In the Guardianship of God. Flora Annie Webster Steel
detail, and Shurruf Deen had many a swift, probing question to answer. He answered them, however, as swiftly, for he was the best gaoler conceivable; so good that even the Doctor allowed that he was almost capable of managing the gaol himself. A man of unimpeachable character, he had yet a curious insight into the minds of the criminals he guarded, and a singular tact in managing them, so that his record of continual rise in the world seemed likely to lengthen itself by an appointment to the most important gaolership in the Province. Shurruf Deen was working all he knew to secure this, and therefore, as he followed the Doctor, his keen, bold eyes were everywhere forestalling the possibility of blame. They fell, among other things, on Shureef's thin, somewhat bowed figure, as it was marched off to be shaved, washed, manacled, and dressed to pattern. Then they turned almost mechanically to the paper he still held. Shureef Deen, Khoja--ten years' hard--three months' solitary. He gave a faint sigh of relief. Solitary confinement, even when broken up by philanthropy into blocks of a week, gave time. It meant many ameliorations to a prisoner's lot which would be unsafe amid the ruck. Besides no man, he told himself, would be fool enough to risk losing these favours simply to spite another man.
He repeated this thought aloud that same evening, after lights were out, and the silence of solitary cells lay all over the gaol, save in one of the latter, where Shurruf sate whispering to Shureef. In the utter darkness the curious similarity of the place to a wild beast's cage, with its inner grating-barred cubicle and its outer high-walled yard let open to the sky, was lost, and the two men might have been anywhere. Shurruf, however, sate on the millstones, as being more suited to his figure, while Shureef crouched on the ground beside the little heap of corn he was bound to give back ounce for ounce in flour and bran. And as he crouched, leaning listlessly against the wall, his supple hand moved among the wheat raising it idly, and as idly letting it slip back through his thin fingers.
"Fate!" he echoed to something the other said; "nay, 'twas not Fate, brother, which sent me to thy gaol. I was hard pressed; I am growing old for the life; it kills men soon. The police would have had me in the big dacoity case at Delhi despite all; so I bungled one farther north, to come--where thou wast--brother."
"And thou didst right," assented Shurruf, eagerly; "I can make things easy for thee."
The wheat slipped with a soft patter, like rain, through Shureef's fingers. "'Twas not that either which brought me to thy gaol. Listen. I am far through this life, but another begins. I am not going to plead guilty there. It is not guilty there, not guilty on the first count, not guilty as a lad of fifteen for theft--" He paused, then a faint curiosity came to his listlessness and he looked at the half-seen figure beside him--"and such a theft! I--I have not done so mean a one--since--"
Shurruf moved uneasily. "Mayhap not; boys do things men do not. And I have always--yea! thou knowest it--upheld thee better than some think. What then? Thy life is past amendment now, save for tobacco and such like; and these I will give, if thou art wise, for the ten years--"
"I shall not live three months of the ten years, brother," interrupted Shureef, calmly; and at the words a pang of regret that the solitary confinement could not be inflicted straight on end shot through Shurruf's breast, killing the faint remorse the remark had awakened; it would have simplified matters so much to have Shureef safe from the possibility of tale-bearing for those three months. "And, as I said, I want none of these things," went on Shureef; "I only want the truth. Promise to tell it, and I say naught; wilt promise, brother?"
"No!" whispered Shurruf, fiercely. "What good would it do now?"
"It would make some mourn for me; it would make more than cursing follow me; it would be evidence for me, a boy, at the Great Court."
The sleek face beside the anxious one took a strange expression, half joy, half fear. "That is fools' talk. Doth not the Lord know, is He not just?"
"Yes, He knows," persisted Shureef; "but others must know, else they will not claim my body, else my grave will not be cooled with tears. It would not harm thee much, Shurruf. Mayhap 'twould be wiser for thee not to seek advancement, since one, who might hear if the truth were told, seeks it also; but if thou stayest in this fat post--"
"Peace, fool!" interrupted Shurruf, passionately. "I will not. Thou hast no proof, so do thy worst. Thou canst claim me brother if thou wilt, naught else--" Shureef bent forward and whispered a name in his ear, making him start back. "It is not true," he went on rapidly; "he died long since. Think not I do not understand, that I cannot follow thy evil thoughts. Have I not watched thee these twenty years? Have I not seen thee sink, and sink, and sink? Can I not guess thy guile--"
"Because it should have been thine own, Shurruf," interrupted his brother in a new tone. "But let that be. It matters not. I asked this thing of thee that thou mightest do it freely; if not, I take it--for I can take it now. I give thee a fortnight to consider; till then I have no more to say, and thy words will be wasted."
He rose, feeling his way by the wall to the inner cell, and Shurruf, after pausing a moment uncertainly, stole from the outer one, locking the door behind him. There were stronger arguments than words at his command, and he had a fortnight wherein to use them. And use them he did, unsparingly. The week of solitary confinement which followed, and the week of work in the general ward, were alternately hell and comparative heaven; a hell of scant food, work beyond limit, and punishments; a heaven of tobacco, opium, even a nip of country liquor now and then; and, as a foretaste of favours to come, there was a day of work in the gaol-gardens among the cool runnels of water and the spinach-patches. For the Doctor, having small faith in things beyond his ken, was dividing the dead who were in the Guardianship of God, from the living who were in his own; in other words, he was enclosing a new graveyard beyond the garden, and as this involved work in the absolute open air, with greater chance of escape, the good-conduct men from the walled garden were drafted outwards, and their place supplied from within. But neither fifteen lashes, nor the privilege of smoking surreptitiously behind a thicket of jasmine and roses, tempted Shureef from the settled resolve which gave his face a curiously spiritual look. The Doctor called it something else, and in the private list he kept of those in his care, put the name of an incurable disease opposite Shureef's, with this after it: ? three months--and he did not try to teach him carpet-weaving or pottery-making.
The Overseer, however, felt that three months was all too long for him, when, another week of solitary confinement coming round, he slipped over in the dead of night to Shureef's cell, and found him once more fingering the corn idly; but as it was a moonlight night now, he could see the grains of wheat, shining like gold, slip through the lean fingers.
"It is not much I ask, brother," persisted Shureef, almost gently; "only that the home folk may claim my body when I die. That is why I came to thy gaol; for they will not, if the truth be not told, and only thou canst tell it without flaw. True, I can harm thee, but I have no wish for that. See! I give thee yet another week for thought. That is three from three months; but I give no more."
Shurruf Deen went back to his quarters over the big entrance-gate, where the warders waited on him as if he were a prince, and pondered over the dilemma in a white heat of indignation. It was so selfish of Shureef; when God knew, what were a few tears more or less when a man had deliberately cast away his right to wailing a dozen times over? What Shureef had said about the first count was true, but what of the others? What right had he to claim any compensation for that first injustice? What right had he even to claim commiseration for the result of a life he had chosen? Yet the Doctor gave it him; he even ordered him back to the garden after a day or two, with the remark to the native assistant-surgeon that it was a case of the candle of life having been burned at both ends. "He might live a year," he said critically, "but I give him three months; and, of course, he might drop down dead any day."
He might; if he only would before the week was out, thought Shurruf, longingly. It would save so much trouble, for though the whole truth could easily be shirked, it would scarcely be possible to deny the relationship, or hush up his own share in the youthful escapade. For there had been sufficient for him to be dismissed by the magistrate with a reprimand for keeping bad company; and this, added to the scandal of a notorious criminal claiming kin to him, would militate against promotion. If Shureef would only drop down dead!
He