I
The church-gong hung from the level branch of a spreading _sirus_
tree, whence the slight breeze of dawn, rustling the dry pods of a
past summer and stirring the large soft puff-blossoms of the present,
seemed to gather up a faint whisper and a fainter perfume to be
upborne into space--further and further and further--by the swelling
sound-waves of the gong as it vibrated to old Deen Mahomed's skilful
stroke.
More like a funeral knell, this, calling the dead to forgetfulness,
than a cheerful summons of the living to give thanks for life, for
creation and preservation. You could hear each mellow note quiver into
silence, before--loud and full with a sort of hollow boom--the great
disc of bronze shook once more to its own resounding noise; seeming in
its agitation to feel the strangeness of the task more than the
striker; though, to say sooth, few things in earth or heaven were more
incongruous than this church chime and the man who rang it. For
Deen Mahomed, as his name implies, was of the faith of Islam;
fierce-featured, hawk-eyed, with the nameless look of his race; a look
suiting the curved sword he wore, in virtue of his office as watchman,
better than the brass badge slung over his shoulder proclaiming him to
be a member of the Indian Church Establishment--that alien Church in
an alien land.
And yet the old man's figure fitted close with the building he
guarded; for despite the new title of St. John's-in-the-Wilderness,
the church remained outwardly what it had been built to be--a
Mahomedan tomb. Its white dome and corner cupolas rose familiarly into
the blue sky beyond the _sirus_ trees, where, even at this early hour,
a hint of coming heat was to be seen in a certain pallidness and
hardness. Within, beneath that central dome, encircled now by pious
Christian texts, lay buried a champion of another God, whose name,
interlaced into a thousand delicate traceries, still formed the
decoration of each architrave, each screen; lay buried, let us hope,
beyond sight or sound of what went on above his helplessness.
How this change had come about is of no moment to the story. Such
things have been, nay, are, in India, seeming in truth more fantastic
when set down in pen and ink than they do when seen in the warm clasp
of that Indian sunlight which shines down indifferently on so many a
strange anomaly of caste, and creed, and custom. Most likely when the
wave of evangelical fervour reached the East to prepare the way for
the Great Sacrifice of purification by blood and fire which came to
native and alien alike in the horrors and wonders of "Fifty-seven,"
some pious bureaucrat had felt a certain militant satisfaction in
handing over a heathen edifice to Christian uses. Such things
have their sentimental side; and this tomb had been--like many
another--Crown property, and so had become ours by right of
conquest. No one else, at any rate, had laid claim to it, except, in
some vague, mysterious way, old Deen Mahomed, and he only to its
guardianship as being "the dust of the feet of the descendants of
_Huzrut-Ameerulla-moomeereen-ulli-Moortaza_, the Holy." In other
words, an inheritor of the saints in light.
Now this sort of title is one not likely to find favour in alien eyes.
Despite this, Deen Mahomed remained guardian of the Church of St.
John's-in-the-Wilderness, thanks to that ineradicable sense--one may
almost say common sense--of justice which dies hard in the Englishman
of all creeds. The only difference to the old man--at least so the
authorities assumed--being that he wore a sword, a badge, chimed the
church-gong, and received the munificent sum of five rupees a month
for performing these trivial duties; which latter fact naturally put
the very idea of discontent beyond the pale of practical politics.
Apparently Deen Mahomed was of this opinion also; at least he never
hinted at objection.
