Pantulu rose the following day as usual and performed his ceremonial
ablutions. Later in the morning when the family had dispersed he laid
himself down in the shade of the verandah of the inner court. His wife
had been watching him with some anxiety. He was too quiet, too
wordless to satisfy her. She would have been better pleased if he had
broken out into loud cursings and lamentations; if he had exhibited
irritation and temper to the rest of the household. It would have been
excusable if he had stormed at herself for some trifle; or dealt out
correction to some of the younger members of the family.
She and her women had obtained relief in the wailing and tears of the
previous night. By the small hours of the morning every one was tired
out and ready for sleep. They all awoke satisfied that the atmosphere
was clearer and their balance of mind restored. Each went her way to
perform her duty feeling that there was no need to waste more time in
regret.
Ananda's father had taken the misfortune differently. So far he had
found no outlet for his grief. Throughout the long absence of his son
he had daily and hourly looked forward to the boy's return. Sometimes
he had been assailed by a haunting fear lest something should happen,
lest Ananda should die in that distant land as Coomara had done and
never come back; lest he himself should die. Then hope would revive
and he would spend his idle hours picturing the home-coming and all its
delights. Never in any of his visions did the evil enter that had
actually overtaken the family; and now that it had come he could not
face it. It hung about him like a dark shadow the depths of which he
dared not fathom.
His wife leaned over him where he lay on a mat against the wall. This
feeble surrender to grief was not at all to her mind, and she had no
intention of allowing him to take his trouble meekly.
"Husband, you are not well. The kitchen woman shall make you a hot
drink that will warm your heart."
"My heart is already too hot! I have swallowed the red-hot balls that
Yama prepares for the cursed after death. I want for nothing but
relief from my pain; and who can give that?"
"Lying here with a broken spirit will not bring relief. It is a
mistake to grieve while there is hope, unless it be for an hour or two
as I and my women lamented last night. This morning I rise refreshed
and ready to do battle with the evil. The struggle has begun and it
has begun well. The boy broke the waterpot, struck the sweeper and
commanded him to get out of his sight. He also refused his food last
night. It must have tempted him sorely for I superintended the
preparation of it myself; and I have not forgotten his tastes."
She sat down by the recumbent figure and passed her long soft hands
over his limbs with a soothing touch.
"My boy went starving to bed?"
"As an ill-behaved son should!"
"He ate very little in the train, saying that he would the better enjoy
his mother's curry. Eiheu!" he drew in his breath and breathed it out
in a sigh. "He must have suffered in his hunger!"
Gunga's eyes flashed angrily, the lids closing quickly with an ominous
snapping movement.
"Let him suffer! His troubles and his hunger have only just begun.
They are nothing to what will follow if he remains obstinate," she said
vindictively. "With your brother's help we shall bring down his pride
in time."
Pantulu moved his hand as if in protestation. "Is it necessary? Can
we not try other means first?"
The thought of cruelties practised upon his son was unbearable.
"Get up and speak to him yourself. Perhaps he will listen and then
there will be no need for punishment. Point out how he has sinned, not
only against us, his parents, but against your dead father, your
grandfather and his father. The shraddah ceremonies have been
faithfully performed by you. Through your good offices the spirits of
your ancestors rest in peace; but when you die, who is to perform the
rites by which your spirit will find happiness? Your
great-great-grandfather will not suffer; your ceremonies have released
him; but if your son cannot and will not perform the necessary rites,
you and three generations behind you will remain in the power of Yama
to be plagued as the god of death wills. What does that mean but
rebirths innumerable to a life of suffering and degradation? Is the
peace of four departed members of the family to be imperilled because a
wilful son refuses to do his duty? He must be forced to abandon his
strange opinions. He must be obliged by some means or other to perform
the rites for the restitution of his caste; and he must and shall be
the chief mourner at the death of his father whenever that may be."
The last words rang out clearly so that they could be heard by the
whole household. They carried conviction to every listener. No one
doubted that the mother would prevail in the end. Even Pantulu himself
with all his weakness born of his intense love for his son admitted
that she was right; that at all costs Ananda must be made to renounce
his new faith.
If no son were at hand to perform the funeral rites at his cremation
and afterwards on the anniversary of his death, he must assuredly be
born again as an unhappy beast of burden; or as some loathsome creature
whose very existence was misery and against whom every man's hand was
turned. As Pantulu continued silent Gunga took up her parable again.
