The Potter's Thumb. Flora Annie Webster Steel
too often, and Government did not intend it to occur again.
When he ceased, the Diwân raised his head slowly, and George felt an odd thrill at his first sight at those luminous dark eyes; a thrill which continued as, at a sign from the old man, the court rhetorician standing surcharged with eloquence at the Diwân's right hand, burst into a stream of polished Persian periods which, hitting the keynote of the empty pavilion, roused a murmurous echo in its arcades. It reminded George of the general confession in his father's church on a week-day when the choir was absent; one certain note followed by faint efforts after repentance. The fancy, indeed, clung closer to facts than his ignorance of the language allowed him to perceive, as the speech dealt chiefly in regrets for the untoward events in the past which had made it incumbent on 'Gee Uff Keene sahib bahâdur' to languish in the wilderness of Hodinuggur, though doubtless the presence of the said 'Gee Uff Keene sahib bahâdur' would cause that desert to blossom like a rose, despite the want of water. These reiterations of his own name made George feel a sense of unknown responsibility, as of a baby at its own christening. He looked anxiously at Dan, his sponsor, but the latter was now conversing with the Diwân in the usual explosive sentences followed by the decorous silences due to dignity, while the attendants brought forward divers round brass trays covered with Manchester pocket-handkerchiefs and laid them at the visitors' feet. George's share consisted of three, one containing dried fruits and sugar, one of various rich cloths topped by a coarse white muslin pugree, the third conglomerate. A French clock, with Venus Anadyomene in alabaster, some pantomime jewelry, a green glass tumbler, a tin of preserved beetroot, a lacquered tray with the motto 'for a good boy,' and various other odds and ends. Among them a small blue earthenware pot. Was it blue after all, or did a gold shimmer suggest a pattern beneath the glaze? A queer, quaint shape, dumpy, yet graceful. That broad, straight ring around it should have marred its curves but failed to do so; strange! how these people had the knack of running counter to recognised rules, and yet---- Here George was recalled to the present by Dan whispering--
'Take it, man! Take it!'
Looking round he saw the latter removing something from a tray, and his own head being full of the blue pot, his hand naturally went out towards it.
'No! no!' continued Dan, in the same voice, 'the pugree.'
'But I've got one already!'
The instinctive greed of the reply made his companion smile as he explained that the pugree was put there on purpose. But, as he spoke, the Diwân signed to an attendant who stepping forward, transferred the blue pot to the tray of dried fruits.
'It is nothing,' came the courteous voice, setting aside all disclaimers; 'our potter makes them.'
'I did not know they could put such a good glaze on nowadays,' remarked Fitzgerald, yielding the point. 'A first-rate piece of work indeed; does the man live here?'
Khush-hâl Beg turned to the speaker breathlessly. 'He is crazy, Huzoor. The Lord destroyed his reason by an accident. The old wall fell on his house one night and killed his daughter. Since then he lives away, where naught can fall, like the crazy one he is.'
The stress and hurry of the speech were evident, even though the fat man was still suffering from the stairs.
'Thank the Lord! that's over,' said Dan piously, when the last diminishing tail of escort left them with but one orderly to carry the spoil. 'I ought to have warned you about the pugree--but there! you might have done worse--the French clock, for instance. Come! let's strike home across the mound. I want to show you a dodge of mine on the canal cut.'
He plunged headlong, after his wont, into professional matters till even George, fresh from college technicalities, could scarcely follow him, and found himself wondering why a man of such vast capacity should have succeeded so indifferently; for Dan Fitzgerald was not a persona grâta at headquarters. To be that, a subordinate often has to conceal his own talents, and this man could not even conceal his faults. Some folk are so self-contained that a burden of blame finds no balance on their shoulders; others are so hospitable that they serve as hold-alls both for friends and foes; and there was plenty of room both for praise and blame in Dan Fitzgerald's excitable Celtic nature.
'What's that?' cried George suddenly. With the best intentions his attention had wandered, for everything in that circle of dun-coloured horizon domed with blue was new to him. Dan paused, listening. An odd rhythmic hum came from the highest hut, which was separated from the others by palisades of plaited tiger-grass shining in the afternoon light like a diaper of gold.
'The potter's wheel!' he cried, his face changing indescribably in an instant. 'Come on, Keene, and let us see the man who made your first bribe!'
He gave no time for reply, but turning at right angles through a gap threaded his way past piles of pots and sherds until he ran the sound to earth. Literally to earth--a circle of the solid earth spinning dizzily in front of a man buried to his waist. At least so it seemed at first to George Keene's ignorance of potters and their wheels. A circle, dazzling at its outer edge, clearer at the centre where something beneath a steady curved hand shot up, and bulged; then, as the whirr slackened, sank into a bomb of clay.
'Salaam alaikoom!' came a pleasant voice as the worker sat back in his seat-hole so as to ease his feet. He was a mild-faced old gentleman with nothing remarkable about him save a pair of shifty eyes--the light hazel eyes seen so rarely in a native's face.
'Salaam alaikoom,' returned Dan. 'The little sahib has never seen a wheel worked. Will you show him?'
'Wherefore not, Huzoor? The sahib could come to none better, seeing we of Hodinuggur have spun the wheel of life for years--for ages and ages and ages.'
The words blent with the rising cadence of the wheel as he leant forward to the task again. Faster and faster upon the wheel with a swaying motion. Only the potter's hand poised motionless above the whirring clay which showed--as children say--like a top asleep. Then suddenly came the turn of the potter's thumb, bringing a strange weird life with it. One protean curve after another swelling, sinking, shifting, falling. The eye could scarcely follow their swift birth and death, until the potter, sitting back once more, the slackening wheel disclosed the hollows and bosses.
'The clay is good,' he said, as if deprecating his own skill, 'and it fires well.'
'When the thumb does not slip,' put in Dan quietly. The potter turned to him in sudden interest.
'The Huzoor knows the sayings of the people, that is well; it is not often so. Yea! it slips--thus.' The wheel still span slowly, he shifted his hand almost imperceptibly and a deep furrow scored itself upon the biggest boss. 'So little does it,' he went on, 'a grit clinging to the skin--a wandering thought. It is Fate. Fuzl Elâhi, the potter, cannot help it.'
'Fuzl Elâhi? Then you are a Mohammedan?'
He shook his head. 'I am as my fathers were. The Moghuls call me so, the Hindus otherwise; but it means the same. By the grace of God, potter of Hodinuggur since time began. Lo! my fathers and my children are in the clay. I dug a grave in the dust for the boy; the girl dug hers for herself. It was deep, Huzoor. I search for it always; in vain, in vain.' The wheel set up its rhythmic hum once more, but the hands lay idle.
'Poor old chap,' said Dan aside, 'I suppose he is thinking of the accident; but by the powers, Keene, it is a situation. Seated here on a pinnacle--a crazy irresponsible creator----'
'Ask him if he made the pot, please,' interrupted George brutally. 'If I could get a pair, I'd send them to the mater. Those things are always in pairs, you know.'
'Pairs! you intolerable Philistine! A potter's vessel trying to be matched before it's broken in pieces. Think of the tragedy--the humour of it.'
'Will you ask, or shall I?'
Fitzgerald grinned maliciously. 'You. I like to hear you stuttering.'
George smiled, rose, and taking the blue pot from the attendant's tray laid it on the potter's wheel.
'Did you make that?' he asked, in English. His meaning was palpable.
'No,