Even now, as he stood unmovable save for one slowly swinging arm,
there was neither dislike nor approval on the fierce, yet indifferent
face looking out at the white glare of the tomb beyond the _sirus_
shade, at the worshippers--laden with Bibles and Prayer-books--passing
up the steps, crossing the plinth and so disappearing within, and at
the long line of vehicles--from the Commissioner's barouche to the
clerk's _palki_--seeking the shade to await their owners' return when
the service should be over. Not so wearisome a task as might be
imagined, since the big bazaar was near for refreshment or recreation;
so near, in fact, that any solemn pause was apt to give prominence to
the twanging of unmentionable _sutaras_ or bursts of unmistakable
laughter. For, as ill-luck would have it, not only the bazaar, but the
very worst quarter of it, lay just behind the fringe of date palms
which gave such local colour to the sketches of the church which the
Chaplain's wife drew for their friends at home. And yet, in a way,
this close propinquity to the atrocious evils of heathendom had its
charm for the little colony of the elect who lived beside the
Chaplain. In the still evenings, when the scent of the oranges which
were blossoming madly in the watered gardens round the houses filled
the air, the inhabitants would sit out among the fast-fading English
flowers, and shake their heads in sorrowful yet satisfied sympathy
with their own position as exiles in that invisible Sodom and
Gomorrah. Invisible, because St. John's-in-the-Wilderness rose between
them and it, shutting out everything save the impartial sky, whence
the sunshine poured down alike on Christian and heathen, just and
unjust. Thus the visible church was to them as the invisible one; a
veil between them and the people.
It was a square building recessed and buttressed to a hexagon. The
Chaplain, however, preferred to call it a St. Andrew's cross, and
perhaps he was right. Perhaps again Deen Mahomed and his cult had
really had as little to say to its form as the Chaplain; such
responsibility being reserved to the primeval _sraddha_, or
four-pointed death-offering. Be that as it may, there was a coolness
between the new parson and his watchman, owing to the former declaring
it to be a scandal that the latter should hold such office in a
Christian place of worship, when he was not even an inquirer!
Certainly he was not. He neither inquired of others nor tolerated
inquiry from them. He slept on the plinth of nights, chimed the gong
by day, and kept the rest of his life to himself. That was all.
Not one of the congregation filing into the church that morning knew
more of him than this. So he stood indifferently waiting for the first
note of the harmonium to tell him his task was over; listening for it
to pulsate out into the sunshine, and, blending with the last note of
the gong, go forth upon the endless waves of ether. Go forth
hand-in-hand, plaintiff and defendant; a quaint couple seeking
extinction, or perhaps the Great White Throne against which the ripple
of life beats in vain.
The note came this morning as on other mornings, and Deen Mahomed
turned, indifferent as ever, to his house. It was a mud and thatch
hovel clinging to one side of a miniature tomb, half in ruins, which
some follower of the saint had built within the shadow of his master's
grave. It stood just opposite the flight of steps up which a late
worshipper or two was hurrying, glad, even at that early hour, to
escape from the glare of sunlight. Yet on the warm dust before the
hovel a child of four or five sat contentedly making a garden, while
the coachman of a smart barouche and pair drawn up close by looked
down with interest on the process. 'Twas God Almighty, says Bacon, who
first planted a garden; but ever since the task has had a strange
charm for man, and even Deen Mahomed paused with a smile for the
little watered plots and pretended paths.
"Thou hast encroached on thy neighbour's land to-day, Rahmut," he
said, "and gone into the roadway. Lo! the _Sirkar_ will make thee pay
revenue, little robber."
"Trust them for that," put in the coachman quickly; then he chuckled.
"But the boy grows; yea! he grows to take _his father's place_."
The old man frowned, yet laid his hand gently on the child's head, as
he said evasively: "Have a care, Rahmut, whilst I am gone, and water
thy rose, or 'twill die in this heat."
He pointed to a drooping white rosebud which the little boy had stuck
in his centre bed.
"Ay," replied the coachman, "'tis hot indeed for the time of year."
"As hot a _Shub'rat_ as I remember. God send the night be cool and
bring peace."
"God send it may," echoed the coachman piously, his evil-looking face
showing the worse for his unction. "God send all get their deserts on
this the great Night of Record."
He made the remark without a quiver, oblivious, apparently, of a long
series of petty thefts against his master's grain, and many another
peccadillo of the past year. But then, though every faithful Mahomedan
believes that on _Shub'rat_ God comes to earth with all the saints in
glory, there, in the presence of the Dead, to write his Record for the
coming year upon the foreheads of the Living, things had a knack of
going on after this judgment much as they did before; especially in
regard to such trivial offences as the theft of grain from a horse.