"When the horse is wilful it is beaten; when the bullock is obstinate
it is goaded. When a son is disobedient his parents use the means
provided by the gods to bring him into subjection. What I have done
thus far is nothing! nothing! but before proceeding further I will
leave my husband to exercise his authority. Rise! be a man! be a
father worthy of the name! Rise and speak to him. Show him clearly
all that is involved in his foolish action. Argue with him. Aye! if
it pleases you beg of him to consider, to have pity on his father, to
have mercy on his mother. If he remains obstinate have him beaten and
starved and brought low with pain and hunger----"
"Woman! he is my son! my beloved child! I hurt him once when I struck
him in my surprise and anger. I cannot hurt him again!"
The tears welled in the haggard eyes and ran unchecked down the old
cheeks. She uttered an exclamation of contemptuous impatience.
"You are weak, too weak to lead a headstrong boy. However, no good can
come of lying here. Get up and try what the tongue can do."
Pantulu raised himself from the mat, shook out the crumpled folds of
his muslin garments. His heart ached for his son, and he was conscious
of only one desire--to put his arms about his neck and thank the gods
that his boy was safe home again. His anger had evaporated in the
ebullition with which the announcement was greeted. Already he was
secretly repenting that he had cursed him; and he would have recalled
his maledictions if he could have done so without raising the ire of
his wife.
"Where is he?" he asked dispiritedly.
"He walks at the further end of the compound."
Pantulu moved away towards the back of the house and passed through the
garden. He entered the grassy compound by the doorway in the mud wall
that enclosed the garden. At the further end from the road he caught
sight of a figure. With his hands behind his back Ananda stood looking
at the mountain. His thoughts were in the past when he and his father
started out for the forest. By some instinct he turned at the approach
of the older man and fixed on him a startled gaze. For the first time
he noticed how Pantulu had aged. He stooped as he walked, and dragged
his legs listlessly. Ananda strode forward and fell at Pantulu's feet
as the pariah had prostrated himself the day before.
"Excellent and honourable father! at last my prayer is granted, and I
am permitted to see and speak with you."
"Rise, my son; I am sorry you have had to wait. Since my return I have
not felt well."
The watching woman looking through the Venetians saw the meeting and
the son's obeisance. "Now, if he will press the boy whilst his heart
melts within him, he may bring him to reason," she said to herself.
She called to her brother-in-law. "See! my husband brings his son to
the house. They will come into the verandah. Quick! hide beneath the
window that is behind the bench where he usually sits. Listen to all
that is said and bear it in mind. I must know every word that passes
between them."
As Pantulu and Ananda moved towards the house the former asked if the
other had breakfasted.
"I had some biscuits," replied Ananda. He thought it wiser not to
mention the milk lest he should get the pariah into trouble and stop
the supply. "I cannot eat food sent by the hand of the sweeper."
"It is impossible!" murmured Pantulu with a shudder. "Ah! I am glad
that my boy has not been obliged to defile himself in that way. For
drink, what have you done? Have you found means to satisfy your thirst
without defilement?"
"That also I have accomplished."
"Your mother must not know."
"It is by my mother's orders that I am thus treated?"
"It is done by the consent of the whole family, not by the mother
alone," said Pantulu, unwilling to hurt Ananda's feelings.
"You are ruler in your own house, excellency. Order one of the women
servants to attend upon me. It hurts the caste of no one to carry food
to the outcaste."
"Inside the house your mother rules, as is the custom among families
like ours. I cannot interfere; but I can speak to her and ask her to
give the order. If I can take good news she may listen."
"Good news; what does that mean?" asked Ananda.
"That you will give up your strange madness and allow the caste
restoration ceremonies to take place."
Ananda did not reply. His father's eyes searched his face with
undisguised anxiety for sign of a favourable response. He only saw a
tightening of the lower lip and slight protruding of the jaw with an
unconscious toss of the head. He remembered the trick of old and all
that it implied. The deep underlying obstinacy that had ever been the
one fault of the boy was still there ready to uphold new beliefs,
prematurely formed in his father's opinion and without sufficient
consideration. His heart sank within him and he was silent during the
rest of the way.
They arrived at the house and mounted the steps that led up to the
front door. The door was closed and the verandah was empty. Pantulu
took his seat upon a broad bench and drew his feet up beneath him. It
was as Gunga had said, just under a window. He signed to his son to
sit on the same bench by his side.
"No harm will have been done by your having called yourself a Christian
in a foreign land," continued Pantulu, resolutely looking away from his
companion's face, that he might not be discouraged by what was so
manifest there. "The ceremonies will be of a character to restore you
even if you have sinned greatly. I have money enough to satisfy the
purohits. There are worse offences than the one you have committed.
