A Mother

I

LATE in the afternoon, when I returned from the hospital, I found that the Rani’s servant, whom I had left that morning sitting on the veranda, was still sitting there. I was not pleased, for I wanted that hour to transplant a bed full of cherished rose-cuttings.

‘ I told you not to wait for me,’ I began reprovingly. ‘ I ’ve other things to do this evening.’

‘My mistress commanded me not to return without you. I wait,’ she answered.

I sighed, and looked at her. She seemed not to have moved since morning. I knew that she could wait a week without inconvenience to anyone but myself.

‘Show me the way,’ I said.

Across the wide road, and down a street a yard and a half wide, she led me quickly — a street as private as a courtyard, where on the steps in front of each house Hindu women in white were spinning and sewing. Of course, I had to stop in front of each fascinating group to explain where I was going, and why I could not sit down. My lack of haste in obeying her mistress’s summons annoyed the servant so much that she answered for me rather curtly several times, ‘To Raja Braham Khan’s.’ And when we came to a cow which blocked our way by standing entirely across the street, she slapped its flank with an energy which echoed her contempt for all Hindu institutions. We passed down weavers’ streets, where each house was humming with its hand-loom, past long stretches of starched thread, until we came to the city wall, and the wheat-fields beyond it.

‘Where now?’ I asked.

‘Ahead,’ she answered, pointing with her chin to a group of palatial old houses rising out of a watered garden.

Impressed, I demanded, ‘Who is Raja Braham Khan?’

She stopped in the path and turned around to look at me.

‘Don’t you know?’ she gasped.

‘I do not,’ I replied. ‘If there is one man in this town called raja, there are fifty.’

‘He is n’t just called a raja,’ she retorted. ‘He is one. The only real one. Before there was a city here, his forefathers owned all this land’ — her gesture indicated the country for miles around. ‘They conquered it. And whoever was, was their slave.’

I was properly appreciative. She led me through the outer courtyard, where huge water-buffalos were eating mustard fodder from clay mangers, and drew aside the curtain of the inner courtyard. Within, on three sides, were two stories of living-rooms, with wide verandas in front of them. Where the late sunshine slanted across the door of one of the rooms, an old woman in white was spinning wool; another woman, in very common dark blue garments, was seeding cotton through a little machine like a clothes-wringer; and another, with a straw fan, was winnowing pulse.

On a bride’s stool, near the old woman, a girl in fine white things sat, doing nothing. They all rose when I came in, and the stately Rani came forward to receive me.

‘You are very kind to come,’ she said when I was seated.

She spoke as a queen might have spoken to one to whom she had granted an audience.

‘It is a great pleasure to me,’ I answered truly.

I had forgotten about my roses the moment I saw her.

She was looking at me keenly.

‘You’re young,’ she commented. ‘I supposed you were old.’

‘Young? I?’ I exclaimed. ‘I warrant you were a grandmother when you were my age.’

We might as well begin family history at once, I was thinking.

She put aside her graciousness.

‘Don’t grandmother me!’ she cried bitterly. ‘Three sons have I, three growm and bearded sons. And not one grandchild. My sons’ wives,’ she explained, weaving her hand contemptuously toward the two women who had withdrawn to the farthest veranda; ‘they bear no sons!’

I expressed my sympathy.

‘Twice has my eldest son been left a widower — childless. I have arranged for his remarriage. The other two are away so much, in government service, that they have n’t time to take other wives. But they must. I’ll have them do it.’

I understood that, if she had decided they should marry, there would be no way of avoiding the irruption of new waves. I wondered as I looked at her how many of the conquering generations of her ancestors had been as regal as this daughter of theirs. She was a majestic woman, wholesome and fine-looking, with a rich rose-color in her cheeks, and the long thin nose which in our city they call the unmistakable indication of aristocratic birth. As I was admiring her, she turned to the pretty colorless girl near her.