"God send they may," re-echoed the old man, suddenly, fiercely. The
words seemed to cut like a knife; yet once more he laid his hand upon
the child's head almost in caress.
"Have a care, child, for thy self and thy rose. Thou didst not pick
it, sure, from the _sahib's_ garden?" he added hastily.
Rahmut threw up a handful of dry dust and spread his little skinny
arms in gay denial.
"Lo! _nana!_ what a thought! I begged it of the _padre's baba_. He
comes ever to the assemblage with flowers, and the white _mem_, his
mother, bade him give it to me and that too--she brought it in her bag
of books."
He pointed with pride to some strips of torn white paper stuck in the
sand as walls to the garden. Then his tone changed to tears. "Oh,
_nana! nana!_ thou hast spoilt it!--thou hast spoilt it!" For the old
man in sudden fury had swept the remains of the offending tract from
their foundations, crushed them to a ball, and flung it across the
sunshiny roadway to the plinth, where it skimmed along the smooth
surface to roll finally to the very door of the church.
"No tears, child--no tears, I say," came in a fierce order. "If thou
wouldst not have me beat thee, no tears. Thou shalt not even play with
such things, thou shalt not touch them. I, the dust from the feet of
the saints, say it."
So, leaving the child whimpering, he turned to the hovel, muttering to
himself. Rujjub, the coachman, nodded to the next on the rank.
"The elephant escaped through the door and his tail stuck in the
keyhole," he said, with a sneer. "_Meean fakeer-ji_ will not have his
grandson touch the _Ungeel_ (Evangel), and chimes the church-gong
himself. But, in truth, he loves the old tomb--God smite those who
defile it--as he loves the boy. God smite those who sent the boy's
father over the Black Water to fight the infidel in China. Lo! even
_Jehad_ (holy war) is accursed with such leaders."
"Bah! Rujjub," retorted his fellow cheerfully. "'Tis so sometimes
without fault. 'He climbed the camel to get out of the way, and still
the dog bit him,' say the wise. The _Meean_ is half-crazed, all know
that. And as for thee! Did thy master pay as fair as mine we should
have less zeal from some folk, should we not, brothers? A fist full of
rupees brings peace, since there is no clapping with one palm!"
A chuckle ran round the squatting grooms at this home-thrust at Rujjub
the grumbler--Rujjub the agitator. The sweet high voices of English
women singing a missionary hymn came floating out through the open
doors. A hovering kite, far in the blue, swooped suddenly, startling
the green and gold parrots--inlaid like a mosaic pattern on the white
dome--to screaming flight for shelter towards the _sirus_ trees.
Little Rahmut, forgetting his tears, built fresh walls of sand to his
garden and watered the fading rosebud anew.
Then a sort of murmurous silence, born of the measured cadence of one
voice from within and the lazy, listless gossiping without, settled
down over the glare and the shade. Only from the hut came no sound at
all. No sound even from the little tomb where the old watchman knelt,
his hands on his knees in the attitude of prayer, his keen eyes
staring straight into the soft darkness--for the only entrance was so
small that the crouching figure blocked out the day. But darkness or
light were alike to Deen Mahomed, lost as he was to the present in a
dull memory and hope. Perhaps, when, years before, he had first begun
to hold his service in defiance of that other worship, he may have put
up some definite petition. Now there was none. Only the cry so seldom
heard by human ears, yet whose echoes so often resound like thunder
through the world--
How long, O lord! how long?
So he knelt, paralysed by the very perplexity of his own prayer, until
a louder burst from the harmonium and a sudden hubbub among the
carriages warned him that the service was over. He rose indifferently,
and came out into the sunlight. It lay now like a yellow glaze over
the white stucco of St. John's-in-the-Wilderness, over the gaily
dressed congregation hurrying to escape from it in their cool homes,
over Rujjub whipping his horses viciously, obedient to a sharp order
from the Englishman who had just handed a delicate woman into the
carriage, over Rahmut's garden with its white rosebud. And then----!
