Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

or bulky dresses of silk and lace that must not be crushed; no great stock of boots and shoes,-only a soft petticoat or two, a few bodices, a fine muslin sheet or veil, and on top or among them some heavy gold necklaces and bangles for which there is no room on the round arms and necks of the owners. One basket will hold two of the women's things, and perhaps a child's thrown in. The men are seeing that the big bullock-carriages are made ready and ship-shape,-two-wheeled carriages with dome-like tops of bamboo framework and curtains of thick red stuff, so that no one may see in, while there are convenient peep-holes for the women to look out. The curtains will be thrown up in the daytime when they are on the country roads, and no heed will be taken of the peasants they meet or of the people working in the fields. Who cares for them? But as they wind through the lanes of a village, or pass down the bazaar of a town, the curtains quickly drop; or if a traveller of the better class is met ambling along on a neighing pink-eyed piebald and followed by servants foot, still more if an Englishman should canter by, nothing but the bright eyes peering through the little window in the side will tell of the fair burden within.

THE EXODUS.

on

And now the Brahmin has done his work, and the propitious time has come. It is the cold, still hour before dawn. The heavens are a deep, clear blue. The moon has just gone down, yet there is no darkness, for every star is shining as stars can shine in the East, and the planet of the morning outshines them all. It is a good and convenient time for beginning the journey, as well as auspicious. Brahmins, after all, are human, and astrology not an unreasonable science. Half the day's journey will be performed easily before a halt need be called for the midday meal, and before the afternoon heat, for the sun is still strong, raises the dust, and makes travelling toilsome for man and beast. The carriages are

now ready before the gate of Pertáb Singh's house. The oxen stand yoked, thick felt coverings thrown over their backs to protect them from the cold. For they are costly white animals, with dewlaps hanging low between the clean forelegs, and small heads showing their blood. Well groomed are they too, and sleek. The Risaldar Sahib has come out snugly clad in thick padded jacket of dark green, with a big handkerchief brought under his chin and over his ears and knotted on top of his head-partly because it is not a lucky thing to sleep with your ears exposed, but mainly to give the fashionable set to his black beard. He casts the eye of a smart cavalry officer over the turnout, to see that everything is in order. For the family honor must be maintained away there among the women's people in Rajputana, whatever stint there may be at home. The drivers, in thick jackets and heads tied up, are squatting on the ground warming their hands at a small fire which they have made in front of the gateway. It blazes up now and again as they feed it economically with a little straw and stalks of the millets from the refuse fodder, not casting it on recklessly as you or I would, but pushing each straw in endways as it is needed, so as to get the greatest service out of it. The yellow light flashes warmly on their dark faces, and lights up the front of the house and the overshadowing branches with a glow that contrasts with the cold starlight. The kahárs or bearers have made ready their loads and tried how they balance, and sit beside them, smoking their little gurgling and bubbling water-pipes, and shivering in their thin cotton jackets. They will soon be warm enough and to spare. A miserable cur or two, thinking that fire may betoken food, come prowling and sniffing about, soon to slink away envious and disappointed, while an early crow is perched watchfully the nearest tree.

on

Soon there is a stir and a bustle inside the court, and the "chime of women's ankle-bells" is heard. The three ladies come shuffling out wrapped

money to pay the mortgage interest. No fear of that. His father is to lay in sufficient grain to keep the reduced household until the famine has passed. His youngest brother, who remains at home, will see to it. He is a good son is the Risaldar Sahib, and has a heart as true as his trusty sword. No wonder if the old people are sad when he has gone.

from head to foot in thick rezais, each of good cheer. He will send them carrying a baby. Behind them come women-servants with blankets and shawls, and little toddling children clinging to their hands. Then Pertáb Singh carrying his pet grandson, a fine boy of five, who has his arm around his grandfather's neck, and his fat brown face, with its great bead-like black eyes intensified by the lines painted round the eyelids, turned to the old man. The young men follow, each with a child in his arms. They do not take farewell of the women-that has been done inside; but they fondle the children, loth to part. The women are weeping and wailing, as young wives mourn when they leave their father's house. Pertáb Singh and his wife are very proud and fond of the handsome girls who have given them grandsons, and they are beloved, especially by the old man, by their daughters-in-law. The women cry aloud, kneeling at Pertáb Singh's feet, and touching them with their hands; and the men weep openly, even the big soldier, for they have not been taught to suppress their feelings, and think it no shame to show their sorrow.

