In the Guardianship of G.o.d.

by Flora Annie Steel.

IN THE GUARDIANSHIP OF G.o.d

"Dittu Sansi, aged twenty-one, theft, six months," read out the overseer of the gaol, who was introducing a batch of new arrivals to the doctor in charge of a large gaol in the Upper Provinces of India.

It was early morning. Outside the high mud walls, which looked like putty and felt like rock, the dew was frosting the gra.s.s in the garden where a few favoured criminals were doing the work of oxen for the well-wheel, and turning the runnels of fresh water to the patches of spinach and onion. But here, inside the gaol square, everything had the parched, arid look of sun-baked mud. Not a speck was to be seen anywhere; the very prisoners themselves, standing in a long line awaiting inspection, with their dust-coloured blankets folded upon the ground in front of them, looked like darker clay images waiting to be put on their pedestals. There was a touch of colour, however, close to the arched gateway. First, a red-turbaned warder or two, guarding the wicket; then half-a-dozen constables in yellow trousers, and a deputy-inspector of police smart in silver laces and fringes; finally the gaol _darogah_, or overseer, a stoutish, good-looking Mahomedan with a tendency to burst out, wherever it was possible, into gay muslin, and decorate the edges of his regulation white raiment with fine st.i.tchings. These, with a nondescript group fresh from the lock-up, were gathered about the plain deal table set in full sunlight where the Doctor sate, ticking off each arrival on the roster. He matched the gaol, being dressed from head to foot in dust-coloured drill, with a wide pith hat which might have been carved out of the putty walls.

"All right, _Darogah_," he said with a yawn. "Number five hundred and seven. Go on,--what's the matter?"

Shurruf Deen, the Overseer, was looking intently at the paper in his hand, and the rich brown of his complacent face seemed to have faded a little. "Nothing, _Huzoor_," he replied glibly enough, though a quick observer might have seen the muscles of his brown throat labouring over the syllables. "The list is badly written, in the broken character. Thou shouldst speak to the clerk in thine office, Inspector-_jee_; this name is almost illegible."

"'Tis Shureef, clear enough, _Darogah-jee_," dissented the Inspector, huffily; "and I should have thought it fits thine own name too close for--"

"Shureef," read out Shurruf, the Overseer, brusquely, "Shureef, Khoja, thirty-five, lurking house trespa.s.s by night, habitual offender, ten years."

The Doctor looked up sharply. Ten years meant business; one can teach a lot in ten years--carpet-weaving, wood-carving, pottery-making--and the Doctor's hobby was his gaol. What he saw was a man, looking many years older than his age, haggard and grey, yet despite this with a lightness and suppleness in every limb. Though this figure was lean where the Overseer was fat, wrinkled where the Overseer showed smooth, there was a similarity in the rich colour of their skins, in the regularity of their features, which made the Englishman turn to look at the _Darogah_ with the mental remark that the race-characteristics of India were very instructive; for Shurruf was a Khoja also. "All right," said the Doctor. "Number five hundred and eight."

"Five hundred and eight," repeated the habitual offender, calmly. "I will not forget. Salaam, _Huzoor!_ Salaam, _Darogah-jee!_"

"Do you know the man?" asked the Doctor quickly of his subordinate; he was sharp as a needle, and there had been a note in the salutation which he did not understand.

"He was in for two years when I was sub-overseer at Loodhiana, _Huzoor_," replied Shurruf, imperturbably. "He gave much trouble there; he will not here, since the Doctor-_sahib_ knows how to manage such as he."

Once more there was an undertone, but the Doctor's attention was riveted by the adroit flattery, and he rose to begin his inspection with a smile. It was true; he did know how to manage a gaol, and there could not possibly be any cause for complaint when he was there to apportion each ounce of food scientifically, to rout every germ, every microbe, and treat even contumacy as a disease. The five hundred and odd prisoners were, as it were, the Doctor's chessmen. He marshalled them this way and that, checkmating their vile souls and bodies while they were in his care. If they pa.s.sed out of it into their own, he took no heed. They might make what they liked of themselves. But if they died, and, as the phrase runs, chose the Guardianship of G.o.d, he buried them temporarily in the gaol graveyard with all possible sanitary precautions, against the time when relations or friends might appear to claim the corpse. There was no official regulation as to the limit of time within which such claim could be preferred; but as a dead body remains in the special Guardianship of G.o.d for a year, it was an understood thing that man should take over the task before the Almighty gave up the job; it was more satisfactory, especially if the corpse was a Hindu and had to be burned. As for the Doctor, he would have preferred to burn the lot, Hindu and Mahomedan alike; failing that, he--took precautions.

As he walked down the line rapidly his sharp eye noted every 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," a.s.sented 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, pa.s.sionately. "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 h.e.l.l and comparative heaven; a h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d, 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 surrept.i.tiously 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sistant-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 did. The very day before the week was up he was shot in an organized attempt at escape on the part of five or six prisoners, who saw their opportunity in the temporary freedom of garden-work. A very determined attempt it was, involving violence, in which Shurruf gained fresh laurels by his promptness in ordering the sentry to fire. One man was wounded in the arm, and broke his leg in falling back from the wall he was scaling. Shureef was picked up quite dead behind the thicket of jasmine and rose. As two or three shots had been fired in that direction, it was possible it might have been an accident, and that he was not really one of the plotters; on the other hand both opium and tobacco were found upon him, proof positive that he had friends in the gaol. And though the warder, who had connived at the attempt at escape, and now pleaded guilty in the hope of lessening punishment, swore that Shureef was not in the plot, he had nothing to reply when Shurruf asked him for the name of any other gaol official who tampered with his duty.

