"This, gentlemen and respected sirs," said the blatant specimen of new
India whom my friend Robbins had insisted on having as a guide to a
ruined Rajput town, "is Hall of Common Audience, in more colloquial
phrase, Court of Justice, built two, ought, six before Christ B.C. by
Great Asoka, mighty monarch of then united Hindustan, full of Manu
wisdoms, and sacred Veda occultations--"
Then I gave in. "For God's sake, Robbins," I said, "take away that
fool or I shall kill him. A man who be-plasters even the Deity with
university degrees is intolerable here."
Robbins gave me that look of condoling forbearance which had nearly
driven me mad for a week and beguiled the _babee_ away promptly, as if
I had been a fractious child. I was, however, only a jilted man. A
badly jilted man, whose jilting was of the kind which becomes almost
comic from sheer excess of tragedy. To be brief, I had gone down on
ten days' leave to Bombay to meet and marry the girl to whom I had
been engaged for two years. Robbins, who was coming out in the same
ship with her, was to have been best man. We had certainly been in
love with each other when we last met; at least, if I was not, I have
never been in love at all. If she was not, then I have never seen a
girl in love. I wish to be absolutely fair in the matter, so I will
confess that, as I went to meet her, I knew myself to be less
emotional than I had been two years before. I had even vague qualms as
to whether this sort of thing was quite wise. I was, to put it curtly,
in the mental condition in which every man about to marry a _fiancee_
whom he has not seen for two years must be. Presumably her mental
condition was similar. But whereas I had to spend the three weeks
preceding the irrevocable step in a jungle station where any novelty
must necessarily be attractive, she spent it in an environment which
gave her endless opportunities of seeing other men, and comparing them
with me, and her ideal. The result being that she found she was in
love with some one else. Being frank and honourable she told me the
truth, with a kind of blank dismay. She did not offer to fulfil her
engagement. How could she? when from the beginning to the end, from
her first confession that I was her ideal, to her last letter, then in
my breast pocket, the whole fabric of our future lives had been built
by us on our belief in the permanence of this selfsame love of ours.
We could only look in each other's eyes and wonder what was the matter
with the foundations of our round world.
Robbins said I behaved splendidly. In truth I was too much stunned at
first to realise what it actually meant, and then a certain contempt
for them both, especially for the man who came and offered me a shot
at him, made me magnanimous. I merely offered in my turn to be best
man at the wedding, and was only deterred from doing so by the feeling
that it was theatrical, and by Robbins suggesting that I had better
have some ice on the back of my head. He meant well, did Robbins, and
insisted on accompanying me on what was to have been my wedding tour;
for I had my ten days' leave, and I was in no hurry to go back to the
gossiping little station where the bungalow I had furnished for her
lay waiting a mistress.
Yes! Robbins meant well, and by sheer counter-irritation kept me
going. There was a honeymoon off the same ship which came up country
with us stage by stage, and the efforts Robbins made to prevent me
from seeing its bliss were pathetically comic. The bride and
bridegroom wore neat, new, brown-leather shoes, and she had a new
brown-leather handbag, just like one which I had carried for my
_fiancee_ before she explained the situation. As I sate opposite them
I wondered savagely if my face had worn the idiotic smirk of sheer
content visible on the man's, and I tucked my own new brown shoes
under the seat. They looked so forlorn beside Robbins' big boots. For
all that, I combated all condemnation of the delinquents for the first
three days. The only honourable theory of marriage being that based
upon a mutual and romantic love, it would be unjust because of a
single mistake, to blame any one for acting in accordance with a
belief which had made Englishmen and Englishwomen what, thank God,
they were. In fact I was badly, brutally moral, until, coming out into
the hotel verandah during one of our rests by the way, I happened on
the bride and bridegroom looking at the moon.
Then the primeval desire to murder rose up, seized me, and held me.
Why hadn't I taken the scoundrel's offer and killed him? I was a good
shot; and Robbins, as an army doctor, an excellent second. Then I
could have married the bride-widow, or spurned her, as I preferred.