‘This is Aziz Begam,’ she said quietly; ‘my daughter. For her sake I sent for you.’

Aziz means ‘The Beloved.’

‘Is she — at home — with you?’ I asked hesitatingly.

‘A widow,’ said the Rani.

I looked again at the listless girl, and at the weary grief in the face of her mother.

‘A widow,’ she repeated. ‘My daughter. A widow at fifteen.’

I was silent There seemed nothing to say.

‘Would that I ware barren,’ moaned the Rani, ‘and that she were the mother of sons! Oh, that I could have taken her widowhood and she my joy! Five sons I bore her father, who loved me alone all his life.’ Pride thrilled her voice for a moment. ‘Our joy was great — until my daughter was born, when the boys were sturdy little lads. I wanted a daughter, but I wept at her birth, fearing her fate. I knew no other woman had been so happy as I. I wept — and loved her more than all my sons. Sons?’ she cried. ‘Are they not kings? Just little, they wrap their turbans on so,’ — she made a vivid gesture, — ‘and out they go, into the world, where they will—kings! But we sit and await their return.’

She paused, and then began again, wearily.

‘I was afraid for her, but her father comforted me. Being our daughter, she must be happy, he assured me. But I loved her trembling. At twelve we married her to her uncle. It was contrary to our custom,’ she explained, noticing my surprise; ‘but I said my daughter must be happy, and he was young and strong and had no other wife. And he lived just next to us — so near that all day long I could watch over her. Then he died, after six months, away with his regiment. Two days’ illness — pneumonia, you call it.’ She said the word bitterly, as if our calling it that had caused his death. ’My child was left. My daughter a widow. I command all things but the one I want, her happiness. She has been sitting in the court ever since, mourning.’ The lady wiped away her tears. ‘She has not known life, she who has no son. Have I joy in life, now that she is joyless?’

‘Lady,’ I said boldly, ‘you married her once contrary to your custom. Marry her again. Let her live.’

‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, ‘that may not be. Do women of our caste remarry? It could not be. You do wrong to suggest it. But you come and teach her something — reading, your religion, anything to amuse her. All day she sits there, waiting for nothing, all her life — until death.’

I doubted if the girl suffered as much as her mother. She was not so livinghearted.

‘What will you teach her?’

‘I cannot come myself to teach her regularly,’ I answered; ‘but I may be able to get a young Christian woman to come to teach her. There are all sorts of lovely things to fill the days with.’

‘Low caste?’ she inquired.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not altogether. You’ll like her. She knows lots, and she’s a nice girl. She has even been to high school.’

‘What will she teach me?’ asked Aziz languidly.

‘Lovely things,’ I began with enthusiasm. ‘How to read. Reading is a kind of life all by itself—making words out of letters — books about women and everything in the world. And how to knit stockings, red and purple ones, and mufflers of many colors, and baby shoes with cunning tassels.’

‘And why should I make baby shoes?’ she asked.

As she spoke, she turned her little hand palm upward in her lap. That significant gesture taught me more than I had ever known of unrelieved ennui.

‘For your brothers’ sons, to be sure! ’ I answered. ‘And socks for your brothers; they’ll be so proud of you, for do they not bring you gifts? — that silk veil you’re wearing I’m sure they brought you.’

She had on a clinging veil of purples in Persian tones, the like of which I had never seen.

‘How did you know?’ she asked, surprised.

‘It’s a way brothers have,’ I replied.

‘It’s a way my mother has, rather,’ she corrected with a smile. ‘Not one of the boys dares to come home without a gift for me. Almost before they bow to receive my mother’s caresses on their heads, they must mention what they ’ve brought me. Once my youngest brother forgot.’

She laughed lovingly.

‘Besides all that,’ I resumed, ‘she will teach you to crochet; that’s most exciting, — far better than doing nothing, — and embroidering on net—’

‘When will you bring her?’ she inquired with interest.

‘To-morrow if she can come. I’m not sure.’