The whole thing was past in a moment. A plunge--a swerve! a little
naked imp making a dive before those prancing feet with an eager,
childish cry; then a shriek from the pale-faced lady standing up in
the barouche, a small figure, crushed and bleeding, in an old man's
arms, and a shout seeming to fill the air.
"Rahmut! Ah, mercy of the Most High! Justice! Justice!"
"Don't look, my dear," said an English voice; "please remember that
you--you had better drive home. It was the child's own fault. Doctor,
hadn't we better drive home?"
"Yes, yes. Drive home, dear lady!" said another English voice in
hurried approach to the scene. "You are not fit. Now then, good
people, stand back, please. Carmichael, make those niggers stand back.
I must see the boy."
It was easy enough to ensure compliance so far as the pale faces, made
paler by shocked sympathy, went; easier still to enforce it from the
darker ones accustomed to obey orders given in that foreign accent.
But how about the old man standing like a stag at bay, clutching the
child to his breast, and backing towards his hut with a loud, fierce
cry?
"Touch him not! Touch him not! Touch him not!"
"We are only driving him crazy," said the Doctor aside, "and I doubt
if it is much good. I saw the wheel pass right over the chest. Let him
be----"
"But it seems so cruel, so unchristian," protested the Parson.
The Doctor smiled oddly.
"That doesn't alter the fact. You're no good here; no more am I. Here,
you _chuprassie!_ Run like the devil to the dispensary, and tell Faiz
Khan he's wanted. If he is out, one of the Mahomedan dressers--a
Mahomedan, mind you--and he is to report to me. Come along, Parson.
The kindest thing we can do is to go away. It's humiliating, but
true."
Apparently it was so, for a sort of passive resignation came to the
straining arms as the dark faces crowded round once more with plain,
unhesitating, unvarnished comments.
"Lo! he is dead for sure. Well, it is the Lord's will, and he hath
found freedom. See you, he wanted his flower, the foolish one."
"'Twas the horses did it," said another. "They are evil-begotten
beasts. Rujjub hath said so often."
"Ai! _burri'bat!_ All things are ill-begotten to one ill-begot, and
Rujjub's beasts know he stints their stomachs-full," put in a third.
"When I drove them in Tytler _sahib's_ stable they were true born
(_i.e_. gentle) as the _sahib_ was himself. Then he took pension and
went home to _Wilayet_, and I have a new master who only keeps a
_phitton_ (phaeton). It is undignified; but, there, 'tis fate, nought
else."
But Deen Mahomed, sitting with the dead child in his arms, was not
thinking of Rujjub or his horses, of _phittons_ or barouches, not even
of chariots of fire--in a way not even of Rahmut himself--but simply
of a tract and a child's tears--those last tears which were to be a
last memory for ever and ever. Yet even this thought brought no
definite emotion, only a dull wonder why such things should be. A
wonder so vague, so dull that when Faiz Deen arrived to give the
verdict of death, the old man, yielding readily to the inevitable,
echoed the truism that it was God's will.
What else, indeed, could it be to the fierce old fanatic with his
creed of _kismet?_
That same evening he lingered awhile in the big bazaar on his way
homewards from the sandy stretch of desert land beyond the city walls,
where he had left a new anthill of a grave among the cluster belonging
to his people; lingered not for pleasure but for business, since the
events of the day had made it necessary that he should spend yet a few
more annas from the five rupees he gained by wearing a sword, a badge,
and chiming the church-gong. For it was _Shub'rat_; the night--the one
night of all the long year--when the souls of the dead are permitted
to visit the ancestral home. Therefore little Rahmut, so lately
numbered amongst the cloud of witnesses, must not be neglected; he
must find his portion like the others--a Benjamin's portion of good
things such as children love.
