The habit of suffering brings not always with it the power of endurance;
the nerves, too frequently acted on, become morbid and less capable of
sustaining the pressure of a reiterated sensation; and the mind, no
longer able to support or to resist a protracted conflict, sinks under
its oppression, or by some natural impulse abandons the object of its
painful cogitation, and finds relief in the effort of seeking change.
The Missionary had reached the crisis of passion, the feverish paroxysm
of long-combatted emotions. He had reached the utmost limits of human
temptation and human resistance, and shuddered at the risk he had run
and the peril he had escaped. He resembled a wanderer in an unknown
land, who reaches a towering and fearful eminence; who beholds at a
single glance the dangers he has passed, and those he has still to
encounter; and who endeavours to regulate his future course by the
inferences of his past experience. That wild delirium of the senses
which left him an unpractised victim to their tyranny, subsided in some
degree with the absence of that tender and enchanting object who
distanced all that his fancy had ever dared to picture of woman’s
loveliness or woman’s love; and his mind, comparatively enabled to
think and to decide, with something of its former tone and vigour, gave
itself up to a meditation which had for its subject the consequences of
that fatal avowal by which he had so irretrievably committed his
character and his profession. The mysterious veil which the cold pure
hand of religion had flung over his feelings, was now for ever
withdrawn, and the frailties of a being once deemed infallible, the
passions and weaknesses incidental to his nature as being human, were
not only exposed to himself, but were betrayed to others; and to the
followers of Brahma and Mahomet, the apostle of Christianity appeared
alike frail, alike subdued by passion and open to temptation, as he on
whom the light of revealed truth has never beamed. He felt that he had
dishonoured the religion he professed, by making no application of its
principles to his conduct in the only instance in which his virtue had
been put to a severe test; and that the doctrine of opinion had failed
practically in its influence upon the interests and feelings of
self-love. He could no longer conceal from his awakened conscience, that
the proselyte his zeal had sought for Heaven, had become the object of a
human passion; of a passion, imprudent in the eye of reason, criminal in
the eye of religion; and which, in its nature and consequences, was
scarcely referable to any order, or to any state of society; for, by the
doctrines of their respective religions, by the laws and customs of
their respective countries, they could never be united by those
venerated and holy ties, which regulate and cement the finest bonds of
humanity, and which obtain from mankind, in all regions of the earth,
respect and sanction, as being founded in one of the great moral laws of
nature’s own eternal code. No Brahmin priest could consecrate an union,
sacrilegious according to his habits of thinking and believing. No
Christian minister could bless an alliance formed upon the violation of
vows solemnly pledged before the altar of the Christian’s God. If,
therefore, human opinion was of moment to one, whose secret ambition to
obtain its favour had rendered even _religion_ subservient to its
purpose; if the habits, the principles, and the faith of a whole life,
held any power over conduct and action in a particular instance; if
self-estimation were necessary to the self-love of a proud and lofty
character, between the Christian Priest and Heathen Priestess was placed
an insuperable bar, which if once removed, risked their exposure to
infamy and to shame in this world, and offered, according to their
respective creeds, eternal suffering in the next. But the alternative
was scarce less dreadful. In the first instance it was deemed
impossible, for it was immediate and eternal separation! Reason
dictated, religion commanded, even love itself, influenced by pity,
admitted the terrific necessity. Yet still passion and nature struggled,
and resisted, with an energy and an eloquence, to which the heart, the
imagination, and the senses, devotedly listened. Oh! it is long, very
long, before the strongest mind, in obedience to the dictates of
prudence and of pride, can dismiss from its thoughts the object of an
habitual meditation, before it can strike out some new line of
existence, foreign to its most cherished sentiments and dearest views.
It is long, very long, before we can look calmly into the deserted
heart, and behold unmoved a dreary void, where late some image erected
by our hopes, filled from the source of pleasure, every artery with the
tide of gladness. It is difficult for human reason to argue away
passion, by cold and abstract principles, and to substitute the torpor
of indifference for the pang of disappointment; but it is still more
difficult for human fortitude, though actuated by the highest human
virtue, to tear asunder the ties of love, in all their force and vigour,
ere habit may have softened their strength, or satiety relaxed their
tension. To effect this sudden breaking up of the affections, ere they
have been suffered gently to moulder away in the mild and sure decay of
consuming time, the silent, certain progress of mortal oblivion, some
power more than human is requisite.
On the luxurious shores of the confluence of the streams, with the light
of heaven dying softly round them, the air breathing enjoyment, and the
earth affording it, the stoicism of the man would not perhaps have
continued proof against the charms of the woman. But in darkness, in
solitude, and in silence, in a cavern cold and gloomy, religion
borrowed a superadded influence from the impression of the senses; and
at the foot of the cross, raised by his own hands in the land of the
unbelieving, and faintly illuminated by the chill pure rays of an
approaching dawn, that season of the day so solemn and so impressive,
when passion slumbers, and visions of fear and gloom steal upon the
soul, did the Christian Missionary vow to resign for ever, the object of
the only human weakness which had disgraced his sinless life. The vow
had passed his lips; it was registered in heaven; and nature almost sunk
beneath the sacrifice which religion had exacted.
The great immolation resolved on, all that now remained to be effected,
was to fly from a spot which he had found so fatal to his pious views,
and to pursue the holy cause of the Mission in regions more favourable
to its success; but the energy of zeal was subdued or blunted, and a
complexional enthusiasm, once solely directed to the interests of
Christianity, had now found another medium for its ardour and activity.
