The fixd events of Fates remote decrees.-Pope.
Vultures drowsed in the shade thrown
by the crumbling, sun-cracked, heat-stricken mud walls
and houses which lined the meandering unpaved streets,
or rather passages, of a certain village in northern
India; crows were packed everywhere, taking no notice
for the nonce of the feast of filth and garbage spread
invitingly around them, and in which sprawled the
disgusting, distorted bodies of somnolent water buffaloes;
inside the houses hags, matrons, maidens, and little
maids slept through the terrific heat of the noonday
hours; in the distance the Himalayas, supreme and
distressing, like a ridge across eternity, lay behind
the turrets and minarets of the town which, thanks
to the Indian atmosphere and the long distance, shone
white, fretted, and-well, exactly as you
can see it any day in paint at the Academy or in Bond
Street.
Perfectly motionless upon the high
khaki-coloured wall, which entirely surrounds the
village, with dust upon his aged feet and raiment and
once white turban, oblivious of the heat, the flies,
and everything that slept, sat a man with age written
upon every gnarled joint, and in every crack and fissure
of the parchment-like skin.
So old, and yet with
life, and hope, and youth eternal in the dark hawk
eye which gazed unseeingly through the outer world
straight towards the mountains.
And the old body made no sign of life,
even when the vultures without sound soared majestically
heavenwards, whilst the crows rose in shrieking disordered
squads, and a kite whistling melodiously swooped from
nowhere downwards across his head to the filth of the
streets.
Neither did he turn his head or his
eyes when a coal-black stallion, guided only by the
pressure of its rider’s knees, came to a stand
directly beneath him in the shadow of the wall, having
scrambled and slithered, jumping like a deer, climbing
like a goat down the rock-strewn road which leads
to the village from the great house at its rear; one
of those abominable roads allotted to the calloused
native foot, honoured for the first time in this instance
by the passage of the prince’s son and heir.
An arresting picture the rider and
his horse made as the man bent low in the saddle and
salaamed, then raised his turbaned head and sat motionless,
gazing at the holy man.
Minutes passed before, with arms filled
with offerings and garlands of marigolds and jasmin
swinging from his wrists, he slid from the saddle
to the ground, and took his way up the narrow tortuous
path which Fate had marked out for him through all
time.
High caste, high born, as slender
and delicate and as pressed with life as a budding
branch in spring, Madhu Krishnaghar stood beside the
priest in the incongruous setting of the mud walls.
A coat of fine white linen with broad
orange waistband came to just below the knees; white
trousers fastened tight about the ankle fitted almost
like a stocking from ankle to knee; the slender, narrow
feet were shod in native slippers, the white turban
with its regulation folds outlined the pale bronze
face with the sign of the man’s religion traced
between the eyebrows; diamond solitaires sparkled
in the ears, and one necklace of great pearls hung
about his neck.
“Usual large gentle eye, hawk
nose, mobile mouth and small-boned oval face”
would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of
any occidental passer-by; “meet ’em everywhere,
gambling at the street corner, or squatting in the
bazaar, or riding elephants.”
Yes! but-is not India’s
future history writ large upon that small-boned oval
face for those who, having the vision, read as they
walk warily.
For those who run hastily past life’s
signposts cannot and will not see that, like the fresh
green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle
luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty
of the mouth, through which gleam the pitiless perfect
teeth.
Glorying in his bull-neck and massive
chin, and blinded by his insular, inherited upbringing,
the European will exclaim “Pah!” at sight
of the thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing
utterly to notice the set of the ears on the head;
just as, muscle bound through worship at the shrine
of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and
poetry of movement for obsequiousness and humility,
ignoring the terrible root from which these delicate
flowers spring; the root of patience; with its tentacles
ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind,
causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on
their shrivelled lips, and the young to envisage plague,
pestilence, and famine with a mere lifting of the
shoulder. Patience! the card which India does
not hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is
playing; the dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard
which she throws on the table openly, but which we
ignore amongst the highly coloured, bejewelled pictures
she places before us, smiling with the tender luminous
eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of
the mouth.
Placing his offerings at the holy
man’s feet, and laying the garlands gently about
the bowed shoulders, Madhu Krishnaghar, the son of
princes, stooped and lifting the hem of the dust-covered
garment, laid it against his forehead, then quietly
sat down a pace removed from the ancient who took
no notice whatever of his proceedings.
And time passed, linking one hour
of noon to its neighbour and the next, until the hags,
matrons, maidens, and little maids awoke to the freshness
of the evening and the monotony of its tasks.
Kites called, crows screamed, men
gambled in the shadows of the evening and the upstanding,
distorted, disgusting water buffalo; while the two
men, master and pupil in the religion of death, sat
hour after hour without movement, staring at the mountains,
the dwelling-place of Siva the terrible, and the birthplace
of Kali his bride.
Far into the night they sat, until
the last quarter of the moon had sunk to rest, when,
with one single movement, the old man sprang to his
feet, flung out his arms, and bent in utter humility
and cast dust upon his once white turban.
His voice was but a shrill cracked
whisper when he called upon his god from the crumbling
top of the sunbaked, moon-drenched wall, and turning,
lifted his travel-stained mantle and laid it on the
young shoulders beside him.
An hour had passed, and more, before
the holy man’s tale, which ran back through
the past seventeen years, was finished. And when
it had been told the high caste youth trembled in
the ecstasy of his religion, amazed at the enlightenment
thrown upon his own enigmatical life, uplifted at
the task before him. Yea! he trembled in the
ecstasy of his religion, forgetting that love and
passion and life ran just as riotously in his supple
perfect body.
He leapt to his feet, smiting his
forehead with clenched hand.
“Give me a sign, O Kali! Show me that
thou art pleased!”
And he rent his garments in joy, showing
the bronze breast with the blood-red marks of his
terrible religion traced upon it; then thrusting his
fingers in his ears sank to the ground and buried his
head between his knees.
A black kid, the happiest of all good
omens, bleating with hunger, tripped and stumbled
from a courtyard; yet even as it found its mother
and buried its little head in the warmth of the soft
side, there had come across the plains a weird, long-drawn-out
sound, fraught with disaster to those who believe
in signs.
Long and shrill it sounded and ceased;
and once again-to be lost in peals of indecent,
discordant laughter.
Uncontrolled, uncontrollable, loathesome
sound which tears India’s nights to shreds.
The jackals had found at dawn.