were becoming uninteresting to him. "He is before that. He does
nothing--he never did anything."
"Gentleman at large," hesitated on Prem Lal's pen; there an ephemeral
conscientiousness born of his ephemeral dignity made him appeal to the
old man himself.
Chiragh Shah smiled courteously. His hands trembled themselves tip to
tip.
"My profession," he echoed. "Surely I am Chaplaoo--of inheritance and
choice," he added alertly.
"Chaplaoo!" That was clear enough to Prem Lal in the vernacular, but
how was it to be translated for the blue paper which must be written in
English as an exposition of learning that might lead to further
employment?
Being prepared for such emergencies by a pocket dictionary, he looked
the word up--a proceeding which revived interest in the audience,
notably behind the chink, whence the magisterial voice was heard
remarking that it was no wonder the Sirkar wanted brains if it was so
crassly ignorant as not to know what chaplaoo meant!
This flurried Prem Lal into premature decision. "Chaplaoo," he
quoted under his breath, "a fawner--ha! I see! One who keepers the
fawn--forester--huntsman--Am I not right?" he translated with a
preparative flick of the steel pen.
The even ivory smile was clouded by an expression too blank for
resentment.
"The Sirkar mistakes. This slave kept no animals."
Prem Lal dived hurriedly into further equivalents.
"Parasite--backbiter--one who bites backs! Ah! I see--bug--etc."
"This slave, as he has said, kept no kind of animals whatever,"
repeated Chiragh Shah, with a suave, unconscious dignity which appeased
even the rising storm of virtuous indignation behind the chink. "He
was--if the Sirkar prefers the title--Chapar-qunatya, by inheritance
and choice."
The rolling Arabic word had a soothing sound, and a hush fell with the
sunshine even on Prem Lal's search after a common factor between East
and West.
"Toad eater! eater of toads----" he began with doubt in the suggestion;
"lick spittle--one who licks the spittle?"
"Eater of toads, licker of spittle," shrilled the voice of the chink.
"Dost come here defiling an honourable house--and I who purvey its
food--with such vile calumny--I----"
"Peace, mother," soothed a softer voice; "such things do no harm save
to the speaker. What you spit at the sky falls on your own face!"
"Aye!" assented a ruder voice, "and is he not a Kyasth (clerk)--lie he
must or his belly will burst."
The word "lie" gave the agitated enumerator a fresh clue, and the pages
of the dictionary fluttered as if in a full gale.
"Lie--liar--slanderer----"
There was no connection in his tone; but the suggestion being at least
plausible to his audience, the question was referred loudly to old
Chiragh Shah, who was beginning to nod with combined sunshine and opium
drams.
"Lie?" he asked, with a return of that swift alacrity. "Surely, I lied
always. Yea! from the beginning to the end."
He used the high-sounding Arabic word for liar, and so sent Prem Lal
a--fluttering once more. Ere he had lit on the correct gutteral, old
Chiragh Shah's set smile had changed into a real one. The slack muscles
of his neck stiffened; he flung out his right hand airily.
"Hush!" said the two smallest boys on the roof in sudden interest;
"dâdâ is going to talk."
He was.
"Lies!" he began, and there was tone in the old voice, "and wherefore
not if it is a real lie and not a bungle? But I never was a bungler. I
know my profession too well--even at the last--yea, at the very end
they had to come to me for artifice--for subterfuge. It was the last
lie--to count as a real lie."
He paused, one of the boys had crept round to him and now laid a
compelling hand of entreaty on the old man.
"Tell us of it, dâdâ."
The spokesman looked at the enumerator as if for orders.
"It may elucidate the meanings," muttered the Middle-fail to himself.
So in the stillness of that sunshiny roof, set so far above the
workaday world, they sate listening.
"Yea! it was the last lie that was worth the telling. Yet I was past my
prime like the court itself. For none, save those who saw, knew the
heart-burnings, the bitterness of those last years. King but in name,
the very court officials drifting away to other allegiance. And Lake
sahib had been so full of promise on that first September day, when the
Frenchman was driven away because, forsooth! he had made the blind Shah
Alum a prisoner in his own palace----" There was a pause in the thin
old cadences, and a flitting shadow fell on the sun-saturate listeners
from a wheeling kite overhead.