Scarcely knowing whither to direct his steps, he mechanically inquired
from a Goala, whom kindness that morning brought to his grotto with some
fruit, the road, which at that season, the caravan passing through
Cashmire from Thibet, usually took. The information he received tended
to facilitate his departure from Cashmire, for the caravan had halted in
the district of Sirinagur.
To behold Luxima for the last time was now all that remained! But the
feelings of tenderness and despair, with which this trying interview was
contemplated, plunged him in all the pangs of irresolution; vibrating
between desire and fear, between the horror of leaving her, unprepared
and unexpecting their eternal separation, or of beholding her in love
and in affliction, expressing in her beautiful and eloquent countenance,
the agony of that tender and suffering heart which, but for him, had
still been the asylum of peace and happiness.
At last, a day of conflict and of misery, alternately devoted to an
heavenly and to an earthly object, now passed in tenderness and grief,
and now in supplication and in prayer, hastened to its conclusion! The
sun had set--a few golden rays still lingered in the horizon, and found
a bright reflection on the snows which covered the mountains of Thibet.
It was the hour of _the appointed interview_! The Christian prostrated
himself for the last time before the altar, and invoked the protection
of Heaven to support him through the most trying effort of his life; to
subdue the hidden “man of the heart,” and, upon the ruins of a frail and
earthly passion, to raise a sentiment of hope and faith, which should
point alone to that eternal recompense reserved for those who suffer and
who sustain, who are tempted and who resist. He arose, sublimed and
tranquillized, from the foot of the altar. Religion encompassed him
with her shield, and poured her spirit on his soul. He took from the
altar the Scriptural volume, and placed it on his bosom; and grasping in
his right hand the pastoral crosier, he paused for a moment, and gazed
around him; then proceeding with a rapid step, he passed, for the last
time, the rude threshold of a place which had afforded him so sweet and
so fatal an asylum, which had so often re-echoed to his sighs of
passion, and resounded to his groans of penitence. Yet once again he
paused, and cast back his eyes upon this beloved grotto: but the faded
wreath of the Indian Priestess, suspended from one of its projections,
caught his glance. He shuddered. This simple object was fatal to his
resolutions--it brought to his heart the recollection of love’s
delicious dawn; the various eras of its successive and blissful
emotions. But he wished to meet _her_, on whose brow this frail memento
had once exhausted its odours and its bloom, as he had first met her,
with eyes so cold, and thoughts so pure and so free from human taint,
that even Religion’s self might say, “A communion such as this belongs
to Heaven!” Yet he withdrew his eyes with a long and lingering look, and
sighed profoundly as he retreated. He reached the arcade of the banyans,
as the sunbeam reflected from the mountains threw its last light on a
dark bower of branches, beneath whose shade he beheld the Indian
Neophyte. She was kneeling on the earth, pale, and much changed in her
appearance, and seemingly invoking the assistance of Heaven with fervid
devotion. No consecrated flower bloomed amidst the dark redundancy of
her neglected tresses. No transparent drapery shadowed, with folds of
snow, the outlines of her perfect form: her hair, loose and dishevelled,
hung in disorder round her; and she was habited in the dress of a
Chancalas, or _outcast_--a habit coarse and rude, and calculated to
resist the vicissitude of climate to which such unhappy wanderers are
exposed. A linen veil partly shaded her head: her muntras were fastened
round her arm with an idol figure of Camdeo: from the dsandam which
encircled her neck, was suspended a small cross, given to her by the
Missionary; and those symbols of faith and of idolatry expressed the
undecided state of her mind and feelings, which _truth_ taught by
_love_, and _error_ confirmed by _habit_, still divided--equally
resembling in her look, her dress, and air, a Christian Magdalene, or a
penitent Priestess of Brahma.
In this object, so sad and so touching, nothing appeared to change the
resolutions of the Missionary, but much to confirm them. It was a fine
image of the conquest of virtue over passion--and the most tender of
women seemed to set a bright example to the firmest of men. Yet, when
Luxima beheld him, a faint colour suffused her cheek, her whole frame
thrilled with obvious emotion. She arose, and extended her trembling
hand--but he took it not; for her appearance awakened sensations of love
and melancholy, which, when they mingle, are of all others the most
profound; and casting down his eyes, he said,
“I am come, my daughter, in obedience to thy commands, to behold thee
for the last time, and to give thee up exclusively to Him, whose grace
may operate upon thy soul, without the wretched aid of one so frail and
weak as I have proved. Thou wearest on thy breast, the badge of that
pure truth which already dawns upon thy soul. Take also this book--it is
all I have to bestow; but it is all-sufficient for thy eternal
happiness.” He paused, and the emotion of his countenance but ill
accorded with the coldness of his words.
Luxima took the book in silence: something she would have said, but the
words died away on her trembling lips; and she raised her eyes to his
face, with a look so tender, and yet so despairing, that the Missionary
felt how fatal to every resolution he had formed, another such look
might prove.
Averting his eyes, therefore, and extending his hands over her head, he
would have spoken--he would have blessed her--he would have said,
“Farewell for ever!” but the power of articulation had deserted him.
Again he tried to speak, and failed; his lips trembled, his eyes grew
dim, his heart sickened, and the agonies of death seemed to convulse his
frame. Luxima still clung to his arm. Had the lifeblood flowed from her
bosom, beneath the sacrificial knife, her countenance could not have
expressed more acute anguish. He sought, by a feeble effort, to release
himself from her grasp: but he had not power to move; and the mutual
glance which mingled their souls at the moment they were about to part
for ever, operated with a force they had no longer power to resist.
