what ways foreign women had! There was the girl's mother, disregarding _this_ old custom, performing _that_ new mummery as if there were no canon of right and wrong; yet they were--those town women--of the race, doubtless of the same race! It was passing strange; nevertheless Uma herself did bravely, having always been of the wise sort. She had given the word back keenly but now to Mai Radha who, as usual, had her pestle in the mortar, and must needs join in the strange woman's hints that the first wife was better away from the sufferer's sight. _Puramesh!_ What an idea! She had spoken sharp and fair, as was right, seeing that it was hard above the common on Uma--so young, so handsome, so well-beloved! Many a pious one in her place, with no mother-in-law to deal with--only two soft-hearted, soft-tongued men--would have closed the door on another wedding yet awhile, and bided on Providence longer. Small blame either. It was not ten years since those two had come together; while as for affection----

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[Footnote 36: The Universal God.]

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The rush of words slackened as the object of it set the swinging knife aside, and came forward to see that naught was lacking to the hospitality of the house. With those strange women within, lording it over all by virtue of their relationship to the expectant mother, it behoved her honour to see that there was no possible ground for complaint. It was a year since Uma had flung herself face down upon the wheat, and now the yellow corn once more lay in heaps upon the white threshing-floor. Another harvest had been sown and watered and reaped; but Uma was waiting for hers. And her mind was in a tumult of jealous fear. Shivo with all his goodness, his kindness to her, could scarcely help loving the mother of his child better than the woman who had failed to bring him one. How could she take that other woman's son in her arms and hold it up for the father's first look? Yet that would be her part.

The strain of the thought showed in her face as she moved about seeing to this and that, speaking to those other women serenely, cheerfully. Her pride ensured so much.

Within, the coming grandmother heaved a very purposeful sigh of relief at her absence. The patient would be better now that those glowering eyes were away. Whereat Mai Radha, the time-server, nodded her head sagely; but the girlish voice from the bed, set round with lamps and flowers, rose in fretful denial.

"Hold thy peace, mother. Thou canst not understand, being of the town. It is different here in the village."

The mother giggled, nudging her neighbour. "Nine to credit, ten to debit! That's true of a first wife, town and country. But think as thou wilt, honey! Trust me to see she throws no evil eye on thee or the child. She shall not even see it till the fateful days be over."

The village midwife, an old crone sitting smoking a pipe at the foot of the bed, laughed.

"Thou art out there, mother! 'Tis her part, her right, to show the babe to its father. That is old fashion and we hold to it."

"Show it to its father! Good lack! Heard one ever the like!" shrilled the indignant grandmother to be. "Why, with us he must not see it for days. Is it not so, friends?"

The town-bred contingent clamoured shocked assent; the midwife and her cronies stood firm. Uma, appealed to by a deputation, met the quarrel coldly.

"I care not," she said; "settle it as you please. I am ready to hold the child or not."

So a compromise was effected between the disputants within, before the beating of brass trays announced the happy birth of a son, and they came trooping into the outer court full of words and explanations. But Uma heard nothing and saw nothing except the crying, frog-like morsel of humanity they thrust into her unwilling arms. So that was Shivo's child! How ugly, and what an ill-tempered little thing. Suddenly the gurgling cry ceased, as instinctively she folded her veil about the struggling, naked limbs.

"So! So!" cried the gossips, pushing and pulling joyfully, excitedly. "Yonder is the master! All is ready."

She set her teeth for the ordeal and let herself be thrust towards Shivo, who was seated by the door, his back towards her. She had not seen him since the advent of the gossips at dawn had driven the men-kind from the homestead. And now the sun was setting redly, as on that evening a year ago when she had told him they were too few for the house. Well, there were more now. And this was the worst. Now she was to see love grow to his face for the child which was not hers, knowing that love for its mother must grow also unseen in his heart.

"So! So!" cried the busy, unsympathetic voices intent on their own plans. "Hold the child so, sister, above his shoulders, and bid him take his first look at a son."

The old dogged determination to leave nothing undone which should be done, strengthened her to raise the baby as she was bid, stoop with it over Shivo's shoulder and say, almost coldly:

"I bring thee thy son, husband. Look on it and take its image to thine heart."

Then she gave a quick, incredulous cry; for, as she stooped, she saw her own face reflected in the brass-ringed mirror formed by the wide mouth of the brimming water-pot, which was set on the floor before Shiv-deo!

"Higher! sister! higher," cried the groups. "Let him see the babe in the water for luck's sake. So! _Ari!_ father, is not that a son indeed! _Wah!_ the sweetest doll."

Sweet enough, in truth, looked the reflection of that tiny face where her own had been. She let it stay there for a second or two; then a sudden curiosity came to her and she drew aside almost roughly, still keeping her eyes on the water-mirror. Ah! there was her husband's face now, with a look in it that she had never seen before--the look of fatherhood.

Without a word she thrust her burden back into other arms, asking impatiently if that were all, or if they needed more of her services.

"More indeed," muttered the grandmother tartly as she disappeared again, intent on sugar and spices, behind the swinging knife. "Sure some folk had small labour or pains over this day's good work. Lucky for the master that there be other women in the world."

