thy patience hath brought Nihâli. Wait a year, only a year longer, husband, and it will bring thee a son."
He looked at the mother and child with kindling eyes.
"A year! Surely, surely! That is but fair. So dry thine eyes, wife, for I am hungry."
That night, when Veru had retired to her bed with the baby, and he sat smoking with his mother in the outer yard, he asked her wistfully if she really thought the child was dwindling.
She turned on him fiercely, perhaps from a feeling of pity.
"And if it does, canst not trust me to physic it? Or wouldst thou have a man doctor to thy women's rooms? They tell me the travelling one sent on his rounds by the Sirkar[2] is in the next village but now. Shall I bid him come, since thou seemst to hold by new-fangled ways?"
Gunesh Chund filled his pipe again with poppy-leaves and tobacco, and watched his mother carding cotton viciously. What would she say if she knew of the promise he had made to Veru? The narcotic did not soothe him; and when sleep failed, he strolled out to where the village elders sat discussing the possible effects of this new settlement on the total of revenue due from the community. The familiar company was a relief, though it brought a doubt of his own wisdom in waiting a year. Still it was only a year. After that, if Veru failed to bear him a son, his duty to himself, to his ancestors, and to the Sirkar demanded another wife.
III.
Whether Gunesh Chund's mother, when she prophesied evil to little Nihâli, did so from conviction or temper, it was not long before her words came true. Despite the marvellous seven spices, and many another time-honoured remedy, the baby dwindled and pined unaccountably. Then came a day when Veru, half distraught and absolutely helpless, sat with it in her arms, sullen and silent. The old women of the village dropped in one after the other, more from curiosity than sympathy, each laying down the law as to some infallible nostrum, whose efficacy they defended against other views in high-pitched cackle. At last Veru, whose smattering of knowledge only brought incredulity without lending aid, declaring she would not have the child tormented further, laid it to her breast, and turned her back upon hoarded wisdom. Only when Gunesh Chund came wandering in restlessly from the fieldwork, which for the first time in his life failed to bring him peace, she unclasped her straining arms to show him the still face lying against the full breast that roused no sign of life or desire.
A piteous sight. The big tears ran down his cheeks and fell on the soft, closed hand. He took a corner of his cotton shawl and wiped them away clumsily but with infinite tenderness.
"Sure, thou dost love her, though she is a girl," said Veru, with the calm of despair.
The man broke into a sob and turned away.
"Mother, canst thou do nothing?" he asked, in all the wistful confidence of a child, laying his great hand on the old woman's head as she bent over her task of kneading the dough for his supper.
"Do! What is to be done with a woman who cries out if the child is touched? I tell thee, O Guneshwa, the little one is bewitched--though God only knows why any one should trouble to cast an eye on a girl. Ask Munlya. Ask Premi, or Chuni, or any wise woman. But Veru heeds us not, saying the books deny it. So be it! The child will die!"
Gunesh Chund lingered, hesitating.
"I--I--perhaps, mother, 'twould be better to fetch the doctor. He is here still, they say."
His mother sprang to her feet, all the vigour and fire of her past youth in eyes and gesture.
"That I should have lived to hear such words in the house where I came a modest bride, where never man set foot save thy father and mine! Wilt thou cast thy honour and mine in the dust for a baby girl? Be it so, Gunesh! Choose now between her and me; or choose, rather, between Veru's barren kisses and my curse, for the child will die if the evil eye be not averted by charms. Choose, I say; for, by my father's soul, if this bastard half-a-man enters the house, I leave it!"
"Nay, mother! I did but suggest. Veru--"
"O Veru! Veru! I am sick of the name. 'Tis she who hath bewitched thee; 'tis her evil eye--"
He interrupted her fiercely, seizing her by the wrist.
"Peace, I say, mother! Peace! I will not hear such words."
"They are true for all that. She hath bewitched thee!"
They stood for a moment face to face, so like each other in their anger and dread. Then the strong man quailed, and fled before her words and his own thoughts. He was no wiser than his fellows, for all the soft heart that betrayed him into progress; perhaps less so, since the superstitions of his fathers enslaved his mind without controlling his affections. He wandered into the fields once more, where the rows of blossoming mustard sown among the wheat showed like a yellow sea against the horizon, but close at hand broke the green gloom of the earing corn in long, curling waves crested with gold--a sight dear to husbandmen's eyes! Yet it brought no comfort to the dull ache in Gunesh's heart, which drove him to finish work with the first excuse of waning light.
The child was at least no worse. Perhaps the warmth had soothed its pain; perhaps the feeble life was sinking silently; but the ignorant, loving eyes that watched it knew not whether the stillness made for sleep or death.
Save for Gunesh Chund and his wife the house was empty, for his mother had sought the relief of words with a neighbouring crony.
"Veru," said Gunesh in a whisper, as if the darkening walls had ears, "dost think the doctor might do her good? The mother will not have him here--mayhap she is right--but I could take the child to him."
"O husband!" Brought face to face with decision, the woman shrank from action. "I know not, and the mother would be so angry."
But the slower mind and warmer heart had been at work on the problem, and ciphered it out once and for all.
"She need never know. Sit within, silent, as if thou hadst it still, should she return. I shall not be long; so give the child to me."
Half fearful, half pleased at his decision, the mother shifted her burden to his awkward arms. How small, how light it seemed, hidden away in the folds of his flowing plaid-like shawl, as he passed through the twilight alleys on his way to the camping-ground where, in the mud caravanserai, the travelling vaccinator was to be found! Neighbours, resting after the day's labour, called to him in various greeting, and he paused to reply with dull patience, conscious always of the unseen burden near his heart. So had he carried the firstling lamb on the night when Nihâli was born. How it had struggled to escape, and sucked at his restraining hand in fierce desire for life! A fear lest the child's quiet was death made him turn aside more than once into a darker corner to look and listen.
Still with the same dull patience he sat down before the vacant room in the serai to await the vaccinator's return; for patience and doggedness are the peasant farmer's unfailing inheritance, not to be reft from him by tyrants or strangers. Some camel-drivers, newly arrived, were cooking their food at a blazing wood-fire in the open, whence the flames threw long shadows, distorted out of all human semblance, into the far corners of the court-yard, where a circle of kneeling camels browsed upon a pile of green branches. Familiar sights and sounds to Gunesh's eyes and ears, yet to-night, with that strange burden near his heart, seeming out of place and unexpected.
Meanwhile Veru, with empty arms and nervous fingers