Faint and pale, Luxima sunk on his bosom. At that moment, sounds came
confusedly on the winds, and growing louder on the ear, seemed to
pierce the heart of the Indian. She started, she trembled, she listened
wildly; and then, with a shriek, exclaimed,
“So soon, so soon, does death overtake me. Now then, now, farewell for
ever! Leave me to die, and save thyself!” As she spoke, she would have
fallen to the earth, but that the Missionary caught her in his arms. All
the powers of life seemed to rush upon him; a vague idea of some
dreadful danger which threatened the object of his pity and his love,
roused and energized his mind and nerved his frame. He no longer
reasoned, he no longer resisted. Obedient only to the impulse of the
immediate feeling, he bore away his lifeless charge in his arms, and
plunging into the deepest shades of the banyan, endeavoured to reach a
dark pile of towering rocks, whose sharp high points still caught a hue
of light from the west, and among whose cavities he hoped to find refuge
and concealment. The mists of evening had hid from his view a mighty
excavation, which he now entered, and perceived that it was the
vestibule of an ancient Pagoda: its roof, glittering with pendent
stalactites, was supported by columns, forming a magnificent colonnade,
disposed with all the grand irregularity which Nature displays in her
greatest works, and reflecting the images of surrounding objects, tinged
with the rich and purple shade of evening colouring. This splendid
portico opened into a gloomy and terrific cavern, whose
half-illuminated recess formed a striking contrast to the exterior
lustre. Pillars of immense magnitude hewn out of the massive rocks, and
forming an imperishable part of the whole mighty mass, sustained the
ponderous and vaulted ceiling: receding in the perspective, they lost
their magnitude in distance, till their lessening forms terminated in
dim obscurity, and finely characterized the awful mystery of the
impervious gloom. Idols of gigantic stature, colossal forms, hideous and
grotesque images, and shrines emblazoned with offerings, and dimly
glittering with a dusky lustre, were rudely scattered on every side. For
the Missionary had borne the Priestess of Brahma to the temple in which
she herself presided: the most ancient and celebrated in India, after
that of Elephanta. This sanctuary of the most awful superstition, worthy
of the wildest rites of a dark idolatry, was now wrapt in a gloom,
rendered more obvious by the faint blue light which issued from the
earth, in a remote part of the cavern, and which seemed to proceed from
a subterraneous fire[11], which burst at intervals into flame, throwing
a frightful glare upon objects in themselves terrific.
The Christian shuddered as he gazed around him: but every thought, every
feeling of the lover and the man, was soon concentrated to the object
still supported in his arms, and who he believed and hoped, in this sad
and lonely retreat, had nothing to apprehend from immediate danger. Life
again reanimated her frame, but she was weak and faint, and an
expression of terror was still marked on her features. He placed her
near a pillar, which supported her drooping form, and flew to procure
some water from a spring, whose gushing fall echoed among the rocks;
when the sound of solemn music, deep, sad, and sonorous, came upon the
wind, which at intervals rushed through the long surrounding aisles of
the cavern, disturbing with their hollow murmurs the deathlike silence
of the place. The Missionary listened: the sounds grew louder; they were
no longer prolonged by the wind; they came distinctly on the ear; they
were accompanied by the echo of many footsteps; and hues of light thrown
on the darkness of the rocks, marked the shadows of an approaching
multitude. The Missionary rushed back to his charge: she had raised her
head from the earth, and listened with the air of a maniac to the
increasing sounds.
“Unfortunate as innocent,” he said, encircling her with his extended
arms, “there is now, I fear, no refuge left thee but this. O Luxima! thy
danger has reunited us, and I am alike prepared to die for or with
thee.” As he spoke, a blue phosphoric light glanced on the idols near
the entrance of the Pagoda: it proceeded from a large silver censer,
borne by a venerable Brahmin, who was followed by a procession of the
same order, each Brahmin holding in his hand a branch of the gloomy and
sacred ocynum, the symbol of the dreadful ceremony of _Brahminical
excommunication_. The procession, which passed near the pillar, by whose
deep shadow the unfortunate victims who thus had rushed upon
destruction, stood concealed, was closed by the venerable Guru of
Cashmire; he was carried in a black palanquin, and his aged countenance
was stamped with the impress of despair. The Brahmins circled round the
subterraneous fire, each in his turn flinging on its flame the leaves of
the sandaltree and oils of precious odour. The kindling flames
discovered on every side, thrones, columns, altars, and images; while
the priests, dividing into two bands, stood on each side of the fire,
and the Guru took his place in the centre of his disciples.