For

And now they are all packed in some wonderful way, which Maskelyne & Cooke could not rival, into the small space afforded by the carriages. The drivers are seated, reins and goad in hand. The bearers have taken up their load. The two brothers, who are to go as escort, have mounted their small wiry ponies, and the cavalcade departs, while the Brahmin, sitting beside the gate, tells his beads and mutters charms, and the two widows and the wives of the poor relations make a background of humble mourners. Pertáb Singh and the Risaldar turn and walk slowly back into the house, where they sit down to smoke and to ponder on the mystery of life.

In a day or two the Risaldar also takes leave of his father and mother and rides away, his body-servant, and a groom who will lead back the horse, following on foot. Some twenty miles distant he will find the railway station where he can get the train which is to take him to his far-off cantonment. Before going he bids the old people to be

And now the strain is beginning to be felt severely in Gardanpur. The laborers and weavers are already thinking of moving from the village. They have little left, corn there is hardly a handful among them, their wives' ornaments have gone to the pawn-brokers. A few rupees, hoarded carefully for years in view of such a time as this, for the tradition and the teachings of past famines are strong in the land, most of them still possess. With the cultivators things are very little better. Their grain stores are either empty or very low. Their cattle are famishing, and every day makes it more difficult to keep them alive. It is very hard to go away and leave their fields-the fields where they and their forebears before them have sown and gathered for generations past. To them those fields are everything in the world-home, country, and life itself. They know no larger form of patriotism, for India is not a country, and there is no Indian nation.

It is easy enough for the low-caste leather workers and weavers to move. They have no ties to bind them to the land, and no cattle to think of. But it is otherwise for the Rajput or Brahmin farmer, who has his ancestral acres, narrow though they be, and his milch and plough cattle, which cost much money, and the loss of which means ruin. "True," they say, "the government is going to make a new road some ten miles off, and those who are in need will find work and wages there. But our women cannot carry earth while we dig, like the chumars' wives. Nor will the cattle be kept alive on the road work. It is of no use to us."

There is a big gathering at the choupal, and all the village farmers are there. What is to be done to save the lives of their wives and children and the cattle?

That is the question. Bullub Dass refuses any more advances of grain or cash, and unless they want to die where they are a decision must be taken, and that quickly. An old grey-beard, the oldest man in the village-some say eighty, others ninety, he himself a hundred years of age-is the first to speak. "He remembers being told by his uncle of the great famine which swept all living things off the face of the land. It was before the Company Bahadur came. There have been famines and famines since, but that remains the famine. Then the villagers had to leave their homes and their fields. It was go or die. And they went, his uncle said, across the Jumna and down towards Malwa. There they found pasture and water for the cattle, and enough corn selling for a rupee to keep a man for two months. That was the place to go to now." One or two others of the older men had heard the same story. And so it is settled that they shall go to Malwa, down into the heart of India, where the Nerbudda runs-Mother Nerbudda, the sacred stream, which some day, so prophecy says, is to rob Ganges herself of her purifying powers.

Some go to tell Pertáb Singh what the village elders have decided to do; others to their houses to warn their womenfolk and to make ready for the exodus. The Rajput has no hope to hold out and no better course to suggest. They must save themselves. He cannot support them. His father always kept in the granaries a year's supply at least for the whole village. They know that he has not been able to keep up the good old custom; debt and bad years have forced him to sell the grain as it came in. Bullub Dass is even more helpless. He cannot give them any more advances of any kind. He must keep seed grain for the next year, otherwise the village, himself included, will be ruined. Yes, this must be done, come what may; no one gainsays that. It is clearer than ever that there is only one way of escaping a lingering death from hunger, and that is instant flight. A fever of fear and excitement seizes the hitherto patient and quiet people. "To Malwa! to Malwa!" is the cry in every mouth.

