The day was bright and ardent, the grotto was cool and shady; and the
Missionary felt no inclination to leave a retreat, so adapted to the
season and his tone of mind. He engaged in the perusal of the
Scriptures, an abridged translation of which he had made into the Hindu
dialect, and in devotional exercises and pious meditations: yet, for the
first time, he found his thoughts not always obedient to his will; but
he perceived that they had not changed their character, but their
object; and that, in reverting to the interview of the morning, they
still took into the scale of their reflection, the subject of his
mission.
When he had finished the holy offices of the evening, he walked forth to
enjoy its coolness and its beauty. He bent his steps involuntarily
towards the altar erected at the confluence of the streams. The whole
scene had changed its aspect with the sun’s course: it was still and
gloomy, and formed a strong relief to the luxuriancy of the avenue of
asoca-trees, on whose summit the western sky poured its flood of crimson
light. He wandered through its illuminated shades, till he suddenly
found himself in a little valley, almost surrounded by hills, and
opening, by a rocky defile, towards the mountains of Sirinagur, which
formed a termination to the vista. In the centre of the valley, a
stream, dividing into two branches, nearly surrounded a sloping mound,
which swelled from their banks. The mound was covered with flowering
shrubs, through whose entwining branches the shafts of a Verandah were
partially seen, while the Pavillion to which it belonged, was wholly
concealed. The eye of the Missionary was fascinated by the romantic
beauty of this fairy scene, softened in all its lovely features by the
declining light, which was throwing its last red beams upon the face of
the waters. All breathed the mystery of a consecrated spot, and every
tree seemed sacred to religious rites. The bilva, the shrub of the
goddess Durga[22]; the high flowering murva, whose nectarous pores emit
a scented beverage, and whose elastic fibres form the sacrificial
threads of the Brahmins; the bacula, the lovely tree of the Indian Eden;
and the lofty cadamba, which, dedicated to the third incarnation, is at
once the most elegant and holy of Indian trees; all spoke, that the
ground whereon he trod was consecrated; all gave a secret intimation to
his heart, that his eyes then dwelt upon the secluded retreat of the
vestal Priestess of Cashmire.
At the moment that he was struck by the conviction, a light and rustling
noise seemed to proceed from the summit of the mound. He drew back, and
casting up his eyes, perceived Luxima descending amidst the trees. She
came darting lightly forward, like an evening iris; no less brilliant in
hue, no less rapid in descent. She passed without observing the
Missionary, and her dark and flowing tresses left an odour on the air,
which penetrated his senses. He had not the power to follow, nor to
address her: he crossed himself, and prayed. He, who in the temple of
the idol had preached against idolatry to a superstitious multitude,
bold and intrepid as a self-devoted martyr, now, in a lovely solitude,
where all was calculated to sooth the feelings of his mind, and to
harmonize with the tender mildness of his mission, trembled to address a
young, a solitary, and timid woman. It seemed as if Heaven had withdrawn
its favour; as if the spirit of his zeal had passed away. While he
hesitated, Luxima had approached the stream, and the light of the
setting sun fell warmly round her. Thrice she bowed to the earth the
brow irradiated with his beams, and then raising her hands to the west,
while all the enthusiasm of a false, but ardent devotion, sparkled in
her up-turned eye, and diffused itself over her seraphic countenance,
she repeated the vesper worship of her religion.
It was then that a zeal no less enthusiastic, a devotion no less fervid,
animated the Christian Priest. He darted forward, and seized an arm thus
raised in impious homage. He discarded the usual mildness of his
evangelic feelings; with, vehemence he exclaimed, “Mistaken being! know
you what you do? that profanely you offer to the Created, that which
belongs to the Creator only!”
The Indian, silent from amazement, stood trembling in his grasp; but she
gazed for a moment on the Missionary, and, to an evident emotion of
apprehension and astonishment, succeeded feelings still more profound. A
resentful blush crimsoned her cheek, and her dark brows knit angrily
above the languid orbs they shaded. The touch of the stranger was
sacrilege. He had seized a hand, which the royal cast of her country
would have trembled to have approached: he had equally shocked the
national prejudice and natural delicacy of the woman, and violated the
sacred character and holy office of the Priestess; she withdrew,
therefore, from his clasp, shuddering and indignant, and looking
imperiously on him, exclaimed, “Depart hence:--that, by an instant
ablution in these consecrated waters, I may efface the pollution of thy
touch; leave me, that I may expiate a crime, for which I must else
innocently suffer.”
The Missionary, with an air of dignified meekness, letting fall his
arms, and casting down his eyes to the earth, replied: “Daughter, in
approaching thee, I obey a will higher than thy command; I obey a Power,
which bids me tell thee, that the prejudice to which thy mind submits,
is false alike to happiness and to reason; and that a religion which
creates distinction between the species, cannot be the religion of
truth; for He who alike made thee and me, knows no distinction: He who
died to redeem my sins, died also for thy salvation. Children of
different regions, we are yet children of the same Parent, created by
the same Hand, and inheritors of the same immortality.”
He ceased. Luxima gazed timidly on him, and expressions strongly marked,
and of a varying character, diffused themselves over her countenance. At
last she exclaimed, “Stranger, thou sayest we are of the same _cast_.
Art thou, then, an irradiation of the Deity, and, like me, wilt thou
finally be absorbed in his divine effulgence? Ah, no! thou wouldst
deceive me, and cannot. Thou art _he_, the daring Infidel, who, in the
temple at Lahore, denied all faith in the triple God, the holy
Treemoortee; Brahma, Vishna, and Shiven: thou art he, who boldly dared
to imitate the sixth avatar, in which Brahma, as a priest, did come to
destroy the religions of nations, and to diffuse his own: yes, thou art
he, who would seem a god among us, and, by seducing our minds from the
true faith, deprive us of our _cast_ on earth, and plunge us, hereafter,
into the dark Nerekah, the abode of evil spirits. I know thee well, and
thy power is great and dreadful; for in the midst of the shrines of the
Gods I worship, thy image only fixed my eye; and when Brahma spoke by
the lips of his Guru, thy voice only left its accents on my ear. Ere
thou didst speak, I took thee for the tenth avatar, which is yet to
come; and when I listened to thee, I deemed thee one of the Genii of the
Arab’s faith, whose words are false though sweet. But they say thou art
a Christian, and a sorcerer; and punishment, with a _black aspect_ and a
_red eye_, waits on the souls of them who listen to, and who believe
thee.”