There was really, I told myself, no logical foothold between this and
being best man. If marriage was an affair of love, these two were
right, and the part designed for me by Providence obviously that of
second fiddle. If not, they were wrong, and I had a right to claim
redress. To shilly-shally, feeling at once hurt and magnanimous, was
absurd. I had lain awake, afterwards, debating half in jest, half in
earnest, whether I should send Robbins back to the wedding with my
cartel, or go myself with a set of silver salt-cellars in a velvet
case. But underneath my jest and earnest lay a keen yet vague desire
to understand, to find some solid spot on which to rest. I had still
been debating the question, when, to please Robbins, who liked me to
have no time for thought, we had driven out next morning to these
ruins. The country through which we drove had been the ordinary
Rajputana country; flat--or nearly so--dry, rocky. Then we had come to
a spiky, spiny, roach-back hillock, over which the dead town sprawled,
half buried in its own dust, half lost in the sunshine.
I had been watching Robbins' big boots all the way, so I was in a bad
temper. Apart from other causes, however, I had some excuse for
threatening to kill the guide. For the Hall of Audience to which we
had just climbed was, briefly, one of those places which make some
of us nineteenth-century folk remember the warning given long ago to
an eager reformer to take the shoes from off his feet, since the
ground whereon he stood had already been made holy by other hands than
his. Yet it was plain almost to bareness. Devoid utterly of any of
that ornamentation telling of human hopes and fears, likings,
dislikings, and ideals, which men all over the world strive wistfully,
hopelessly, to make permanent by carving them in stone. But it was a
miracle of light and shade, with its triple ranks of square stone
columns--rose-coloured in the sunshine about their feet, blood red in
the gloom of arches about their heads--standing like sentinels round a
Holy of Holies which was roofed only by the open sky, and floored
level to the marble pavement surrounding the still pool, with clear,
cool water. And through the outer arches, on all sides, showed that
indefinite glare, and dust, and haze, faintly yellow, faintly
purple--that burden and heat of the Eastern day in which millions are
born, and toil, and die--which seems to swallow up the real India and
hide so much of it from Western eyes.
I had just got so far in my appreciation of the indefinable charm of
the place, when Robbins returned to stand beside me and look down on
the brimming water.
"Curious!" he said, "at the top of a hill like this. I wonder what's
the reason of it?"
"Those of uncultivated mind, sirs," replied New India, promptly, "hold
it by reason of Grace-of-God. We who through merciful master's aid
have acquired hydraulics prefer system of secret syphons; though the
latter belief is optional."
"If that man remains here," I remarked aside to Robbins, "I refuse to
be held responsible for my actions. Take him away and see the rest of
the ruins. I am going to stop here--this is enough for me."
They went off together, the guide babbling of modern equity. The last
words I heard were a quotation: "Boots not to say, O Justice! what
asperities have not been committed in Thy name!"
Perhaps. No doubt dreadful things had been done even in this Hall of
Audience, though it lay very still now; very silent in the sunshine.
I sate down on the base of a sentinel column and looked at the sky,
mirrored at my feet, wondering what other things the water had seen.
So by degrees the question seemed to clamour at me. What had been done
there? What was it? What gave the place its charm for me? For it had a
charm, an infinite charm.
I gave an impatient shrug of my shoulders at the sound of footsteps.
Robbins need not surely watch me as if he feared I might commit
suicide; though the water certainly looked inviting. But it was not
Robbins. It was an old man with a shaven head, and a very clean
saffron-coloured cloth, coming through the pillared ranks with a brass
_poojah_ basket like a big cruet-stand in his hand. My mind misgave me
instantly. He was far too clean for a real ascetic, and there was a
bogus air about him as of one expecting tourists and their alms. In
addition he came straight towards me, and squatting down by the edge,
within reach absolutely of my contaminating shadow, began to mutter
prayers.
I rose disgusted; but my first movement showed me I was at any rate
partly mistaken, for he turned his head, startled at the sound. Then I
saw he could not have known I was there, for he was blind. I saw also
that the basket which he had set down contained nothing but the
star-like flowers of the wild jasmine.
"Whom are you going to worship?" I asked instantly, for I was a
connoisseur in ceremonies, having spent years of study over the
ancient cults of India.
He stood up instantly and salaamed, recognising the accent of the
master. "No one, _Huzoor_," he replied. "I am only going to make
Mother Atma her crown."
"Atma!" I echoed. "Who was she?"