Uma looked after her silently, beset by a great impatience of the noise and the congratulations. She wanted to get away from it all, from those whispers and giggles heard from within, and interrupted every now and then by that new gurgling cry. The excitement was over, the gossips were departing one by one, Shivo and his father were being dragged off to the village square for a pipe of peace and thanksgiving. No one wanted her now; her part in the house was done, and out yonder in the gathering twilight the heaps of corn were alone; as she was. She could at least see to their safety for a while and have time to remember those faces; hers, and the child's, and Shivo's.

Well! it was all over now. No wonder they did not need her any more since she had done all--yea! she had done her duty to the uttermost!

A sort of passionate resentment at her own virtue filled her mind as, wearied out with the physical strain, she lay down to rest upon the yielding yellow wheat. How soft it was, how cool. She nestled into it, head, hands, feet, gaining a certain consolation from the mere comfort to her tired body. And as she looked out over her husband's fields, the very knowledge that the harvest had been reaped and gathered soothed her; besides, in the years to come there would be other hands for other harvests. That was also as it should be. And yet? She turned her face down into the wheat.

"Shivo! Shivo!" she sobbed into the fruits of the harvest which she had helped to sow and gather. "Shivo! Shivo!"

But to her creed marriage had for its object the preservation of the hearth fire, not the fire of passion, and the jealousy which is a virtue to the civilised was a crime to this barbarian.

So, as she lay half-hidden in the harvested corn, the thought of the baby's face, and hers, and Shivo's--all, all in the water-mirror, brought her in a confused half-comprehending way a certain comfort from their very companionship. So, by degrees, the strain passed from mind and body, leaving her asleep, with slackened curves, upon the heap of corn. Asleep peacefully until a hand touched her shoulder gently, and in the soft grey dawn she saw her husband standing beside her.

She rose slowly, drawing her veil closer with a shiver, for the air was chill.

"I have been seeking thee since nightfall, wife," he said in gentle reproach, with a ring of relief in his voice, "I feared--I know not what--that thou hadst thought me churlish, perhaps, because I did not thank thee for--for thy son."

His hand sought hers and found it, as they stood side by side looking out over the fields with the eyes of those whose lives are spent in sowing and reaping, looking out over the wide sweep of bare earth and beyond it, on the northern horizon, the dim, dawn-lit peaks of the Himalayas.

"He favours her in the face, husband," she said quietly, "but he hath thy form. That is as it should be, for thou art strong and she is fair."

So, as they went homeward through the lightening fields,--she a dutiful step behind the man,--the printing presses over at the other side of the world were busy, amid flaring gas-jets and the clamour of marvellous machinery, in discussing in a thousand ways the dreary old problems of whether marriage is a failure or not.

It was not so to Uma-devi.

YOUNG LOCHINVAR

Young Lochinvar, in the original story, came out of the West. In this tale he came out of the East, and the most match-making mamma might be disposed to forgive him; partly on account of his youth, partly because he really was not a free agent.

They were cousins of course. In the finest race of the Panjab--possibly of the world--cousins have a right to cousins provided the relationship lie through the mother's brother, or the father's sister; the converse, for some mysterious reason, being _anathema maranatha_.

But Nanuk's mother, wife of big Suchet Singh, head man of Aluwallah village, was sister to Dhyan Singh, the armourer, who plied his trade in the little courtyard hidden right in the heart of the big city. A big man too, high-featured and handsome; high-tempered also as the steel which he inlaid so craftily with gold. For all that, round, podgy Mai Gunga, his wife, ruled him by virtue of a smartness unknown to his slower, gentler nature. Not so gentle, however, but that he mourned the degeneracy of these latter piping days of peace. They and the Arms Act had driven him from the manufacture of sword hilts and helmets, shields and corselets, to that of plaques and inkstands, candlesticks and ashtrays. From the means of resistance to the decoration of victorious drawing-rooms. Not that he nourished ill-feeling against those victors. They were a brave lot, and since then his people had helped them bravely to keep their winnings. Only it was dull work; so every now and again Dhyan Singh revenged himself by making a paper knife in the form of some bloodthirsty lethal weapon, and put his best work on it, just to keep his hand in.

Little Pertabi, his daughter, used to sit and watch her father at the tiny forge set in the central sunshine of the yard. It was funny to see the shaving of sheer steel curl up from the graver guided in its flowing curves by nothing but that skilled eye and hand; funnier still to watch the gold wire nestle down so obediently into the groove; funniest of all to blow the bellows when the time came to put that iridescent blue temper to the finished work.

Then, naked to the waist, the soft brown hair on her forehead plaited in tiniest plaits into a looped fringe, a little gold filigree cup poised on the top of her head, a long betasselled pigtail hanging down behind, Pertabi would set her short red-trousered legs very far apart, and puff and blow, and laugh, and then blow again to her own and her father's intense delight; for Dhyan having a couple of strapping sons to satisfy Mai Gunga's heart felt himself free to adore this child of his later years.

But even when there was blowing to be done, Pertabi did not find life in the city half as amusing as life out in the village at her aunt's with cousin Nanuk as a playfellow. Nanuk to whom she was to be married by and by. That had been settled when she was a baby in arms, for in those, and for many years after, Suchet Singh's wife and Mai Gunga had been as friendly as sisters-in-law can well be. That is to say there were visits to the village for change of air, especially at sugar-baking time, while those who wished for shopping or society came as a matter of course to the armourer's house. The world wags in the same fashion East and West; especially among the women folk.

