CHAPTER IV.

KILLING WITH KINDNESS.

ONE evening, about the hour of sunset, the doctor, Isa Dás, was called in haste from his devotions to see Natthu the oilman, who was, it was said, dying of raging fever. Isa Dás hurried to the house. The entrance was through a small yard, in which a black buffalo and her calf were tied. Through the doorway Isa Dás passed into the dwelling, the lower part of which was occupied by the oil-mill; but the patient buffalo who usually turned the creaking wheel was no longer going his wearisome round. The place looked the receptacle for dirt, and every species of rubbish.

Isa Dás had never before penetrated beyond this room, but now a group of dirty children were ready to show him the way up to his patient. The narrow staircase was steep and utterly dark; Isa Dás had to feel his way, and take care that he stumbled not on a broken step. To a European newly arrived, such a dwelling might give an idea of extreme poverty, but to the zenana visitor it would appear but a common specimen of the houses of those who live by the work of their hands. Had Isa Dás had no one to show him the way, he would have been sufficiently guided by the hubbub of voices from the apartment above.

The Christian soon found himself in a room about twelve feet square. This room was literally crammed with people, men, women, and half-naked children. * All pressed forward, jostling one another, to watch the struggles of a frantic sufferer on a charpai covered with a mass of dirty rags, which gave forth a sickening odour. It was scarcely possible to breathe in that crowded place; the crowd shut out every breath of air from the sufferer, and their loud voices mingled with his cries.

* The oilman's bibi wee evidently not a purdah woman, or none of the male sex, except near relations, would have been admitted.

The doctor saw in a moment that, if this state of things continued, the patient had not a chance of life. Natthu was gasping for breath, his eyes almost starting out of his head, while he seemed, with his outstretched hands, to be trying to keep something back, which no one could see but himself.

"Back—back—all of you!" cried the doctor in a tone of authority. "Except the bibi, not one must remain in this room. I will not so much as attempt a cure unless the place be cleared!"

But it was no easy matter to clear the place. One dirty girl in particular, who was carrying a wretched baby whose eyes were covered with flies and whose head with sores, seemed to think it her right as well as her pleasure to stand and stare. It was at least five minutes before Isa Dás could clear the room of all but the patient and his wife.

He could hear people mutter, as they groped their way down the stairs, that this strange new way of treating the sick all came from Isa Dás being a Christian.

"Now, away with these rags, and bring water!" cried the doctor.

"Have you brought medicines with you?" asked the wife.

"Yes, but the three medicines which this poor fellow most requires are air, cleanliness, and quiet?" cried Isa Dás, who was feeling the pulse of his patient. "If he can have these but for one night, he may struggle through this attack; but if not—" he interrupted himself, for there was the girl with the wretched baby again trying to force herself back into the room. *

* If the sight of a zenana visitor be at all a novelty, she is likely to be followed by an escort of such children even into the zenanas of the comparatively wealthy. It is not strange to see amongst them some baby covered with small-pox.

The wife, happily, was not quite destitute of common sense. She saw that the doctor knew his business, and the life of the breadwinner for herself, her children, two widowed aunts, and a mother was too precious for her not to be anxious to do what she could to save it.

The obtrusive girl was promptly expelled in a fashion which sent her as well as the baby roaring down the staircase. A noisy hen with her brood of chickens was next turned out, and a great many dirty rags carried away. The air was able to come in tolerably freely through the square-shaped opening which might be called a window, though it had never held a pane of glass.

Poor Natthu was quite unconscious of what was passing around him, but he was sensible of the relief given by something like quiet, and bathing his brow somewhat lessened the terrible pain in his head. His wife assiduously fanned him with a small straw hand-punkah, and he drank in the fresh air almost as eagerly as he did the cooling medicine held by Isa Dás to his lips.

"What will his poor mother and aunts say when they hear of this dreadful illness?" exclaimed the wife. "He was quite well and driving the buffalo at the mill when they left here early with the children to go to the melá at P—," mentioning a village a few miles distant. "Little they knew that Piru's father * would be lying in such a state before night."

* It is considered indecorous for a wife to mention the name of her husband, or a man that of his bibi.

Thankful was Isa Dás that all these relatives had not been present to add their numbers to the crowd, and their voices to the noise. He was glad to hear from the bibi that the party intended to sleep at P—, so that the poor oilman had some chance of a quiet night. Ere long, some improvement took place; the sick man's pulse beat less wildly, and he ceased to cry out, as he had been doing in his delirium, that demons were crowding around him and smothering him to death.

"Praise be to the Most Merciful! He is better already," said the doctor. "Cheer up," he continued kindly to the wife, who was shampooing her husband's feet, "if he be but kept quiet, I hope that he may live to do many a good day's work for you yet."

The words were scarcely out of Isa Dás's lips, when he heard a sudden wild tumult below, and the sound of feet first rushing through the mill-room, then up the steep stairs, with the noise of loud weeping and wailing. There was no means, even had there been time, to fasten the door, and not even the doctor could keep out the mother, two aunts, and five children, who now burst into the room.

Natthu startled suddenly from something like sleep, sprang up into a sitting posture; wildly waving his arms, and rolling his eyes, he screamed out in terror, "Here they are again!" And then fell backwards in a fit, from which he never recovered.

Before midnight, laments for the dying gave place to wild wailing over the dead. The women, in their unreasoning fear and grief, had actually put out the spark of life which the doctor had been so anxiously trying to cherish!

Isa Dás left that house at midnight with a very heavy heart, remembering how he had vainly tried to sow the seed of Truth in the poor oilman's worldly heart. He thought, too, how many a life in Hindustan is every year lost from the folly of those who should tend the sick.

"But how can I wonder," he said to himself, "that in things regarding the body the same mistakes are made as in things regarding the soul! Superstitions crowd like the flies on the eyes of that poor child, which no one takes the trouble to drive away, though they carry disease and perhaps blindness. As cleanliness, air, and quiet are to the sick frame, so are purity, truth, and peace to the sick soul. Oh! When will these blessings be widely known and prized in my poor benighted country?"

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