The _vina_ still hangs in my collection next the _ravanastron_.
Sometimes I take it down and sound the strings. But the waving palms, the odorous thickets, and the shadowy, immortal forms have got mixed up somehow with that infernal humming and b.u.mming of the four-anna bit. So I get no help in trying to decide the question,--"Who was Ramchunderji?"
HEERA NUND.
He stood in the verandah, salaaming with both hands, in each of which he held a bouquet--round-topped, compressed, prim little posies, with fat bundles of stalk bound spirally with date-fibre; altogether more like ninepins than bouquets, for the time of flowers was not yet, and only a few ill-conditioned rosebuds, suggestive of worms, and a dejected _champak_ or two, showed amongst the green.
The holder was hardly more decorative than the posies. Bandy, hairy brown legs, with toes set wide open by big bra.s.s rings--a sight bringing discomfort within one"s own slippers from sheer sympathy; a squat body, tightly b.u.t.toned into a sleeveless white coat; a face of mild ugliness overshadowed by an immaculately white turban. From the coral and gold necklace round his thick throat, and the crescent-shaped ear-rings in his spreading ears, I guessed him to be of the Arain caste. He was, in fact, Heera Nund, gardener to my new landlord; therefore, for the present, my servant. Had I inquired into the matter, I should probably have found that his forbears had cultivated the surrounding land for centuries; certainly long years before masterful men from the West had jotted down their trivial boundary pillars to divide light from darkness, the black man from the white, cantonments from the rest of G.o.d"s earth. One of these little white pillars stood in a corner of my garden, and beyond it lay an illimitable stretch of bare brown plain, waiting till the young wheat came to clothe its nakedness.
I did not inquire, however; few people do in India. Perhaps they are intimidated by the extreme antiquity of all things, and dread letting loose the floodgates of garrulous memory. Be that as it may, I was content to accept the fact that Heera Nund, whether representing ancestral proprietors or not, had come to congratulate me, a stranger, on having taken, not only the house, but the garden also. The _sahibs_, he said, went home so often nowadays that they had ceased to care for gardens. This one having been in a contractor"s hands for years had become, as it were, a miserable low-degree native place. In fact, he had found it necessary to steep his own knowledge in oblivion in order that content should grow side by side with country vegetables. Yet he had not forgotten the golden age, when, under the aegis of some judge with a mysterious name, he, too, Heera Nund the Arain, had raised celery and beetroot, French beans and artichokes, asparagus and parsley. He reeled off the English names with a glibness and inaccuracy in which, somehow, there lurked a pathetic dignity. Then suddenly, from behind a favouring pillar, he sprung upon me the usual native offering, consisting of a flat basket decorated with a few coa.r.s.e vegetables. A bunch of rank-smelling turnips, half-a-dozen blue radishes running two to the pound, various heaps of native greens, a bit off an overblown cauliflower proclaiming its bazaar origin by the turmeric powder adhering to it in patches, a leaf-cup of mint ornamented by two glowing chillies. He laid the whole at my feet with a profound obeisance. "This dust-like offering," he said gravely, "is all that the good G.o.d (_Khuda_) can give to the _sahib_. Let the Presence (_Huzoor_) wait a few months and see what Heera Nund can do for him."
I shall not soon forget the ludicrous solemnity of voice and gesture, or the simple self-importance overlaying the ugly face with the smile of a cat licking cream.
I did not see him again for some days, for accession to a new office curtails leisure. When, however, I found time for a stroll round my new domain I discovered Heera Nund hard at work. His coatee hung on a bush; his bare, brown back glistened in the sunshine as he stooped down to deepen a watercourse with his adze-like shovel. A brake of sugarcane, red-brown and gold, showed where the garden proper merged into the peasants" land beyond; for the well, whence the water came that flowed round Heera Nund"s hidden feet as he stood in the runnel, irrigated quite a large stretch of the fields around my holding. The well-wheel creaked in recurring discords, every now and again giving out a note or two as if it were going to begin a tune. The red evening sun shone through the mango-trees, where the green parrots hung like unripe fruit. The bullocks circled round and round; the water dripped and gurgled.
