RAMCHUNDERJI.

"But the tenth _avatar_ of the Lord Vishnu is yet to come."

"Exactly so, pundit-_ji_," I replied, looking at my watch. "It is yet

to come, seeing that time's up. Half-past eight; so not another stroke

of work to-day. No, not for twice a thousand rupees!"

A thousand rupees being the sum with which the Government of India

rewards what they are pleased to call "high proficiency" in languages,

I, having regard to its literature, had chosen Sanskrit as a means of

paying certain just debts. To which end the head-master of the district

school came to me for two hours every morning, and prosed away over the

doings of the Hindoo pantheon until I came to the conclusion that my

Lord Vishnu had been rather extravagant in the matter of incarnations.

The pundit, however, to whom would be due a hundred rupees of the

thousand if I succeeded, smiled blandly. "The tenth _avatar_ will

doubtless await his Honour's leisure; the tenth, and last."

"Last!" I echoed with scorn. "How do you know? Some authorities hold

there are twenty-four, and upon my soul I don't see why there should

not be twenty-four thousand. 'Tis the same old story all through;

devils and demigods, _rakshas_ and _rishies_, Noah's ark and Excalibur.

That sort of thing might go on for ever."

Now, Pundit Narayan Das was a very learned man. He had taken a Calcutta

degree, and was accustomed to educate the rising generation on a

mixture of the _Rig-Veda_ and _The Spectator_. So he smiled again,

saying in English, "'History repeats itself.'"

Thereupon he left me, and I, going into the verandah with my cigar,

came straight upon Ramchunderji and his wife Seeta. At least I think

so.

They were the oddest little couple. He, at a stretch, might have

touched a decade of life, she, something more than half such distance

of time. That is, taking them by size: in mind and manners, and in

their grave, careworn faces, they were centuries old. His sole garment

consisted of a large yellow turban twined high into a sort of mitre,

with just a tip of burnished silver fringe sprouting from the top; and,

as he sat cross-legged against the verandah pillar, a hand resting on

each knee, his figure awoke a fleeting memory which, at the time, I

failed to catch. Afterwards I remembered the effigies in Indra's

celestial court as represented by some Parsee actors I had once seen.

Seeta was simply a bundle, owing to her being huddled and cuddled up in

a veil ample enough for an ample woman.

"I am Ramchunderji, and this is my wife Seeta," said the boy gravely.

"If the Presence pleases, I will beguile time by singing."

"What will you sing?" I asked, preparing to idle away ten minutes

comfortably in a lounge-chair which lay convenient.

"I sing what I sing. Give me the _vina_, woman."

The veil gave up such a very large instrument that the smallness of the

remaining wife became oppressive. So large indeed was it, that one

gourd over-filled the boy's lap, while the other acted as a prop to the

high twined turban. Even the connecting bamboo, slender though it was,

seemed all too wide for those small fingers on the frets.

"Is the permission of the Presence bestowed?" suggested Ramchunderji,

with the utmost solemnity.

Twang, twang, twangle! Heavens, what a _vina_ and what a voice! I

nearly stopped both at the first bar; then patience prevailing, I lay

back and closed my eyes. Twang, twangle! A sudden difference in the

tone made me open them again, only to find the same little bronze image

busy in making a perfectly purgatorial noise; so I resigned myself once

more. Palm-trees waving, odorous thickets starred with jasmin, forms,

half-mortal, half-divine, stealing through the shadows, the flash of

shining swords, the twang of golden bows bent on ten-headed many-handed

monsters. Bah! Pundit Narayan Das, prosing over those epic poems of

his, had made me drowsy. "What have you been singing?" I asked, rousing

myself.

Ramchunderji spread his hands thumbs outwards, and the three wrinkles

on his high forehead deepened: "God knows! It is what they sang before

the great flood came. The _vina_ was theirs, and my turban, and my

wife's veil; the rest was too big altogether, so I gave it away for

some bread. When the belly is full of greed the heart hath none left,

and the nine-_lakh_ necklace is worth no more than a mouthful. If the

Presence could see into my heart now, he would find no greed there."

This delicate allusion to an inward craving produced a four-anna bit

from my pocket, and sent Ramchunderji away to the sweet-meat sellers in

order to appease his hunger; for sweet-stuff is cheap in the East,

especially when it is stale. Seeta and the _vina_, mysteriously

intertwined beneath the veil, followed duteously behind.