With these words, rapidly pronounced, blushing at her own temerity, in
thus addressing a stranger of another sex, and involved in the confusion
of her own new and powerful feelings, she would have glided away; but
the Missionary following, caught the drapery of her robe, and said, with
impressive dignity, “I command thee, in the name of Him who sent me, to
stay and hear.”
Luxima turned round. Her cheek was pale, she trembled, and raised her
hands in the attitude of supplication. Shrinking back upon herself,
fear, mingled with a sense of the profanation she endured, seemed to be
the leading emotion of her soul. The Missionary, struck by the pleading
softness of her air, and apprehensive of forfeiting all chance of
another interview, by a perseverance in now detaining her, drew back a
few paces, and crossing his hands on his bosom, and casting his eyes to
earth, he sighed, and said, “Go! thou art free; but take with thee the
prayers and blessings of him, who, to procure thy eternal happiness,
would joy to sacrifice his mortal life.” He spoke with enthusiasm and
feeling:--Luxima heard him in amazement and emotion. Free to go, she yet
lingered for a moment; then raising her eyes to heaven, as if she
invoked the protection of some tutelary deity, she turned abruptly away,
and gliding up the mount, disappeared amidst the ombrage of its trees.
The Missionary remained motionless. The result of this interview
convinced him, that in the same light as the infidel appeared to him, in
such had he appeared to her; alike beyond the pale of salvation, alike
dark in error. Her prejudices, indeed, extended even beyond the abstract
sentiment; for his words were not only deemed sacrilegious, but his very
presence was considered as pollution: and her opinions seemed so
animated by her enthusiasm, her religious faith so blended with her
human ambition, that he believed he might well deem the conversion of
her nation possible, could hers be once effected. But to those
obstacles were opposed the success, which had even already crowned his
progressive efforts: either by a fortunate chance, or by a divine
providence, he had established himself near her residence; he was
acquainted with the places of her morning and evening worship; he had
addressed her, and she had replied to him. She had, indeed, confessed
she feared his presence, and she had endeavoured to fly him; but had she
not also avowed the deep impressions he had made on her mind? that she
had mistaken him for an incarnation of her worshipped god; and, in the
consecrated temple of her faith, where she stood, not more adoring than
adored, that _his_ image only rested on her imagination, _his_ accents
only dwelt upon her ear?
The Missionary moved rapidly away, as this conviction came home to his
heart. He believed he felt it all, as a religious should only feel,
through the medium of his mission, and not as a man through the agency
of his feelings; and he returned thanks to Heaven, that the grace of
conversion was already working in the pure, but erring, soul of the
innocent infidel, slowly indeed, and under the influence of the senses;
but the ear which had been charmed, the eye which had been fixed, were
organs of intellect, the powerful sources of mind itself.
Another day rose on the cave of the apostolic Nuncio; but he extended
not his wanderings beyond the huts of the neighbouring Goalas; when he
approached them, he was hailed with smiles; but when he attempted to
preach to them, they listened to him with indifference, or heard with
incredulity. He sighed, and believing his hour was not yet come, looked
forward, with religious patience, to the moment, when he should present,
to the worshippers of Brahma, a Neophyte, whose conversion would be the
sole miracle which graced his mission: but what miracle could better
evince the divinity of the doctrine he advanced, than that a Priestess
of Brahma, a Prophetess, a Brachmachira, should believe in, and receive
it? He beheld, therefore, from the summit of his asylum, towns and
villages, the palaces of Rajahs, and the cottages of the Ryots; but he
approached them not. The charms of a solitude, so lovely and so
profound, grew with an increasing and hourly influence on his heart and
imagination. Pure light and pure air, the softest sounds and sweetest
odours, skies for ever sunny, and shades for ever cool, the song of
birds and murmur of cascades, all, in a residence so enchanting,
rendered life itself an innocent enjoyment. The goalas called him “The
Hermit of the Grotto of Congelations;” and believing him to be an
harmless fanatic, and a holy man of some unknown faith, they respected
his solitude, and never intruded on it, but to furnish him with the
simple necessaries his simple life required[23].
For some time he forbore approaching the consecrated grove of the
Priestess: he wished to awaken confidence, and feared to banish it by
importunity. On the evening of the third day, he directed his steps
towards the pavilion of Luxima, always concealing himself amidst the
trees, lest he should be observed by any of the few attendants who
resided with her. At a little distance from the confluence of the
streams, his ear was struck by a moan of suffering. He flew to the spot
whence it proceeded, and beheld a young fawn in the fangs of a wolf; an
animal rarely seen in the innoxious shades of Cashmire, but which is
sometimes driven, by hunger, from the mountain wilds of Thibet into the
valley. The animal, fierce in want, now suddenly dropt his bleeding
prey, and turned on the man. The bright glare of his distended eyes, the
discovery of his fang-teeth, his inclined head, the sure presages of
destruction, all spoke the attack he meditated. The Missionary, firm and
motionless, met his advance with the spear of his crosier; and though
the wolf rushed upon its point, the slight wound it inflicted only
served to whet his rage. He gained upon his opponent. The Missionary
threw away the crosier. He had no alternative: he rushed upon the
animal; he struggled with its strength: the contest was unequal; but it
was but of a moment’s duration: the animal lay strangled at his feet,
and the Missionary returned his acknowledgments to that Power, which had
thus nerved his arm, and preserved his life. He then turned to the fawn.
