Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of love and
lost myself.--_Hindu Proverb_.
A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed. Let
the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, whatever
trouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--neither sudden, alien
nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limits of
decent everyday society, and paid for it heavily.
He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in the second.
He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will never do so
again.
Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's _bustee_, lies
Amir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one grated window.
At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls on either side
of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh nor Gaur Chand
approve of their womenfolk looking into the world. If Durga Charan had
been of their opinion, he would have been a happier man to-day, and little
Bisesa would have been able to knead her own bread. Her room looked out
through the grated window into the narrow dark Gully where the sun never
came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blue slime. She was a widow,
about fifteen years old, and she prayed the Gods, day and night, to send
her a lover; for she did not approve of living alone.
One day, the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on an
aimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled over a
big heap of cattle-food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laugh from
behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, and Trejago,
knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old _Arabian Nights_ are
good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered that verse of "The
Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:
Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun;
or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved?
If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame,
being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
There came the faint _tchink_ of a woman's bracelets from behind the
grating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love
when the Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my Beloved, and driven her
with the pack-horses to the North.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart.
Call to the bowmen to make ready--
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,
wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"
so neatly.
Next morning, as he was driving to office, an old woman threw a packet
into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken glass-bangle,
one flower of the blood-red _dhak_, a pinch of _bhusa_ or cattle-food, and
eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not a clumsy compromising
letter, but an innocent unintelligible lover's epistle.
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. No
Englishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejago spread
all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzle them out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,
when her husband dies, a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.
Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flower of the
_dhak_ means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or "danger," according
to the other things with it. One cardamom means "jealousy"; but when any
article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses its symbolic meaning
and stands merely for one of a number indicating time, or, if incense,
curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ran then--"A
widow--_dhak_ flower and _bhusa_,--at eleven o'clock." The pinch of
_bhusa_ enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves much to
instinctive knowledge--that the _bhusa_ referred to the big heap of
cattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that the
message must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.
So the message ran then--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap of
_bhusa_, desires you to come at eleven o'clock."
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knew that
men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in the forenoon,
nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went, that very
night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a _boorka_, which cloaks
a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs of the City made the hour,
the little voice behind the grating took up "The Love Song of Har Dyal" at
the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon Har Dyal to return. The song
is really pretty in the Vernacular. In English you miss the wail of it. It
runs something like this--
Alone upon the housetops, to the North
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North,
_Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!_
Below my feet the still bazar is laid
Far, far, below the weary camels lie,--
The camels and the captives of thy raid.
_Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!_
My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I.--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
_Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!_
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating and
whispered--"I am here."
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a double life
so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream.
Bisesa, or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter, had
detached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that the
window slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry into which an
active man might climb.
In the daytime, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, or put
on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station; wondering
how long they would know him if they knew of poor little Bisesa. At night,
when all the City was still, came the walk under the evil-smelling
_boorka_, the patrol through Jitha Megji's _bustee_, the quick turn into
Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the dead walls, and
then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing of the old woman
who slept outside the door of the bare little room that Durga Charan
allotted to his sister's daughter. Who or what Durga Charan was, Trejago
never inquired; and why in the world he was not discovered and knifed
never occurred to him till his madness was over, and Bisesa ... But this
comes later.
Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird;
and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that had
reached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lisping
attempts to pronounce his name--"Christopher." The first syllable was
always more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestures with
her roseleaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then, kneeling
before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do, if he were
sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more than any one else
in the world. Which was true.
After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelled
Trejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. You may
take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticed and
discussed by a man's own race but by some hundred and fifty natives as
well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at the
Band-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instant
dreaming that this would affect his dearer, out-of-the-way life. But the
news flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, till
Bisesa's duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubled
that she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan's
wife in consequence.
A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She understood no
gradations and spoke openly. Trejago laughed and Bisesa stamped her little
feet--little feet, light as marigold flowers, that could lie in the palm
of a man's one hand.
Much that is written about Oriental passion and impulsiveness is
exaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true; and
when an Englishman finds that little, it is quite as startling as any
passion in his own proper life. Bisesa raged and stormed, and finally
threatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once drop the alien
_Memsahib_ who had come between them. Trejago tried to explain, and to
show her that she did not understand these things from a Western
standpoint. Bisesa drew herself up, and said simply--
"I do not. I know only this--it is not good that I should have made you
dearer than my own heart to me, _Sahib_. You are an Englishman. I am only
a black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint,--"and the widow
of a black man."
Then she sobbed and said--"But on my soul and my Mother's soul, I love
you. There shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to me."
Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she seemed
quite unreasonably disturbed. Nothing would satisfy her save that all
relations between them should end. He was to go away at once. And he went.
As he dropped out of the window, she kissed his forehead twice, and he
walked home wondering.
A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa. Trejago,
thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough, went down to Amir
Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hoping that his rap at
the sill of the shifting grating would be answered. He was not
disappointed.
There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into Amir Nath's
Gully, and struck the grating which was drawn away as he knocked. From the
black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into the moonlight. Both hands had
been cut off at the wrists, and the stumps were nearly healed.
Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one in
the room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife, sword, or
spear,--thrust at Trejago in his _boorka_. The stroke missed his body, but
cut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly from the
wound for the rest of his days.
The grating went into its place. There was no sign whatever from inside
the house,--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and the
blackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind.
The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a madman
between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the river as
the dawn was breaking, threw away his _boorka_ and went home bareheaded.
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What was the tragedy--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair,
told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she tortured to
tell; whether Durga Charan knew his name and what became of
Bisesa--Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible had
happened, and the thought of what it must have been, comes upon Trejago in
the night now and again, and keeps him company till the morning. One
special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies the front
of Durga Charan's house. It may open on to a courtyard common to two or
more houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of Jitha Megji's
_bustee_. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa--poor little
Bisesa--back again. He has lost her in the City where each man's house is
as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opens into
Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up.
But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sort
of man.
There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, caused by
a riding-strain, in the right leg.