"They will make a fine pair! God keep them to the auspicious day," the deep-chested countrywomen would say piously; then Mai Gunga would giggle a bit, and remark that if Nanuk grew so fast she would have to leave Pertabi at home next time. Whereupon the boy's mother would flare up, and sniff, as country folk do, at town ideas. In her family such talk had never been necessary; the lads and lasses grew up together, and mothers were in no hurry to bring age and thought upon them. Perhaps that was the reason why men and women alike were of goodly stature and strength; for even Mai Gunga must admit that Dhyan was at least a fine figure of a man. So there would be words to while away the hours before the men returned from the fields. And outside, under the bushy mulberry trees, Pertabi and Nanuk would be fighting and making it up again in the cosmopolitan fashion of healthy children. Of the two Pertabi, perhaps, hit the hardest; she certainly howled the loudest, being a wilful young person. Nanuk used to implore her not to tease the sacred peacocks, when they came sedately by companies to drink at the village tank, as the sun set red over the limitless plane of young green corn, and she would squat down suddenly on her red-trousered heels with her hands tight clasped behind her back, and promise to be as still as a grey crane if she might only look. Then some vainglorious cock was sure to show off his tail; every tail was to Pertabi's eager eyes the _most_ beautiful one in the world, and she must needs have a feather--just one little feather-- from it as a keepsake--just a little keepsake. Now, what Pertabi desired she got, at any rate if Nanuk had aught to say towards the possibility. So the little tyrant would play with the feather for five minutes; then fling it away. But Nanuk, serious, conscientious Nanuk, would set aside half his supper of curds on the sly and sneak out with it after sundown as an oblation to the mysterious village god, who lived in a red splashed stone under the peepul tree. Else the peacocks being angry might not cry for rain, and then what would become of the green corn? Nanuk was a born cultivator, true in most things, above all to Mother Earth. Despite the peacocks' feathers, however, not without a will of his own; for when, on one of his visits to the city, Pertabi insisted on handling the little squirrel he brought with him housed in his high turban, and it bit her, he laughed, saying he had told her so; nay, more, when she chased the frightened little creature savagely, howling for vengeance, he fell upon her and boxed her ears soundly, much to Mai Gunga's displeasure. A rough village lout, and her darling the daintiest little morsel of flesh!

"I don't care," sobbed Pertabi; "I'll bite him hard next time--yes! I will, Nano; you'll see if I don't."

Mai Gunga, however, was right in one thing. Pertabi was an extremely pretty child. The gossips coming in of an afternoon to discuss births, marriages, and deaths took to shaking their heads and saying that she might have made a better match than Nanuk, who, every one thought, would limp for life in consequence of that fall from the topmost branch of the _shisham_ tree where the squirrels built their nests. Not much of a limp, perhaps, but who did not know that under the bone-setter's care a broken leg often came out a bit shorter than the other, even if it was as strong as ever? Mai Gunga's plump, pert face hardened, but she said nothing; not even when a new acquaintance, the wife of a rich contractor on the lookout for a bride of good family, openly bewailed the prior claim on Pertabi.

Nevertheless the next time that the sister-in-law came to town, and on leaving it laden with endless bundles wrapped in Manchester handkerchiefs spoke confidently of the meeting at sugar-time, Mai Gunga threw difficulties in the way. She was too busy to come herself; Nanuk, still a semi-invalid, must be quite sufficient charge for her sister-in-law. Besides seeing that Pertabi touched the eights, she thought it time for village customs to give way to greater decorum. Briefly, despite the peculiar virtue of some people's families, she did not choose that her daughter should be out of her sight. The two women, as might be supposed, parted with ceremony and effusion; but Suchet Singh's wife had barely arrived in the wide village courtyards ere she burst forth:

"Mark my words!" she said, even as she disposed her bundles about her. "That town-bred woman means mischief. I was a fool to give in to you and Dhyan, instead of having the barber, as to a stranger. Not that I want the little hussy above other brides, but I would not have Nanuk slighted."

Suchet Singh laughed.

"Twenty mile of an _ekka_ hath shook thy brains out, wife. What talk is this? They are two halves of one pea. As friend Elahi Buksh saith, '_do dil razi to kia kare kazi?_' (when two are heart to heart, where's the parson's part?)"

"Tra! That's neither in three nor thirteen," retorted his wife. "Give me the barber[37] for certainty."

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[Footnote 37: The barber is always employed in regular betrothals.]

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Meanwhile Pertabi was howling in the little courtyard, much to big, soft-hearted Dhyan's distress.

"Let her go, but this once," he pleaded aside; "truly thou art over anxious, and she but seven for all her spirit."

"Seventy or seven, God knows thee for a baby," snapped Mai Gunga. "Would I had never listened to thee and thy sister, though, for sure, the children were pretty as marionettes. It was a play to think of it. But a mother knows her daughter better than the father, though it seems thou wilt be ordering the wedding-garments next. So be it, but till then Pertab goes not to Nanuk; 'tis not seemly."

"I--I don't want Nanuk," howled Pertabi. "I--I want the fresh molasses--I do--I do."

