LITMIR.BIZ

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Athira’s brother down into Suket Singh’s regiment to call Athira home. Suket Singh kicked him once round the Lines, and then handed him over to the Havildar, who beat him with a belt.

      ‘Come back,’ yelled Athira’s brother.

      ‘Where to?’ said Athira.

      ‘To Madu,’ said he.

      ‘Never,’ said she.

      ‘Then Juseen Daze will send a curse, and you will wither away like a barked tree in the springtime,’ said Athira’s brother. Athira slept over these things.

      Next morning she had rheumatism. ‘I am beginning to wither away like a barked tree in the springtime,’ she said. ‘That is the curse of Juseen Daze.’

      And she really began to wither away because her heart was dried up with fear, and those who believe in curses die from curses. Suket Singh, too, was afraid because he loved Athira better than his very life. Two months passed, and Athira’s brother stood outside the regimental Lines again and yelped, ‘Aha! You are withering away. Come back.’

      ‘I will come back,’ said Athira.

      ‘Say rather that WE will come back,’ said Suket Singh.

      ‘Ai; but when?’ said Athira’s brother.

      ‘Upon a day very early in the morning,’ said Suket Singh; and he tramped off to apply to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur for one week’s leave.

      ‘I am withering away like a barked tree in the spring,’ moaned Athira.

      ‘You will be better soon,’ said Suket Singh; and he told her what was in his heart, and the two laughed together softly, for they loved each other. But Athira grew better from that hour.

      They went away together, travelling third-class by train as the regulations provided, and then in a cart to the low hills, and on foot to the high ones. Athira sniffed the scent of the pines of her own hills, the wet Himalayan hills. ‘It is good to be alive,’ said Athira.

      ‘Hah!’ said Suket Singh. ‘Where is the Kodru road and where is the Forest Ranger’s house?’…

      ‘It cost forty rupees twelve years ago,’ said the Forest Ranger, handing the gun.

      ‘Here are twenty,’ said Suket Singh, ‘and you must give me the best bullets.’

      ‘It is very good to be alive,’ said Athira wistfully, sniffing the scent of the pine-mould; and they waited till the night had fallen upon Kodru and the Donga Pa. Madu had stacked the dry wood for the next day’s charcoal-burning on the spur above his house. ‘It is courteous in Madu to save us this trouble,’ said Suket Singh as he stumbled on the pile, which was twelve foot square and four high. ‘We must wait till the moon rises.’

      When the moon rose, Athira knelt upon the pile. ‘If it were only a Government Snider,’ said Suket Singh ruefully, squinting down the wire-bound barrel of the Forest Ranger’s gun.

      ‘Be quick,’ said Athira; and Suket Singh was quick; but Athira was quick no longer. Then he lit the pile at the four corners and climbed on to it, re-loading the gun.

      The little flames began to peer up between the big logs atop of the brushwood. ‘The Government should teach us to pull the triggers with our toes,’ said Suket Singh grimly to the moon. That was the last public observation of Sepoy Suket Singh.

      Upon a day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in the district.

      ‘The base-born has ruined four rupees’ worth of charcoal wood,’ Madu gasped. ‘He has also killed my wife, and he has left a letter which I cannot read, tied to a pine bough.’

      In the stiff, formal hand taught in the regimental school, Sepoy Suket Singh had written —

      ‘Let us be burned together, if anything remain over, for we have made the necessary prayers. We have also cursed Madu, and Malak the brother of Athira – both evil men. Send my service to the Colonel Sahib Bahadur.’

      The Policeman looked long and curiously at the marriage bed of red and white ashes on which lay, dull black, the barrel of the Ranger’s gun. He drove his spurred heel absently into a half-charred log, and the chattering sparks flew upwards. ‘Most extraordinary people,’ said the Policeman.

      ‘WHE-W, WHEW, OUIOU,’ said the little flames.

      The Policeman entered the dry bones of the case, for the Punjab Government does not approve of romancing, in his Diary.

      ‘But who will pay me those four rupees?’ said Madu.

      THE FINANCES OF THE GODS

      The evening meal was ended in Dhunni Bhagat’s Chubara and the old priests were smoking or counting their beads. A little naked child pattered in, with its mouth wide open, a handful of marigold flowers in one hand, and a lump of conserved tobacco in the other. It tried to kneel and make obeisance to Gobind, but it was so fat that it fell forward on its shaven head, and rolled on its side, kicking and gasping, while the marigolds tumbled one way and the tobacco the other. Gobind laughed, set it up again, and blessed the marigold flowers as he received the tobacco.

      ‘From my father,’ said the child. ‘He has the fever, and cannot come. Wilt thou pray for him, father?’

      ‘Surely, littlest; but the smoke is on the ground, and the night-chill is in the airs, and it is not good to go abroad naked in the autumn.’

      ‘I have no clothes,’ said the child, ‘and all to-day I have been carrying cow-dung cakes to the bazar. It was very hot, and I am very tired.’ It shivered a little, for the twilight was cool.

      Gobind lifted an arm under his vast tattered quilt of many colours, and made an inviting little nest by his side. The child crept in, and Gobind filled his brass-studded leather waterpipe with the new tobacco. When I came to the Chubara the shaven head with the tuft atop, and the beady black eyes looked out of the folds of the quilt as a squirrel looks out from his nest, and Gobind was smiling while the child played with his beard.

      I would have said something friendly, but remembered in time that if the child fell ill afterwards I should be credited with the Evil Eye, and that is a horrible possession.

      ‘Sit thou still, Thumbling,’ I said as it made to get up and run away. ‘Where is thy slate, and why has the teacher let such an evil character loose on the streets when there are no police to protect us weaklings? In which ward dost thou try to break thy neck with flying kites from the house-tops?’

      ‘Nay, Sahib, nay,’ said the child, burrowing its face into Gobind’s beard, and twisting uneasily. ‘There was a holiday to-day among the schools, and I do not always fly kites. I play ker-li-kit like the rest.’

      Cricket is the national game among the schoolboys of the Punjab, from the naked hedge-school children, who use an old kerosene-tin for wicket, to the B.A.‘s of the University, who compete for the Championship belt.

      ‘Thou play kerlikit! Thou art half the height of the bat!’ I said.

      The child nodded resolutely. ‘Yea, I DO play. PERLAYBALL OW-AT! RAN, RAN, RAN! I know it all.’

      ‘But thou must not forget with all this to pray to the Gods according to custom,’ said Gobind, who did not altogether approve of cricket and western innovations.

      ‘I do not forget,’ said the child in a hushed voice.

      ‘Also to give reverence to thy teacher, and’ – Gobind’s voice softened – ’ to abstain from pulling holy men by the beard, little badling. Eh, eh, eh?’

      The child’s face was altogether hidden in the great white beard, and it began to whimper till Gobind soothed it as children are soothed all the world over, with the promise of a story.

      ‘I did not think to frighten thee, senseless little one. Look up! Am I angry? Are, are, are! Shall I weep too, and of our tears make a great pond and drown us both, and then thy father will never get well, lacking thee to pull his beard? Peace, peace, and I will tell thee of the Gods.

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