It was already dark, but even there in the bazaar the little lamps of
the dead shone from many a house, giving an unwonted radiance to the
big brass platters of the sweetstuff shop where the old man paused to
haggle over full weight and measure; since even in feasting the dead,
the living must look after themselves. A strange sight this. The noisy
bazaar, more full of stir than usual, since many a thrifty soul had
put off marketing till the last. Overhead, the myriad-hued stars
which, in these foggy climes, come back to memory as an integral part
of the Indian night, and, beneath them, the little twinkling lamps set
out in rows. Thousands of them--so much was certain from the pale
suffused light showing like a dim aurora above the piled shadow of the
city. On every side the same soft radiance, save towards St.
John's-in-the-Wilderness rising dark beyond the fringe of palm trees.
This Feast of All Souls was not for it, and to the crass ignorance of
those who lived in the garden-circled houses behind it the twinkling
lights set for the dead were but a sign of some new wickedness in
Sodom and Gomorrah, or, at best, of some heathen rite over which to
shake the head regretfully.
So in front of the cavernous shop, visible by the glow, the old
watchman fumbled beneath his badge with reluctant hand, for a few
pence, listening the while to Rujjub's account of the morning's
tragedy given in the balcony above where the latter was lounging away
his leisure among heavy perfumes and tinkling jewels. One of the
hearers looked down over the wooden railing, and nodded cheerfully at
the chief mourner.
"It is God's will, father; no one was to blame."
"To blame," echoed Rujjub, with a thick laugh, for he was in the first
loquacity of semi-intoxication and still full of resentment. "The
_sahibs_ say I was to blame. It is their way. But they will learn
better. It is our blame if we do this and that. My brother's blame
that he would not fight over the seas and get killed like Rahmut's
father. 'Tis our blame for everything except for our rupees and our
women--the _sahibs_ can stomach them."
Some one laughed, a gay laugh chiming to the tinkle of jewels.
"_Wah!_ thou mayst laugh now, Nargeeza!" continued the man's voice
savagely; "thou knowest not what virtue means----"
"'AH, brother, thou hast a hole in thy tail, said the sieve to the
needle,'" quoted the other voice amid a louder titter and tinkle.
Rujjub swore under his breath.
"So be it, sister! but a day of reckoning will come, and thou be
damned for thy dalliance with the infidel. Yea, it will come; it will
surely come."
The words echoed through Deen Mahomed's heart and brain as, leaving
the shrill squabble with its running accompaniment of titters and
tinkles and broad masculine guffaws behind him, he made his way back
to his empty hovel.
"Yea, it will come; it will surely come!" What else was possible when
God, a justly offended God, was above all? We in the West have not a
monopoly in the Tower of Siloam; that belongs to every religion, to
none more rightfully than to the Faith of Islam, which leaves all
things in the hand of Providence.
The belief brought a certain fierce patience to the old man as he
finished his preparations for the ghostly guests who, on that night
alone, could partake of the hospitality of the living. The lamps, mere
wicks and oil in little shells of baked clay, were ready luted to
their places by mud, outlining the interior of the tomb where Deen
Mahomed performed all the rites of his religion; outlining it so
strangely, that when they were lit, the old man, kneeling before the
white cloth spread upon the floor, looked as if prisoned in a cage of
light. There was no darkness then, only that soft radiance reflected
from the newly whitewashed walls upon that fair white sheet on which,
with calm ceremony, he laid the little earthen platters of food one by
one, designating their owners by name.
"This to my grandson, Rahmut, who has found freedom."
That was the last dedication, and the old voice trembled a little,
ever so little, as it went on into the formula of faith in one God,
speaking through the mouths of his Prophets. Not one prophet tonight
but many, for were they not all on earth--Moses and Elias, Jesus and
Mahomed--taking part in the Great Assize where those dead ancestors
would plead for the living who had inherited their sins, their
failures?
Before such a tribunal as that there must be justice--justice for all
things just and unjust.
So, half-kneeling, half-sitting, the old Mahomedan waited for the
finger of God to write his fate for the coming year upon his
forehead--waited, resting against the wall, for the spirits of the
dead to come silently, invisibly, to the feast prepared for them. And
Rahmut had a Benjamin's portion to console him for those tears--those
last tears!