All now was the silence of death, and the subterraneous fire spread
around its ghastly hues: the chief of the Brahmins, then prostrating
himself before the shrine of Vishnu, drew from his breast the volume of
the sacred laws of MENU, and read the following decree, in a deep and
impressive voice: “Glory be to Vishnu! who thus speaks by the mouth of
his Prophet Menu[12]. He who talks to the wife or the widow of a
Brahmin, at a place of pilgrimage, in a consecrated grove, or at the
confluence of rivers, incurs the punishment of guilt; the seduction of a
guarded Priestess is to be repaid with life: but if she be not only
guarded, but eminent for good qualities, he is to be burnt with the
fires of divine wrath!” At these words the solemn roll of the tublea,
or drum of condemnation, resounded through the temple; and when the
awful sound had died away in melancholy murmurs, two Brahmins coming
forward, made their depositions of the guilt of the chief Priestess of
the temple. They deposed, that, passing near the sacred grove which led
to the pavilion of the Priestess, they observed issuing from its shades
the Mogul Prince Solyman--that, induced by their zeal for the purity of
their sacred order, they repaired at the same hour on the following
evening to the place of her evening worship, where they had discovered
the Brachmachira, not indeed as they had expected, with the worshipper
of Mahomet, but with a Frangui or Impure, who had already endeavoured
to seduce some of the children of Brahma to abandon the God of their
fathers; that they found her supporting the infidel in her arms--a
circumstance sufficient to confirm every suspicion of her guilt, and to
call for her excommunication, or forfeiture of cast. The sanctity, the
age and reputation of the Brahmins, gave to their testimony a weight
which none dared dispute. It was now only reserved for the Guru to
pronounce sentence on his granddaughter. He was supported by two Yogis.
A ghastly and livid hue diffused itself over his countenance; and in his
despairing look were mingled with the distracted feelings of the doting
parent, the superstitious horrors of the zealous Priest. Thrice he
essayed to pronounce that name, hitherto never uttered but with triumph;
and to heap curses upon that beloved head, on which blessings and tears
of joy had so often fallen together. At last, in a low, trembling, and
hollow voice, he said,
“Luxima, the Brachmachira of Cashmire, Chief Priestess of the
Pagoda of Sirinagur, and a consecrated vestal of Brahma, having
justly forfeited cast, is doomed by the word of Brahma, and the law
of Menu, to become a Chancalas, a wanderer, and an outcast upon
earth!--with none to pray with her, none to sacrifice with her,
none to read with her, and none to speak to her; none to be allied
by friendship or by marriage to her, none to eat, none to drink,
and none to pray with her. Abject let her live, excluded from all
social duties; let her wander over the earth, deserted by all,
trusted by none, by none received with affection, by none treated
with confidence--an apostate from her religion, and an alien to her
country, branded with the stamp of infamy and of shame, the curse
of Heaven and the hatred of all good men[13].”
The last words died on the lips of him who pronounced them; and the
unfortunate grandsire fell lifeless in the arms of his attendants. The
conch, or religious hell, was then blown with a blast so shrill and
loud, that it resembled the sound of the last trump; the tublea rolled,
and was echoed by endless reverberations; hideous shouts of
superstitious frenzy mingling their discordant jar, ran along the mighty
concave like pealing thunderbolts, until gradually these sounds of
terror fainted away in sobbing echoes; and the awful procession departed
from the temple to the same solemn strains, in the same order in which
it had entered it. All was again silent, awful, and gloomy; like the
night which preceded creation, or that which is to follow its
destruction. The subterraneous fires still faintly emitted their flame
above the surface of the earth, and threw their mystic light on the
brow of the excommunicated Priestess. She lay lifeless on the earth,
where she had fallen during the conclusion of the ceremony of her
excommunication, with a shriek so loud and piercing, that the horrid
crash of sounds, which at that moment filled the Pagoda, could alone
have drowned her shrill and plaintive voice, or prevented the discovery
of her situation to the ministers of the temple. The Missionary knelt
beside her, watching, in breathless agony, the slow departure and fading
sounds of the procession. When all was still, he turned his eyes on the
Outcast; he saw her lying without life or motion, cold and disfigured,
and, save by him alone, abandoned and abhorred by all. Thus lost, thus
fallen, he beheld her in a place where she had once received the homage
of a deity: he saw her an innocent and unoffending victim, offered by
himself, by his mistaken zeal and imprudent passion, on the altar of a
rigid and cruel superstition: his brain maddened as he gazed upon her,
for he almost believed her tender heart had broken its life-chords,
under the pressure of feelings and sufferings beyond the power of human
endurance; and, in this dreadful apprehension, all capability of thought
or action alike deserted him. Alike bereaved of reflection or resource,
alike destitute of effort or energy, he remained mute, agonized, and
gazing on the object of his tenderness and his despair. At last a sigh,
soft, yet convulsive, breathed from the lips of Luxima, and seemed to
operate on his frame like electricity: it was a human sound, and it
dispelled the dead-like silence of all around him; it was the accent of
love and sorrow, and his heart vibrated to its respiration. He raised
the sufferer in his arms; he addressed to her soothing murmurs of love
and pity, of hope and consolation. At the sound of his voice, she raised
her eyes, and gazed, with a look of fear and terror, round her, as if
she expected to meet the forms, or to hear the voices, of the awful
ministers of her malediction; but the moment which succeeded was cheaply
purchased, even by its preceding horrors. She turned back her languid
eyes in despair, believing herself abandoned alike by Heaven and earth,
but she fixed them in transport on him who was now her universe; her
whole being received a new impulse from the look which answered to her
own.