It was but slightly wounded; and as it lay trembling on the grass, its
preserver could not but admire its singular beauty. Its form was
perfect, its velvet coat was smooth and polished, and its delicate neck
was encircled by a silver collar, clasped with the mountain gem of
Cashmire. Some Shanscrit characters were engraven on this collar, but
the Missionary paused not to peruse them. The suppliant looks of the
gentle and familiar fawn excited his pity: it seemed no stranger to
human attentions, and caressed the hand of the Missionary, when he took
it in his arms to bear it to his cave; for it was unable to move, and
his benevolent nature would not permit him to leave it to perish. It was
also evident, that it was the favourite of some person of distinction,
to whom he would take pleasure in restoring it; for though he had
conquered all human affections in himself, and had lived alone for
Heaven, neither loving nor beloved on earth, yet sometimes he remotely
guessed at the happiness such a feeling might bestow on others less
anxious for perfection; and a vague wish would sometimes escape his
heart, that _he_ too might love: but when that wish grew with
indulgence, and extended itself to a higher object; when the possible
existence of a dearer, warmer, feeling, filled his enthusiast soul, and
vibrated through all his sensible being, then the blood flowed like a
burning torrent in his veins, his heart quickened in its throb to a
feverish pulsation--he trembled, he shuddered, he prayed, and was
resigned.
When he had reached the grotto, he placed his helpless burden on some
moss. He bathed its wound, and applying to it some sanative herbs, was
about to bind it with the long fibres of the cusa-grass, when the light
which flowed in upon his task was suddenly obscured. He was on his knees
at the moment: he turned round his head, and perceived that the shadow
fell from a form which hovered at the entrance of his grotto. The form
was Luxima’s: it was the Priestess of Brahma who presented herself at
the entrance of the Christian’s cave: it was the zealous Brachmachira,
who stood within a few steps of the Christian’s altar. The Missionary
remained in the motionless attitude of surprise. He could not be
deceived: it was no vision of ethereal mildness, such as descends upon
the abodes of holy men; for, all pale, and spiritual, and heaven-born as
it looked, it was still all woman: it was still the Idolatress. With
eyes of languid softness, with looks so wild, so timid in their glance,
as if she trembled at the shade her figure pictured on the sunny earth;
before the Monk had power to rise, she advanced into the centre of the
grotto, and kneeling opposite to him, and beside the fawn, she said,
“Almora, my dear and faithful animal; thou whom I have fostered, as thy
mother would have fostered thee; thou dost, then, still live! and the
innocent spirit thy lovely form embodies, has not yet fled to some less
pure receptacle.” At the sound of her caressing voice, the favourite
raised her languid eyes, and fawned upon her hands. “It lives!” she said
joyfully; and turning her look upon the Missionary, added, in a softer
voice, “And thou hast saved its life?”
As she spoke, her eyes fell in bashful disorder, beneath the fixed look
of the Missionary; and again gently raising their dewy light, threw
around the cavern, a glance of wonder and curiosity. The sun was
setting radiantly opposite to its entrance, and the spars of its vaulted
roof shone with the hue and lustre of vivid rubies: pure rays of
refracted light fell from the golden crucifix on the surface of the
marble altar; and the figure of the Monk, habited only in a white jama,
finely harmonized with the scene, and gave to the grotto that air of
enchantment, which the Indian fancy delights to dwell on. The mind of
Luxima seemed rapt in the wondrous imagery by which she was surrounded.
She again turned her eyes on the Monk, and suddenly starting from her
position, the head of the fawn fell from her bosom. “Thou art wounded!”
she exclaimed, with a voice of pity and of terror. The Monk perceived
that the breast of his jama was stained with blood. “Thou wilt bleed to
death!” she continued, trembling, and approaching him: “thou, who,
unlike other infidels, art so tender towards a suffering animal, art
thou to suffer unassisted?”
“My religion teaches me to assist and to relieve all who live and
suffer,” said the Missionary; “but here, who is there to assist
me?”--Luxima changed colour; she flew out of the grotto, and in a moment
returned. “Here,” she said eagerly, “here is a lotos-leaf filled with
water; bathe thy wound: and here is an herb, sovereign in fresh wounds;
apply it to thy bosom: and to-morrow an Arab physician from Sirinagur
shall attend thee.”--“The wound lies not in my bosom,” replied the Monk:
“it is my right arm which has been torn by the fangs of the wolf, and I
cannot assist myself; yet I thank thee for thy charitable attentions.”
Luxima stood suspenseful and agitated. Natural benevolence, confirmed
prejudice, the impulse of pity, and the restraint of religion, all were
seen to struggle in the expression of a countenance, which faithfully
indicated every movement of the soul. At last nature was victorious, and
raising her eyes and hands to heaven, she exclaimed, “Praise be to
Vishnu! who still protects those who are pure in heart, even though
their hands be polluted!” Then gently, timidly, approaching the
Missionary, she knelt beside him, and raising the sleeve of his jama,
she bathed the wound, which was slight, applied to it the sanative
herbs, and, tearing off part of her veil, bound his arm with the
consecrated fragment. Thus engaged, the colour frequently visited and
retired from her cheek. When her hand met the Missionary’s, she
shuddered and shrank from the touch; and when his eye dwelt on hers, she
suddenly averted their glance. They fell at last upon her own faded
wreath of the buchamhaca, which was suspended from a point of the rock:
she blushed, and cast them down on the rosary of the Christian Hermit,
which, at that moment, encircled her own arm. She perceived that his
eyes also rested on them. “I found them,” she said, replying to his
look; “for having missed a fawn, who had followed me to the stream of
evening worship, I implored the assistance of Moodaivee, the Goddess of
Misfortune, and she conducted me to a spot, where I perceived the
shining hairs of my favourite, lying scattered around the body of a
wolf, who lay, grim and terrific, even in death. I said, ‘Who is he,
powerful as the flaming column, in which Shiven did manifest his
strength--who is he, bold and terrible, who thus destroys the
destroyer?’ Thy beads told the tale; and the red drops which fell from
the wound of the fawn, tracked the path to this cave of wonders, where I
have found thee, kind infidel, acting as an Hindu would have acted; who
shudders as he moves, lest, beneath his incautious steps, some viewless
insect bleeds. Receive, then, into thy care, this wounded animal; and
when it can be removed, lead it, at sunrise, to the confluence of the
streams; there I will receive it.”