You have not killed a Brahman, for instance."
"I told you, oh excellent father, that having taken this step there is
no going back," said Ananda, at last, in a low voice.
"I say there is; there must be a going back. Your deeds can be undone,
expiated. Listen!" Pantulu controlled his excitement and continued
more quietly. "Listen, my son. Let me put before you all that it
means if you refuse to come back to us. Who is to perform the funeral
rites at my death if you cannot be chief mourner? Are they to be left
unperformed? Is my spirit to wander as a wretched ghost and be born
again as an unhappy contemptible pariah or beast because my son refuses
to fulfil his duties?"
"You will never be born again on this earth, my father; you will never
become a man or a beast again," cried Ananda, his eyes aglow with
enthusiasm. "The man-God of the Christians came to open men's eyes to
better things, to assure the world of immediate pardon for sin, and to
promise a happiness after death far exceeding any earthly happiness.
Think what a glorious future He offers to us in place of the hopeless
cycles of rebirths."
Pantulu shook his head in perplexity, not without fear at the blasphemy
against Hinduism that fell upon his startled ears.
"Our faith was ancient before ever the man-God of the Christians was
born. Were the millions, who lived and died before His time, living
and dying in error?"
"They lived and died according to the light given to them by God. When
Christ was born, a new light came into the world. It is by following
the new light that I have found my hope in a glorious future, an
existence of joy and happiness surpassing even the Nirvana itself; for
we shall retain our personality and consciousness which is denied to
those who look for absorption in the Hindu Deity. Try and realise the
joy that you and I, my beloved father, will feel when we meet in that
golden future. At Coomara's death I was in despair. Every time I
heard a dog shriek or saw a horse overloaded and beaten, I thought of
my friend suffering similar pains; and all for no fault of his! It was
intolerable in its injustice; I could not bear it. Then I met the
family of an Englishman who was killed suddenly; and I wondered at
their peace, their resignation, their perfect faith in his happiness
and their belief in a future meeting. When I found that the secret lay
in their religion what could I conclude but that their religion must be
better and more advanced than mine?"
Pantulu had listened unwillingly at first and with prejudice; gradually
his curiosity was aroused; he wanted to learn what it was that had
attracted Ananda and taken so strong a hold upon him. Moreover the
charm of hearing his son's voice once more exercised a kind of hypnotic
influence, causing him almost to forget the vital issues of their
conversation and their variance of opinion. There was comfort also in
proximity. The poor old man found delight in the mere touch of his
boy's hand. Nothing could kill the paternal love that had filled
Pantulu's life.
In the distance he heard his wife speaking sharply to one of her women
in the kitchen. The sound made him start guiltily. What had he been
doing? Listening to rank heresy instead of preaching orthodoxy. He
pulled himself together with an effort.
"My son, the Christian faith may be all very well for Christians. We
are Hindus, born, by a fate over which we have no control, in the Hindu
faith. The faith is bound up with our social and political laws and
cannot be separated. Let me point out to you how important it is that
you should make no change. If by remaining an outcaste you cannot
fulfil the part of chief mourner at my death, the law of caste--and it
is upheld by our country's law--disinherits you, You cannot inherit any
of my wealth, my lands, my houses, my looms, my silk farms, my jewels
and hoard of silver. Not a single rupee will be yours if another hand
drops the rice and butter into the fire before my dead body immediately
after death; if another bears the pot of fire in my funeral procession;
if another lights the funeral pile. Would you wish to lose your
birthright, the riches that should be yours, the honour as head of one
of the oldest and most respected families of Chirakul? Would you
deliberately make yourself a pauper, an outcaste, despised even by the
pariahs? Consider well all that you propose to sacrifice."
Once more Pantulu gazed anxiously into his boy's face for a sign that
he relented, that his pleading had prevailed; and his heart sank within
him as he noted the tightening of the lower lip and the obstinate tilt
of the chin. Again he spoke, repeating the old arguments, enumerating
the property that should one day belong to his son; but without avail.
At length Ananda made a kind of response in putting a question.
"If I do not take upon myself the duties of chief mourner, on whom do
they fall?" he asked.
"On your son."
"And the child will inherit your fortune?"
"Everything; and as soon as he comes of age he will take my place in
the family councils and you will be as one that has died in a foreign
land."
Ananda rose to his feet intimating that as far as he was concerned the
interview was at an end.
"Your answer, my son! your answer! what news am I to carry to your
mother?" cried Pantulu, in sudden dismay, as he realised two facts--his
son was leaving him, and he had failed miserably in his attempt to win
him back.
