Part 18 (1/2)

”Likely; when the day's work is done. How go the crops thy way? Here, as thou seest, 'tis G.o.d's dew on G.o.d's grain.”

”With us also. There will be marriages galore this May.”

”Ay! if this bring naught.” The speaker nodded toward the cake which now lay on the ground between them, for they had inevitably squatted down to take alternate pulls at a pipe. ”What can it bring?”

”G.o.d knows,” replied the host in his turn. So the two, with that final reference in their minds, sat looking dully at the _chupatti_ as if it were some strange wild fowl. Sat silently, as men will do over a pipe, till a clinking of anklets and a chatter of feminine voices came round the corner, and the foremost woman of the troop on their way to the tank drew her veil close swiftly at sight of a stranger. Yet her voice came as swiftly. ”What news, brother? What news?”

”None for thee, Mother Kirpo,” answered the resident watchman tartly.

”'Tis for the elders.”

The t.i.tterings and tossings of veiled heads at this snub to the worst gossip in the village, ended in an expectant pause as a very old woman, with a fine-cut face which had long since forsworn concealment, stepped up to the watchmen, and squatting down beside them, raised the cake in her wrinkled hands.

”From the North to the South or the South to the North. From the East to the West or the West to the East. Which?” she asked, nodding her old head.

”Sure it was so, mother,” replied the stranger, surprised. ”Dost know aught?”

”Know?” she echoed; ”I know 'tis an old tale--an old tale.”

”What is an old tale, mother?” asked the women eagerly, as, emboldened by the presence of the village spey-wife, they crowded round, eying the cake curiously.

She gave a scornful laugh, let the _chupatti_ drop, and, rising to her feet, pa.s.sed on to the tank. It suited her profession to be mysterious, and she knew no more than this, that once, or at most twice in her long life, such a token had come peacefully into the village, and pa.s.sed out of it as peacefully with its message.

”Mai Dhunnoo knows something, for sure,” commented a deep-bosomed mother of sons as the troop followed their ”chaperone's” lead, closer serried than before, full of whispering surmise. ”The G.o.ds send it mean not smallpox. I will give curds and sugar to thee, Mata jee, each Friday for a year! I swear it for safety to the boys.”

”He slipped in a puddle and cried 'Hail to the Ganges,'” retorted her neighbor, an ill-looking woman blind of one eye. She had been the richest heiress in the village, and was in consequence the wife of the handsomest young man in it; a childless wife into the bargain. ”Boys do not fill the world, Veru; not even thine! Their welfare will not set tokens a-going. It needs some real misfortune for that.”

”Then thy life is safe for sure,” began the other hotly, when a peacemaker intervened.

”Wrangle not, sisters! All are naked when their clothes are gone; and the warning may be for us all. Mayhap the Toorks are coming once more--Mai Dhunnoo said 'twas an old tale. G.o.d send we be not all reft from our husbands.”

”That would I never be,” protested the heiress, provoking uproarious t.i.tterings among some girls.

”No such luck for poor Ramo,” whispered one. ”And she sonless too!”

”He shaved for the heat, and then the hail fell on his bald pate,”

quoted the prettiest callously. ”Serve him right, say I. He, at least, had two eyes.”

The burst of laughter following this sally made the peacemaker, who, as the wife of the headman, had authority, turn in rebuke. 'Twas no laughing matter to Jatnis, as they were, who did so much of the field work, that a token, maybe of ill, should come to the village when the harvest promised so well. The revenue had to be paid, smallpox or no smallpox, Toork or no Toork. And was not one of the Huzoors in camp already giving an eye to the look of the crops, and the other to the shooting of wild things? Could they not hear the sound of his gun for themselves if they listened instead of chattering? And truly enough, in the pause which came to mirth, there echoed from the pale northern horizon, beyond which lay the big jheels, a shot or two, faint and far; for all that dealing death to some of G.o.d's creatures. And these listeners dealt death to none; their faith forbade it.

”Think you they will come our way and kill our deer as they did once?”

asked a slender slip of a girl anxiously. Her tame fawn had lately taken to joining the wild ones when they came at dawn to feed upon the wheat.

”G.o.d knows,” replied one beside her. ”They will come if they like, and kill if they like. Are they not the masters?”

So the final reference was in the women's minds also, as, while the muddy water strained slowly into their pots through a filtering corner of their veils, they raised their eyes curiously, doubtfully, to the horizon which held the master. It had held him always. To the north or to the south, the east or the west. Mohammedan, Mahratta, Christian.

But always coming over the far horizon and slaying something. In old days husbands, brothers, fathers. Nowadays the herds of deer which the sacredness of life allowed to have their full of the wheat unchecked, or the peac.o.c.ks who spread their tails, securely vainglorious, on the heaps of corn upon the thres.h.i.+ng floors.

So the unleavened cake stayed in the village all day long, and when the slant shadows brought leisure, the headman's wife baked two cakes, one for the north the other for the west, and Dittu the old watchman, and the embryo watchman his son, set off with them to the next village west and north, since that was the old custom. So much must be done because their fathers had done it; for the rest, who could tell?

Nevertheless, as the messengers pa.s.sed through the village street where the women sat spinning, many paused to look after them, with a vague relief that the unknown, unsought, had gone out of their life.