Want, however, was her master, since her own obstinacy was but inherited from her mother. So she sat sulkily in the sunshine, refusing the armourer's big caresses or the charms of bellows-blowing, while she pictured to herself, with all the vividness of rage, Nanuk going down--going down alone--to watch the great shallow pans of foamy, frothy, fragrant juice shrink and shrink in the dark, low hut where one could scarcely see save for the flame of the furnaces. What joy to feed those flames with the dry, crushed refuse of the cane and leaves! What bliss to thrust a tentative twig, on the sly, into the seething, darkening molasses, and then escape deftly to that shadowy hiding-place by the well, and gravely consider the question as to whether it was nearly boiled enough. Toffee-making all over the world has a mysterious fascination for children, and this was toffee-making on a gigantic scale. The legitimate bairn's part of scraping from each brew never tasted half so sweet as those stolen morsels; if only because, when you threw away the sucked twigs, the squirrels would come shyly from the peepul tree where the green pigeons cooed all day long, and fight for your leavings. Pertabi could see the whole scene when she closed her eyes. The level plain, the shadow of the trees blotting out the sunshine, the trickle of running water from the well, the creaking of the presses, the babel of busy voices, and over all, through all, that lovely, lovely smell of toffee! Yes! sugar-baking time in the village was heavenly, and Nanuk was greedy--greedy as a grey crow to keep it all to himself!

When Spring brought big Suchet to pay the village revenue into the office, he and the armourer met, as ever, on the best of terms; nevertheless their subsequent interviews with their woman-kind were less satisfactory.

"Thou art worse than a peacock which cries even after rain has fallen," finished the big villager testily. "What is it to me if women come or go? Dhyan is a man of mettle and word."

Yet in his heart he knew well that the armourer had no more to say to such matters in the narrow city court, than he had in the wide village yard, where the kine stood in rows, and Nanuk's tumbler pigeons never lacked a grain of corn at which to peck.

As for Mai Gunga, her wrath became finally voluble at the hint thrown out by big Dhyan, that if she went no more to the village, folk might talk of Pertab being slighted. Slighted, indeed, with half the eligible mothers agog with envy! Slighted, when but for this cripple--yea! Dhyan need not make four eyes at her--she said cripple, and meant it. He had a broken leg, and that to a man of sense was sufficient excuse for breach of betrothals. If, indeed, there ever had been such a thing as a betrothal; which for her part she denied.

Dhyan Singh swore many big oaths, vowed many mighty vows that he would have naught to do with such woman's work. Not even if it became clear that, as his wife hinted, his little Pertab would not be welcome in his sister's house. Yet he scowled over the idea, twisted his beard tighter over his ears, as became a man, and looked very fierce. And when a month or two later Suchet Singh's wife met his halting apology for Mai Gunga's absence with a distinct sniff and a cool remark that she really did not care,--Nanuk could no doubt do better in brides,--he came home in a towering passion to his anvil and made a paper knife fit for a brigand. To have such a thing said to him, even in jest, when he, for his sister's sake, had been willing to waive the fact of Nanuk being a cripple!

"Cripple indeed!" shrieked the boy's mother, when Suchet came back from the city one day with Dhyan's remark enlarged and illustrated by friendly gossip. "Lo, husband! That is an end. Whose fault if he limps?--only in running, mind, not in walking. Whose indeed! Whose but that immodest, wicked, ill-brought-up hussy's! Was it not to get her another squirrel, because she cried so for his, that he climbed? Let her have her girl; we will have damages."

So when sugar-baking time came round again, Suchet and Dhyan, rather to their own surprise, found themselves claimant and defendant in a breach of betrothal case for the recovery of fifteen hundred rupees spent in preliminary expenses. Yet, despite their surprise, they were both beside themselves with rage. Dhyan because of the unscrupulous claim when not one penny had been spent, Suchet because of the slur cast on his boy's straight limbs by the secondary plea in defence; that even if there had been a betrothal and not a family understanding, the crippled condition of the bridegroom was sufficient excuse for the breach of contract. The actual point of the betrothal being so effectually overlaid by these lies as to be obscured even from the litigant's own eyes.

It was one gorgeous blue day in December that Suchet rode in to the city on his pink-nosed mare, with Nanuk on the crupper to bear witness in Court to his own perfections. A handsome, soft-eyed lad of ten, glad enough of the ride, sorry for the separation, even for one day, from the village toffee-making; but with a great lump of raw sugar stowed away in his turban as partial consolation. For the rest, he had a childish and yet grave acquiescence. Pertabi apparently had been a naughty girl, and Mammi Gunga had never been nice. Yet the "_jej-sahib_"[38] might say they were married; since, after all, he, Nanuk, could run as fast as ever. _Tchu!_ he would like to show Pertabi that it was so.

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[Footnote 38: Judge.]

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The court-house compound was full of suitors and flies, the case of Suchet _versus_ Dhyan Singh late in the list, so the former bade his son tie the mare in the furthest corner behind the wall, in the shade of a spreading tree, and keep watch, while he went about from group to group in order to discuss his wrongs with various old friends--that being half the joy of going to law; grave groups of reverend bearded faces round a central pipe, grave, slow voices rising in wise saws from the close-set circles of huge turbans and massive blue and white draperies.