“Thou art safe! thou art near me!” she exclaimed, in a sobbing accent;
and, falling on his shoulder, she wept. Some moments of unbroken silence
passed away, devoted to emotions too exquisite and too profound to be
imaged by words. Where a true and perfect love exists, there is a
melancholy bliss in the sacrifices made for its object; and the tender
Indian was now soothed, under her affliction, by the consideration of
him for whose sake she had incurred it: for to suffer, or to die, for
him she loved, was more precious to her feelings, than even to have
enjoyed security and life, independent of his idea, his influence, or
his presence. But equal to sustain her own miseries, she was overpowered
by the fate which remotely threatened him; and in a moment when her
affection rose in proportion to the peril he risked for her sake, she
resolved on the last and greatest sacrifice the heart of woman could
make to effect his safety, by again urging his flight, and resigning him
for ever. Gazing on him, therefore, with a melancholy smile, which love
and agony disputed, she said, “My father and my friend! a creature
avoided and abhorred by all, labouring under the curse of her nation and
the wrath of Heaven, has no alternative but to submit to a fate, which
she can neither avert nor avoid: but for thee, who hast incurred the
penalty of a crime, of which thou art innocent, and which thy pure soul
abhors, a life of safety and of glory is yet reserved. A law, which
seems dictated by cruelty, is always reluctantly executed by the gentle
and benevolent Hindus; and they shudder to take the life which they yet
forbear not to render miserable. Provoke not then their wrath by thy
presence, but fly, and live for those most happy and most blessed, who
shall meet thy looks and hang upon thy words. For me, my days are
numbered--sad and few, they will wear away in some trackless desert;
where, lost to my cast, my country, and my fame, death, welcome and
wished for, shall yet find my soul wedded to one deathless bliss, the
bliss of knowing I was beloved by thee.” As she spoke, her head drooped
on the trembling hands which were clasped in hers; her tears bathed
them. A long and an affecting pause ensued.
A thousand feelings, opposite in their nature and powerful in their
influence, seemed to struggle in the bosom of the Missionary: a thousand
ideas, each at variance with the other, seemed to rush on and to agitate
his mind. At last, withdrawing the hand which trembled in hers, and with
the look and voice of one whose soul, after a long tumultuous conflict,
is wound up to unalterable resolution, he said, “Luxima, I am a
Christian, and a priest, and I am bound by certain vows to Heaven, from
the observance of which no human power can absolve me; but I am also a
man; as such, led by feeling, impelled by humanity, and bound by duty,
to aid the weak and to succour the unfortunate:--but when I am myself
the cause of sorrow to the innocent! of affliction to the
unoffending!--O Luxima!” he passionately added, “lost to thee for ever,
as lover or as husband, thinkest thou that I can also abandon thee as
pastor and as friend? Hast thou then, my daughter, the courage to leave
for ever the temples of thy God, and the land of thy forefathers? Art
thou so assured of thyself and of me, as to follow me through distant
regions, to follow me as my _disciple only_; to take up the cross of
Christianity, and to devote what remains of thy young and blooming life
exclusively to Heaven? Luxima, wilt thou follow me to Goa?”
“Follow _thee_?” wildly and tenderly repeated the Indian. An hysteric
laugh burst from her lips, a crimson blush rushed over her face, and
again deserting it, left it colourless. “Follow thee! O Heaven! _through
life to death_!”
The Missionary arose: he averted his eyes from the fatal eloquence of
hers: he paced the temple with an unequal but rapid step; he seemed
wrapt in thoughts wild and conflicting. At last, turning to Luxima, he
fixed his eyes on her face, and said, with a voice firm, solemn, and
impressive, “Daughter, it is well! from this moment I am thy guide on
earth to heaven--no more!”
“No more!” faintly repeated Luxima, casting down her looks and sighing
profoundly. Then, after a short pause, the Missionary extended his hand
to raise her; but suddenly relinquishing the trembling form he
supported, he moved away. Luxima, with a slow and feeble step, followed
him to the entrance of the temple; but, as they reached together the
extremity of the cavern, the blue light of the subterraneous fire
flashed on an image of Camdeo, her tutelar deity. She started,
involuntarily paused before the idol, and bowed her head to the earth.
The Missionary threw on her a glance of severe reproof, and, taking her
hand, would have led her on; but this little image had touched on the
chord of her most profound feelings, and awakened the most intimately
associated ideas of her mind.
“Father,” she said, in a timid supplication of look and voice, “forgive
me; but here, in this spot, no less an idol than that at whose shrine I
bow--my nation’s pride and sex’s glory--here did I devote myself to
Heaven; and becoming the Priestess of mystic love, here did I renounce,
by many a sacred vow, all human passion and all human ties.”
“Luxima,” he replied, still leading her on, “such as were thy vows, such
_are_ mine; let us alike keep them in our recollection, and renew them
in our hearts. O my daughter! let us more than tacitly renew them in our
hearts; let us together kneel, and----”
“_But not here, father!_” tremulously interrupted Luxima, looking
fearfully round her--“not here!”
“No,” he replied, and shuddered as he spoke, “not here!”
In silence, and with rapid steps, they passed beneath the frowning and
gigantic arch, which hung its ponderous vault above the threshold of the
Pagan temple; to its impervious gloom, its mysterious obscurity,
succeeded the sudden brightness of the moonlight glen, in whose lovely
solitudes the awful pile reared its massive heights, to intercept the
rising, or catch the parting beam of day. Here the proscribed wanderers
paused; they listened breathlessly, and gazed on every side; for danger,
perhaps death, surrounded them: but not a sound disturbed the mystic
silence, save the low murmurs of a gushing spring, which fell with more
than mortal music from a mossy cliff, sparkling among the matted roots
of overhanging trees, and gliding, like liquid silver, beneath the
network of the parasite plants. The flowers of the Mangoosten gave to
the fresh air a balmy fragrance. The mighty rocks of the Pagoda, which
rose behind in endless perspective, scaling the heavens, which seemed to
repose upon their summits, lent the strong relief of their deep shadows
to the softened twilight of the foreground.