"How about the seeds I sent you?" I asked, when Heera Nund drew his wet feet from the stream, and composing himself for the effort, produced an elaborate salaam.
He left humility behind him as he stalked over to a narrow strip of ground on the other side of the well, a long strip portioned out into squares and circles like a doll"s garden, with tiny one-span walks between.
"Behold!" he said, "his Honour will observe that the cabbage caste have life already."
Truly enough the half-covered seeds showed gussets of white in their brown jackets. "But where are the tickets? I sent word specially that you were to be sure and stick the labels on each bed. How am I to know which is which?"
"The Presence can see that the sticks are there," he answered with a superior smile; "but there are others beside the _sahibs_ who love tickets."
He pointed to the tree above us, where on a branch sat a peculiarly bushy-tailed squirrel, as happy as a king over the brussels-sprouts"
wrapper, which he was crumpling into a ball with deft hands and sharp teeth. How I came to know it was this particular wrapper happened thus: I threw my cap at the offender, and in his flight he dropped the paper on my bald head; it was hard, and had points.
"They are mis-begotten devils," remarked Heera cheerfully; "but they are building nests, _sahib_, and like to paper the inside.
Notwithstanding, the Presence need fear no confusion; his slave has many names in his head. This is _arly walkrin_ (Early Walcheren), that is _droomade_ (Drumhead), yonder is _dookoyark_ (Duke of York), and that, that, and that--He would have gone on interminably, had I not changed the subject by asking what was growing beneath a dilapidated hand-light, which stood next to a st.u.r.dy crop of broadcast radishes.
Only a few panes of gla.s.s remained intact, but the vacancies had been neatly supplied by coa.r.s.e muslin. The gardener"s face, always simple in expression, became quite h.o.m.ogeneous with pure content.
"_Huzoor!_ It is the _malin_ (female gardener)!"
"The _malin!_ What on earth do you mean?"
Have you ever watched the face of a general servant when she takes the covers off the Christmas dinner? Have you ever seen a very young conjurer lift his father"s hat to show you that the handkerchief (which he has palpably secreted elsewhere) is no longer in its legitimate hiding-place? Something of that mingled triumph and fear lest some accident may have befallen skill in the interim showed itself in Heera Nund"s countenance as he removed the light with a flourish, thus disclosing to view a fat and remarkably black baby asleep on a bed of leaves. It was attired in a pair of silver bangles, and a Maw"s feeding-bottle grew, like some new kind of root-crop, from the ground beside it.
"My daughter, _Huzoor_--little Dhropudi the _malin_."
His voice thrilled even my bachelor ears as he squatted down and began mechanically to fan the swift-gathering flies from the sleeping child.
"You seem to be very fond of her," I remarked after a pause. "It is only a girl after all. Have you no son?"
He shook his head.
"She is the only one, and I waited for her ten years--ten long years; so I was glad even to get a malin. Dhropudi grows as fast as a boy, almost as fast as the _Huzoor"s_ cabbages. Only the other day she was no bigger than my hand."
"Your wife is dead, I suppose?" The question was, perhaps, a little brutal, but it was so unusual to see a man doing dry nurse to a baby girl, that I took it for granted that the mother had died months before, at the child"s birth. I never saw a face change more rapidly than his; the simplicity left it, and in place thereof came a curious anxiety such as a child might show with the dawning conviction that it has lost itself.
"She is not at all dead, _Huzoor_; on the contrary, she is very young.
Children cry sometimes, and my house does not like crying. You see, when people are young they require more sleep; when she is old as I am she will be able to keep awake."
