told to me by a friend. Someone visiting a local prison was attracted
by the misery of a woman who had murdered her child. He spoke to her,
and she said she wished that her own life had been taken, for she
loved her child, and all she had done was to right the wrong of early
widowhood. “Her husband died when she was five. Do not I, who have
lived a lifetime of widowhood, know what that means? Was I wrong to try
to save her from misery like to mine?”
In truth, apart from the written law, it is difficult to judge the
woman. She loved her child, and in her own opinion did no more than
pull her gently away from under the wheels of that Jagannath Car of
Hindu widowhood.
There was my “Dog-girl,” now just dead, poor child. What of her Mother?
she who has made war upon her only daughter since her second year. What
of her? There is no law to meet her case. What of her? “God has not
said a word.”
It is a graphic quarrel in three generations of women, and of women
living in the same Palace, only a courtyard dividing each from each.
Sullenly they lived, silently year in year out, not a single interest
coming from the outside world to distract their attention from their
hates and resentments. Traffic indeed with the world they had none.
Palace walls shut them in securely, shut them in with their broodings
and bemoanings, with the intrigues and loyalties of their several
waiting-women, and with one gray-white _Sarus_, the red-throated, a
ghost-bird, walking restlessly on his high stilts from courtyard to
courtyard.
I saw the solitary creature first in the cow-dust hour before the stars
come out, and he seemed to me somehow the embodiment of that quarrel,
the lost soul of the inharmonious.
I have said the quarrel was in three generations--daughter, mother,
grandmother--and, of course, like all Raj quarrels, it had been made
by a third person to suit his own purposes. My connection with it was
an attempt at Peacemaking, when the daughter was about fifteen, and
could speak for herself. Not soon shall I forget my journeys ... flat,
mud-coloured country, with mud huts rising out of the ground, as if you
had pinched up the earth into hiding holes ... mud-coloured humans like
detached pieces of their own houses herding undersized goats, or urging
miserable beasts and an unwilling plough over the baked earth: little
vegetation, but here and there a palm-tree, standing straight and
solitary against the heat-hazed, pewter-coloured sky, as if even Nature
had need here to throw herself on God.... This was before the rain. In
a week all was changed, the road was under water, and I had a weird,
mysterious drive through the rivers of streets. The suspicion of a moon
was overhead, and a glorious fresh breeze wandered the world. Silently
we drove, _swish, swish_, fifteen miles of--a call to secrecy, as if
all the world had finger on lip--“_hush, hush_” ... the trees said it,
the feathery bamboos whispering head against head, and the soft gray
clouds, and that veiled moon, and that wistful breeze, and those muddy
streets, they all said “_Hush!_” ... even the bare legs of the saises,
as they ran by the carriage, seemed to say the same. “_Hush!_” ... All
the world was slipping into a delicious forgetfulness and oblivion,
and there was none to see, none save I, thrilling with sympathy, and
that palm or two against the horizon looking on stiff-necked and aloof
as if refusing to have part or lot in this flirtation of Earth and
Cloudland. I did not mind the palms. I hugged myself with the delicious
feeling of being in the secret of the world-things. Once or twice in
our pathless journey we passed through a village, so close that I could
reach a hand and scratch a soft pink nose of cow or buffalo at its
tethering. The peasant house-holder lay stretched in his winding-sheet
asleep on the unguarded threshold. No reason for worry or watch-dog
when all your wealth is in dear Mother-Earth, guarded by the floating
fluid come down from Heaven for that same purpose. How good will be the
rice crop after this soaking he knows full well, that slow-minded one
who sleeps so blissfully.
But it is after midnight, and we have arrived. And next morning there
are secrets again, but of a different kind, in the air, and my work is
cut out for me.
It was the little daughter who was most difficult to manage. “How
could she visit her Mother?” she would be bewitched. Had they not on
such-and-such a day--it was the fifth day of the dark fortnight in the
month of the Spring games--had they not, her Mother’s minions, thrown
mustard in her path as she walked? Did the Miss Sahib not know that
_that_ was a powerful breeder of demons? Oh! but yes! Colman’s mustard
that you get in yellow tins from Europe shops.... And,--“once they bade
her to a ‘peace-making meal,’ but there was poison in the food....
How did she know it? Oh! she was not without sense, who does not know
poison when they see it!”