Meanwhile Nanuk ate sugar till it began to taste sickly, and then he sat looking at the remaining lump and thinking, not without a certain malice, how Pertabi would have enjoyed it. Then suddenly, from behind, a small brown hand reached out and snatched it. "_One two, that's for you; two three, that's for me; three four, sugar galore; the Rajah begs, with a broken leg_----" The singing voice paused, the little figure munching, as it sang, with vindictive eyes upon the boy, paused too in its tantalising dance.

"Did it hurt much, Nano? I'm so sorry. And mother wouldn't let me keep the squirrel, Nano; but I howled, I howled like--like a _bhut_ (devil)."

The abstract truth of the description seemed to bring back the past, and Nanuk's face relaxed.

"Father's at Court, and mother's gone to see the woman who wants me to marry her son," explained Pertabi between the munchings, "but I won't. I won't marry anybody but you, Nano. I like you, Nano."

Nano's face relaxed still more.

"You have got sugar-presses, Nano, and the other boy has none. He lives in the city, and I hate the city. Is there much sugar this year, Nano?"

"More than last," replied the boy proudly. "We have the best fields in----"

"Then give me another bit," interrupted Pertabi.

"That is all I brought." There was a trace of anxiety in Nanuk's voice, and he looked deprecatingly at the little figure now cuddled up beside him.

"Oh, you silly! but it doesn't matter. We can go and fetch some more. That's why I ran away. I knew uncle would bring you, so we can go to the village early. Come, Nano."

"Go to the village, Pertab! Oh, what a tale!" It is easy to be virtuously indignant at the first proposition of evil, but what is to be done when you are at the mercy of a small person who hesitates at nothing? Wheedlings, pinchings, kissings, tears, and promises were all one to Pertabi. At least a ride on the pink-nosed mare for the sake of old times! They could slip away easily without being seen; yonder lay the road villagewards--there would be plenty of time to go a mile, perhaps twain, and get back before _Chachcha-ji_ could possibly finish with his friends. She could get off at the corner, and then even if _Chachcha-ji_ had discovered their absence Nano could say he had taken the mare for water, or that the flies were troublesome. Excuses were so easy.

Ten minutes after, his feet barely reaching the big shovel stirrups, young Lochinvar ambled out of the court-house compound with his bride behind him.

"We must come back at the turn, Pertab," he said, to bolster up his own resolution.

"Of course we must come back," replied Pertabi, digging her small heels into the old grey mare. "Can't you make the stupid go faster, Nano? We may as well have all the fun we can."

So the old mare went faster down the high-arched avenue of flickering light and shade, and Pertabi's little red legs flounced about in a way suggestive of falling off. But she shrieked with laughter and held tight to her cavalier.

"Don't let us go back yet, Nano!" she pleaded; "the old thing is all out of breath, and _Chachcha-ji_ will find out you've been galloping her, and beat you. I shouldn't like you to be beaten, Nano dear, and it is so lovely."

It _was_ lovely. They were in the open now among the level stretches of young green corn, and there were the fallen battalions of red and gold canes, and from that clump of trees came the familiar creak of the press. Nay, more! wafted on the soft breeze the delicious, the irresistible smell of sugar-boiling. Other people's sugar-boiling.

"It's time we were going back," remarked Nanuk boldly.

"_Tchu!_" cried Pertabi from behind, "we are not going back any more. See! I've tied your shawl to my veil. When I do that to my dolls, then they are married; so that settles it. Go on, Nano! it's all right. Besides it is no _use_ going back now, they would only beat us for getting married. Go on, Nano--or I'll pinch."

Perhaps it really was fear of the pinching, perhaps it was the conviction that they had gone too far to recede, which finally induced young Lochinvar to give the old mare her head towards home. But even then he showed none of the alacrity displayed beneath him and behind him by the female aiders and abettors. His face grew graver and graver, longer and longer.

"We can't be married until we've taken the seven steps," he said at length. "Look! they have been burning weeds in the field. Let's get down and do it, or the gods will be angry."

Pertabi clapped her hands. "It will be fun, anyhow, so come along, Nano."

They tied the old mare to a tree, while, hand tight clasped in hand, just as they had seen it done a hundred times, they circumambulated the sacred fire.

"That's better," sighed Nano. "Now, I believe, we really are married."

"_Tchu!_" cried Pertabi in superior wisdom, "I can tell you heaps and heaps of things. Our dolls do them when we've time; we are always marrying our dolls in the city. But we can ride a bit further first, and when we get tired of Pinky-nose we can just get down and be married another way. That'll rest us."

So through the lengthening shadows, they rode on and got married, rode on, and got married, until Pertabi's braided head began to nod against Nanuk's back, and she said sleepily:

"We'll keep the _gur-ror_ (sugar-throwing) till tomorrow, Nano; that'll be fun."

But when, in the deep dusk, the pink-nosed mare drew up of her own accord at the gate of the wide village yard, and drowsy Nanuk just remembered enough of past events to lift his bride across the threshold, and murmur with an awful qualm, "This is my wife," Pertabi woke up suddenly to plant her little red-trousered legs firmly on the ground, and say, with a nod:

"Yes! and we've been married every way we could think of, haven't we, Nano? except the sugar-throwing, because we hadn't any; but--we'll--have--plenty--now; won't we, Nano?" The pauses being filled up by yawns.

It was midnight before Suchet Singh and Dhyan, forgetful of their enmity in over-mastering anxiety, arrived on the scene. The culprits were then fast asleep, and the deep-chested country-woman, having recovered the shock, was beginning to find a difficulty in telling the tale without smiles. A difficulty which, by degrees, extended itself to her hearers.