“All is still,” said the Missionary, pausing near the edge of the
falling stream, and relinquishing the hand he had till now clasped; “all
is still, and spirits of peace seem to walk abroad, to calm the tumult
of human cares, to whisper hope, and to inspire confidence. My
daughter, eternity is in these moments. The brief and frail authority of
man, reduced to its own insignificance, holds no jurisdiction now, and
the spirit ascends free and fearless to the throne of its Creator.” The
Missionary stood gazing on the firmament as he spoke, his soul mingling
with the magnificent and sublime objects he contemplated; then, turning
his eyes on Luxima, he was struck with the peculiar character of her air
and person. She looked, as she stood at a little distance, half hid in
the mists of shade, like some impalpable form, which imaged on the air
the spirit of suffering innocence, in the first moment of its ascent to
heaven. Her head was thrown back, and a broken moonbeam, falling
through the trees, encompassed it with a faint glory: the tears of human
suffering had not yet dried upon her cheek of snow; but it was the only
trace of human feeling visible: her soul seemed to commune with him of
whom it was an emanation.
“Luxima,” said the Missionary, approaching her, “the moment of thy
perfect conversion is surely arrived: in spirit thou belongest to Him
who died to save thee; be then his also by those rites, which, in a
place like this, he thought it not beneath him to receive, from the
hands of one by whom he was preceded, as the star of the morning ushers
in the radiance of the rising sun. O my daughter! ere together we
commence our perilous and trying pilgrimage, we have need of all the
favour which Heaven’s mercy can afford us, for we have much to dread,
from others and ourselves; let then no tie be wanting which can bind us
faster to virtue and religion. Luxima, innocent and afflicted as thou
now art, pure and sublime as thou now lookest, feelest thou thyself not
worthy to become a Christian in form as in faith?”
“If _thou_ thinkest me not unworthy,” she replied, in a low voice, “that
which thou art, I am willing to be.”
The Missionary led her forward, in silence, to the edge of the spring,
and blessing the living waters as they flowed, he raised his consecrated
hands, and shed the dew of salvation upon the head of the proselyte,
pronouncing, in a voice of inspiration, the _solemn sacrament of
baptism_. All around harmonized with the holy act; Nature stood sole
sponsor; the incense which filled the air, arose from the bosom of the
earth; and the light which illuminated the ceremony, was light from
heaven.
A long and solemn pause ensued; then the Missionary, clasping and
holding up the hands of Luxima in his, said, “Father, receive into thy
service this spotless being; for to thy service do I consecrate her.”
A beam of religious triumph shone in the up-turned eyes of the
Missionary. The conversion of the Priestess of Brahma was perfected, and
human passion was subdued. “Daughter of heaven!” he said, “thou hast now
nothing to fear; and I, on this side eternity, have nothing to hope.” As
he spoke the last words, an involuntary sigh burst from his lips, and he
turned his eyes on the Christian vestal; but hers were fixed upon the
Pagoda, the temple of her ancient devotion. Her look was sad and wild;
she seemed absorbed and overwhelmed by the rapidity of emotions which
had lately assailed her. “Let us proceed,” he said, in a softened voice,
“if thou be able; let us leave for ever the monument of the dark
idolatry which thou hast abjured.” As he spoke, he took her arm to lead
her on; but he started, and suddenly let it fall, for he found it was
encircled with the muntra, or Brahminical rosary, from which the image
of Camdeo was suspended. “Luxima,” he said, “these are not the ornaments
of a Christian vestal.”
Luxima clasped her hands in agony; the tears dropped fast upon her
bosom; and she fell at his feet, exclaiming, in a voice of tenderness
and despair, “Oh! thou wilt not deprive me of these also? I have nothing
left now _but these_! nothing to remind me, in the land of strangers, of
my country and my people, save only these: it makes a part of the
religion I have abandoned, to respect the sacred ties of nature; does
my new faith command me to break them? This rosary was fastened on my
arm by a parent’s tender hand, and bathed in Nature’s holiest dew--a
parent’s tender tears: hold not the Christians relics, such as these,
precious and sacred? Thou hast called thy religion the religion of the
heart; will it not then respect the heart’s best feelings?” A deep
convulsive sob interrupted her words; all the ties she had broken
pressed upon her bosom, and the affections of habit, those close-knit
and imperishable affections, interwoven, by time and circumstance, with
the very life-nerves of the heart, bore down for the moment, every other
passion. The Outcast, with her eyes fixed upon the religious ornaments
of her youth, wept, as she gazed, her country, parents, friends--“and
would not be comforted.”
The Missionary sighed and was silent: he sighed to observe the strong
influence of a religion, which so intimately connected itself with all
the most powerful emotions of nature and earliest habits of life; and
which, taking root in the heart, with its first feelings, could only be
perfectly eradicated by the slow operation of expanding reason, by the
strengthening efforts of moral perception, or by the miraculous effects
of divine grace, and he was silent; because, the appeal which the tender
and eloquent Indian made to his feelings, found an advocate in his
breast it was impossible to resist. Instead, therefore, of reproving
her emotion, he suffered himself to be infected by its softness, and
mingled his tears with hers.
The grief of Luxima subsided in the blessed consciousness of a sympathy
so precious, so unexpected; and love’s warm glow dried up the tear,
which the grief of natural affection shed on the cheek of the Outcast.