A half-puzzled, half-cunning look came to his face. "It is a long
story, _Huzoor_; but if the Cherisher of the Poor will give his slave
a rupee--"
Returning to my first impression of him, I was about to move away,
when he added plaintively: "I tell it better than the _baboo_,
_Huzoor_, but now-a-days he comes with the _sahibs_. So my stomach is
often empty. May God silence his tongue!"
The desire pleased me. It matched my own. And as I paused, I noticed
that the old man, who had squatted down again, had begun to thread the
jasmine flowers on some link which was invisible from where I stood.
"What are you using to thread the flowers?" I asked curiously.
"A woman's hair, _Huzoor_. It is always the hair of a woman who has
died, but whose child has lived, that is used for Mai Atma's crown.
Shall I tell the story, _Huzoor?_"
"Was she beautiful?" I asked irrelevantly, why I know not.
"I do not know, _Huzoor_," he replied. "Am I not blind?"
The answer struck me as irrelevant also, but I went on idly, feeling,
in truth, but small interest in what I was convinced must be some
hackneyed tale I had heard a hundred times before, since I was given
to the hearing of tales.
"Is it about this place?" I asked.
He shook his head again. "I do not know, _Huzoor_. It is about Mai
Atma. Shall I tell the story?"
"You seem to know very little about the story, I must say. How do you
know it is about Atma?"
He smiled broadly. "It is about Mai Atma, sure enough. The _Huzoor_
will see that if he lets me tell the tale."
I clinked a rupee down among the jasmine flowers and bid him fire
away, and be quick about it.
He began instantly, plunging without any preface into a curiously
rhythmed chant, the very first line of which gave pathetic answer to
my irrelevant question, and at the same time showed the cause of the
old man's ignorance. It ran thus:--
"O world which she has left, forget not she was fair."
Vain appeal when made in the oldest known form of Arya-Pali--the
dialect in which the edicts of Asoka are carved--and of which not one
man in ten million, even in India, knows the very existence. I
happened to be one of the few, and though at the time I could
naturally only gather the general outline of the chant, I subsequently
took it down word for word from the old man's lips. Some passages
still remain obscure; there are yawning gaps in the narrative, but
taking it all in all, it is a singularly clear bit of tradition,
preserved, as it were, by the complete ignorance of those who passed
the words from lip to lip. Roughly translated, it runs thus:--
"O world she left, forget not she was fair; so very fair. Her small
kind face so kind. Straight to the eyes it looked, then smiled or
frowned. About her slender throat were gold-blue stones. Gold at her
wrists; the gold hem of her gown slid like a snake along the marble
floor, coiled like a snake upon the water's edge.
"By night she asked the stars, by day the sun, what they would have
her do.
"I was her servant sitting at her door,
Watching her small feet kiss the marble floor;
Reading the water mirror's heaven-learnt lore.
"O world she left, remember she was Queen!
"For Atma ruled a queen ere she was born, her widowed mother wasting
nine long months to give her life ere following the King.
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant blind,
He and his sons for ever, lest they find
Thy face within the crown their fingers bind.
"Hark! how her voice comes echoing through the Hall, 'Who hath a claim
to-day 'gainst me or mine?' (There was a dainty jewel at her breast,
kept time in sparkles to her lightest word.)
"'Who hath a claim'--her small, kind face so wise!
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant blind,
He and his sons for ever!"
* * * * *
"See! how her soft feet kiss the marble floor! Atma, the girl-queen,
dancing to herself, close to the pool; the jasmine in her hair falling
to fit the rhythm of her feet, and scent their warm life with the
scent of death, or sail away upon the water's breast like mirrored
stars. Oh, bind from them a crown; a crown for Atma mata, who is
kind--for Atma, who hath struck her servant blind."
* * * * *
"Hark! how her voice comes whispering in my ear: 'I see naught but my
own face in the deep. No other face but this--my face alone. And there
are always stars about my head, or else the sun. Read me the riddle
quick.' (There was a tremor in her perfumed hair which matched the
tremor of her perfumed breath.) 'Atma is queen,' I said; 'the stars,
the sun, weave crowns as I do. Wear them. Oh! my queen.'
"O Atma mata! rightly am I blind,
Blind was I then in heart and soul and mind.
"Hark! how her voice comes echoing through the Hall. (The cold blue
stones about her slender waist clipped all her purple robe to long
straight folds.) 'Go tell your masters, Atma needs no King. She is the
Queen, her son shall be the King, and not the son to Kings of other
lands. So if they seek for beauty, seek not mine--it is not mine to
give--it is my son's! My son the gods will send me ere I die.'
