Maya was on her feet at once, indignant, vehement.
"Thou shouldst not offer him such things. He shall not take them from thee. I will not have it. Nay, nay, my bird--my heart"s delight!
Mother will give thee sweets enough. Kick not so, life of my life!
Ganesh! how he cries. He will burst: and "tis thy fault. Hush, hush!
See, here is mother"s milk. _Ai!_ wicked one! would bite? Ye G.o.ds, but "tis a veritable _Toork_ for temper."
Hushing the child in her arms, she walked up and down, followed by Saraswati"s calm, big black eyes.
"Thou art a fool, Maya," she said slowly, putting down the sugar horse. "Gopal"s sweets would not have hurt the child so much as thy spitefulness." Then she turned to her work again among the niches.
When she rose the basket was in her hand, the threads were broken, and the cover tilted as if something slender and supple had been allowed to slip out. Perhaps it had, for behind the sugar horse, standing in the lowermost niche, two specks of fire gleamed from the shadow. It was growing dark now, but the harvest moon riding high in the heavens and the now flaming fire aided the dying daylight, and a curious radiance, backed by velvety shadows, lay on everything.
"I must sweep out the niches thoroughly tomorrow," she said indifferently. "Methought just now I heard the rustle as of a _jelabi_.[44] They love to hide in such places, and therefore I bid thee but yesterday see to their cleansing, But, sure, what work is done in this house mine must be the hand to do it. See to your lentils, sister; methinks they burn at the bottom."
--------------------- [Footnote 44: _Echis carinata_, the Indian viper. It lies coiled in a true-lover"s knot, rustling its scales one against the other. It is the most vicious and irritable of all Indian snakes.]
Maya, with a petulant shrug of her shoulders, set down the child.
"Such work spoils my hands, and--and--folk like them pretty."
Even she, town born and town bred, did not dare before this grave-eyed peasant woman to name her husband"s name in such a connection,[45] but Saraswati understood the allusion, and the simple, straightforward naturalism drawn from ages of rural life which was her heritage, rose up in arms against such depravity. But even as she lashed herself to revenge by the thought, everything that was stable seemed to shift, all that moved to stand still. Her heart ceased beating, the walls span round, the moon quivered, the flames grew rigid. Ah, no! one thing that moved would not pause. Chujju had caught sight of the sugar horse, and was creeping towards it, now on his little fat hands, now tottering on his little fat feet, his glistening eyes fixed on the niche which held those gleaming specks of fire.
[Footnote 45: A husband"s name should never be mentioned by a wife, especially in matters referring to herself.]
No! nothing was too bad for Maya; and Dhunnu, the wise woman, had been right when she said that the charm lay in the child. It must be so--and death was naught. There! he was close now, one little hand stretched out, the dimples showing--the---- Ah!
A cry, fierce, almost imperative, and Saraswati had him in her arms, while something slim and grey fell from the niche in its spring, and wriggled behind a pile of brushwood.
"I saw its eyes," she gasped, still straining the child to her ample bosom, when Gurditta, brought thither by Maya"s screams of "Snake!
snake!" stood beside her, his breath coming fast, his manliness stirred to its depths.
Maya saw the danger swiftly. "Give him to me," she clamoured. "O husband, make her give him to me. She would kill him if she could. She put it there--I saw her put it there--I swear it."
Saraswati turned on her in calm contempt. "Thou liest, O Maya; since Time began, spirit of deceit and mother of illusion. Thou didst _not_ see me put it there."
Then, with the same dignity, she turned to the man.
"Master! Take the child. He is safe. This much is true, I saved him."
That night, when the moon still shone in the cloudless sky, Saraswati, her veil wrapped closely round her, stole softly from the homestead.
Past the resting oxen, out among the serried battalions of maize and millet, where the tall sheaves, lying p.r.o.ne on the ground, looked like the bodies of those who had fallen in the day"s fight; down on the sun-cracked borders of the tank, whence the water was sinking swiftly, now the rain had ceased; by the ghostly peepul trees, shorn of their branches which the camels love, and looking weird and human with great arms stretched skywards; so on to the burning ghat beyond, with its little cones of mud marking the spot of each funeral pyre, and the twinkling lights set here and there by pious survivors. Saraswati drew her veil tighter and sped faster as she pa.s.sed through the more recent ashes, as yet uncovered, but swept into little heaps; and there--horrible sight!--still scattered, with the uncalcined bones gleaming in the moonlight, and a faint line of smoke still circling upwards, lay the most recent of all. That must be old Anant Ram, the _khuttri_ (merchant) who had died that morning: an evil man, come to his end.