"Ho! ho! ho!" exploded Suchet suddenly; "and so they didn't even forget the forehead mark. I'll be bound that was Nanuk--the rogue."

"Ho! ho! ho!" echoed the armourer; "as like as not it was Pertab. The sharpest little marionette."

"Well, 'tis done, anyhow," said the woman decisively. "We can't have it said in our family, Dhyan, that the vermilion on a girl's head came save from her husband's fingers. He! he! he! Couldst but have seen them. 'This is my wife,' quoth he. 'And we've been married every way we could think of,' pipes she. 'Haven't we, Nano?' The prettiest pair--Lord! I shall laugh for ever."

"And--and Gunga?" faltered the armourer.

"Gunga's brain is not addled," retorted her sister-in-law sharply. "Who bruises a plum before taking it to market? What's done is done. We must cook the wedding feast without delay, have in the barber, and keep a still tongue."

So, ere many days were over, Pertabi and Nanuk, as bride and bridegroom, watched the fire-balloons go up into the cloudless depths of purple sky. The boy watching them shyly, yet with absorbing interest; for did not their course denote the favour or disfavour of the gods?

"The omens are auspicious," he said contentedly; but Pertabi was in a hurry for the sugar-throwing, in which she aided her bridesmaids with such vigour that Nanuk had a black eye for several days.

"If you were to ask me, and ask me, and ask me to lift you on old Pinky-nose again, I'd never do it--never!" he declared vindictively.

"Oh, yes! you would, Nano," replied his wife with the utmost confidence, "you would if I asked you; besides you really wanted to be married, you know you did. And then there was the fresh molasses."

A BIT OF LAND

He stood in the hot yellow sunshine, his air of modest importance forming a halo round his old rickety figure, as with one hand he clung to a plane-table, old and rickety as himself, and with the other to one of those large-eyed, keen-faced Indian boys who seem to have been sent into the world in order to take scholarships. The old man, on the contrary, was of the monkey type of his race, small, bandy-legged, and inconceivably wrinkled, with a three days' growth of grey beard frosting his brown cheeks; only the wide-set brown eyes had a certain wistful beauty in them.

In front of those appealing eyes sat a ruddy-faced Englishman backed by the white wings of an office tent and deep in the calf-bound books and red-taped files on the table before him. On either side, discreetly drawn apart so as to allow the central group its full picturesque value, were tall figures, massive in beards and wide turbans, in falling folds of dingy white and indigo blue; massive also in broad, capable features, made broader still by capable approving smiles over the old man, the boy, and the plane-table. So standing they were a typical group of Jat peasantry appealing with confidence to English justice for the observance of Indian custom.

"Then the head-men are satisfied with this _ad-interim_ arrangement?" asked the palpably foreign voice. The semicircle of writers and subordinate officials on the striped carpet beyond the table moved their heads like clockwork figures to the circle of peasants, as if giving it permission to speak, and a chorus of guttural voices rose in assent; then, after village fashion, one voice prolonged itself in representative explanation. "It will be but for three years or so, and the Shelter-of-the-World is aware that the fields cannot run away. And old Tulsi knows how to make the Three-Legged-One work; thus there is no fear." The speaker thrust a declamatory hand in the direction of the plane-table, and the chorus of assent rose once more.

So the matter was settled; the matter being, briefly, the appointment of a new _putwari_, in other words the official who measures the fields, and prepares the yearly harvest-map, showing the area under cultivation on which the Land Revenue has to be paid; in other words again, the man who stands between India and bankruptcy. In this particular case the recently defunct incumbent had left a son who was as yet over young for the hereditary office, and the head-men had proposed putting in the boy's maternal grandfather as a substitute, until the former could pass through the necessary modern training in the Accountants' College at head-quarters. The proposition was fair enough, seeing that Gurditta was sure to pass, as he was already head of the queer little village school which the elders viewed with incredulous tolerance. And, to tell the truth, their doubts were not without some reason; for on that very day when the Englishman was inspecting, the first class had bungled over a simple revenue sum, which any one could do in his head with the aid, of course, of the ten God-given fingers without which the usurer would indeed be king. The master had explained the mistake by saying that it was no fault of the rules, and only arose because the boys had forgotten which was the bigger of two numbers; but that in itself was something over which to chuckle under their breaths and nudge each other on the sly. _Ari hai!_ the lads would be forgetting next which end of the plough to hold, the share or the handle! But _Purumeshwar_[39] be praised! only upon their slates could they forget it; since a true-born Jat's hand could never lose such knowledge.

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[Footnote 39: The Universal God.]

[Footnote 40: The Monkey-god.]

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So, underlying the manifest convenience of not allowing a stranger's finger in their pie, the elders of the village had a secondary consideration in pleading for old Tulsi Ram's appointment; a desire, namely, to show the world at large and the Presence in particular that there had been _putwaries_ before he came to cast his mantle of protection over the poor. Besides, old Tulsi, though he looked like a monkey, might be Sri Hunuman[40] himself in the wisdom necessary for settling the thousand petty disputes, without which the village would be so dull. Then he was a real saint to boot, all the more saintly because he was willing to forego his preparation for another world in order to keep a place warm for his grandson in this.