"I have nothing to say that has not been already said." Ananda spoke
with evident pain. It grieved him to wound his father by refusing to
comply with his wishes. He knew of what vital importance it was to a
Hindu to have the assurance that the funeral rites would be duly
performed by a fitting and proper member of the family; and he found
the greatest difficulty in maintaining his honesty of speech. The
temptation to temporise was strong. "It is impossible, even if I
desired it, to re-establish my faith in the Hindu teaching concerning
the future life. It is a miserable groping in the dark, a wilful
blinding of the eyes; the whole thing is a relic of the ancestor
worship of a barbarous people not worthy of our nation with its present
civilisation. I must have something better----"
"My son! my son!" interrupted his father in an agony of disappointment
and grief. "It is killing me! Have mercy on me! My life is bound up
in yours! I cannot live without you! Keep your beliefs secretly if
you will, but I beg, I pray you conform outwardly to the faith of your
ancestors. In their names I command you to come back and do your
duty----"
The door of the house opened and Gunga came out confronting her son for
the first time since his return. Ananda put the palms of his hands
together and repeated his greeting mechanically.
"May the gods protect you, most excellent and beloved mother!"
She received the salutations with an exclamation of contempt.
"Call me not mother! Unhappy woman that I am to have given birth to
such a breaker of our most sacred laws. Go! get out of the house which
you have dishonoured! See!" she pointed to Pantulu, who had drooped
where he sat till he seemed to crouch in abject misery. "See how he is
stricken! It is the hand of a wicked son who has dealt the blow. May
that hand be accursed! May its owner be condemned to cycles of
wretched rebirths!"
She poured out a string of curses upon him and he fled. Obstinate yet
strangely craven, he clung desperately to the new faith which alone
held out a promise of salvation from the awful fate invoked by his
mother. Her very maledictions drove him to his new leader Christ. His
father's entreaties only placed before him anew the tenets that had
filled him with such horror. Already he had had experience of the
persecution he was likely to meet with if he persisted in his adherence
to Christianity. He shrank from physical pain with the timidity of a
child; but for all that he preferred to face the ills of this life to
the terrors of the Hindu life to come.
With his heart thumping like a hammer he regained his room and sat down
to collect the thoughts scattered by the sudden and unexpected
onslaught made by his mother. His spirit rose in a wordless prayer; it
seemed to steep itself in the new light, and again he was sensible of a
blessed peace that soothed and calmed his disordered mind. His courage
returned, and he deliberately set himself to recall his father's words.
What was it that he had said about disinheritance? He must have made a
mistake. The solution of the difficulty would be found in the making
of a will. His father must have a proper will drawn up by which his
son was named as his heir. He must have another interview. On second
thoughts perhaps it would be better to write his request.
Taking out his writing case he set to work at once. The time slipped
by without his knowledge. He looked at his watch; it was three
o'clock. The sweeper did not appear and no food was sent. The
omission did not trouble him. Again he satisfied his hunger with
biscuits and tried to forget his thirst.
The sun set and the tropical night approached. He listened for the
step of the despised pariah, but the man did not come to perform any of
his duties. The excitement of the journey and return home had worn
off, and Ananda was conscious of an oppressive dullness. He lighted
the dim oil lamp and a little later lay down on his cot.
He was in a sound sleep when he was awakened by the falling of some
little stones near the cot. A whisper reached his ears.
"Excellency! the cow is here. Come for your milk."
Ananda rose at once and crept out of his room in silence. He followed
the pariah to the wall that divided the compound from the road. A
herdsman of his own caste handed him a bottle of milk over the wall,
just drawn from the cow for which he paid him the current price with a
small sum in addition for his trouble in bringing the cow at such an
hour. The man went away immediately.
"Excellency, no food was sent to-day by my hand," said the sweeper.
"It did not matter since your honour could not eat it; but the meaning
of such treatment must be understood. The big mistress hopes to starve
your excellency into obedience. This she can only do when there is no
more money left in your honour's moneybag. Be careful of your rupees.
I can bring the cow but I cannot bring rupees and the cow will not come
without the rupees."
The man mounted the wall with the intention of returning to his home.
"Why did you not come to-day to sweep the yard?" asked Ananda.
"I was forbidden by the big mistress. The order has been given that no
one is to speak with your honour or approach your room. To-morrow
night I will come and bring the herdsman with his cow."
The following morning Ananda wrote another letter which he posted
himself in the town. It was addressed to Dr. Wenaston, Principal of
the College of Chirapore; and the long epistle he had prepared for his
father remained in his writing case undelivered.