As she spoke, she advanced to the entrance of the cave, and performing
the salaam, the graceful salutation of the East, disappeared. Had a
celestial visitant irradiated with its brightness the gloom of his
cavern, the Missionary would not have been more overwhelmed by emotions
of surprise and admiration; but, in recovering from his confusion, he
recollected, with a strong feeling of self-reproach, that he had
suffered her to depart, without availing himself of so singular an
opportunity of increasing her confidence, and extending their
intercourse. He arose--and resuming his monkish robe, followed her with
a rapid step. He perceived her, like a vapour which a sunbeam lights,
floating amidst the dark shadows of the surrounding trees. The echo of
his footsteps caught her ear: she turned round, and the flush of quick
surprise mantled even to her brow; yet a smile of bashful pleasure
played round her lips. The Missionary turned away his eyes, and secretly
wished she might not thus smile again; for the pearl, whose snowy lustre
the chunam had not yet dimmed, marked by contrast the ruby brightness
of those lips, which, when they smiled, lost all their usual character
of seraph meekness, and chased from the playful countenance of the
woman, the dignified tranquillity which sat upon the holy look of the
Priestess.
The Missionary was now beside her. “The dew of evening,” he said, “falls
heavy, the sun is about to withdraw its last beam from the horizon, and
the cause which drove a ferocious animal into these harmless shades may
still exist, and send another from the heights of Thibet; therefore,
daughter, have I followed thee!” The Indian looked not insensible, nor
yet displeased by his attention; but when he called her _daughter_, she
raised her eyes in wonder to the form of him, who thus assumed the
sacred rights of paternity: but she read not there his claim, and
repeated in a low voice--“_Daughter!_”--“Yes,” he replied, as a vague
sense of pleasure thrilled through his heart, when she repeated the
word; “yes, I would look upon thee as a daughter, I would be unto thee
as a father, I would guide the wanderings of thy mind, as now I guide
thy steps, and I would protect thee from evil and from error, as I now
protect thee from danger and from accident.”
The countenance of Luxima softened as he spoke. He now addressed
himself, not to her prejudices, which were unvanquishable, but to her
feelings, which were susceptible: he addressed her, not as the priest of
a religion she feared, but as a man, whom it was impossible to listen
to, or to behold, without interest; and the Missionary, observing the
means most likely to fascinate her attention and to win her confidence,
now dropt the language of his mission, and spoke to her with an
eloquence, never before exerted but in the cause of religion. He spoke
to her of the lovely wonders of her native region; of the impression
which the venerable figure of her grandsire had made on his mind, in the
temple of Lahore; and of her own story, which, he confessed, had deeply
interested him: he spoke to her of the loss of affectionate parents, of
the untimely fate of a youthful bridegroom, and of the nature of the
austere life she herself led; of the tender ties she had relinquished,
of the precious feelings she had sacrificed. In adverting thus to her
life, he was governed by an acute consciousness of all the privations of
his own; he spoke of the subjection of the passions, like one
constituted to know their tyranny, and capable of opposing it; and he
applauded the fortitude of virtue, like one who estimated the difficulty
of resistance by the force of the external temptation and the internal
impulse: he spoke a language not usually his own--the _language of
sentiment_: but if it wanted something of the force, it wanted nothing
of the pathos which distinguished the eloquence of his religion.
Luxima heard him with emotion. Her heart was eloquent, but the nature of
her religion, and feminine reserve, alike sealed her lips. She replied
to his observation by looks, and to his questions by monosyllables. He
only understood, from her timid and brief answers, that her grandsire
was then residing at his college at Sirinagur, and that she lived in
religious retirement, in her pavilion, with only two female attendants,
wholly devoted to the discipline and exercises of her profession. But
though her words were few, reserved, and guarded; yet the warm blush of
sudden emotion, the playful smile of unrepressed pleasure, the low sigh
of involuntary sadness, and all those simple and obvious expressions of
strong and tender feelings, which, in an advanced state of society, are
obscured by ceremony, or concealed by affectation, betrayed, to the
Monk, a character, in which tenderness and enthusiasm, and genius and
sensibility, mingled their attributes.
When she had reached the base of the mound, the Missionary sought not to
proceed. “Daughter,” he said, “thou art now within the safe asylum of
thy home. Peace be unto thee! and may He, who gave us equally hearts to
feel his goodness, guard and protect thee!” As he spoke, he raised his
illumined eyes to heaven, and clasped his hands in the suppliant
attitude of prayer. The dovelike eyes and innocent hands of the Indian
were raised in the same direction; for, gazing on the glories of the
firmament, a feeling of rapturous devotion, awakened and exalted by the
enthusiasm of the Missionary, filled her soul.
In this sacred communion, the Christian Saint and Heathen Priestess felt
in common and together; and their eyes were only withdrawn from heaven,
to become fixed on each other. The beams of both were humid, and both
secretly felt the sympathy by which they were united. Luxima withdrew in
silence; and the Missionary, as he caught the last glimpse of her form,
sighed, and said, “How worthy she is to be saved! how obviously does a
dawning grace shed its pure light over the dark prejudices of her
wandering mind!” Then he recalled her looks, her blushes, her words: all
alike breathed of a soul, formed for the highest purposes of devotion;
a heart endowed with the most exquisite feelings of nature: and, in
meditating on the character of his future proselyte, he remained
wandering about the shades of her dwelling, until the rays of a midnight
moon silvered their foliage; then a strain of soft and solemn music
faintly stole on his ear, and powerfully awakened his attention. This
mysterious sound proceeded from the summit of the mound; and led by
strains which harmonized with the hour, the place, and with the peculiar
tone of his feelings and his mind, he ascended the acclivity; but it was
with slow and doubtful steps, as if he were impelled to act by some
secret impulse, which he did not approve, and could not resist. As he
reached the summit of the mound, he perceived, by the peculiar odours
which breathed around him, that it was planted with the rarest and
richest shrubs. A spring, gushing from its brow, shed a light dew on
every side, which bestowed an eternal freshness on the balmy air, and on
those fragrant flowers, which opened now their choicest sweets.