"Poor devil!" said the Doctor, musingly, as he finished the necessary examination. "He was a fool to try--if he did; the run would have finished him to a certainty. Even the excitement of being in the fun might have killed him without anything else, for it was worse than I thought; his heart was mere tissue-paper."

Once more the Overseer's rich brown skin seemed to fade, though he was glib enough with his tongue. "He is to be buried tonight?" he asked easily.

"The sooner the better. _His_ friends aren't likely to want him back; but all the same put him in the new yard." The Doctor's hand, as he drew up the sheet, finally lingered a bit. "If--if he wanted to get outside, he may as well, poor devil!"

So in the cool of the evening Shureef, wrapped in a white cloth, was taken from a solitary cell and given into the Guardianship of G.o.d in the sun-baked patch of earth where he was the first to lie. It was a desolate patch, bare of everything save a white efflorescence of salt, showing, as the warder remarked cynically, that it was only fit for corpses. Not even for them, dissented the diggers, who, with leg-irons clanking discordantly, lingered over their task while Shureef, a still, white roll of cloth, waited their pleasure. The soil, they said, was much harder than in the old place, and if folk were to be dug up as well as buried--not that any would want the expense of moving Shureef, whose name was a byword--here the Overseer's portly figure showed in the adjoining garden, and they hurried on with their work.

Shurruf did not come over to the grave, however, perhaps because he was in a demi-toilet of loose muslin, without his turban, and in charge of his little son, a pretty child of four, whom the obsequious gardener had presented with a bunch of jasmine and roses, and who, after a time becoming bored by his father's interest in the spinach and onions, drifted on by himself to find something more attractive, until he came to stand wide-eyed and curious in the mourners' place at the head of the grave. And there he stood silent, watching the proceedings and keeping a tight clutch on his flowers, until a hand from behind, dragging him back pa.s.sionately, sent a shower of earth over the edge on to Shureef's body which had just been laid in its last resting-place, and sent also a bunch of roses and jasmines to lie close to Shureef's heart, for the child dropped them in his fright.

"Weep not, my prince!" cried the warder. "Thou shalt have them again.

Here, some one, go down and hand them up."

But Shurruf, the Overseer, who, with his little son clutched up in his arms, stood now in the mourners' place, his face almost grey, turned on the man with a curse. "Let the flowers lie," he said; "there are plenty more in the garden." So, without another word, he left them to fill up the grave; and they, having done it, left Shureef with the flowers on his breast to the Guardianship of G.o.d.

And there he stayed month after month, until the year drew close to its end. And Shurruf Deen stayed in the gaol, for, after all, the man whose place he had hoped to get was allowed another year's extension of service. Perhaps it was the deferred hope which told on the Overseer's nerves; but certain it is that the pa.s.sing months brought a strange look of anxiety to his face. Perhaps it was that, though he had set aside much, he could not quite set aside the thought of that bunch of roses and jasmine which his little son's hand had thrown upon Shureef's breast. Something there was in his mind without a doubt, which made him, but a few weeks before the Guardianship of G.o.d must end, and before the momentous question of promotion must be decided, steal out more than once at night to Shureef's solitary grave, as he had stolen to his solitary cell. But the memory of the still, white roll of cloth with the flowers upon it, touched him more closely than the memory of the listless figure letting the wheat-grains slip through its idle fingers. Why it should have done so it were hard to say. Fear had something to do with it--sheer superst.i.tion that when the Guardianship of G.o.d was over, the uncared-for body might fall into the keeping of the devil and torment him. Love had its part too; love, and a vague remorse born more of the chance which had made his little son chief mourner, than of a sense of personal guilt. Plainly it did not do to try and escape the tie of kindred altogether.

So, by degrees, the thought grew that it would indeed be safer for Shureef to pa.s.s into other guardianship before G.o.d's ended. He had asked for nothing, save that his grave might be cooled by tears; if this could be compa.s.sed, surely he ought to be satisfied, ought to forget everything else and leave his kindred in peace. And it might be compa.s.sed with care. Shureef's mother--not his own, for they had only been half-brothers--was alive, alive and blind, and poor too, since his father, stung by his son's disgrace, had sent her back to her own people. Poor, blind, and a mother! Here was material ready to his hand. It would not cost half a month's pay, even with the expenses of moving the body; and then--yes, then, when they were no longer needed, those flowers, even if they were dust, as they must be, could be taken away and forgotten.

It was the anniversary of Shureef's burial, and in the cool of the evening the clanking leg-irons were once more at work upon his grave; for, much to the Doctor's disgust, an old woman had put in an appearance at the last moment with unimpeachable credentials of relationship and sufficient cash to convey the remains to her village.

There was, as Shurruf, the Overseer, said regretfully, no valid excuse for refusal, and the Doctor-_sahib_ might rely upon his doing all things decently and in order, and on strict sanitary principles.

Whereupon the Doctor had smiled grimly, and said that in cases of resurrection there was safety in extremes.

Nevertheless, it was the love of horrors, no doubt, which made the gathering round the opening grave so large. The old woman sate in the mourners' place, her tears flowing already. The others, however, talked over probabilities, and told tales of former disinterments with cheerful realism, while Shurruf Deen bustled backwards and forwards among his elaborate arrangements.