And after all it was only for three years! They, and Tulsi, and the Three-Legged-One could surely manage the maps for so long. If not, well, it was no great matter, since the fields could not possibly run away. So they went off contentedly in procession, Tulsi Ram clinging ostentatiously to the plane-table, which, by reason of its straighter, longer legs, looked for all the world as if it were taking charge of him, and not he of it.

It looked still more in possession as it stood decently draped beside the old man as he worked away at the long columns of figures; for the mapping season was over, and nothing remained but addition, subtraction, and division, at all of which old Tulsi was an adept. Had he not indeed dipped far into "Euclidus" in his salad-days when he was the favourite disciple of the renowned anchorite at Janakpur?

Gurditta by this time was away at college, and Kishnu, his widowed mother, as she cooked the millet-cakes in the other corner of the courtyard, wept salt tears at the thought of the unknown dangers he was running. Deadly dangers they were, for had not his father been quite healthy until the Government had insisted on his using the Three-Legged-One? And then, had he not gone down and wrestled with it on the low, misty levels of newly reclaimed land by the river-side, and caught the chills of which he had eventually died? Thus when the rainy season came on, and the plane-table, still decently draped, was set aside for shelter in the darkest corner of the hovel, it looked to poor Kishnu like some malevolent demon ready to spring out upon the little household. And so, naturally enough, when Tulsi went to fetch it out for his first field-measurements, he found it garlanded with yellow marigolds, and set out with little platters of curds and butter. Kishnu had been propitiating it with offerings.

The old man looked at her in mild, superior reproof. "Thou art an ignorant woman, daughter," he said. "This is no devil, but a device of the learned, of much use to such as I who make maps. Thou shouldest have known that the true Gods are angered by false worship; therefore I counsel thee to remember great Mahadeo this day, lest evil befall."

So he passed out into the sunlight, bearing the plane-table in debonair fashion, leaving the abashed Kishnu to gather up the marigolds. _Baba-ji_, she told herself, was brave, but he had not to bustle about the house all day with that shrouded thing glowering from the corner. However, since for Gurdit's sake it was wise to propitiate everything, she took the platters of curds and butter over to Mahadeo's red stone under the big banyan tree.

Nevertheless, she felt triumphant that evening when old Tulsi came in from the fields dispirited and professing no appetite for his supper. He had in fact discovered that studying text-books and making practical field-measurements were very different things, especially in a treeless, formless plain, where the only land-marks are the mud boundary-cones you are set to verify, and which therefore cannot, or ought not to be considered fixed points.

However, he managed at last to draw two imaginary lines through the village, thanks to _Purumeshwar_ and the big green dome of Mahadeo's banyan tree swelling up into the blue horizon. Indeed he felt so grateful to the latter for showing clear, even over a plane-table, that he sneaked out when Kishnu's back was turned with a platter of curds of his own for the great, many-armed trunk; but this, of course, was very different from making oblation to a trivial plane-table. And that evening he spent all the lingering light in decorating the borders of the map (which was yet to come) with the finest flourishes, just, as he told Kishnu, to show the Protector-of-the-Poor that he had not committed the _putwari_-ship to unworthy hands.

Yet two days afterwards he replied captiously to his daughter's anxious inquiries as to what was the matter. There was naught wrong; only one of the three legs had no sense of duty, and he must get the carpenter to put a nail to it. Despite the nail, however, the anxiety grew on his face, and when nobody was looking he took to tramping over the ploughs surreptitiously dragging the primeval chain-measure after him; in which occupation he looked like a monkey who had escaped from its owner the plane-table, which, with the old man's mantle draped over it, and his pugree placed on the top, had a very dignified appearance in the corner of the field; for it was hot work dragging the heavy chain about, and old Tulsi, who was too proud to ask for aid and so disclose the fact that he had had to fall back on ancient methods, discarded all the clothing he could.

And after all he had to give in. "Gurdit's father did it field by field," said the head-men carelessly when he sought their advice. "Fret not thyself, _Baba-ji_. 'Twill come right; thou art a better scholar than ever he was."

"Field by field!" echoed Tulsi aghast. "But the book prohibits it, seeing that there is not verification, since none can know if the boundaries be right."

A broad chuckle ran round the circle of elders. "Is that all, Sri Tulsi?" cried the head-man. "That is soon settled. A Jat knows his own land, I warrant; and each man of us will verify his fields, seeing that never before have we had such a settling-day as thine. Not an error, not an injustice! _Purumeshwar_ send Gurditta to be as good a _putwari_ when he comes!"

"Nay, 'tis Gurdit who is _putwari_ already," replied Tulsi uneasily; "and therefore must there be no mistake. So I will do field by field; peradventure when they are drawn on paper it may seem more like the book where things do not move. Then I can begin again by rule."

There was quite a pleasurable excitement over the attested measurement of the fields, and old Munnia, the parcher of corn, said it was almost as good as a fair to her trade. Each man clanked the chain round his own boundary, while his neighbours stood in the now sprouting wheat to see fair play and talk over the past history of the claim; Tulsi Ram meanwhile squatting on the ground and drawing away as for dear life. Even the children went forth to see the show, munching popped corn and sidling gingerly past the Three-Legged-One which, to say sooth, looked gigantic with half the spare clothes of the community piled on to it; indeed the village women, peeping from afar, declared Kishnu to have been quite right, and urged a further secret oblation as prudent, if not absolutely necessary.