The next day they were back again, and the twang of that infernal

instrument broke in on the pundit's impassioned regrets over the heroic

days of his favourite poems. "By the by," I interrupted, "can you tell

me what that boy is singing? I can't make out a word, and yet--But it

was no use bringing fancy to bear on Narayan Das, so we went out to

listen. They were sitting under a trellised arch covered with jasmin

and roses, and a great Gloire de Dijon had sent a shower of blown

petals over Seeta's veil.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," quoted Narayan Das

sententiously, after listening a while. "It is Ramayana, the immortal

poem your honour reads even now; but debase, illiterate. You say wrong,

boy! it is thus."

Ramchunderji waited till the pompous periods ceased; then he shook his

head gravely. "We did not sing it so in the days before the great flood

came."

His words gave me a curious thrill; but there is no more matter-of-fact

being in the world than a Calcutta Bachelor of Arts; so the pundit at

once began a cross-examination that would have done credit to a Queen's

counsel. "What flood? who were 'we'?" These and many other questions

put with brutal bluntness met with a patient reply.

It had been a very big flood, somewhere, God knows how far, in the

south country. One, two, three years ago? Oh, more than that! but he

could not say how much more. The bard who sang and the woman who

carried the _vina_ had disappeared, been swept away perhaps. Since then

he, Ramchunderji, had wandered over the world filling his stomach and

that of his wife Seeta with songs. Their stomachs were not always full;

oh, no! Of late (perhaps because the _vina_ was so old) people had not

cared to listen, and since the great flood nothing could be got without

money. Seeta? Oh, yes! she was his wife. They had been married ever so

long; he could not remember the time when they had not been married.

It was Narayan Das's opportunity for shaking his head. These infant

marriages were subversive of due education. Here was a boy, who should

be in Standard II. doing the compound rules, idling about in ignorance.

It struck me, however, that Ramchunderji must be pretty well on to

vulgar fractions and rule of three, with himself, Seeta, and the world

as the denominators, so I asked him if his heart were still so devoid

of greed that another four-anna bit would be welcome. His face showed a

pained surprise. The Presence, he said, must be aware that four annas

would fill their stomachs (which were not big) for many days. They had

not come for alms, only to make music for the Presence out of

gratitude. Thinking that music out of an ill-tuned _vina_ was hardly

the same thing, I forced another four-anna bit on the boy and sent him

away.

Nearly a month passed ere I saw him again, though Narayan Das and I

used, as the days grew warmer, to sit out in the trellised arch, within

sight of the road. My knowledge of Sanskrit increased as I read of

Ramchunderji's long exile, shared by Seeta, his wife; of how he killed

the beasts in the enchanted forest; how she was reft from him by

Ravana, the hydra-headed many-handed monster; and of how finally she

was restored to his arms by the help of Hanuman the man-monkey, the

child of the wild winds. But though the pundit used to waste many words

in pointing out the beauties of a poem which held such hold on the

minds of the people that their commonest names were derived from it, I

never seemed to get into the spirit of the time as I had done when I

listened with closed eyes to the boy's debased, illiterate rendering of

the _s'lokas_.

It was after the school vacation had sent Narayan Das to see his

relatives at Benares that the odd little couple turned up again.

Ramchunderji's face looked more pinched and careworn than ever, and as

he held the _vina_ across his knees, Seeta, losing its contours, seemed

more than ever inadequate to her veil.

"Perhaps one of the many devils which beset the virtuous has entered

into the instrument," he said despondently; "but when I play, folk

listen not at all. So greed remaineth in the stomach, and the heart is

empty."

I offered him another four-anna bit, and when he demurred at taking it

before beguiling the time with music, I laid it on the flat skin top of

one of the gourds, hoping thus to ensure silence.

The wrinkles on his forehead seemed to go right up into his turban, and

his voice took a perplexed tone. "It used not to be so. Before the

flood Seeta and I had no thought of money; but now--" He began

fingering the strings softly, and as they thrilled, the four-anna bit

vibrated and jigged in a murmur of money that fitted strangely to the

sort of rude chant in which he went on.

"Money is in the hands, the head, the heart;

Give! give, give, before we give again;

Money hath ten heads to think out evil-doing;

Money hath twenty hands to mete out pain.

Money! money! money! money!

Money steals the heart's love from our life.

Money I have not--say! art thou hungry, wife?"

If anything was possessed of a devil it was that four-anna bit. It

buzzed, and hummed, and jigged infernally, as the boy's finger on the

strings struck more firmly.

