The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel
ridges and see the promise of harvest doubled by the reflection of each tender green spikelet in the flooded fields! The night settled down dark, heavenly dark, with a fine spray of steady rain in the old, weather-beaten face, as it set itself towards home.
The blue sky was on the side of labour this time, and, during the next month or so, Târadevi's young soldiers made mud pies, and crowed more lustily than ever over the bunniah's boys.
Then the silvery beard began to show in the wheat, and old Jaimul laughed aloud in the fulness of his heart.
"That is an end of the new seal," he said boastfully, as he smoked his pipe in the village square. "It is a poor man's harvest, and no mistake."
But Anunt Râm was silent. The April sun had given some of its sunshine to the yellowing crops before he spoke.
"I can wait no longer for my money, O baba-ji!" he said; "the three years are nigh over, and I must defend myself."
"What three years?" asked Jaimul, in perplexity.
"The three years during which I can claim my own according to the sahib-logue's rule. You must pay, or I must sue."
"Pay before harvest! What are these fool's words? Of course I will pay in due time; hath not great Râm sent me rain to wash out the old writing?"
"But what of the new one, baba-ji?--the cash lent on permission to foreclose the mortgages?"
"If the harvest failed--if it failed," protested Jaimul quickly. "And I knew it could not fail. The stars said so, and great Râm would not have it so."
"That is old-world talk!" sneered Anunt. "We do not put that sort of thing in the bond. You sealed it, and I must sue."
"What good to sue ere harvest? What money have I? But I will pay good grain when it comes, and the paper can grow as before."
Anunt Râm sniggered.
"What good, O baba-ji? Why, the land will be mine, and I can take, not what you give me, but what I choose. For the labourer his hire, and the rest for me."
"Thou art mad!" cried Jaimul, but he went back to his fields with a great fear at his heart--a fear which sent him again to the usurer's ere many days were over.
"Here are my house's jewels," he said briefly, "and the mare thou hast coveted these two years. Take them, and write off my debt till harvest."
Anunt Râm smiled again.
"It shall be part payment of the acknowledged claim," he said; "let the Courts decide on the rest."
"After the harvest?"
"Ay, after the harvest; in consideration of the jewels."
Anunt Râm kept his word, and the fields were shorn of their crop ere the summons to attend the District Court was brought to the old peasant.
"By the Great Spirit who judges all it is a lie!" That was all he could say as the long, carefully-woven tissue of fraud and cunning blinded even the eyes of a justice biassed in his favour. The records of our Indian law-courts teem with such cases--cases where even equity can do nothing against the evidence of pen and paper. No need to detail the strands which formed the net. The long array of seals had borne fruit at last, fiftyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold--a goodly harvest for the usurer.
"Look not so glum, friend," smiled Anunt Râm, as they pushed old Jaimul from the Court at last, dazed, but still vehemently protesting. "Thou and Jodha thy son shall till the land as ever, seeing thou art skilled in such work, but there shall be no idlers; and the land, mark you, is mine, not thine."
A sudden gleam of furious hate sprang to the strong old face, but died away as quickly as it came.
"Thou liest," said Jaimul; "I will appeal. The land is mine. It hath been mine and my fathers' under the king's pleasure since time began. Kings, ay, and queens, for that matter, are not fools, to give good land to the bunniah's belly. Can a bunniah plough?"
Yet as he sat all day about the court-house steps awaiting some legal detail or other, doubt even of his own incredulity came over him. He had often heard of similar misfortunes to his fellows, but somehow the possibility of such evil appearing in his own life had never entered his brain. And what would Kishnu say--after all these years, these long years of content?
The moon gathering light as the sun set shone full on the road, as the old man, with downcast head, made his way across the level plain to the mud hovel which had been a true home to him and his for centuries. His empty hands hung at his sides, and the fingers twitched nervously as if seeking something. On either side the bare stubble, stretching away from the track which led deviously to the scarce discernible hamlets here and there. Not a soul in sight, but every now and again a glimmer of light showing where some one was watching the heaps of new threshed grain upon the threshing-floors.
And then a straighter thread of path leading right upon his own fields and the village beyond. What was that? A man riding before him. The blood leapt through the old veins, and the old hands gripped in upon themselves. So he--that liar riding ahead--was to have the land, was he? Riding the mare too, while he, Jaimul, came behind afoot--yet for all that gaining steadily with long, swinging stride on the figure ahead. A white figure on a white horse like death; or was the avenger behind beneath the lank folds of drapery which fluttered round the walker?
The land! No! He should never have the land. How could he? The very idea was absurd. Jaimul, thinking thus, held his head erect and his hands relaxed their grip. He was close on the rider now; and just before him, clear in the moonlight, rose the boundary mark of his fields--a loose pile of sunbaked clods, hardened by many a dry year of famine to the endurance of stone. Beside it, the shallow whence they had been dug, showing a gleam of water still held in the stiff clay. The mare paused, straining at the bridle for a drink, and Jaimul almost at her heels paused also, involuntarily, mechanically. For a moment they stood thus, a silent white group in the moonlight; then the figure on the horse slipped to the ground and moved a step forward. Only one step, but that was within the boundary. Then, above the even wheeze of the thirsty beast, rose a low chuckle as the usurer stooped for a handful of soil and let it glide through his fingers.
"It is good ground! Ay, ay--none better." They were his last words. In fierce passion of love, hate, jealousy, and protection, old Jaimul closed on his enemy, and found something to grip with his steady old hands. Not the plough-handle this time, but a throat, a warm, living throat where you could feel the blood swelling in the veins beneath your fingers. Down almost without a struggle, the old face above the young one, the lank knee upon the broad body. And now, quick! for something to slay withal, ere age tired in its contest with youth and strength. There, ready since all time, stood the landmark, and one clod after another snatched from it fell on the upturned face with a dull thud. Fell again and again, crashed and broke to crumbling soil. Good soil! Ay! none better! Wheat might grow in it and give increase fortyfold, sixtyfold, ay, a hundredfold. Again, again, and yet again, with dull insistence till there was a shuddering sigh, and then silence. Jaimul stood up quivering from the task and looked over his fields. They were at least free from that thing at his feet; for what part in this world's harvest could belong to the ghastly figure with its face beaten to a jelly, which lay staring up into the over-arching sky? So far, at any rate, the business was settled for ever, and in so short a time that the mare had scarcely slaked her thirst, and still stood with head down, the water dripping from her muzzle. The thing would never ride her again either. Half-involuntarily he stepped to her side and loosened the girth.
"Ari! sister," he said aloud, "thou hast had enough. Go home."
The docile beast obeyed his well-known voice, and as her echoing amble died away Jaimul looked at his blood-stained hands and then at the formless face at his feet. There was no home for him, and yet he was not sorry, or ashamed, or frightened--only dazed at the hurry of his own act. Such things had to be done sometimes when folk were unjust. They would hang him for it, of course, but he had at least made his protest, and done his deed as good men and true should do when the time came. So he left the horror staring up into the sky