The Grandmother spoke a more forcible tongue; charges under the Penal
Code, with quaint excursions into the family history of the past for
parallel to this unworthy widow of her son.
The Ranee herself was dignified. You can afford dignity when you hold
the purse-strings, and your accusations take the form of reduced
allowances. She entertained me much this lady. As soon as word was
brought her of my arrival she went to bed, feigning sickness. How did
she know what manner of woman I might be! It were best to be on the
safe side; if you were ill and in bed you could, with courtesy, avoid
seeing visitors. So she went to bed. But she sent her Prime Minister
and her most confidential officers to call upon me, that they might
report. Was their report favourable, or did curiosity get the better
of discretion? I know not; but early next morning a long procession of
Palace servants in red and gold liveries came with gifts of welcome.
Each man bore a tray of fruits and things auspicious; one touches
the trays, leaving a silver coin behind. They bore also a letter of
compliments praying an early visit. “Such was the beneficent nature of
my visit to her State, she was well....” For me, after writing back
elaborate congratulations on the quick recovery, I stood at the window
watching the messengers. Their lithe, smooth bodies glistened in the
sun, and on each tray reposed the red and gold livery of that visit of
ceremony! Once through my gateway, what need to carry superfluous mark
of civilization.
The days that followed brought their own burden ... visits, morning
and evening, to this lady or that at the Palace, and visitors calling
all day, each one with some tale against his neighbour, some story of
Court intrigue.... “Where all is unknown, best be on the safe side
and accuse” was their motto. And silent patience in the hearer led to
this much knowledge at least, that there was one man’s name held in
detestation by all alike.... And when the sun set there was solitude,
and I walked in the Temple Garden, a garden which was a wild bed of
Indian jasmine and other sweet-scented flowers loved of the gods, or
played with the children of the old Priest at the Monkey Temple; or
anon, sat still, in the cleft of some low branch, while the Priest
himself told legends of the country-side--quaint tales of miraculous
cures, or gruesome tales of living corpses.... And once an old Mutiny
soldier recited Persian verses to me in a voice that should have
reached his old battlefield at Delhi, many miles away; and once again,
on a dark night of stars, they showed me the King’s games of by-gone
days--little green parrots turning somersaults in circles of fire,
and torch-bearers dancing a wild tattoo.... So the days passed.... Of
what account was Time to the believers in Eternity? They would not be
hurried. But every day we gained ground, and at last all was ready for
the great peace.
Etiquette of the strictest was imperative: it needed some care to
secure this without friction. As a personal favour the old Grandmother
promised to come with me to the Ranee’s apartments; likewise the
little daughter clinging tightly to my hand for fear of those same
mustard demons.
As a personal favour also, the Ranee agreed to welcome her
Mother-in-law in orthodox fashion.
Five o’clock of an afternoon, and a long dark room lined with
waiting-women standing erect and silent, each waving a huge glittering
fan planted like a flag in front of her ... _flap_, _flap_, went the
fans, like an elephant’s ears; and the serving-women’s ornaments shone
like stars on arm or forehead. I had just arrived, the first and third
generations in either hand, myself a little fearful as to possible
backsliding. The old lady I seated; then going across to the Ranee at
the other end of the room, “Your Mother-in-law,” I said, “has come to
visit you. May I take you to her?”
It was thus, you see, we adjusted reconciliation, met each other half
way, without too much sacrifice of pride ... and, as I led my Ranee
forward, “I want to see,” I whispered, “if your ‘falling at the feet’
is as pretty as ours in the West Country.” “Prettier,” she said.
“Look!” And, covering her face, she fell three times at the feet of the
old dame, who stood there stern as an irrevocable sin. And she? She
might have blessed the prostrate woman, but, at least, she cursed not;
and so as not to strain forgiveness too far, I made excuse of heat and
else, and had her conveyed back to her own courtyard.
The Mother and daughter were less ceremonious; the Mother wept much,
and to seal the peace, made over to her daughter jewels of gold and
precious stones, silver palanquins, silver bedsteads, silver toilet
sets ... all of quaint Indian patternings--the jewels, magnificent sets
of emeralds and pearls, of rubies and topazes--nose-rings, ear-rings,
armlets, bracelets, circlets for hair and forehead, decorations for
the little bare feet, showers of emeralds and pearls falling from a
band round the ankle, over the instep, and ending in a ring for each
separate toe.