“Thou weepest for me,” she said, chasing away the trembling drops which
hung in her up-turned eyes; “and in the indulgence of a selfish feeling,
I hazard thy safety and thy life! That cruel, that accusing Brahmin, who
has watched my steps to my destruction, whom I mistook last night for
the vision of that God he too zealously serves--may he not even now
lurk in these shades; or may he not, when we are vainly sought for in
our respective asylums, seek us here?--O my father! forgive these tears.
But it was the tenderness of him who lately cursed me; it was my aged
grandsire, whom I have dragged to death and covered with shame (for
something of my infamy must light on all my kindred); it was he who,
with the morning’s dawn, sent me the tidings of my approaching fate, and
bade me fly and shun it: he would not see, he would not hear me; nor
dare he breathe my name, but to heap curses on my head. But for this
timely tender warning I should have else been hunted, like some noxious
reptile, to wilds and wastes, there to die and be forgotten. All day I
lay concealed amidst the shades of the impervious banyan, to wait thy
coming with the evening sun, to bid thee a last farewell, and urge thee
to save thyself by an immediate flight; but by a miracle, wrought
doubtlessly by thy God for thee, that which seemed to lead us to
destruction, became the wondrous mean of preservation; and we found
safety where we could only hope for death.”
“Luxima,” said the Missionary, “let us believe that He, who alone could
save us, still extends around us the shelter of his wing. Let us, while
yet thou hast strength, fly these fatal shades. Behind those
pine-covered rocks, which the moon now silvers, there lies, I know, a
deep and entangled glen, which, I have heard, is held in superstitious
horror, and never approached by pious Hindus. This glen leads to Bembar,
by many a solitary path, made to facilitate the march of the caravan
from Thibet to Tatta, at this season of the year[14]. It was but
yesterday, some straggling troops, belonging to the caravan, passed
through the valley, and halted at no great distance hence, to traffic
with the Cashmirian merchants: these, as they often halt, we may
overtake in some lone way, out of the view of thy intolerant
countrymen.” While he spoke, they had proceeded on, and reached the
entrance to a ravine in the rocks, which, dark and tremendous, seemed
like a closing chasm above their heads, threatening destruction; but,
when they had reached its extremity, they found themselves in a
delicious glen, through whose trees were discernible the crescent
banners of the Mogul camp; and the sky-lamps, which marked the outposts
of the midnight guards. At this sight, the prophetic warning and
generous offers of the gallant Solyman rushed with equal force to the
minds of the wanderers; but both remained silent--Luxima, from an
instinctive delicacy, which mocked the refinement of acquired sentiment;
the Missionary, from a feeling less laudable and less disinterested.
Both involuntarily turned their eyes on each other, and suddenly
withdrawing them, changed colour; for, in spite of the awful vows since
made, and the virtuous resolutions since formed, the hearts of each
throbbed responsively to the dangerous recollection of that fatal scene,
to which the unexpected presence of the Mogul Prince had given birth.
Ere the mild and balmy night had passed its noon, the weary proselyte,
exhausted equally from fatigue of mind and body, felt that she would be
unable to proceed, if she snatched not the invigorating refreshment of a
short repose. The Missionary, with tender watchfulness, was the first
to observe her faltering steps, and sought out for her a mossy bank,
cradled by the luxuriant branches of a mango-tree; and, withdrawing to a
little distance, he at once guarded her slumber and gave himself up to
meditate on some precise plan for their future pilgrimage; which, if
they could overtake the caravan, whose track they had already
discovered, would be attended with but few difficulties. Yet he dared no
longer seek “the highways and public places,” to promulgate his
doctrines, and to evince his zeal. Withheld less by a principle of
self-preservation than by his fears for the safety and even life of his
innocent proselyte; he also felt his enthusiasm in the cause weakened,
by the apparent impossibility of its success; for he perceived that the
religious prejudices of Hindostan were too intimately connected with the
temporal prosperity of its inhabitants, with the established opinions,
with the laws, and even with the climate of the country, to be
universally subverted, but by a train of moral and political events,
which should equally emancipate their minds from antiquated error, in
which they were absorbed, and which should destroy the fundamental
principles of their loose and ill-digested government. He almost looked
upon the Mission, in which he had engaged, as hopeless; and he felt that
the miracle of that conversion, by which he expected to evince the
sacred truth of the cause in which he had embarked, could produce no
other effect than a general abhorrence of him who laboured to effect it,
and of her who had already paid the forfeit of all most precious to the
human breast, for that partial proselytism, to which her affections,
rather than her reason, had induced her. Yet, when he reflected that he
should return to Goa, the scenes of his former triumphs, followed only
by one solitary disciple, and that disciple a young and lovely woman,
his mind became confused, and he trembled to dwell on an idea fraught
with a thousand mortifying and cruel recollections. The dawn had already
beamed upon his harassing vigils, when Luxima stood before him,
resembling the star of the morning, bright in her softness, the mists
of a tender sadness hanging on the lustre of her looks. The Missionary
was revived by her presence; but the sweet and subtle transport, which
circulated through his veins, as he gazed on the being who now
considered him as her sole providence, he endeavoured to conceal beneath
a tranquil coldness of manner, which the secret ardour of his feelings,
the delicacy of his situation, and the pure and virtuous resolutions of
his mind, alike rendered necessary and laudable.
As they proceeded, he spoke to her of the plans he had devised, and of
his intention of placing her in a religious house when they arrived at
Goa. He spoke to her of the false religion she had abandoned, and of
the pure faith she had embraced.
