In the Guardianship of God. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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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 God 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 passionately, 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 God.
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 passing 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 God 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 superstition that when the Guardianship of God 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 pass into other guardianship before God's ended. He had asked for nothing, save that his grave might be cooled by tears; if this could be compassed, surely he ought to be satisfied, ought to forget everything else and leave his kindred in peace. And it might be compassed 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.
They dug down to one side of the original grave after approved fashion, so that there should be as little disturbance as possible, and when traces of what was sought showed in a fold of still, white shroud, extra cloths were sent down, in which, covering as they exposed, the workmen gradually swathed all that was mortal of the dead dacoit.
"He hath not lost much weight," said those at the ropes as they hauled.
So there the task was done, decently and in order. But Shurruf wanted something which he knew must still lie within the brand-new shroud, and, ere they lifted the gruesome bundle to the coffin awaiting it, he stooped,--then stood up suddenly, grey to the very lips, and crushing something in his hand, something, so it seemed to those around, pink and white and green. But his face riveted them. "In the Guardianship of God," he muttered, "in the Guardianship of God."
"What is it?" said one to another, as he stood dazed and speechless. Then they, too, stooped, looked, touched, until, as he had lain when they found him behind the rose and jasmine thicket, Shureef lay before them looking more as if he was asleep than dead.
"Wah!" said a voice in the crowd; "he cannot have been so bad as folk thought him, if the Lord has taken all that care of him."
Shurruf gave a sort of sob, stepped back, lost his footing on the edge of the open grave and fell heavily. When they picked him up he was dead.
The Doctor, summoned hastily, shook his head. Death must have been instantaneous, he said; the neck was broken. After which he went over and looked at Shureef curiously; then stooped down and picked up some of the earth on which the body lay, earth which had come from the bottom of the grave. "Look," he said, pointing out minute