"And what was Bahadur Shah but a prisoner, too? What matter--the
Huzoors gave him bread after their fashion and he was unfaithful to the
salt of it. That was not well--one must be loyal even to a lie! So
after the mad midsummer dream of recovered kingship in the palace--such
a mad dream--we who dreamed it knew at the time that we were
dreaming--came that second September day when the English returned
to Delhi. We did not watch them, then; we were hiding in the
tombs--Humayon's tomb without the wall.
"It was the night after Hudson _sahib bahadur_ had wiled away the King
by fair promises--aya! the Huzoor knew the trick of those well--but the
Princes were still hiding--and many a better man, too.
"My son for one. He was wounded to the death. Ah! I knew it--though the
brave lad--he was the son of mine old age--steadied his breath and
smiled when I spoke to him. But there was little leisure for words with
treachery to right and treachery to left, and none to trust fairly. For
the world had changed even then, and there were but one or two of my
kind left, and I was out of favour. Too old for the new court--too old
for new pleasures. And the young Prince--lo! how he used to laugh at my
worn flatteries--had many pleasures--so many of them that he took some
of them from other folks' lives; thus he had foes. Aye! but friends,
too, for he came nearer to kingliness than his brothers. And my son
loved him.
"So when the danger came, and I knew by chance of the plot to kill the
Prince as he slept, and gain the reward set on him by the English, I
had no choice. Yet I dare trust no one in the skulking crowd which
crept about the shadows of the old tomb. In those days it was every one
for himself, and the Prince had scant following at best. And he lay
drunk with wine and women, out of bravado partly to the skulkers--in
one of the half-secret upper rooms. But I knew which, and I remember it
so well. The grey spear point of the distant Kut showed through its
open arch.
"And below, in a far nook of the crypt, where there was a secret
swinging panel in the red sandstone wall, known only to the old, my son
lay dying.
"He steadied his breath as I stooped over him, and whispered that he
would soon be fighting for his Prince again.
"'Soon, my son,' I answered, waiting as he smiled. For I knew the
silence was at hand--silence from all things save the breathing that
would only steady into death.
"We, my servant and I, lifted him easily. He was but a lad, though he
would have grown to greater stature than the Prince. His head lay so
contentedly on my shoulder as I went backward up the stair, telling
those who stood aside to let us pass, that he was better and craved the
fresher air of the roof. 'Better? Aye! he is better, or soon will be,
old fool,' said one with a laugh. Then clattered noisily after his
companions, so noisily that the echo of the winding staircase sent
their scornful mirth back to me. 'He will be dead--like someone he
followed--by morning.'
"Before morning, if I did not fail, thought I, silently, as, searching
the shadows, we sought the Prince's hidden room. There was a youth ever
with the Prince--a baby-faced, frightened, womanly thing--yet faithful
as far as in him lay. Him, I caught by the throat, 'They would kill
thee, too,' I said; 'better take the chance of life. If fate be kind,
ere dawn discovers the deceit, _he_ will be fit to fly.'
"So after my servant and I, wailing at our lack of wisdom, had carried
the Prince down, face covered as one to whom worse sickness had come
suddenly, I crept to the upper room again. It was growing late, but the
grey spear-head of the Kut still showed beyond the open arch as I
covered the lad's face, lest, for all his gay dress, the murderers
might see too much.
"'Dream thou art fighting for the Prince, sonling!' I said, knowing he
was past even the steadying of his breath for an answer; but the smile
had lingered on his face.
"Then I covered my face also, and, bidding the baby-faced one escape to
the crypt as soon as it was possible, sate as a servant might have
sate, at the turning of the ways from the stair head.
"Would those who were to come be familiar or strange? I wondered. The
latter, most likely, since Chiragh Shah, the Chaplaoo, had long since
passed from court life, almost from remembrance.
"They were strange; as they challenged me, I drew the cloth from my
face without fear.
"'The Prince's room!' they cried, dagger-point at my breast. But that
could not be. There must be no suspicion, only certainty, only soothed
certainty. 'I have been waiting to show it to my lords,' I answered.
'Lo! he sleeps sound--yea! he sleeps sound, his face toward the Kut.'
"So, with smooth words, I led them in the dark----"
The memory of the darkness seemed to fall as darkness itself on the old
brain, and Chiragh Shah sate silent in the sunshine for a few seconds.
When he spoke again, it was as if years had passed. "It was the last
lie that was worth the telling," he said, almost triumphantly.
"And a good lie, too," came the shrill voice from behind the door
chink. "See you, boy!--call the old man by his right name in your
paper, or may God's curse light on you for ever!"