Luxima answered only by gentle sighs, and by looks, which seemed to say,
“Whatever may be my future destiny, I am at least _now_ near you.”
The Missionary sought to avoid these looks, which, when they met his
eye, sunk to his heart, and disturbed his best resolutions; for never
had his Neophyte looked more lovely. Supported by a white wand, which he
had formed for her, of a bamboo, she moved lightly and timidly by his
side, like the genius of the sweet and solitary shades, in which they
wandered. The course of the rivers, the variation of the soil, and the
beacons held out to them by the surrounding mountains, with whose forms
they were well acquainted, were their guides; while the milk of the
young and luscious cocoa-nut, the cheering nectar extracted from the
pulp of the bilva-fruit, and the rice, and delicious fruits, which on
every side presented themselves, afforded at once nutrition and
refreshment[15]. Sometimes catching, sometimes losing, the faint track
of the caravan, the conviction of increasing safety, and the certainty
of overtaking it at Bembar, left them scarcely a fear, and scarcely a
hope, on the subject. For to wander through the lovely and magnificent
valley of Cashmire, was but to loiter amidst the enjoyments of Eden; and
to proceed by each other’s side--to catch the half-averted eyebeam,
which penetrated the soul--to observe the sudden glow which mantled on
the cheek--to participate in the same blissful feeling, and yet to
heighten, by submitting it to the same pure sense of virtue, was a state
of being too exquisite not to obliterate, in its transient enjoyment,
the memory of the past and the apprehension of the future. Restrained
and reserved even in the intimacy of their intercourse, they sought to
forget the existence of a passion it was now so dangerous to cherish.
The Missionary was regulated by religion and by honour; the Indian, by
sentiment and by instinctive delicacy. Solicitude tempered by reserve,
tenderness blended with respect, distinguished the manner of the Priest.
Modesty, which shrunk from the appearance of intrusion; and bashfulness,
trembling to betray the feelings it guarded, marked the conduct of the
Neophyte. Silent, except on subjects of religious sublimity, a look,
suddenly caught and as suddenly withdrawn, alone betrayed their
dangerous secret. They were frequently parted during the ardours of the
day, which prevented their continuing their journey; and sometimes, when
the night-dews fell heavily, the guardian Priest sought out for his
weary charge a grassy couch, where the madhucca had spread its downy
leaves; or where a luxurious and perfumed shade was afforded by the
sephalica, whose flowers unfold only their bloom and odour to the sighs
of night, and droop and wither beneath the first ray the sun darts o’er
their fragile loveliness: while _he_, not daring, even by a look, to
violate the pure and seraph slumber of confiding innocence, waked only
to guard her repose; or slept, to woo to his fancy the dream, which too
often, in illusive visions, gave to his heart her whom waking he
trembled to approach. When they arose, the twilight of the dawn
conducted them to the respective bath, which innumerable springs
afforded; and, when again they met, they offered together the incense
of the heart to Heaven, and proceeded on their pilgrimage. The path they
had taken was so sequestered, that they seldom risked discovery; but
when, amidst the haze of distance, they observed a human form, or caught
a human sound, they plunged into the umbrage of the surrounding shades,
until the absence of the intruder again gave them up to solitude and
silence. It was in moments such as these only, that the high mind of the
Missionary felt that it had forfeited its claim to the independence
which belongs to unblemished rectitude, and that the Indian remembered
she was an alien and an Outcast.
THE END OF VOL. II.
S. GOSNELL, _Printer, Little Queen Street, London_.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The new Emperor Aurengzebe had scarcely mounted his throne near
Delhi, when he was alarmed with intelligence of the march of Solyman
Sheko, by the skirts of the northern mountains, to join his father,
Daara, at Lahore.--Dow, 286.
[2] The Brahminical hell.
[3] Saint Catherine de Genes.
[4] It is thus Brahma is represented in his avatar of divine wisdom.
[5] Paraubahzah Vushtoo, or First Cause.
[6] The Indian Cupid is frequently represented armed with a flash of
lightning.
[7] Gungee, the presiding deity of the Ganges: she has eight vestal
attendants, which personify the eight principal rivers in Hindoostan.
[8] Flowers have always been the tasteful medium for the eloquence of
Eastern love: like the Peruvian quipas, a wreath, in India, is
frequently the record of a life.
[9] To quit life, before it quits them, is among the Hindus no uncommon
act of heroism; and this fatal custom arises from their doctrine of
metempsychosis, in which the faith of all the various casts is equally
implicit.
[10] This mystery is called the _Matricha-machom_. The Brahmins believe
that the soul is thus conducted to the brain, and that the spirit is
re-united to the Supreme Being.
[11] The vapour of naphtha which issues through the crevices of the
earth, is supposed to be the cause of the flame which is sometimes
observed in India. At Chittagong is a fountain which bursts into flame,
and which has its tutelar deities and presiding priests. When it is
purposely extinguished, it rekindles spontaneously.
[12] See translation of the Laws of Menu, by Sir William Jones.
[13] Such is the form of the Indian excommunication.
[14] “Selon les témoignages de tous les Katchmeriens, on voyoit partir
chaque année de le pays plusieurs caravans.”--_Voyages de_ BERNIER.
[15] “Il faut surtout considérer que l’abstinence de la chair des
animaux est une suite de la nature du climat.”--_Essai sur les Mœurs des
Nations, &c. &c. &c._
End of Project Gutenberg's The Missionary; vol. II, by Lady Sidney Morgan