His tone was argumentative, as if he were reasoning the matter out for his own edification. "Not that Dhropudi keeps me awake often," he added, in hasty apology to that infant"s reputation; "considering how young a person she is, her ways are very straight-walking and meek."
"If she cries you can always stop her with the watering-pot, I suppose."
He looked shocked at the suggestion.
"_Huzoor!_ it is not difficult to stop them; such a very little thing pleases a baby. Sometimes it is the sunshine--sometimes it is the wind in the trees--sometimes it is the birds, or the squirrels, or the flowers. When it is tired of these there is always the milk in its stomach. Dhropudi"s goat is yonder; it lives on your Honour"s weeds.
You are her father and her mother."
However much I might repudiate the relationship, I soon became quite accustomed to finding Dhropudi in the most unexpected places in my garden. For, soon after my first introduction to her, the claims of an early crop of lettuces to protection from the squirrels led Heera Nund to transfer the hand-light from one of his charges to another.
Dhropudi, he said, could grow nicely without it now; the black ants could not carry her off, and the squirrels had quite begun to recognise that she was of the race of Adam. At first, however, he took precautions against mistakes, and many a time I have seen the sleeping child stuck round with pea-sticks, or decorated with fluttering feathers on a string, to scare away the birds. Sometimes she was blanching with the celery, and once I nearly trod on her as she lay among the toppings in a thick plantation of blossoming beans. But she never came to harm; the only misadventure being when her father would lay her to sleep in some dry water channel, and, forgetting which one it was, turn the shallow stream that way. Then there would be a momentary outcry at the cold bath; but the next, she would be pacified with a flower, and sit in the sun to dry, for to say sooth, no more good-tempered child ever existed than Dhropudi. In this, at any rate, she was like her father, though I could trace no resemblance in other ways. "She is like my house," he would say, when I noticed the fact.
"She is young, and I am old--quite old."
Indeed, as time pa.s.sed I saw that Heera Nund was older than I thought at first. Before the barber came in the morning there was quite a silver stubble on his bronze cheek, and his bright, restless eyes were haggard and anxious. Despite his almost comic jauntiness and self-importance, he struck me as having a hunted look at times, especially when he came out from the mud-walled enclosure at the further end of the garden, where his "house" lived. He went there but seldom, spending his days in tending Dhropudi and his plants with an almost extravagant devotion. His state of mind when that young lady used her new accomplishment of crawling, to the detriment of a bed of _sootullians_ (Sweet Williams) in which he took special pride, was quite pathetic. I found him simply howling between regret for the plants and fear lest I should order punishment to the offender. His grat.i.tude when I laughed was unbounded.
After this Dhropudi used to be set in a twelve-inch pot, half sunk in the ground, where she would stay contentedly for hours, drumming the sides with a carrot, while Heera weeded and dibbled.
"She grows," he would say, s.n.a.t.c.hing her up fiercely in his arms; "she grows as all my plants grow. See my _sootullians!_ They will blossom soon, and then all the _sahibs_ will come and say, "See the _sootullians_ which Heera Nund and Dhropudi have grown for the _Huzoor_.""
Yet with all this blazoning of content the man was curiously restless--almost like a child in his desire for action and vivid interest in trivialities. "See the misbegotten creature I have found eating the honourable _Huzoor"s_ roots!" he would say, casting a wire-worm on the verandah steps, and dancing on it vindictively. "It was in the _Huzoor"s_ carnations, but by the blessing of G.o.d and Heera Nund"s vigilance it is dead. Nothing escapes me. Have I not fought wire-worms since the beginning of all things, I and my fathers? We kill all creeping, crawling things, except the holy snake that brings fruit and blossom to the garden."
One night I was disturbed by unseemly noises, coming apparently from the servants" quarters; but my remonstrances next morning were met by my bearer, with swift denial. "It is Heera. He, poor man, has to beat his wife almost every night now. I wonder the Presence has not heard her before; she screams very loud."
I stood aghast.