She was trembling ere she reached the hut where Dhun Devi, the wise woman, kept watch and ward over the ashes. It was a miserable shanty, where she found the old woman asleep before a large iron pot, supported on a trivet. Beneath it some cowdung cakes smouldered slowly, yet not so slowly but that every now and again a blood-red bubble showed on the contents of the pot. A flaring oil-lamp, filched, doubtless, from those outside, stood in a smoke-blackened niche, and by its light you could see festoons of dank, blood-red drapery clinging, to a rope, while, with a drip, drip, drip, something fell upon the floor--something which ran in rills right out to the moonlight, and, sinking into the sand, stained it blood-red; a ghastly setting to the wise woman"s crouching figure, even though Saraswati knew that Mai Dhunnu was engaged in no more nefarious occupation than dyeing the webs of her ignorant neighbours with madder.
The old crone stood up hastily, then sank to her low stool again when she had peered into her visitor"s face. "Thou wilt not tell," she whispered in a hoa.r.s.e croak, which, coming in reality from a throat affection, vastly enhanced her claims to wisdom in the eyes of the villagers. "Thou art of the old style; not like these apes of to-day, with their dog-eared books and their dyes which fade before a January sun." The chuckle she gave suited her surroundings well; so did the claw-like hand she laid suddenly on Saraswati"s firm arm. "Well, daughter! Hast plucked up courage? Hast learnt to trust the wisdom of old Dhun Devi?"
Saraswati shook her head. "Thou must find other wisdom for me, mother," she said briefly. "Such is not for me."
"Obstinate! I tell thee "tis the glamour of the child."
""Tis not the child, though the G.o.ds know the poison hath bit deeper somehow since he came. Lo! I have tried it, and "tis not my way. Nor would I kill her. That were too trivial, seeing she is not worth life.
I want but my share. It is empty here, emptier than ever, somehow, since the boy was born."
She clasped her strong hands above her heart. The glow of the fire, spreading as the old woman fanned it with the tremulous breath of age, lit up the big black brows knit above the puzzled black eyes.
Dhun Devi straightened her bent back, and looked at her companion critically.
"Life is more than the shadow of a pa.s.sing bird to such as thou, O Saraswati! "Tis not wise. For death is naught, and life is naught. The soul of man circles ever, like the potter"s wheel, upon its pivot.
Have I not seen it? Have I not known it? Did I not go through the night of a thousand dangers myself, and bring five stalwart sons into the day? Where are they? Have they not pa.s.sed into the dark again?
Have not my hands piloted many through the Sorrowful Hour and sent many from it? Lo! the snake would not have harmed the child."
"I care not if thou speakest truth or not, O mother, though thou art learned above women in such thoughts, I know," muttered Saraswati sullenly, with drooping head. "Only this I know, that way is not mine.
There must be others. See! I have brought thee my golden armlet.
_Dhun_[46] was ever as a sign-post to Dhun Devi. Is"t not so?"
[Footnote 46: Worldly-wealth.]
The old dame"s fingers closed greedily on the bribe, careless of the open sneer which accompanied it. "Ways?" she echoed. "Of a surety there are ways, but none so simple as death."
"Ay," said Saraswati quietly, "I have thought of that. The well is deep, and the little feathery ferns in the crannies look kind. But they would say Saraswati, the Jatni, had been ousted from her own well-land by a stranger, and that is not so. I heed not the girl; deceit is her portion. "Tis something here." Again she laid her hand on her heart with a puzzled look. "Nor do I want _him_ only. Couldst thou not turn the child"s mind to me, so that, seeing his love, Gurditta would hold me dearer also?"
Dhun Devi shook her head, but her keen, bright old eyes were on the other"s face.
"There is a way," she whispered, after a pause, "but death lurks in it often with such as thou."
"Whose death?"
"Thine own. Do not all women know how the Sorrowful Hour----"
Saraswati caught the withered wrist in a fierce clasp.
"_Mai!_" she panted; "Mai Dhunnu! Dost speak of the Sorrowful Hour to me--to me--after all these years! Is there hope--hope even yet?"