Thus adjured, Prem Lal, who, throughout the whole tale, had been
fluttering his dictionary from one synonym to another, suggested
sycophant; that was, he explained, one who flatters and lies for
personal profit.
"Profit!" echoed the voice. "Small profit dâdâ gained. Was not the
Prince killed with his brothers next day by Hudson Sahib; so there was
no one left even to reward the old man?"
"Save God," suggested Prem Lal, piously trying to escape somehow from
the dilemma.
"And there is gain, and gain," admitted the spokesman, combining new
and old, east and west.
"Hush!" said one of the two small boys again; "dâdâ is going to
talk--he may know----"
So once more the old voice rose in unconscious apology for the
difficulty of condensing what etomologists call his life history into a
census paper.
"Yea, it was good, and hard--yet not so hard as the first. _That_ never
left me, despite the long years."
It seemed, indeed, as if it had not, for something of childlike
complaint came into the old voice. "It was my first day at court.
Mother had cut my father's khim-khab robe--crimson with gold
flowering--to fit me, despite her tears. Her eyes were heavy with them
when she kissed me; but I had no fear for all I was so young. I knew
the women's bread depended on my tongue--though it was my heritage also
to be Chaplaoo.
"And the King was pleased. Mother had tied my turban so tall and he
laughed at that. It was out in the garden, he under the gilt canopy,
the nobles round and beyond the flowers, and birds fluttering among the
roses.
"And I was standing beside the king, and he was laughing--for I knew my
part.
"Then the fluttering came closer, closer, and lo! a bird settled on my
wrist. It was Gul-afrog--I had left it with my sister, but it had
followed me--for we loved each other. So, on my wrist it sate joyful,
and salaamed, as I had taught it, drooping its pretty wings.
"Then the King cried, 'How, now, whose pretty bird is this?' and
someone laid a warning hand upon my shoulder. But I knew before what I
must say if I was to stand in father's place. I knew! I knew!
"'It is yours, my king.'
"So I said, kneeling at his feet! 'It is yours, it is yours,' and
Gul-afrog had been with me since it fell out of the bulbul nest in the
rose tree. Then they brought a golden cage ..." The old man sate
staring out into the sunshine in silence, and only the littlest of the
two boys wept softly.
"We will call him 'Flatterer for Gain.'" said Prem Lal, in desperate
decision, and perhaps the description came as near to old Chiragh
Shah's profession as was possible in a census schedule.
A MAIDEN'S PRAYER
"That is over! Thanks to Kâli Ma!" sighed Ramabhai, fanning herself
vigorously as the last man shambled, a trifle sheepishly, from the
inner apartment. She--was a stoutish Bengâli lady, with red
betel--stained lips and smooth bandeaux of shiny black hair.
Good-looking, good-natured, at the moment distinctly excited as she
went on garrulously. "Muniya! down with the curtain, there is no
further use for it now that crew has gone! And to think that the master
will have to give each one of them five rupees! And for what? Forsooth!
for the first seeing of such a bride as not one of them ever saw
before. Lo! Shibi, marriage-monger!" Here she turned accusingly on one
of the women who were busy unveiling themselves, chattering the while
with shrill voices. "Hast no mind at all? Thou mightst have found newer
words for thy description of my daughter!--'beautiful as a full moon,
symmetrical as a cart-wheel, graceful as a young goose.' What are these
for perfection? And thou didst use the same last week for Luchi Devi's
girl, who is pock-marked and blind of an eye! But there! 'What's a fowl
to one who has swallowed a sheep.' Parbutti,"--here she transferred her
attentions to a young girl who was seated on a cushion resting her face
in her henna-dyed hands, as if she felt dazed or tired--"an thou hast a
grain of sense have a care of that nose-ring thy paternal auntie lent
for the occasion or there will be flies in the pease porridge--there
always is in that family. Yea! it is well over; and thank the gods, the
priest found good omen in the morning watches, so I have not to dine
the creatures. Fish curry and kid pillau is too much to pile on the
getting of a trousseau; yet one must have meats at a wedding feast, if
one in Sakta; and the bridegroom's folk are strict. As for clothes, I
tell you, sisters, that 'boycotts' is well enough to play with every
day, but when it comes to weddings and tinsel, 'tis a different matter.
Kâli Ma! what a price for _kulabatoon_! Parbutti! an thou canst not
remember that thou hast on thee four hundred rupees worth of Benares
_khim-kob_, go put on the old Manchester. Thank Heaven!' Boycotts' is
not so old yet, but one has stores left to come and go upon! Yea! Yea!