And behind the Curtain sat the Prime Minister and Treasurer reading a
list of the gifts--a _price_ list! totalling item by item, calling “Is
it there?” “Is it there?”
The darkness deepened, we finished our inventory by the light of tall
brass lamps--cotton wicks floating in open pans of oil--the handmaidens
still lined the walls, still waved their jewelled fans. Once the
daughter spoke. “A pearl is missing in this nose-ring!” she said.... Do
not be hard on her, my poor little dog-girl. At first, I will own, I
was so myself, chiding her gently for her attitude. All she said was,
“I have known my Mother since I was two years old.” Then wonderingly,
“So the Miss Sahib thought her tears true tears!”
* * * * *
Later I saw more of the child, and watched her grow human and
childlike. The “dog-girl,” I called her, because she had a passion for
dogs, would rescue the most mangy pariahs off the streets and care
for them herself, fearless of consequences. I promised that my own
dear “Chow” should visit her, but as he was, I explained, a high-caste
dog, it could only be when the outcasts were out of the way! It was
so I got rid of the yapping pack in the days of heat; but watching
from her window, one later day of hail and thunder-showers, she saw
some ill-treatment in the street, and re-admitted the “outsiders from
Caste.” It was on this occasion she rebuked me. “Is the spark of life
in Caste-Brother and outcast, in Chow dog and Pariah? Then why should I
not care for these?”
“But you are a Hindu, Caste is your religion?”
“That is man’s invention; where man has not invented, let me hear the
voice of God calling me to have compassion on a fellow life.”
And now she has heard the voice of God calling her out of this life of
fellowship, perhaps, who knows, in supreme compassion of her own little
stunted, shadowed life of high-castehood....
So, after all, God has spoken.
* * * * *
I had taken these thoughts out for a walk on a sunny day in the hill
country, and had now arrived at my destination, where I meant to leave
a card.
It was a house which boasted an electric bell, and unlike Indian
houses, had a closed door, overlooking the street. As I pressed the
button two hill children, in blue and red kimonos, and long plaits of
hair, stood watching me.
“Poor Miss Sahib,” said one to the other, “she is pressing a piece of
wood, and thinks to open the door that way.”
The babies came nearer. “Poor Presence--pressing the wood at the side,”
and they laughed.
I turned round and smiled at them, which gave the younger courage.
“Doors,” she said, “open not with pressings of wood at the side; by the
turning of yellow balls in the middle do the foreign people open doors.
We have seen with our eyes.”
Then, as if apologizing for instructing me:
“Shut doors were ever a foolishness,” she added, and ran away.
XIV
THE TIE THAT BINDS
“The Hour of Union”--with the west, a red gold lake of fire, turning
to the colour of smoke--there, behind the tall gray steeple from which
comes the Christian’s call to prayer.
The crows which have been so noisy all day long spread their wings for
flight; the palms across the road and the great star-flower tree at my
gate are among their bedding places, I know of old. All things travel
toward the Silence, and my soul stretches herself at ease, up here in
the open spaces of my roof.
What is it saying, the Christian Bell? “_Vivos Voco: mortuos plango:
fulgura frango_,” speaking its unknown tongue to a people that
understandeth not, nor wishes to understand. _Vivos voco, vivos
voco...._ But no bell calls the Hindu to worship. She worships when
she will, not necessarily in groups; she rarely passes a temple without
worship, most often just silent prostration: sometimes she will creep
in and ring the bell that hangs beside the bull, her timid call of
ceremony on the god: or she will run in to leave a flower, or to
comfort her heart, poor soul, with prayer for the moment’s need. Nor
need she pray always in a Temple. I have seen her light a light at
cross-roads--the very tragedy of a prayer--among the wheels of traffic
in a busy town, a special prayer this, for a new little life that is
to be. _Vivos voco._... No need to call where religion is not imposed,
rules of a school whose head master is God. The head master will punish
infringement of those rules, so teach the ushers sometimes.... But to
the Hindu sin is not an offence against any Being; it is but putting
one’s self out of harmony with one’s highest attainment. Do it, an you
will, you anger none. You but travel so many more rounds of the wheel
of life ... on and on ... on and on ... reaping in the next cycle what
you have sown in this ... Oh! the weariness of the pain of birth and
re-birth! Oh! the helplessness of trying to escape. There _is_ no
escape. Life is inexorable. Life is more inexorable than Death.