‘Make her come!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘Both of you come for dinner.’

Her face had lighted up the moment Aziz had shown interest in me.

‘ If we may dine in here, with just the women, and no men —’

‘Dine where you will,’ the Rani cried.

‘And there are to be no men in when the teacher is here for lessons. She’s young — ’

‘Whatever you say, whatever you ask,’ they agreed eagerly.

And when I came away they called down all the blessings of heaven upon me.

II

Jasmine, whom I took with me the next afternoon, is the very personification of discretion — but of a very interesting discretion; of a discretion so interesting that, during one of the several years in which she was in my care, I received twenty-nine proposals of marriage for her, four of them in one day. At the Rani’s dinner her merry tongue wagged on and on delightfully; unawed by her hostess, who beamed upon her, unawed even by the whole chickens reposing on piles of rice on silver platters, which were set before each of us.

Through course after course of greasy, spicy meat she flirted gently but firmly with Aziz, who served us with a charming shyness. By the time we had eaten our rice-flour pudding and its silver covering, which makes one keenwitted, and had tasted the abundance of sweets which makes one doubt that love digesteth all things, the girls were friends. Their softly veiled heads close together, they sat on a cot in the courtyard, looking over the treasures of Jasmine’s sewing-bag. Aziz took them all delightedly in her thin hands, — precious patterns of lace, balls of gay wool, varieties of knitting-needles stuck for safety into a cork, a silver thimble, a little pin-cushion and needle-book, — and handed them one after the other to her mother.

The Rani pretended to talk to me, but her thoughts were all on her daughter’s pleasure. Some time before we came away, she found that I knew her mother and sisters, who lived in a town where I often go with the doctor to her dispensary. Thereupon she wanted to adopt us both, to employ us permanently, and I had some trouble in convincing her that neither Jasmine nor I could be hired by the month or year to amuse Aziz.

After that I went occasionally to the Rani’s, sometimes because there was no other chaperone for Jasmine, sometimes ostensibly to see the progress Aziz was making, but really because I loved seeing the girls together, and enjoyed the queenly gratitude of my hostess. Aziz enjoyed reading, but crocheting and knitting she utterly delighted in. Her thirst for new patterns was insatiable. She spent whole days trying the patterns in a book whose English directions she could not read. She took to making her own designs for filet lace, conventionalizing in her own way the blossoms of yellow mustard that the servants brought in from outside, the leaves on the one great tree that shaded the inner courtyard, the frisky lambs, and her pet chickens.

Whatever the daughter enjoyed, the Rani enjoyed a pitiable hundredfold. She never had seen such exquisite edging for veils as Aziz made, and no one in her presence dared ever to have seen anything nearly so beautiful. Her admiration of her daughter’s skill was so extreme, that she appeared to be utterly shocked when I suggested that she learn to knit. She declared she never could learn, she was too stupid. She would do the old exquisite embroidery which she had learned in her girlhood, and which was nothing in comparison with the things Aziz could do.

At length, one day, after many kindnesses and favors to us, she sent her servant to invite us to the great wedding of her oldest son, which had been arranged for the next week. All the women of the Rani’s kin would be there, whom I wanted greatly to see. Unfortunately, I was to be out of the city the next week, but I promised to send Jasmine. I was heartily sorry not to be present. I did not know what a wedding it was to be.

I went away as I had planned, and returned as usual by a night train. I awoke the next morning wondering what had happened during my absence. One surely misses something by being away even a day from our city. And while I was dressing, before five, Jasmine came into my room, announced only by her sobbing.

‘Miss Sahib,’ she cried; ‘oh, Miss Sahib!’ And she hid her face in her veil and wept unrestrained.

‘What’s happened now?’ I questioned her. ‘Brace up a bit and tell me.’

‘It’s Aziz,’ she said. ‘She’s killed. I saw it. The lady has no daughter.’

She sat on the floor by me, her face hidden in her arms, and cried and gasped out the terrible story.