A pavilion, surrounded by a light and elegant verandah, rose, like a
fairy structure, from the midst of the surrounding shades; and, from one
of the lattices, proceeded those aërial sounds, which,
“Sweet as from blest voices uttering joy,”
had first allured his attention. It seemed to inclose a particular
apartment. Its lattices were composed of the aromatic verani, whose
property it is, to allay a feverish heat; and which, by being dashed by
the waters of an artificial fountain, bestowed a fragrant coolness on
the air. A light gleamed through one of the lattices, and the Missionary
found no difficulty in penetrating, with his eye, into the interior of
the room. He perceived that the light proceeded from a lamp, suspended
from the centre of the ceiling, which was painted with figures taken
from the Indian mythology. Beneath the lamp stood a small altar, whose
ivory steps were strewed with flowers and with odours.
The idol, to whom the offerings were made, wore the form and air of a
child: by his cany bow, his arrows tipt with Indian blossoms, the
Missionary recognised him as the lovely twin of the Grecian Cupid;
while, before her tutelar deity, knelt Luxima, playing on the Indian
lyre, which she accompanied with a hymn to Camdeo. The sounds, wild and
tender, died upon her lips, and she seemed to
“Feed on thoughts,
Which voluntary mov’d harmonious numbers.”
She then arose, and poured incense into a small vase, in which the
leaves of the sacred sami-tree burnt with a blue phosphoric light: then
bowing to the altar, she said, “Glory be to Camdeo; him by whom Brahma
and Vishnu are filled with rapturous delight; for the true object of
glory is an union with our beloved: that object really exists; but,
without it, both heart and soul would have no existence.”
As she pronounced this impassioned invocation, a tender and ardent
enthusiasm diffused itself over her countenance: her eyelids gently
closed, and soft and delightful visions seemed to absorb her soul and
feelings.
The Missionary hastened away, and rapidly descended the mound. He had
seen, he had heard, too much: even the very air he breathed communicated
its fatal softness to his imagination, and tended to enervate his mind.
A short time back, and the Indian had shared with him a feeling as pure
and as devotional as it was sublime and awful: he found her now involved
in idolatrous worship. Hitherto a chaste and vestal reserve had
consecrated her look, and guarded her words; now a tender and
impassioned languor was distinguished in both: and the virgin priestess,
the widowed bride, who had hitherto appeared exclusively consecrated to
the service of that Heaven she imaged upon earth, seemed now only alive
to the existence of feelings in which Heaven could have no share.
For whose sake was this tender invocation made? lived there an object
worthy to steal between the vestal Prophetess and her paradise of
Indra? He recalled her look and air, and thought that as he had last
beheld her in all the grace and blandishment of beauty and emotion, she
resembled less the future foundress of a religious order, than one of
the lovely Rajini, or female Passions, which, in the poetical mythology
of her religion, were supposed to preside over the harmony of the
spheres, and to steal their power over the hearts of men by sounds which
breathed of heaven. But he discarded the seducing image, as little
consonant to the tone of his mind, while he involuntarily repeated, “The
true object of soul and mind is the glory of a union with our beloved;”
until, suddenly recollecting the doctrines of mystic love, and that,
even in his own pure faith, there were sects who addressed their homage
to Heaven in terms of human passion[24], Luxima stood redeemed in his
mind: for, whatever glow of imagination warms the worship of colder
regions, he was aware that, in India, the ardent gratitude of created
spirits was wont to ascend to the Creator in expressions of the most
fervid devotion; that the tender eloquence of mystic piety too
frequently assumed the character of human feelings; and that the faint
line, which sometimes separated the language of love from that of
religion, was too delicate to be perceptible but to the pure in spirit
and devout in mind. He was himself of a rigid principle and a stoical
order, and the language of his piety, like its sentiment, was lofty and
sublime. Yet he was not intolerant towards the soft and pious weaknesses
of others; and he now believed that the ardent enthusiasm of the lovely
Heathen was a sure presage of the zeal and faith of the future
Christian.
The little hills which encircled the vale where chance had fixed the
residence of the Nuncio, seemed now to him as a magic boundary, whose
line it was impossible to pass; and during the day which succeeded to
that of Luxima’s visit, he wandered near the path which led to her
pavilion, or returned to his grotto, to caress the fawn she had
committed to his care; but always with a feeling of doubt and anxiety,
as if expectation and disappointment divided his mind; for he thought it
probable, that the humanity of Luxima might lead her, now her first
prejudices were vanquished, again to visit him, to inquire into the
state of his own slight wound, or to see her convalescent favourite.
Once he believed he heard her voice: he flew to the mouth of the grotto,
but it was only the sweet soft whistle of the packimar, the Indian
bird-catcher, as he hung, almost suspended, from the projection of a
neighbouring rock, pointing his long and slender lines tipped with lime
to the gaudy plumage of the pungola, who builds her nest in the recesses
of the highest cliffs; or lured to his nets, with imitative note, the
lovely and social magana, the red-breast of the East. Again he heard a
light and feathery foot-fall: he thought it must be Luxima’s, but he
only perceived at a distance, a slender youth bending his rapid way,
assisted by a slight and brilliant spear; and by his jama of snowy
white, and crimson sash and turban, he recognised the useful and swift
Hircarah, the faithful courier of some Indian rajah or Mogul omrah.