* * * * *
And now the gray overhead is tinged with rosy pink. How long after the
sunset lives the memory of the sunset? This is the marriage of day and
night, the twilight hour, the time of affection, the time of peace....
Now the clouds are staining the great roof of the world--their bridal
congratulations. Soon, they also will have fallen back upon silence
(for is not colour speech after its kind?) and then the God of Night
will sprinkle stars all over the floor of the bridal chamber where
day and night lie hiding while we sleep. For while we sleep, night
walks with day in three great strides across that star-strewn floor,
back to the east where we find her again. “As the Sun sets, but never
dies, even so shall the Sun of my Life set; but I shall not die.” ...
“_Mortuos plango_”.... But why wail if I do not die? Death is release:
death is but the next chance: the new start. Who wails the dead? going
where all the sunsets go to come again, even as they.
Say I have done evil: well! I made my choice. Now I go to pay like a
man. Say I have done well: I go to my reward, through the same door
as had I sinned, for but two doors has this House of Life for all,
the same exit the same entrance. And but two doors will have the
next house, and the next ... the many mansions on the way of Peace.
For Peace comes _at long last_; there is always that; we may make it
come now, this minute, if we choose, if we lay aside desire.... “He
attaineth Peace into whom all desires flow as rivers flow into the
Ocean, which is filled with water, but remaineth unmoved ... not he who
desireth desire.”
But, the chances are endless, why come so soon to the Peace-place. Let
us enjoy all enjoyment, this house and that, _and that_.... Oh! the
weary wander to the House of Peace. Oh! the loneliness of the way: for
none may hold my hand as I walk. None may even be my sponsor. No man
shall save his Brother’s soul. This journey to God, to Peace, must
be my own journey of discovery. Oh! the loneliness of this constant
converse with Fate! It is the loneliness which men are wont to
associate with death: when the Eastern ceases for this--dialogue--he
has attained Heaven, absorption into the Divine.... Oh! the loneliness!
Oh! the joy of loneliness and solitude; the joy of aloofness, each
for each. The Soul and God together, alone together side by side, and
at last, alone and one ... one Great Soul. For our souls are carrier
pigeons, homing to God. _Mortuos plango._ No, the carrier pigeon has
brought its message through all the worlds, to God Himself. The pigeon
rests at peace in the home of Light.
_Fulgura frango.... Fulgura frango._ But what need to break the
lightning, what need? What is, is good; what happens is ordained. Fight
not with Fate. Love it. Conquer by loving it.... Never resent, never
resent. Submit to the evil, and behold it is good. All is illusion in a
world of dreams; who can tell if the lightning be good or bad? Better
not break it, lest worse befall; better not.
* * * * *
Even as one looks the illusions of vision are fading, steeple, trees,
house-tops, are only blurs of grayness, and the other voice of prayer
smites the stillness--“There is no God, but God”....
Beware, beware of resisting Fate; beware, there is who kills and who
makes alive. None may oppose Him; why break the Lightning?
* * * * *
Oh! the time Between the Twilights is good: one floats on the sea of
silence, and is nothing--just part of the Great Creation--absolutely
at rest, at one with Nature, at peace with one’s self, with one’s
neighbour.
Shall we remember in the next House, the furnishings of this? I asked
of my Wisest of the Wise.
“It will be as you desire, as you intend,” was the answer; and then,
musingly, “Most wish to forget, most wish to forget.” ...
There is in her the strangest mixture of ritual and freedom from
ritual. That is because she is a woman. Hinduism, as we find it in
India now, is but a tradition, of which the women keep the record.
You may believe what you will, there are no articles of belief,
there are idols for the ignorant, there is poetry, allegory, which
you may interpret as you will; there are the beautiful songs of the
_Bhagavad Gita_, there is the propitiation of evil spirits, there
are the extortions of the ash-smeared; there is the ecstasy of the
wife-worship of Life, of her husband, her child. There is the crown of
self-sacrifice, and there is the demand of the stronger for the service
of the weaker. All stand for Hinduism; but none connote Hinduism. Of
its essence is caste ... and here we are back again at our marriage
register. The one fear of the Hindu is, lest so-and-so will not marry
into his family. If he does that which would prevent marriage he has
ceased to be a Hindu....