‘It was the day after the wedding. They had brought the bride home. I was sitting there where we always sat, in the east veranda, and the house was full of women singing. And the men in their rooms were feasting with the bridegroom. He left them to speak to his mother a moment, and when he returned he heard them say with men’s insinuations, pointing toward his cousin, Raja Afzal, who was coming toward them across the field, “His will be the next wedding. He boasts the bridegroom’s sister loves him — that in the darkness she has said so.”

‘The Rani’s son pushed through them to a closet and seized an axe. He hewed his cousin down in the path where they met.’ Jasmine cried afresh. ‘He came rushing in where we were sitting talking — his clothes were dripping blood. Miss Sahib, we ran from his face, screaming. He seized Aziz as she fled. He swore at her. He called her fearful names. “It’s over with you!” he cried. We heard his mother crying, and struggling with him. He locked her in the kitchen. Then he killed his sister with many blows, — she was so little, — and left the house.

‘We were still screaming, wild with terror. The men came in. They guessed what had happened. They found the lady unconscious. The court was full of blood and the body was scattered around. We huddled together, and even with our eyes shut we saw it all. I shall see it and smell it forever!’ she sobbed.

She could not leave the story unfinished.

‘In the evening the police came, and took away the bridegroom, and the body of Afzal, which had lain in the field all afternoon. None dared go near it, except the crows— its blood whimpered above the ploughed earth. No one in the city slept 1 hat night. I have wept these three days, seeing his bloody face, and her all crushed up. But the Rani has not wept. The house is full of mourners, but she sits apart. She sees only her sons. She has given them all her wedding jewelry, and all that Aziz had, to get him acquitted. No one can comfort her. She is stricken. Oh, I wish I’d never gone there!’

‘But, Jasmine,’ I protested, ‘how could it happen? She never spoke to that man, did she? Within those high walls, with women around her day and night, she was surely blameless. She could n’t have seen him. It could n’t have been true!’

Jasmine sobbed. ‘Anything could have been true,’she said. ‘She was only a girl — a girl shut out of life. She had to do something. Just pushing back the curtain a bit, as he passed, — as he often did, — and lifting her eyes to him, — it was begun. He boasted of it, — fool that he was, — it was ended. That might have been.’

‘But suppose she did that,’ I interrupted. ‘If she did lift her eyes as he passed — what then ? ’

‘You never understand,’ my little protégée answered between sobs. ‘Does not a woman know that all men’s eyes are full of evil purposes? Unless one consents, why should one let one’s eyes meet theirs? It may have been his lie. It may have been her thoughtlessness. She was young. I was very fond of her. She learned so beautifully.

When I went out to our morning tea on the veranda, the doctor was waiting to relieve herself by telling me a few more ghastly details. What was left of the girl’s body had been brought to the hospital, and she had gone through the ordeal of giving witness at the inquest, to save the Rani the shame, worse than death, of having the body taken to the public morgue. In the hospital women everywhere were helplessly talking of the murder. I had to go that evening and sit awhile with the mourners. I did not see the Rani.

III

Our city’s summers exaggerate mightily the terrors of life. With the weight of that day’s dusk, the horror of a great darkness stifled us. For days we could by no means get away from it. I would wake suddenly at night, stiff with an inexplicable fright, and find the doctor wide awake and anxious to talk about home. Day after day we heard reports of the murderer’s trial. And when finally we heard that he was sentenced to eight years in prison, we were sorry for the Rani’s sake that the term was so long, and sorry when we remembered Aziz that it was not longer.

One morning in the early autumn, when I had gone with the doctor to Garwali dispensary, the Rani’s sister came to the clinic to see me. She wept as she laid aside her outer veil, and sat down beside me.