"I'll tell you what it is, Ramchunderji," said I uneasily, "that _vina_

is enough to ruin Orpheus. As you don't care for my money, I'll give

you another instrument instead. I have one inside which is easier to

play, and more your style in every way."

So I brought out a _ravanastron_, such as professional beggars use, a

thing with two strings and a gourd covered with snake-skin. To my

surprise the boy's face lost its impassive melancholy in palpable

anger.

"The Presence does not understand," he said quite hotly. "We do not

beg; Seeta and I fill ourselves with songs. That thing whines for

money, money, money, like the devil who made it. Rather would I live by

_this_ than by mine enemy." And as he spoke he struck the snake-skin

with his supple fingers till it resounded again. "Yea! thus will I find

bread," he went on, "but the _vina_ must find a home first. Therefore I

came to the Presence, hearing that he collected such things. Perhaps he

will keep it in exchange for one rupee. It is worth one rupee, surely."

His wistful look as he handed me the instrument made me feel inclined

to offer a hundred; but in good sooth the _vina_ was worth five, and I

told him so, adding, as I looked at some curious tracery round the

gourds, that it appeared to be very old indeed.

"The Presence saith truly; it is very old," echoed Ramchunderji

drearily. "That is why folk will not listen. It is too old; too old to

be worth money."

Nevertheless he cheered up at the sight of his rupee; for he would not

take more, saying he had every intention of returning to claim the

_vina_ ere long, and that five rupees would be beyond his hopes of

gain.

A fortnight after I came home from my early morning ride by the police

office, which stood outside the native town, close to a brick-stepped

tank shaded by _peepul_-trees, my object being to check the tally of

poisonous snakes brought in for the reward given by Government for

their capture. The first time I saw some six or seven hundred deadly

serpents ranged in a row with all their heads one way, and all their

unwinking eyes apparently fixed on me, I felt queer, and the fact of

their being dead did not somehow enter into the equation. But habit

inures one, and I walked along the thin grey fringe of certain death

spread out on the first step of the tank with an air of stolid

business, only stopping before an unusually large specimen to ask the

captor, who sat behind awaiting his pence, where he had come across it.

"Six hundred and seventy in all, _Huzoor_" remarked the Deputy

Inspector of Police, following me, resplendent in silver trappings and

white cotton gloves. "That is owing to the floods, and the season,

since this is the sixth of _Bhadron_ (August) the month of snakes. Yet

the outlay is excessive to the Government, and perhaps with justice the

price of small ones, such as these, might be reduced one-half."

I looked up, and behind a fringe of diminutive vipers sat Ramchunderji

and the bundle he called Seeta. On his bare right arm he wore a much

betasselled floss silk bracelet bound with tinsel.

"I am glad to see the greed is in your heart again," said I, pointing

to the ornament.

"The _Ram-rucki_ is not bought, but given, as in the days before the

flood," replied the boy. "Every one wears the _Ram-rucki_ still, every

one!"

The Deputy Inspector pulled down the cuff of his uniform hastily, but

against the gleam of his white gloves I caught a glimpse of bright

colours. The _Ram-rucki_, he explained evasively, was the bracelet of

luck given to Ramchunderji in old days before his search for Seeta, and

common, ill-educated people still retained the superstitious custom of

binding one on the wrist of each male during the month of _Bhadron_.

There was so much deplorable ignorance amongst the uneducated classes,

and did the Presence look with favour on the proposal for reducing the

rewards? Perhaps it was Ramchunderji's eager, wistful face hinting at

the way promises were kept before the flood, which made me reply that I

considered no one but the Viceroy in Council had power to reduce the

price of snakes.

Several times after this I found the odd little couple disposed behind

their tally of small vipers; then the season of serpents ceased, and

one by one the _habitues_ of the tank steps dropped off to pursue other

professions. The fringe broke into isolated tassels, and finally the

worn, ruddy steps lay bare of all save the flickering light and shade

of the leaves above.