The sun, as it faded from the horizon, withdrew with it, hopes scarcely
understood by him who indulged them. Hitherto his mind had received
every impression, and combined every idea, through a religious
influence; and even the Indian, in all the splendour of her beauty, her
youth, and her enthusiasm, had stolen on his imagination solely through
the medium of his zeal. Until this moment, woman was to him a thing
unguessed at and unthought of. In Europe and in India, the few who had
met his eye were of that class in society to whom delicacy of form was
so seldom given, by whom the graces of the mind were so seldom
possessed. Hitherto he had only stood between them and Heaven: they had
approached him penitent and contrite, faded by time, or chilled by
remorse; and he had felt towards them as saints are supposed to feel,
who see the errors from which they are themselves exempt. His
experience, therefore, afforded him no parallel for the character and
form of the Priestess. A rapturous vision had, indeed, given him such
forms of heaven to gaze on; but on earth he had seen nothing to which he
could assimilate, or by which compare her.
Yet, in reflecting on her charms, he only considered them as rendering
her more worthy to be converted, and more capable of converting. He
remembered that the pure light of Christianity owed its first diffusion
to the influence of woman; and that the blood of martyred vestals had
flowed to attest their zeal and faith, with no inadequate effect. This
consideration, therefore, sanctified the solicitude which Luxima
awakened in his mind; and anxiously to expect her presence, and
profoundly to feel her absence, were, he believed, sentiments which
emanated from his religious zeal, and not emotions belonging to his
selfish feeling.
On the evening of the following day, he repaired to the altar at the
confluence of the streams, accompanied by the fawn, which was now
sufficiently recovered to be restored to its mistress. His heart
throbbed with a violence new to its sober pulse, when he perceived
Luxima standing beneath the shadowy branches of a cannella-alba, or
cinnamon-tree, looking like the deity of the stream, in whose lucid wave
her elegant and picturesque form was reflected. The bright buds of the
water-loving lotos were twined round her arms and bosom: she seemed
fresh from her morning worship, and the enthusiasm of devotion still
threw its light upon her features; but when the Missionary stood before
her, this devotional expression was lost in the splendour of her
illuminated countenance. The pure blood mantling to her cheek gradually
suffused her whole face with radiant blushes: a tender shyness hung upon
her downcast eyes; and a smiling softness, a bashful pleasure, finely
blended with a religious dignity, involved her whole person. There was
so much of the lustre of beauty, the freshness of youth, the charm of
sentiment, the mystery of devotion, and the spell of grace, in her
look, her air, her attitude, that the Missionary stood rapt in silent
contemplation of her person, and wondering that one so fit for heaven
should yet remain on earth.
The fawn, which had burst from the string of twisted grass by which the
Missionary led it, now sprung to the feet of her mistress, who lavished
on her favourite the most infantile caresses; and this little scene of
re-union gave time to the Missionary to recover the reserved, dignity of
the apostolic Nuncio, which the abruptly awakened feelings of the man
had put to flight. “Daughter,” he said, “health and peace to thee and
thine! May the light of the true religion effuse its lustre o’er thy
soul, as the light of the sun now irradiates thy form!”
As he spoke a language so similar to that in which the devotions of the
heathen were wont to flow, he touched, by a natural association of
ideas, on the chord of her enthusiasm; and thrice bowing to the sun, she
replied, “I adore that effulgent power, in whose lustre I now shine, and
of which I am myself an irradiated manifestation.”
The Missionary started; his blood ran cold as he thus found himself so
intimately associated in the worship of an infidel; while, as if
suddenly inspired, he raised his hands and eyes to heaven, and,
prostrate on the earth, prayed aloud, and with the eloquence of angels,
for her conversion.
Luxima, gazing and listening, stood rapt in wonder and amazement, in awe
and admiration. She heard her name tenderly pronounced, and inseparably
connected with supplication to Heaven in her behalf: she beheld tears,
and listened to sighs, of which she alone was the object, and which were
made as offerings to the suppliant’s God, that she might embrace a mode
of belief, to whose existence, until now, she was almost a stranger.
Professing, herself, a religion which unites the most boundless
toleration to the most obstinate faith; the most perfect indifference to
proselytism, to the most unvanquishable conviction of its own supreme
excellence; she could not, even remotely, comprehend the pious
solicitude for her conversion, which the words and emotion of the
Christian betrayed; but from his prayer, and the exhortations he
addressed to her, she understood, that she had been the principal object
of his visiting Cashmire, and that her happiness, temporal and eternal,
was the subject of his ardent hopes and eloquent supplications.
This conviction sunk deep into her sensible and grateful heart, which
was formed for the exercise of all those feelings which raise and purify
humanity; and it softened, without conquering, the profound and
firm-rooted prejudices of her mind; and when the Monk arose, she seated
herself on a shelving bank, and motioned to him to place himself beside
her. He obeyed, and a short pause ensued, which the eloquent and fixed
looks of the Indian alone filled up; at last, she said, in accent of
emotion, “Christian, thou hast named me an idolatress; what means that
term, which must sure be evil, since, when thou speakest it, methinks
thou dost almost seem to shudder.”
“I call thee idolatress,” he returned, “because, even now, thou didst
offer to the sun that worship, which belongs alone to Him who said, ‘Let
there be light; and there was light.’”--“I adore the sun,” said Luxima,
with enthusiasm, “as the great visible luminary; the emblem of that
incomparably greater Light, which can alone illumine our souls.”--“Ah!”
he replied, “at least encourage this first principle of true faith, this
pure idea of an essential Cause, this sentiment of the existence of a
God, which is the sole idea innate to the mind of man.”--“I would adore
Him in his works,” replied the Priestess; “but when I would contemplate
him in his essence, I am dazzled; I am overwhelmed; my soul shrinks
back, affrighted at its own presumption. I feel only the mighty interval
which separates us from the Deity; overpowered, I sink to the earth,
abashed and humbled in my conscious insignificance.”
“Such,” said the Missionary, “are the timid feelings of a soul,
struggling with error, and lost in darkness. It is by the operation of
divine grace only, that we are enabled to contemplate the Creator in
himself; it is by becoming a Christian that that divine grace only can
be obtained!”
Luxima shuddered as he spoke. “No,” she said; “the feeling which would
prompt me to meet the presence of my Creator; to image his nature to my
mind; to form a distinct idea of his being, power, and attributes, would
overpower me with fear and with confusion.”