And the things which might prove a bar to marriage among Westerns
do not of necessity prove here a bar to marriage. There is no
excommunication for sin; there is excommunication, out-casting for
breach of a ceremonial rule. The man under Western influence may be
ashamed of a son-in-law who has served his time for a crime. Not so the
orthodox Hindu: has he not paid the penalty for his sin, why cast it up
against him? That account is closed.
If you wish to know what things would out-caste, ask the women. They
have learned from their grandmothers, and they from theirs.
In the long ago travelling Priests would wander from house to house,
telling tales from the old Epics, or building up that great fabric of
folk-lore which we find in all parts of India. Often they would act the
tales they told or sing them, and this made great entertainment in the
lives of the women--Mystery Play, Oratorio, brought to their doors. In
these latter days your Priest will whisper in your ear the name of the
God you must worship, and he will direct your worship, and chiefly your
charity; but he gives you no bundle of ethical maxims, no credo: and in
a woman’s private chapel her own temperament supplies the religion. As
I have said, most usual is the worship of the Baby _Krishna_, though
there is also the Shiva cult which I have described, both with the same
idea running through them, the reverence for Creation. Then to the
timid, religion is often but a faggot of superstitions--what to avoid,
what brings luck ... every home provides some old dame learned in this
lore.
In one thing, however, all are alike. They will keep faith with Gods,
not always with men; that matters little, for no one has taught them
that sense of honour, product of the self-corporate, got from living
in masses in the world. But the Gods are another matter, the Gods can
punish. And the courage with which the frailest will keep faith, at
what cost, offering a child in performance of some vow to a Temple,
measuring her length along the ground in pilgrimage ... this is one of
our paradoxes in India.
In the lives of most there is room for little beside the worship of
the husband, with its perfection of self-sacrifice, which seems to
exhaust all of altruism that the religion holds. And that is perhaps
the chief difference between the standpoint of the West and Hinduism.
When you benefit your fellow-men, it is more to buy merit than out of
compassion. I suppose compassion dries up at the fount, so to speak,
in the consciousness or sub-consciousness that misery is only another
illusion, that in a way you have elected the present suffering,
that at any rate you might have the very best of times in your next
genesis. But however it may be, philanthropy among the orthodox is an
acknowledged soul-saving arrangement. Listen to the very beggar in the
street. “Gift me and buy merit,” is his prayer. He is not ashamed to
beg; you are climbing to heaven on his shoulders. In a way it is you
who are in his debt.
This absence of altruism is a fact which experience is always
emphasizing; and I deem it the more noteworthy, inasmuch as in the
field of thought and meditation the heights climbed are very great
indeed, it is quite common to come across a mysticism parallel to the
mysticism of the West. But I would not be misunderstood; though the
doctrine of works and merit is the most general kind of Hinduism, I
have met a higher. “Good works are fetters of gold, but still fetters,”
as said my orthodox interpreter of religion, and he went on to explain
that even the desire for goodness could be an obstacle on the way to
God. Whereafter he told me this beautiful story.
There was once a woman who had lived an evil life. She was a
Mahommedan, and she said to herself, “I will go the Pilgrimage and wipe
out my sins.” So she set forth, taking with her a dog she loved. And
as she wandered, her face Mecca-wards, the other pilgrims shunned her,
for they knew her ill-repute. But she heeded them not, her mind being
full of the so-soon purchase of sanctity.... And it came to pass that
a few miles from Mecca the dog fell ill, and she said within herself,
“I cannot leave it behind. I must needs stay and tend it.” So, albeit
with a sigh, for Mecca was almost in sight, and she had longed so great
a while to be holy even as those other women by whom she was shunned,
she turned away from the path in search of water. But it was a place
of sand, and it was long before she found a well, and then she had
perforce to make a rope of her hair and a bucket of her clothes to draw
water for the poor beast ... and, in tending him, day changed into
night, but she heeded not--her whole soul in the desire that he might
live.
And when the pilgrims reached the Holy City, and were preparing for the
evening prayer, a voice forbade the recital.... “This,” said the Voice,
“is not the place where God is to be found; go back to where she whom
you deem evil tends a fellow life, for there to-day dwells God Himself.”