A wedding is a great strain on a mother; and then there is the parting
with my daughter, too--my sweeting, my little lump of delight----"
Here Ramabhai discreetly dissolved into regulation tears, mingled with
sharp sobs and little outcries. It came easily, for she was really
devoted to Parbutti, the little bride, who, in truth, looked
distractingly pretty, all swathed in scarlet gold-flowered silk gauze,
and hung with jewels galore.
Her grave open-eyed face looked, perhaps, a trifle stupid and
obstinate, but there could be no question of its beauty.
"Mother!" she said seriously, "there is a smell of smoke--the tall one
in the black coat smelt of it, and it is defilement. Had we not better
pacify the gods?"
"Hark to her!" exclaimed Ramabhai, drying her facile tears
triumphantly. "Saw you ever such a saint? He who gets my Parbutti is
certain of salvation."
Parbutti sate silent. She did not even blush, though that is allowed to
a Bengâli bride. But for all her outward calm she was inwardly
quivering all over; and small wonder if she was! After long years
spent, not like an English girl, in ignorance and innocence of
matrimony, but in matter-of-fact expectation of it, that one great
event in woman's life was close at hand. It had been delayed almost
beyond propriety by the difficulty of finding a high-caste husband. For
her father, though a Kulin Brahman, was sufficiently westernised not to
hold with the caste habit of marrying a daughter to what may be called
a professional husband: that is, to a Kulin who already possesses a
score or two of wives. A suitable student had, however, been found at
last, and the feminine portion of the household had plunged
hysterically into all the suggestive ceremonials of a high-class
Bengâli marriage. Even the widows let their blighted fancies dwell on
kisses and blisses; so, feeling vicariously the sensuous pleasures of
bridedom, vied with happier women in drugging the girl with sweets and
scents, and secret whisperings of secret delights. The whole atmosphere
was enervating, depraving; but Parbutti took all the gigglings and
titterings gravely as her right. For this was the consummation of her
hopes ever since, as a child of five, she had been taught to worship
the gods, to pray for an amorous husband, and curse any woman who might
try to win love from her.
"Look! how the little marionette scowls over it," the women had
tittered as they watched her, a bit of a naked baby, going through the
formula of the Brata, as it is called. "Truly no co-wife will dare to
enter her house." And certainly her energy was prodigious.
"Mata! Mata! Ma! Keep my co-wife far--
Shiv! Shiv! Shiv! Grant she may not live--
Pot! Pot! Pot! Boil her hard and hot--
Broom! Broom! Broom! Sweep her from the room--
Mud! Mud! Mud! Moist thee with her blood--
Bell! Bell! Bell! Ring her soul to hell--"
and so on through every common and uncommon object on God's earth--and
beneath it!
The childish body had swayed to the rhythm of the chant; the childish
voice had risen clear in denunciation; the childish soul had given its
consent to every wish; for Parbutti was nothing if not serious.
The very cantrips of the Sakta cult to which her parents--and some
fifty millions of other Bengâlis--belonged, were to her so many
indispensable realities.
She, as an unmarried girl, ate her plateful of sacrificial meat
contentedly, though her mother refused it. She sate wide-eyed, solemn,
acquiescent, when after long fasting the whole family waited in the
dead of the night till the auspicious moment for sacrifice arrived, and
in the silence the only sound was an occasional piteous, half-wondering
bleat of the miserable victim--a pet goat, mayhap! She did not wink an
eye when the consecrated scimitar curved downwards, a jet of red, red
bubbling blood spurted into the dim light, and a sort of sob from the
dying and the living alike told that atonement was made.
That sort of thing did not make her or any of the other women quiver;
yet they were affectionate, emotional, kind-hearted. "Without shedding
of blood is no remission of sin," is a Pauline text; but it was theirs
also. Graven by age-long iteration in their limited minds and lives was
the dogma that the Blood is the Life thereof. There was but one
Sacrament; the Sacrament of Blood. Marriage was secondary, but cognate
to it, of course; that was because it was the Gate to Birth and Death,
through which none pass without the Great Sacrifice. So they clothed
the bride in scarlet, and smeared her forehead with vermilion. It was
this stability of inner thought which enabled the women to be so
untiring in their variants of its outward application. All the bathings
and anointings and soothsayings had this unchangeable dogma as
foundation. So the round of ritual went on, the drums throbbed in
unending rhythm, the conches blared in deafening yells, the whole house
was full of the rustlings and bustlings of womenfolk. It must surely
have been a wedding which made Babu Kishub Chander Sen write the
ponderous dictum: "Man is a noun in the objective case, governed by the
active verb woman."