‘My mother heard you were coming,’ she began, ‘and sent me to you. She begs you to go to my sister, and to entreat her to come to us for a change. We’ve sent servants with horses to bring her, but she sends them back. We’ve gone ourselves, and she refuses to leave the house. She eats nothingnot one mouthful. She has not shed a tear. She sits alone, going mad. Perhaps if you go and beseech her she will come. My mother begs you to try.’

I was deeply touched; I knew it was not the mother’s habit to beg anything of anyone. No member of that family had ever before come to the public dispensary. They paid us instead for going to see them.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ I replied. ‘I’ll go to see her to-day. But if you’ve failed, what can I do?'

The humble words of her gratitude I remembered that evening, as I walked through the city by the path that was familiar now, and out beyond its farther walls to the Rani’s cluster of gardens. In the gathering darkness of her courtyard only the two worthless daughters-in-law and the frightened little bride greeted me lonesomely. I tried to talk of pleasant things with them, but horror clung about them, and fastened itself upon me.

‘Stay with us,’ they besought me. ‘The house is full of shadows and things, and we’re afraid.’

But I could n’t stay. I had to see the Rani and go home.

‘May I go to her now?’ I asked.

‘If you wish,’ they answered. ‘We don’t dare.’

I climbed to the flat roof of the second story, on which there was a little room with a veranda. On its clay floor the Rani was sitting. When she saw me she stretched out her hand and said, ‘Come in. She loved you.’

I sat down beside her weakly, shocked at the change in her. She was very thin. Her face was gray, and her eyes were very bright. In her grief she had torn out her hair until she was nearly bald.

‘Sit here,’she said calmly. ‘From here you can look down there.'

I looked. There was a new-made grave in the family burying-plot.

’I look there always,’ she said.

‘Dear Rani Sahib,’ I cried, ‘I loved her and I love you. I come from your mother and your sisters. They sent me to beg you to come to them. They told me to entreat you thus.’

I clasped my hands in the prayerful way no one is supposed to resist.

‘Don’t trouble me,’ she said quietly. ‘ I will not go. I stay with her. At night I sleep on her grave. Could she stay out there in the dark alone?’

‘Your mother is old,’ I continued. ‘She beseeches you, your mother. It’s madness to stay here.’

‘I’m mad now,’ she agreed. ‘Some days I’m mad. If I went there, and saw Afzal’s mother, I would be altogether mad.’

She still looked at the grave.

Have you seen a jail?’ she questioned after a while, in a monotone.

’Not the inside of one,’ I answered. I had often seen chained labor-gangs, scantily clad in sackcloth. I was thankful she had not.

‘Who cooks the food they eat there?’ she demanded.

‘I think they have cooks,’ I replied vaguely, as soothingly as possible.

‘My sons also give me lying comfort,’ she went on. ‘He hates common food. Never would he eat bread of flour not ground by hand. At mills they grind the bad grains with the good. These years I have not let the servants prepare his meals. I alone knew just how he liked each thing seasoned. When he comes home from a journey he says, “Thank God for the food my mother prepares!” How can I eat good food while he chokes on coarse half-cooked stuff? He was my firstborn.’

There was a pause.

‘Is there a heaven?’ she asked. Her voice seemed dead.

‘There is,’ I said.

But what’s the use?’ she argued. ‘Our eyes are to be in the tops of our heads in heaven. God knows that, if we see our children, we’ll cease worshiping Him.’

‘That’s not true,’ I assured her. ‘God doesn’t mind us loving one another, and our children. He Himself is —’

‘What do you know about it, childless child?’ she interrupted. ‘Don’t comfort me. I can wait my eight years for comfort.’

‘Dear mother,’ I said, ‘do you think you can live fasting eight years?’

‘I will live,’ she replied, without a change of tone. ‘I will not die until he returns.’

I hoped she would die sooner. Afzal’s brother had sworn to kill her son the day he returned from prison.

‘I will not die,’ she continued calmly. ‘I wait for him. When he comes home I will kill him with my own fingers, because he hurt my flower.’

That was six years ago. She is still waiting.