"He should let her go, or kill her," continued the bearer placidly.
"She is not worth the trouble of beating; but he is a fool, because she is Dhropudi"s mother. Yes, he is a fool; he beats her when he finds her lover there. He should beat her well before the man comes. That is the best way with women."
It was an old story, it seemed, dating before Dhropudi"s appearance on the scene. It occurred to me that perhaps a deeper tragedy than I had thought for was ripening in my garden among the ripening plants. I found myself watching Dhropudi and her father with an almost morbid interest, and hoping that, if my idle suspicion was right, kindly fate might hide the truth away forever in the bottom of that well where Heera often held the child to smile at her own reflection, far down where the water showed like a huge round dewdrop.
So time went on, until the _sootullians_ showed blossom buds, and Dhropudi cut her first tooth on one and the same day. Perhaps the excitement of the double event was too much for Heera"s nerves; perhaps what happened was due anyhow; but as I strolled through the garden that evening at sundown I saw the most comically pathetic sight my eyes ever beheld. Heera Nund, clothed, but not in his right mind, was dancing a _can-can_ among his _sootullians_, while Dhropudi shrieked with delight and beat frantically on her flower-pot. Even with the knowledge of all that came after, the remembrance provokes a smile,--the rhythmic bobbing up and down of the uncouth figure, the cowlike kicks of the bandy legs, the preternaturally grave face above, the crushed _sootullians_ below.
I sent him in charge of two sepoys to the Dispensary, and there he remained for two months, more or less. When he came back he was very quiet, very thin, and there were the marks of several blisters on the back of his head. He resumed work cheerfully, with many apologies for having been ill, and once more he and Dhropudi--who had been handed over meantime, under police supervision, to her mother--were to be found spending their days together in amicable companionship; his only regrets being, apparently, that the _sootullians_ had blossomed and Dhropudi learnt to walk in his absence.
But for one or two little eccentricities I might have been tempted to forget that _can-can_ among the flowers; indeed, I always met his inquiries as to the _sootullians_ with the remark that they had done as well as could be expected in the circ.u.mstances. The eccentricities, however, if few, were striking. One was his exaggerated grat.i.tude for the blisters on the back of his head; the last thing in the world one would have thought likely to produce an outburst of that Christian virtue. But it did, and an allusion to the all too visible scars invariably crowned the frequent recital of the benefits he had received at my hands. Another was the difficulty he had in distinguishing Dhropudi from the other fruits of his labor. On two separate occasions she formed part of the daily basket of vegetables which he brought in to me, and very quaint the little black morsel looked sitting surrounded by tomatoes and melons. But though he treated the matter as an elaborate joke when I remarked on it, there was a dazed, uncertain look in his eyes as if he were not quite sure as to the right end of the stick.
Nevertheless peace and contentment reigned apparently in his house.
When I sat out in the dark, hot evenings, a glow of flickering firelight from within showed the mysterious mud-walled enclosure by the wall, decorous and conventional. The winking stars looking down into it knew more of the life within than I did, but at any rate no unseemly cries disturbed the scented night air and the _Huzoor"s_ slumbers.
Perhaps the police supervision had impressed the lover with the dangers of lurking house-trespa.s.s by night; perhaps the dark-browed, heavy-jowled young woman who had taken my warning so sullenly had learnt more craft; perhaps the languor which creeps over all things in May had sucked the vigour even from pa.s.sion. Who could say? Those crumbling mud walls hid it all, and Heera seemed to have begun a new life with the hot-weather vegetables.
So matters stood when an old enemy laid hold of me. Ten days after I found myself racing Death with a determination to reach the sea, and feel the salt west wind on my face before he and I closed with each other. The strange hurry and eagerness of it all comes back to some of us like a nightmare, years after the exile is over; the doctor"s verdict, the swift packing of a trunk or two, the hope, the fear, the mad longing at least to see the dear faces once more.