Parbutti's father, being a sensible man, removed himself as much as
possible from the ebullient atmosphere; perhaps it was as well, since
he was a light in the Nationalist party, and the ceremonials of a Sakta
wedding do not go well with talk of political rights and wrongs, of
education, and equality, and exotic tyranny.
Even Parbutti's solemnity was not quite proof against the silly
suggestiveness, the almost indecent jokes and tricks, the hysterical
enhancing of emotions with which she was surrounded.
She felt it a relief when, the guests having retired for some sleep,
she was free to perform her daily devotion at the shrine downstairs.
It was a quaint place, this shrine dedicated to Mai Kâli in her
terrific form--in other words, to Our Lady of Pain--the Woman ever in
travail of mind and body--the Ewig Weiblichkeit which is never
satisfied. It formed on the river side of the house, a sort of low
basement, private in so far that a flight of steep stone steps led down
to it from the lowest storey of the house, public in that it opened on
to some bathing steps. But few people came thither except on certain
festivals; so Parbutti, still in her wedding finery, stole down to it
confidently. She liked the small, dim, arched chamber where you could
only see Mai Kâli as a blotch of crimson in her dark niche. And as you
crept down the stairs behind that niche, and looked through the
crisscross iron bars that filled up the arch, "She" showed nothing but
a black shadow against the brilliance beyond. Parbutti used often to
stand for an instant or two on the cornerwise landing of the stairs to
look before passing up. Everything showed black but the low square of
the outside doorway; and even the pigeons when they flew across it
seemed flitting shadows on the light. To-day she was in a hurry, so she
squatted down promptly at a respectful distance from the image, and
began to smear the floor from a goglet of red paint she had brought
with her. And as she did so she chanted:
"Om! Om! Kâli Ma!--
Ruler, Thou, of blackest night--
Dark, Dark, not a Star--
In Thy Heaven Kâli Ma!--
Thou who lovest the flesh of man--
By this blood I pray thee ban--
Aliens in Hindustan--
Kill them, Kâli Ma!--
Drink their blood and eat their flesh--
Thou shalt have it fresh and fresh--
Lo! devour it! lick thy lips--
Flesh in lumps and blood in sips--
Stain thyself with sacred red--
Make them lifeless, dead! dead! dead!
Blessed Kâli Ma!
Ho-o-m! 'Phut!"
The last two words were spoken with relish, not only because they were
supposed to be the most potent part of the charm, but because they lent
themselves to dramatic effect. _Ho-om_ being given soft and low; _phut_
explosively. The result being suggestive of an angry tom-cat. But the
rest of the doggerel came slackly, for Parbutti was not much interested
in it. It was not her curse at all, but one she had promised her
schoolboy brother, Govinda, to say every evening. For many reasons;
chiefly, it is to be feared, because someone else, at present nameless,
was a class-fellow of the said Govinda's. But everyone knew, that if
there was one compelling prayer on earth it was that of a maiden bride;
even Mai Kâli could not resist it. And the petition was a fair one. Who
wanted aliens in Hindustani? Not she! Why! their presence made your
menkind do unspeakable things, so that life became wearisome with
pacifying the gods. Imagine not being able to kiss ...
Voices close at hand, made her leap to her feet, and gain the staircase
like a frightened hare. Then, of course, being a girl, she paused to
peep through the grating.
Surely it was Govinda! Then, she need not have run away! No! he had a
tall lad with him! Parbutti's heart beat to suffocation. Was it
possible? Could it be? Was it--well! what she had been taught to
consider her prayer, her pilgrimage, her paradise; that is, her duty
and her pleasure combined? Stay! there was another lad--short! And yet
another--middle-sized!
This was disconcerting; but perhaps if she listened a little she might
find out. So she stood still as a mouse, all ears, praying in her
inmost heart it might be the tall one.
Though they spoke in Bengâli, they used such a plentitude of English
words that it was difficult for her to understand fully what they said.
It was not all their fault, as it arose largely from the fact that the
ideas they wished to express, being purely Western, had no Eastern
equivalents. Parbutti, however, had been accustomed to this sort of
talk, as she had been a great favourite of her father's, and till the
last year or so, had often sate on his knee as he entertained his
friends.