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant blind,
He and his sons for ever, lest they find
Thy face within the crown their fingers bind.
"See! how her slim hand grasps the marble throne. See! how her firm
feet grip the marble step! Hark how her voice rings clear with angry
scorn. (There was a loose gold circlet on her wrist, slid to soft
resting as she raised her arm.) 'Oh! shame to brawl like dogs about a
bone! Cowards to kill because a woman's fair. Can they not take the
promise of a Queen? Go! bid your masters bind fair sons in peace. Atma
will choose a father for her King--she needs no lover.'
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant dead.
"'Hush!'--just a whisper on the water's edge, a faint glow from the
sacred censer's fire. 'What dost thou see, my friend, down in the
deep? There in the circle of the sacred flowers?' (The incense cloud
rose white upon the dark, and hid us from each other, hid all things
save water and our hands--her hands in mine clasped in the cold clear
pool.) 'Naught, oh my Queen! Naught but thy face--thy face--beside
mine own.' (Cold was the water, cold her little hand, cold was her
voice.) 'Nay! more than that,' she said, 'thou dost forget the stars
about my head.'
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant blind,
For being blind in heart and soul and mind.
"Hark! how her voice goes echoing through the Hall. 'Go, bid your
masters sheathe their swords at once, nor spill men's blood because a
woman's fair. For I have chosen. I will wed with none, but since God
sends the children to the world and asks no questions how they come or
why, I will take him as father to my King. The law allows adoption; be
it so. From out God's children I have bought a son to be your King and
mine. Lo! here he stands.' (Her arm about the sturdy, dimpled limbs
drew the child closer to the cold blue stones clipping her purple robe
to long, straight folds.) 'Some woman bore him--fair and strong and
bold--bore him by God's decree to be a son. That is enough for me who
am your Queen. Go, tell the brawlers, Atma hath her King.' (So
stooping, whispered softly to the boy, who straightway lisped to order
parrot-wise.) 'Who hath a claim to-day 'gainst me or mine? Who hath a
claim?' And as of old came answer: 'None, O King.'
"None said they all, and so I held my tongue.
O Atma mata! shall I ever find
Thy kind, wise face? Oh! wherefore am I blind?
"Hark! how her voice breaks in upon the child's. A claim at last.
"So they--these kings--have dared
To kill my people--nay! not mine--my son's!
Have they no shame--no pity for the poor?
"The gold hem round her robe's straight virgin folds coiled like a
snake asleep upon the floor, the sparkling jewel fastened on her
breast shone bright and steady as a distant star.
"There was no tremor in her perfumed hair, there was no quiver in her
perfumed breath; the cold blue stones about her throat and waist, the
loose gold circlet on her slender wrist, the jasmine-blossom chaplet
in her hair, looked as though carved in stone, so still she stood
before the dead man on the marble floor.
"His red blood crept in curves to find her feet and clasp them in a
claim for vengeance due, while those around cried 'Justice from the
King!'
"Until she smiled--her small, kind face so wise, and her clear voice
came echoing through the Hall. 'Vengeance is mine,' she said, 'and not
the King's. Send forth no army, spill no blood for me. Search not the
water-mirror for a sign. I know the answer of the sun and stars. So
send our heralds out, and bid these Kings come as Kings should, and
not as murderers to plead their cause before the King, my son. Come
with all state as to a wedding feast, come with all hope as
bridegrooms to the bride. My son shall choose my lover, so prepare all
things in order--music, feasting, flowers.' (Then turned to where I
stood, and said aside: 'Forget not thou to make a jasmine crown.')
"O Atma mata! wherefore was I blind?
Did I not know how wise thou wert, how kind,
How cold thy hand, how warm the heart behind?
"Fair, strong, and bold he stood, the little King; the noonday sun
above the child's bare head scarce cast a shadow on his small, bare
feet, standing so straight beside the water's edge, where, half afloat
upon the clear, still depths, a small round raft of jasmine-blossoms
lay ready to give the omen.
"Heaped so high, so piled with little scented stars, that I--her
servant with the crown she had bespoke--stood wondering what need
there was of all. And round about the mirror-pool in rank sat Atma's
lovers waiting the decree.
