to endure the suspense any longer, she drew her veil tightly, to avoid recognition, and stole like a shadow along the darkest side of the street to meet Gunesh. But he, also weary of waiting, returned from an unsuccessful pursuit of the doctor by another route. Thus no reply came to his whispered call to Veru, as he stepped over the threshold. What had happened? He repeated the call louder.
"Veru!--Mother! Is there no one in the house?"
His mother's voice answered him from behind, and he turned to her, relieved; for all its lightness, the little burden at his heart grew heavy in responsibility. Even in his mother's arms it seemed safer.
Two old women who had accompanied her, with the intention of making a last appeal to common sense, looked at the child critically.
"Truly, O mother of Gunesha," said one, "'tis the evil eye; but there is time yet to cast the devil out by fumigations."
"Without doubt," echoed the other. "I have seen children nearer death than this, snatched from the grave by wisdom such as thine."
Gunesh Chund's mother looked at him, her triumph dimmed and softened by appeal.
"Wilt kill the little thing by over-kindness?" she whispered. "See, chance hath given her to us. Veru, poor fool, is away.--Let us work the charm, Guneshwa. I worked it on thee when thou wast a sickly babe, and see how strong and tall thou art."
He looked from one to the other doubtfully. What was he, an ignorant man, to set his wishes against these wise mothers, when they assured him of success? He gave a sign of assent, and set himself towards authority should Veru come back ere the business was well over.
The old women turned to their task joyfully. The time was past, they cackled, for any but robust measures, and life in Nihâli's frail form must be made unendurable to the devil without delay. For this purpose, what more effectual than red pepper and turmeric? Swiftly, with muttered charms, and many a deft passing through of this thing seven times, and that seven times seven, the child was laid on a low, strong-seated stool, in full blaze of the fire-light, while the grandmother, bringing the drugs from her stores within, mixed them in approved manner. An earthenware saucer filled with smouldering charcoal served for brazier. Then, all being ready and placed beneath the stool, a discordant chant was raised, and the powder flung on the embers.
From the dense yellow smoke enveloping poor little Nihâli came a feeble, gasping cry.
"Mother!" pleaded the man, hiding his face.
"'Tis the devil cries," replied the stern old woman, flinging fresh drugs on the coals.
A fainter cry came, echoed in a shriek from the door, where Veru stood, paralyzed for an instant by rage and terror. The next, dashing the witches aside with furious blows, coughing and suffocating in the fumes, her empty, craving arms sought the child and found it--too late! A sigh, a struggle, and the demon, or angel of life, had fled forever.
Smarting and half blind with the foul smoke, Veru's eyes failed to see the tall figure half hidden in the corner; but her voice seemed to pierce him through and through.
"I gave her to Guneshwa! Where is he?"
Then, as the full extent of the result came home to her, shriek after shriek rent the air, and she fell into one of the violent hysterical fits so common among Indian women of all classes.
"The devil hath entered into her," said her mother-in-law, bitterly; so the turmeric and red pepper came in handy.
Gunesh Chund, torn by a vague remorse, and uncertain what to think, found his refuge in the dream-compeller. But while he dreamed under the stars, on the roof that rose like a watch-tower above the village, and Veru lay in the unconsciousness of exhaustion below, a strange, ghastly scene was enacted in the outer court-yard, where the old women flitted about with tiny oil lamps in their hands. Little Nihâli, dressed in her fine clothes, with bandy legs straightened and struggling arms at rest, lay stiff on the string stool, with each tiny palm clenched over a ball of raw sugar, and miniature cards of cotton-wool, such as women prepare for their spinning, between each finger. So armed with all female attractions, the sugar symbolizing sweetness to a lover, the cotton diligence as a wife, Nihâli was ready, like a true woman, to sacrifice herself unconditionally in order to bring sons to the hearth.
"Veru, of course, would not hear of this," said the stern grandmother to her cronies, "and Guneshwa is fairly bewitched by her obstinacy. Nevertheless, the opportunity shall not slip; for if the omens are bad, I must give him another wife without delay."
So, in the darkest of the night, before the jackal's last cry heralded the dawn, the three women slipped through the deserted streets. No fear was on their faces, no huddling together or whispering; straight in solemn order, as to a sacred duty, went the little procession, headed by the tall, gaunt grandmother, bearing the dead baby in her arms.
Past the still, shining pools of water girdling the village; beyond the thorn enclosures; through the fields of wheat, till the village common-land, a stretch of bare mud and low, sparse bushes, lay dim and desolate around them.
"'Tis the nick of time," said one of the cronies, pointing to a grey shadow slinking away from their steps; "now may the Great One send a good omen!"
In an open spot surrounded by bushes Gunesh Chund's mother paused and looked around.
"Here," she whispered, and the others nodded.
She stooped to lay the dead child on the ground, carefully placing it so that the feet were from the village; then raising herself to her full height, she stretched her right hand towards the horizon, as if pointing out a road, repeating in a wild chant echoed by those behind her:
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