So she took to hanging the marigolds again, taking care to remove them ere the old man rose in the morning. And the result was eminently satisfactory, for as he put one field-plan after another away in the portfolio Tulsi Ram's face cleared. They were so beautifully green, far greener than those in the book; so surely there could be no mistake. But alas! when he came to try and fit them together as they should be on the map, they resolutely refused to do anything of the kind. It was a judgment, he felt, for having disobeyed the text-book; and so the next morning he rose at the peep of day determined to have it out legitimately with the Three-Legged-One. And lo! it was garlanded with marigolds and set out once more with platters of curds and butter.

"Thou hast undone me, ignorant woman!" he said with a mixture of anger and relief. "Now is it clear! The true Gods in despite of thy false worship have sent a devil into this thing to destroy me." So despite Kishnu's terror and tears he threw the offerings into the fire, and dragged the plane-table out into the fields with ignominy.

But even this protestation failed, and poor old Tulsi, one vast wrinkle of perplexity, was obliged once more to refer to the circle of head-men.

"Gurdit's father managed, and thou hast twice his mettle," they replied, vaguely interested. "Sure the devil must indeed be in it, seeing that the land cannot run away of itself."

"It hath not run away," said Tulsi dejectedly. "There is not too little, but too much of it."

Too much land! The idea was at first bewildering to these Jat peasants, and then sent them into open laughter. Here was a mistake indeed! and yet the lust of land, so typical of their race, showed in their eyes as they crowded round the map which Tulsi Ram spread on the ground. It was a model of neatness: the fields were greener than the greenest wheat; but right in the middle of them was a white patch of no-man's-land.

"_Trra!_" rolled the broadest of the party after an instant's stupefaction. "That settles it. 'Tis a mistake, for look you, 'tis next my fields, and if 'twere there my plough would have been in it long ago." A sigh of conviction and relief passed through the circle, for the mere suggestion had been disturbing. Nevertheless, since Gurdit's father's map had never indulged in white spots, Tulsi's must be purged from them also. "Look you," said one of the youngest; "'tis as when the children make a puzzle of torn leaves. He has fitted them askew, so let each cut his own field out of the paper and set it aright."

Then ensued an hour of sheer puzzledom, since if the white spot were driven from one place it re-appeared differently shaped in another. The devil was in it, they said at last, somewhat alarmed; since he who brought land might be reasonably suspected of the power of taking it away. They would offer a scapegoat; and meanwhile old Tulsi need not talk of calling in the aid of the new _putwari_ in the next village, for he was one of the new-fangled sort, an empty drum making a big noise, and, as likely as not, would make them pay double, if there really was extra land, because it had not come into the schedule before. No! they would ask the schoolmaster first, since he had experience in finding excuse for mistakes. Nor was their trust unfounded, for the master not only had an excuse in something he called "a reasonable margin of error," but also a remedy which, he declared, the late _putwari_ had always adopted; briefly a snip here, a bulge there, and a general fudging with the old settlement-maps.

The elders clapped old Tulsi on the back with fresh laughter bidding him not try to be cleverer than others, and so sent him back to his drawing-board. But long after the dusk had fallen that evening, the old man sat staring stupidly at the great sheet of blank paper on which he had not drawn a line. It was no business of his what Gurdit's father had done, seeing that he too was of the old school inwardly, if not outwardly; but Gurdit himself, when he returned, would allow of no such dishonesties, and he, Tulsi, was in the boy's place. There was time yet, a month at least before inspection, in which to have it out with the plane-table. So when the wild geese from the mudbanks came with the first streak of dawn to feed on the wheat, they found old Tulsi and his attendant demon there already, at work on the dewy fields; and when sunset warned the grey crane that it was time to wing their flight riverwards, they left Tulsi and the Three-Legged-One still struggling with the margin of error.

Then he would sit up of nights plotting and planning till a dim, dazed look came into his bright old eyes, and he had to borrow a pair of horn spectacles from the widow of a dead friend. He was getting old, he told Kishnu (who was in despair), as men must get old, no matter how many marigolds ignorant women wasted on false gods; for she had taken boldly, and unchecked, to the oblations again.

But in the end inspection-day found that white bit of land white as ever, nay, whiter against the dark finger which pointed at it accusingly; since, as ill-luck would have it, what only the natives themselves may call a Black Judge was the inspecting officer. A most admirable young Bachelor of Arts from the Calcutta University, full to the brim of solid virtue, and utterly devoid of any sneaking sentimental sympathy with the quips and cranks of poor humanity; those lichens of life which make its rough rocks and water-worn boulders so beautiful to the seeing eye. "This must not occur," he said, speaking, after the manner of the alien, in English to his clerk in order to enhance his dignity. "It is gross negligence of common orders. Write as warning that if better map be not forthcoming, _locum tenens_ loses appointment with adverse influence on hereditary claims."

Adverse influence on hereditary claims! The words, translated brutally, as only clerks can translate, sent poor old Tulsi into an agony of remorse and resolve.

A month afterwards Kishnu spoke to the headmen. "The Three-Legged-One hath driven the _putwari_ crazy," she said. "Remove it from him or he will die. Justice! Justice!"