As she spoke, a religious awe seemed to take possession of her soul.
She trembled; her countenance was agitated; and she repeated rapidly the
creed of the faith she professed, prostrating herself on the earth, in
sign of the profound submission and humility of her heart. The
Missionary was touched by a devotion so pure and so ardent; and, when
she had ceased to pray, he would have raised her from the earth; but,
warm in all the revived feelings of her religion, her prejudices
rekindled with her zeal; she shrunk from an assistance she would have
now deemed it sacrilegious to accept, and, with a crimson blush, she
haughtily exclaimed, “As the shadow of the pariah defiles the bosom of
the stream over which it hangs its gloom, so is the descendant of Brahma
profaned by the touch of one who is neither of the same cast nor of the
same sex.”
The Missionary stood confused and overwhelmed by sentiments so
incongruous, and by principles so discordant, as those which seemed to
blend and to unite themselves in the character and mind of this
extraordinary enthusiast. At one moment, the purest adoration of the
Supreme Being, and the most sublime conceptions of his attributes,
betrayed themselves in her eloquent words; in the next, she appeared
wholly involved in the wildest superstitions of her idolatrous nation.
Now she hung upon his words with an obvious delight, which seemed
mingled with conviction; and now she shrunk from his approach, as if he
belonged to some species condemned of Heaven. To argue with her was
impossible; for there was an incoherence in her ideas, which was not to
be reconciled, or replied to. To listen to her was dangerous; for the
eloquence of genius and feeling, and the peculiar tenets of her sect,
gave a force to her errors, and a charm to her look, which weakened even
the zeal of conversion in the priest, in proportion as it excited the
admiration of the man. Determined, therefore, no longer to confide in
himself, nor to trust to human influence on a soul so bewildered, so
deep in error, the Missionary drew from his bosom the scriptural volume,
translated into the dialect of the country, and, presenting it to her,
said, “Daughter, thou seest before thee a man, who has subdued the
passions incidental to his nature; a man, who has trampled beneath his
feet the joys of youth, of rank, of wealth; who has abandoned his
country and his friends, his ease and his pleasure, and crossed perilous
seas, and visited distant regions, and endured pain, and vanquished
obstacles, that others might share with him that bright futurity,
reserved for those who believe, and follow the divine precepts which
this sacred volume contains. Judge, then, of its purity and influence,
by the sacrifices it enables man to make. Take it; and may Heaven pour
into thy heart its celestial grace, that, as thou readest, thou mayst
edify and believe!”
Luxima took the book, gazing silently on him who presented it. His
countenance, the tone of his voice, seemed no less to affect her senses,
than the solemnity of his address to impress and touch her mind. The
Missionary moved slowly away; he had restored his mind to its wonted
holy calm; he wished not again to encounter the eyes, or listen to the
accents of the Indian. If she were not influenced by the inspired
writings he had put into her hand, “neither would she by one who should
descend from heaven.”
He proceeded on, nor glanced one look behind him; and, though he heard a
light foot-fall near him, yet his eyes were still fixed upon his rosary.
At last a sweet and low voice pronounced the name of “Father!” The
tender epithet sunk to his heart: he paused, and Luxima stood beside
him. He turned his eyes on her for a moment, but suddenly withdrawing
them, he fastened their glances on the earth. “Daughter,” he said, “what
wouldst thou?”--“Thy forgiveness!” she replied timidly: “I shrunk from
thy approach, and therefore I fear to have offended thee; for haply the
women of thy nation offend not their gods, when men of other casts
approach them, and they forbid it not.”
“The God whom they adore,” he said, “judges not by the act alone, but by
the motive. The pure in heart commit no evil deeds; and, perhaps, there
are women, even of thy nation, daughter, who would deem the presence of
a Christian minister no profanation to their purity.”
“But I,” she returned, with majesty, “I am a sacerdotal woman! a
consecrated vestal, and a guarded Priestess! And know, Christian, that
the life of a vestal should resemble the snow-buds of the ipomea, when,
hid in their virgin calix, the sun’s ray has never kissed their leaves.
Yet, lest thou part from me in anger, accept this sacrifice.”
As she spoke, she averted her eyes. A deep blush coloured her cheek;
and, trembling between an habitual prejudice and a natural feeling, she
extended to the Missionary hands of a pure and exquisite beauty, which
never before had known a human pressure. The Missionary took them in
silence. He believed that the rapid pulsation of his heart arose from
the triumphant feeling excited by the conquest of a fatal prejudice; but
when he recollected also, that this was the first time the hands of a
woman were ever folded in his own, he started, and suddenly dropt them;
while Luxima, animated by a devotional fervour, clasped them on her
bosom, and said, in a low and tender voice, “Father, thou who art
thyself pure, and holy as a Brahmin’s thought, pray for me to thy gods;
I will pray for thee to mine!” Then turning her eyes for a moment on
him, she pronounced the Indian salaam, and, with a soft sigh and
pensive look, moved slowly away.
The Missionary pursued her with his glance, until the thickening shade
of a group of mangoostan-trees concealed her from his view. Her sigh
seemed still to breathe on his ear, with a deathless echo: at last, he
abruptly started, and walked rapidly away, as if, in leaving a spot
where all breathed of her, he should leave the idea of her beauty and
her softness behind him. He endeavoured to form an abstract idea of her
character, independent of her person; to consider the mind distinct from
the woman; to remember only the prejudice he had vanquished, and not the
hands he had touched; but still he felt them in his own, soft and
trembling; and still he sought to lose, in the subject of his mission,
the object of his imagination. He endeavoured to banish her look and her
sigh from his memory; and to recall the last short, but extraordinary
conversation he had held with her. He perceived that a pure system of
natural religion was innate in her sublime and contemplative mind; but
the images which personified the attributes of Deity, in her national
faith, had powerfully fastened on her ardent imagination, and blended
their influence with all the habits, the feelings, and the expressions
of her life. The splendid mythology of the Brahminical religion was
eminently calculated to seduce a fancy so warm; and the tenets of her
sect, to harmonize with the tenderness of a heart so sensible. But a
life so innocent as that she led, and a mind so pure as that she
possessed, rendered her equally capable to feel and to cherish that
abstract and awful sense of a First Cause, without which all religion
must be cold and baseless.