November had chilled the welcome cool weather to cold, when a report

came in the usual course that a boy calling himself Ramchunderji, and a

girl said to be his wife, had been found in a jasmin garden outside the

city, half dead of exhaustion and without any ostensible means of

livelihood. They had been taken up as vagrants and sent to hospital,

pending Government orders. Now the Jubilee year was coming to a close,

leaving behind it a legacy of new charities throughout the length and

breadth of India. Of some the foundation stone only had been laid by

direct telegram to the Queen-Empress; others had sprung to life in a

manner suggestive of workmen's tenements. Among the latter was a Female

Boarding School and Orphanage for the children of high-caste Hindus,

which had been built and endowed by a number of rich contractors and

usurers, not one of whom would have sent their daughters to it for all

their hoarded wealth. Persistent pennies had attracted a creditable, if

intermittent, supply of day-scholars to its stucco walls; but despite

an appropriate inscription in three languages over the gate, the

orphanage remained empty. Money can do much, but it cannot produce

homeless orphans of good family in a society where the patriarchal

system lingers in all its crass disregard of the main chance. So at the

first hint of Seeta I was besieged on all sides. A real live, genuine,

Hindu female orphan going a begging! Preposterous! Sacrilegious! The

Chairman of the Orphanage Committee almost wept as he pictured the

emptiness of those white walls, and actually shed tears over the

building estimates which he produced in order to strengthen his claim

to poor little Seeta. Was it fair, he asked, that such a total of

munificent charity should not have a single orphan to show the

Commissioner-_sahib_ when he came on tour? His distress touched me.

Then winter, hard on the poor even in sunlit India, was on us; besides,

Narayan Das tempted me further, with suggestions of a Jubilee

Scholarship at the district school for Ramchunderji himself.

I broke it very gently to the boy as he lay on a mat in the sun, slowly

absorbing warmth and nourishment. He was too weak to contest the point,

but I felt bad, exceedingly, when I saw him turn face down as if the

end of all things was upon him. I knew he must be whispering

confidences to Mother Earth respecting that happy time before the

flood, and I slunk away as though I had been whipped.

Now, if in telling this veracious history I seem too intermittent, I

can but offer as an excuse the fact that an official's work in India is

like that of a Jacquard loom. A thread slips forward, shows for a

second, and disappears; a pause, and there it is again. Sometimes not

until the pattern is complete is it possible to realise that the series

of trivial incidents has combined to weave an indelible record on the

warp and woof. So it was early January before the Ramchunderji shuttle

stirred again. Narayan Das came to me with a look on his face

suggestive that neither the _Rig-Veda_ nor _The Spectator_ was entirely

satisfactory. The boy, he said, was not a bad boy, though he seemed

absolutely unable to learn; but his influence on Standard I. was

strictly non-regulation, nor did any section of the Educational Code

apply to the case. If I would come down at recess time, I could see and

judge for myself what ought to be done. When I reached the play-ground

the bigger boys were at _krikutts_ (cricket) or gymnastics, the medium

ones engaged on marbles, but in a sunny corner backed by warm brick

walls sat Ramchunderji surrounded by a circle of Standard I. Small as

he was, he was still so much larger than the average of the class,

that, as he leant his high yellow turban against the wall, with

half-closed eyes, and hands upon his knees, the memory of India's Court

came back to me once more. He was reciting something in a low voice,

and as the children munched popcorn or sucked sweeties their eyes never

left his face.

"Look!" said Narayan Das in a whisper from our spying-ground behind the

master's window. The song came to an end, a stir circled through the

audience, and one by one the solid children of the fields, and the

slender, sharp little imps of the bazaars, rose up and put something

into the singer's lap. A few grains of corn, a scrap of sweet stuff,

and as they did so each said in turn, "Salaam, Ramchunderji!" "No

wonder the boy has grown fat," I whispered, dropping the reed screen

round which I had been peeping.

Narayan Das shook his head. "If it were only comestibles," he replied

gravely, "I could arrange; but when they are devoid of victuals they

give their slate-pencils, their ink-pots, even their First-Lesson

books. Then, if nobody sees and stops, there is vacancy when such

things are applied for. Thus it is subversive of discipline, and

parents object to pay. Besides, the _in forma-pauperis_ pupils come on

contingent with great expense to Government."

I looked through the screen again with a growing respect for

Ramchunderji. "Does he eat them too?" I asked.

The head-master smiled the sickly smile of one who is not quite sure if

his superior officer intends a joke, and fell back as usual on

quotation, "The ostrich is supposed by some to digest nails, but--"

I laughed aloud, and being discovered, went out and spoke seriously to

the offender. His calm was not in the least disturbed. "I do not ask,

or beg," he replied; "they give of their hearts and their abundance, as

in old days before the flood. Is it my fault if they possess

slate-pencils, and ink-pots, and First-Lesson books?"