It is the fifth morning after the

women started from Pertáb Singh's house for Rajputana that the exodus begins. It was about the same hour, the watch before the dawn, when the stillness of the night is broken by the barking of dogs, the voices of men, the wailing of women and children, and, above all, the strident creaking of the heavy wheels of many carts on their ungreased axles. It was a long procession, slow and sad. Men and cattle, both weakened now by days of hardly sufficient food, going most of them knew not where-more on the chance than with any hope of finding wherewithal to support life. And, if there were sad hearts in the crowd, none was sadder than that of old Pertáb Singh as he stood with his youngest son on the road outside the village and saw the carts slowly pass out. They went household by household, with all that they possessed. Old people who had never been two miles from their homes, young ones just born into this parched inhospitable earth. Everything they had in the world packed into the carts-grindstones, tools, cooking-vessels, little household gods; baskets filled with clothes and trinkets, a few worn blankets, an old rezai or two; and the delicate women, the old people, and the young children who cannot walk piled on top of all. Behind come the able-bodied men and the older children and the strong women driving along a few spare oxen, a small weedy cow with a starveling calf, the milch buffalo; and here and there a woman, for whom there was no room in the carts, on a cow-hocked pony with a child on her knee.

They file past the old man, all the people he knows, all with whom is the daily business of his life: the men who till his land and pay him his rent, the village herd, the washerman, the carpenter, the blacksmith, they are all there, and they are all going away. They greet him as they pass, and salaam with as much deference as in the best times, and he returns the words of salutation, "Rám, Rám," with a sore heart. Why is he not going too? His house will soon be the only one in the whole of Gardanpur where the evening lamp will glow. No, there will be one more. The spare old man who holds

the post of village watch, and is paid three rupees a month, will be faithful to his salt. He will stick to his post, and make his reports regularly twice a week to the police station twenty miles off, so long as body and soul hold together, and his thin, black, indefatigable legs can carry him, with their small sinewy calves gathered up close to the knee into a tight ball seamed with swollen veins. As the last cart with its miscellaneous load and more miscellaneous following turns round the corner into the highroad, Pertáb Singh the Rajput leans on his long staff and weeps silently. He has lived too long.

His son takes him by the hand and leads im gently home through the deserted village. No human voice breaks the stillness of the early morning. There is no sound telling of life and toil from the grindstone or the cotton-gin. Nothing is to be heard but an occasional yell from some ownerless curs who have stayed to quarrel over their scavengering trade, and the agonizing creak, creak of the receding carts.

Bullub Dass is standing at the door of the Rajput's house as the old man and his son come up. His right-hand man and agent, Bansi Lal, is with him. Bansi Lal is a short round man of comfortable aspect, with a complexion described in Indian language as "wheaten," and trim black whiskers and moustache. He is dressed in white, with a neat pink turban on his head. He transacts the disagreeable parts of Bullub's business, goes round dunning defaulting clients, taking with a smile the hard words which he receives often when he asks for rupees. He attends the civil courts, fiiles suits, gives the usual formal evidence in corroboration of his master's books and deeds, and takes execution of decrees. All this and more also does Bansi, and what he is paid no one but himself and Bullub Dass knows. In his income-tax returns he enters his earnings as fifteen rupees a month. If the statement is true, Bullub Dass has made a profitable bargain, and Bansi, like a good Arab horse, is able to live well where a worse beast would starve. Pertáb Singh is not in an amiable mood this morning; even at his best he does not much care to be VOL. XV. 774

LIVING AGE.

greeted on his own threshold by the money-lender. He passes him by with a supercilious look of faint recognition, such as a smart woman bestows on an unfashionable acquaintance.

"Stay, Pertáb Singh Sahib," says Bullub. "What is all this? Whither are all the people gone? What fool's work is this? How are you and I to live if the people run away?"

"They have gone to get food and save their lives," retorts the Rajput. "If it is a fool's work, you are the fool. Why don't you open your pits and your money boxes and keep the people in the village? You are the fool, I say, Bania Sahib."

The banker's eyes flash and his lips quiver, but he answers smoothly.

"Thakur Sahib," he says, using a title of respect which in the fallen fortunes of his house Pertáb Singh hears rarely from any but the men of his own clan"Thakur Sahib, in my poor judgment it is the duty of the lord of the soil to keep grain enough to feed the people in a time like this. Your grandfather, ay, and your respected father, always did their duty in this matter."