This consciousness of a predisposition to truth on her part, with the
daily conquest of those prejudices which might prevent its promulgation
on his, gave new vigour to his hopes, and, in the anticipation of so
illustrious a convert, he already found the sacrifices and labours of
his enterprise repaid.
THE END OF VOL. I.
S. GOSNELL, Printer, Little Queen Street, London.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Jesuits, being charged with fraudulent practices, in
endeavouring to persuade the Indians that the Brahminical and Christian
doctrines differed not essentially, were openly condemned by the
Franciscans; which laid the foundation of those long and violent
contests, decided by Innocent the Tenth, in favour of the Franciscans.
[2] The misfortune of Portugal being united to the kingdom of Spain
after the death of Cardinal Henry, uncle to the King Sebastian, gave a
terrible blow to the Portuguese power in the Indies.--GUZON, Histoire
des Indes Orientales.
[3] The power of that formidable ecclesiastic, the Inquisitor General,
is very terrible; and extends to persons of all ranks--the Viceroy,
Archbishop, and his vicar, excepted.--See HAMILTON’S New Account of the
East Indies.
[4] Dara having advanced beyond the river Bea, took possession of
Lahore; giving his army time to breathe; in that city, he employed
himself in levying troops and in collecting the imperial revenue--Dow’s
History of Hindostan, vol. iii. p. 274.
[5] “Autre fois les Jesuites avoient un établissement dans cette ville,
et remplissoient leurs fonctions sacrés, et offroient aux yeux des
Mahometans et des Gentiles, la pomp de leurs fêtes.”--BERNIER.
[6] Monsieur de Thevenot speaks of a convent of religious Hindus, at
Lahore: they have a general, provincial, and other superiors; they make
vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty; they live on alms, and have
lay brothers to beg for them; they eat but once a day; the chief tenet
of their order is, to avoid doing to others, what they would not
themselves wish to endure; they suffer injuries with patience and do not
return a blow; and they are forbidden even to _look_ on women.
[7] A Hindu considers all the distinctions and privileges of his cast,
as belonging to him by an incommunicable right; and to convert, or be
converted, are ideas equally repugnant to the principles, most deeply
rooted in his mind; nor can either the Catholic or Protestant
Missionaries in India, boast of having overcome those prejudices, except
among a few of the lower casts, or of such as have lost their caste
altogether.--Voyages aux Indes par M. SONNEBAT, tom. i. p. 58.
[8] Gazettes de la cour de Delhi, des nouvelles publiques qui marquent,
jour par jour, et non dans ce stile ampoullé qu’on reproche aux
Orientaux, ce qui se passe d’importante à la cour et dans les
provinces--ces sont de gazettes repandues dans toute l’empire.--ANQUETIL
DU PERRON, p. 47.
[9] A ceremony similar to that of confirmation in the Catholic church.
[10] From the time that they assume the dsandam, they are called the
Brahmasaris, or children of Brahma.
[11] The “Raga Mala,” or Necklace of Melody, contains a highly poetical
description of the Ragas and their attendant nymphs.
[12] See “Duties of a faithful Widow,” translated from the Shanscrit, by
H. Colebrook, Esq.
[13] “Certainly,” says De Bernier, “if one may judge of the beauty of
the sacred women by that of the common people, met with in the streets,
they must be very beautiful.” P. 96
“The beauties of Cashmire, being born in a more northern climate, and in
a purer air, retain their charms as long, at least, as any European
women.”--GROSSE, p. 239.
[14] The women are so sacred in India, that even the common soldiery
leave them unmolested in the midst of slaughter and desolation.--Dow,
History of Hindoostan, vol. iii. p. 10.
[15] “The process of the saint’s canonization,” says the biographer of
Xavier, “makes mention of four dead persons, to whom God restored life
at this time by the ministry of his servant.”
[16] “Cet excès de chaleur vient de la situation de ces hautes montagnes
qui se trouvent au nord de la route, arrêtent les vents frais,
reflechissent les rayons du soleil sur les voyageurs, et laissent dans
la campagne un ardeur brulante.”--BERNIER.
[17] “Il (Bernier) n’eut plutôt monté ce qu’il nomme l’affreuse muraille
du monde (parce-qu’il regard Cashmire un paradis terrestre), c’est à
dire une haute montagne noire et pelée, qu’en descendant sur l’autre
face il sentoit un air plus frais et plus temperé: mais rien ne se
surprise tant, dans ces montagnes, que de se trouvir, tout d’un coup,
transporté des Indes en Europe.”--Histoire Generale des Voyages, livre
ii. p. 301.
[18] According to Forster, the utmost extent of this delicious vale from
S.E. to N.W. is scarcely 90 miles; other travellers assert, it to be but
40 miles from east to west and 25 from north to south.
[19] So called by the Hindus and by the ancient annals of India; but
Bernier and Forster denominate the capital and its district by the same
name as the kingdom or province.
[20] The confluence of streams is sacred to the followers of Brahma.
[21] “L’Eternel, absorbé dans la contemplation de son essence, resolut
dans la plenitude des tems de former des êtres participants de son
essence et de sa beatitude.”--SHASTAR, traduit en François.
[22] The Goddess of Nature in the Indian mythology.
[23] “Il ne faut à ces nations que des nourritures rafraichissantes et
pures; la nature leur a prodigue des forêts de citroniers, d’oranges, de
figuiers, de palmiers, de cocotiers, et des campagnes couvertes de
riz.”--Essai sur les Mœ et l’Esprit des Nations. VOLTAIRE.
[24] It is unnecessary to mention the well-known doctrine of quietism,
embraced by the Archbishop of Cambray.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Missionary; vol. I, by Lady Sidney Morgan