I must confess that this argument seemed to me unanswerable, but I

advised him, seeing that the flood _had_ come, to return such offerings

in future to the store. He did not take my advice, and, about a week

after, being discovered selling these things to the bigger boys at a

reduced price, he was caned by the head-master. That night he

disappeared from the boarding-house and was no more seen. His name was

removed from the rolls, his scholarship forfeited for absence without

leave, and the arrears absorbed in refunds for slate-pencils and

ink-pots. So that was an end of Ramchunderji's schooling, and Standard

I. once more became amenable to the Code.

Winter was warming to spring, the first bronze vine leaves were

budding, and the young wheat shooting to silvery ears, before the

Commissioner, coming his rounds, was taken in pomp to visit the

Orphanage and its occupants. I remember it so well. The Committee and

the Commissioner, and I, and every one interested in female orphans and

female education, on one side of a red baize table decorated with

posies of decayed rosebuds and jasmin in green-glass tumblers; and on

the other Seeta and the matron. The former, to enhance her value as a

genuine half-caste waif, was still a mere bundle, and I fancied she

looked smaller than ever; perhaps because the veil was not so large.

Then the accounts were passed, and the matron's report read. Nothing,

she said, could be more satisfactory than the general behaviour and

moral tone of the inmates, except in one point. And this was the

feeding of the monkeys, which, as every one knew, infested the town.

The result being that the _bunder-log_ had become bold even to the

dropping down of stones into the court--quite large stones, such as the

one placed as a stepping-stone over the runnel of water from the well.

Here I unguardedly suggested an air-gun; whereupon Narayan Das, who

always attended these functions as an educational authority, reminded

me reproachfully that monkeys were sacred to the god Hanuman, who, if I

remembered, had finally rescued Seeta from the ten-headed, many-armed

monster Ravana, the inventor of the _ravanastron_ or beggar's fiddle.

It was at this juncture that I suddenly became aware that the Jacquard

loom of Fate was weaving a pattern; Ramchunderji! Seeta! the exile! the

killing of the wild beasts! the ten-headed, many-handed monster Ravana!

Yet I could tell you almost every word of the Commissioner's speech,

though he prosed on for the next ten minutes complacently about the

pleasure he felt, and the authorities felt, and the whole civilised

world felt, at seeing "Money, the great curse and blessing of humanity,

employed as it should be employed in snatching the female orphan of

India from unmerited misfortune, and educating her to be an example to

the nineteenth century." Every one was highly delighted, and the

Committee approached me with a view of adding the Commissioner's name

as a second title to the school.

But I awaited the completion of the pattern. It was on the eleventh of

April, that is to say, on the High Festival of Spring, at the fair held

beside the tank where humanity in thousands was washing away the old

year, and putting on the new in the shape of gay-coloured clothing,

that my attention was attracted by a small, dense crowd whence came

hearty guffaws of laughter.

"'Tis a performing monkey," said a bearded villager in response to my

question as to what was amusing them so hugely. "The boy makes him do

tricks worthy of Hanuman; yet he saith he taught him yonder down by the

canal. Will not the Protector of the Poor step in and see? Ho, ho!

'twould make a suitor laugh even if the _digri_ (decree) were against

him." But I recognised the pattern this time, and I had made up my mind

not to interfere with the shuttle again. As I turned away, another roar

of laughter and a general feeling in pockets and turbans told me that

the final tip had succeeded, and that collection was going on

satisfactorily.

A few days later the Chairman of the Committee came to me in excited

despair. The real, genuine female Hindu orphan was not to be found, and

the stucco walls were once more empty. Inquiries were made on all

sides, but when it came out, casually, that a boy, a girl, and a

monkey, had taken a third-class ticket to Benares I said nothing. I was

not going to aid Ravana, or prevent the due course of incarnation, if

it _was_ an incarnation. That great city of men, women, and monkeys

should give the trio fair play.

Last year, when I was in Simla, I overheard a traveller giving his

impressions of India to a lady who was longing all the time to find out

from a gentleman with a mustache when the polo-match was to begin at

Annandale next day.

"The performing troupes are certainly above the European average," he

said. "At Benares, especially, I remember seeing a monkey; he, his

master, and a girl, did quite a variety of scenes out of the Ramayana,

and really, considering who they were, I--"

"Excuse me,--but--oh! Captain Smith, is it half-past eleven or twelve?"

The _vina_ still hangs in my collection next the _ravanastron_.

Sometimes I take it down and sound the strings. But the waving palms,

the odorous thickets, and the shadowy, immortal forms have got mixed up

somehow with that infernal humming and bumming of the four-anna bit. So

I get no help in trying to decide the question,--"Who was Ramchunderji?"