The old man feels the thrust and turns fiercely, clutching his staff; but his son takes him by the arm, saying, "Don't be angry, sir: what does it matter what this scoundrel of a bania says?" and leads him inside. Bullub Dass moves away homewards, followed by his man. Had he meant to suggest some way of bringing back and keeping the people? Who can tell? At any rate he will do nothing now. He will move neither hand nor foot to help Pertáb Singh or his tenants, not even if their ruin is to involve his own. Malice is in his eye and desire for revenge in his heart.

Nevertheless, it is not a pleasant business for Bullub Dass. He has a great deal of money out to loan in Gardanpur, not only to the Rajput landowner but to nearly every farmer in the village. Off they have gone with carts and cattle, and everything they possess that might be seized in execution of a decree. There is nothing left but the baked dusty soil and the empty mud huts. What if they do not come back? Where is his capital gone, and where the comfortable profit of twenty-five per cent.

any pretence of being a specialist or a philanthropist. People said that he was half crazy over the subject of disease, and followed the development of a fever with the same interest that others listened to or read a dramatic work, but with this exception, that it was not always necessary to be a mere spectator, that by discreetly intervening sometimes, he prepared cheerful and unexpected comedy, where otherwise there would have been the deepest tragedy.

which one way or another, bad years a true ministering angel, and without with good, he had managed to gather in? Where too is Pertáb Singh to find the money to pay the mortgage interest if there are no rents? Then again he does not care to be left like this in a deserted village. His grain pits have much more in them than is wanted for the next season's seed, and although his women and their valuables and most of his ready money have gone to his native place in Marwara long ago, yet he has a good deal in his house, not to speak of all his account books and securities. The people of Gardanpur he can trust. He has lived on terms of give-and-take with them for years, and they are a respectable law-abiding set. But there are wild and evil-living men in neighboring villages who might like to make him their prey. He begins to wish he had not been so summary in refusing advances. It would have been better to risk more than to lose all, perhaps life as well. He is daring and brave enough in his own line, but violence and personal danger he cannot face: for he is the product of many generations of men whose weapons have been thrift and carefulness-and perhaps trickery-the sword never.

SIR C. H. T. CROSTHWAITE, K.C.S.I.

Translated for THE LIVING AGE. DOCTOR SANTOS: A CHARACTER SKETCH. Every one in Madrid knew Doctor Santos. He was a little bit of a man, with his beard and hair clamoring for the use of the scissors and his clothes for benzine and a more fashionable cut. Nevertheless, he had a universal reputation for great wisdom, and his popularity in the district of Chamberi, the principal scene of his work, was beyond everything.

Possibly the peculiarities of the doctor did more than his true merit to attract the attention of the people. Perhaps some presentiment made every one consider him physically of not much account, but mentally a diamond of the purest water. It was well known that in the exercise of his profession he was

This might have been merely scientific curiosity-we will not discuss that point-but thanks to this keen interest, if a patient were very ill, and that happened frequently, he would remain to watch by the bedside, and again-and this happened yet more frequently, for Doctor Santos devoted himself almost exclusively to poor people—there would not be money enough to buy supper for the family or broth and medicine for the sick one; then our doctor would pull out his purse and send for whatever was necessary. His patients never lacked for what was needed to restore them to health.

The doctor's greatest pleasure, as he always declared, was to cure sick children. It seemed impossible that a man who had no family and who, according to all accounts, had never married, and who had been adopted himself by a barber who took him from an orphan asylum, should be able to feel such absolute tenderness of heart towards little ones.

A woman, whose son the doctor had restored to health, aptly expressed the sentiments of every one: "It seems as if Doctor Santos had been a mother himself."

We will take it for granted that his life and good deeds are well known, for many a scientific work can testify to the merits of Doctor Santos; so we will not stop to give a detailed resumé or minute account of the arduous labor of many years spent in the true performance of his profession.

I am now going to speak of an event in his life which, if it were not absolutely true, would seem to many people to be altogether improbable.

Doctor Santos always said that the

« AnteriorContinuar »