"Till suddenly the baby raised his hand. (There was a loose gold
circlet on his wrist, which smote him on the breast as it fell back,
making him wince, so all too large it was.) But the child bit his
lip and took no heed, knowing his kingly part right royally; so,
parrot-wise, he lisped the ordered words: 'My mother Atma hath no need
for love; since she hath mine. She hath no need, my lords, for you as
lovers, but she sends by me, as sister sends her brothers, that which
sure should heal the strife and make you brothers too.'
"So at the last he stooped, and with a push sent the flower-raft
afloat upon the pool, dipping and dancing on the waves it made, so
that the loose, white blossoms of the pile floated to drift like stars
upon the depths, leaving what lay beneath them clear and cold.
"O Atma mata! why was I not blind?
Thy face, thy face was there in flowers enshrined!
Thy cold dead face, with cold dead flowers entwined.
* * * * *
"O world she left! to bring it peace not war.
O world she left, forget not she was fair,
So very fair. The jasmine in her hair
And round her kind, wise face; about her throat
The cold blue stones, and for her queenly crown
The sunlight in the water--like the stars.
"O Atma mata! strike thy servant blind,
He and his sons for ever, lest they find
Thy face within the wreath their fingers bind."
* * * * *
The old man's song ceased, but he went on without a pause. "The
_Huzoor_ will hear that it is all about Atma. Her name is there
always."
He had finished stringing the flowers also, and now with a deft hand
set the fragile garland--strung like a daisy chain upon a dead woman's
hair and then tied to a circle--afloat upon the water, where it
drifted idly, each separate flower separate, and keeping its appointed
place.
A crown of scented stars!
I roused myself to answer. "Undoubtedly it is all about Atma; but you
have not told me why you weave the crown?"
"It is always woven, _Huzoor_," he replied. "Our family belongs to the
place, and as one son is always blind, he stays at home--since he
cannot earn money at other trades, _Huzoor_--and makes Mai Atma's
crown as his fathers did."
"One son is always blind?" I echoed curiously.
"Always, _Huzoor_. It is ever so. One is blind in each generation, so
he makes Mai Atma's crown."
_He and his sons for ever!_ a strange coincidence truly.
"Then no one has ever seen her face 'within the wreath their fingers
twine'?" I asked, quoting the words involuntarily and forgetting that
he could not understand them. He answered the first part of the
sentence.
"How could that be, _Huzoor_, seeing we are always blind?"
True. But if one was not blind? My thought was interrupted by Robbins'
voice from behind.
"Hope you haven't found it long, old chap; but the _baboo_ really
knows a lot about Asoka. Fine old beggar he must have been. And then
he has got a chant about some female called Atma who had a lot of
lovers, don't you know." Robbins pulled himself up hastily, and, to
cover his confusion, protested that it was just the sort of
unintelligible gibberish which interested me, and thereupon bade the
_baboo_ give me a specimen.
Before I could stop him, the brute had got well into the first line;
but even in my wrath I was relieved to find that it was indeed
absolutely unintelligible. New India evidently did not understand the
old. I came to this conclusion before I got my fingers, as gently as I
could, inside his rainbow-hued comforter and choked him off.
"I cannot help it, Robbins," I said as I tendered the _baboo_ five
rupees as hush-money. "If you knew all you would excuse me."
Robbins gave me one of his most sympathetic looks and said he quite
understood.
Did he? Did I? I asked myself that question over and over again, until
in the dead of the night I could ask it no longer. The desire for an
answer grew too strong.
It was still night when I stood once more beside the water's edge. The
moon had paled the red ranks of the sentinel pillars, the dust and
heat and burden of the day was gone. All things were clear and flooded
with cool, quiet, passionless light. And on the water lay the crown of
starry flowers. It had drifted close to the edge, at the extreme end
of the pool, beside a square projection in the marble floor, whence
you could look clear into the depths. No doubt the place of
divination. I went over to it moved by an irresistible impulse, and,
kneeling down, thrust my hand into the cool water.
Was it fancy, or did I feel a cold, soft hand in mine? Was it a
passing dizziness, or did a white, scented vapour close round me like
a cloud, hiding all things save the water framed in that crown of
jasmine?
_Atma! Mai Atma!!_
* * * * *