_Chandni_
About a mile below the eastern gorge of Naini Tal, the favorite
hill-station of Kumaon, is a Padhani village overlooking Serya Tal. It
is inhabited by a few score of low-caste hill-men, who earn a living,
they and their women-folk, by carrying rough-hewn stones from the
hillsides for contractors engaged in building houses, or by selling
fodder-grass and firewood to the English residents.
When a Padhani has accumulated sufficient means he purchases a wife and
stays at home every other day; and when he has attained affluence and
bought two wives, he stays at home altogether; which accounts for the
fact that a large majority of these carriers of wood and stone are
women.
It is not to be supposed that the Padhani women look upon their toilsome
tasks as a hardship: nature, and the decrees of evolution, have endowed
them with superb health and strength, and they are wont, as they carry
the most astonishing loads, to sing joyous choruses, and so lighten
their toils. Every one who has been to Naini Tal is familiar with the
sight of a string of Padhani women, short-kilted, showing a span of
brown skin between their bodices and skirts, and singing in unison.
They never seem to weary of their choruses, and Captain Trenyon of the
Forest Department, and his _khansamah_, Bijoo, never tired of looking at
them as they passed below his bungalow with swaying hips and jaunty
carriage. They were a trifle darker than their Rajpoot sisters (_quod
tune, si fuscus Amyntas_), and they might have been akin to Pharaoh's
daughter, she who was "black but comely."
Now, Bijoo was a Padhani, and he took more than a casual interest--such
as Captain Trenyon's, doubtless, was--in the laughing and singing crowd
that filed below the captain's house several times a day. Chiefest among
them, and distinguished by her beauty and her stature, was Chandni;
and, ere the season was over, Bijoo purchased her from her crippled
father for ten rupees, and, thereafter, Captain Trenyon turned his back
on the Padhani traffic of the Mall to watch Chandni instead, as she
helped Bijoo to clean the silver; and the songs of the Padhani women
attracted him no more.
* * * * *
The following year, before the snows of February had cleared off from
Shere-ke Danda and Larya Kata, Chandni returned alone to the house of
her father, Thapa, at Serya Tal. It was night when she pushed back the
thatch door of his hut, which was in darkness within, and called him by
name:
"It is I, father, Chandni, thy daughter."
"Moon of my Heart!" said the old man, waking from his sleep, and he
would have "lifted up his voice and wept," as is the manner of all
orientals when greatly moved, but she prevented him by the
impressiveness of her "Choop, choop! father; proclaim not my return to
the village!"
"Where is Bijoo, the man thy husband?"
"Nana Debi alone knoweth, my father, and I have come back to thee."
"Is he dead, little one?"
"He is dead to me, da-da; and I have returned to cook thy food and carry
wood and stone for thee, if thou wilt let me."
"Let thee, O Spray of Jessamine!" and the old man caught his breath, and
once more she had to check his emotions with an imperative "Choop,
choop!"
He left his charpoi, and raking together the embers in the chula, he
blew on them till they kindled into a blaze, at which he lit a smoky
chirag, whose dim light showed Chandni sitting on the ground with her
back towards him, swaying to and fro, and crying softly "Aho, aho, mai
bap!"
He sat by the fire patiently, waiting for her to speak, his hands
trembling with apprehension.
When her composure was sufficiently restored, she said, "Thapa Sing, my
father, Nana Debi hath no ears for a woman's prayers; do thou,
therefore, sacrifice a goat to him to-morrow at Naini Tal, and entreat
his curses on all Faringis. See, here is money," and she threw a small
bag of coins towards him.
He picked up the purse, and after a pause she went on:
"My father, the Mussulmanis do well to veil their women's faces. Trenyon
sahib looked upon me ere I was married to Bijoo, and since then, daily,
in his jungle camp hath he scorched me with his eyes, till my cheeks
felt as though the hot wind had blown on them.
"One day, Bijoo came home with a coin of gold in his hand, such as I had
never seen before, and which, he said, the sahib had given him; and he
bored a hole through it and hung it on my forehead, and bade me wear it
there at the sahib's request; but he stabbed me with his eyes as he put
it on me.
"And the next day, Bhamaraya, the sweeper's lame wife, (Kali Mai afflict
her with leprosy!) came to the door of our hut, Bijoo being gone to the
village market for food supplies, and she extolled my beauty, and
showed a picture of myself made by Trenyon sahib by the help of the sun;
and thereafter I veiled myself when I went abroad.
"She came again the next day, and whensoever Bijoo was away from home,
always praising my lips and my eyes, and telling me what Trenyon sahib
spake concerning me. And yesterday she came to me and said, 'Chandni, O
Moon of the Jungle, Trenyon sahib would fain have speech with thee.
To-night will he send Bijoo with a message to the thana at Kaladoongie,
and when he is gone and the other servants be asleep I will conduct thee
to the sahib's tent. See what he hath sent thee,' and she placed at my
feet a gold bangle.
"When I would have spurned her and her lures from my door she laughed
wickedly, saying, 'Ho, ho, my Pretty Partridge! if golden grain will not
catch thee, assuredly thou art entangled in the snare of necessity, thou
Wife of a Thief!' and she pointed at the coin on my forehead.
"Then, as my heart turned to water, she went on: 'To-morrow the
Thanadar will return with Bijoo, and, unless thou asketh the clemency of
the sahib, Bijoo will be charged with theft and taken back to
Kaladoongie as a prisoner.--The Sircar sends men across the Black Water
for lesser offences than this!'
"And being a woman, and fearing I knew not what dangers for Bijoo and
myself, I entreated Bhamaraya to take me to the sahib's tent, promising
to say naught to Bijoo.
"And thus it fell out, Bijoo being away, that I went with the lame
she-wolf to Trenyon sahib's tent last night to make appeal for my
husband."
She paused in her narrative once more, swaying herself to and fro and
moaning, "Aho, aho!" Then, after a while, she went on:
"When we were in the sahib's presence Bhamaraya plucked the chudder from
my face, saying, 'Lo, sahib, I have brought thee the Rose of the Terai!'
Whereon he filled her palms with rupees. And as she left the room she
spake to me, saying, 'The saving of Bijoo were an easy task for thy
beauty, thou Flower-Faced Chandni.'
"And I stood suppliant before the sahib, with folded palms and downcast
eyes, and in the silence I could hear the beating of my heart. After a
while, and because he spake not, I looked up and met his eyes that
burned upon my face; and then I knew the price that was set on Bijoo's
safety.
"Falling before him, I clasped his feet, saying, 'Provider of the Poor,
let thy servant depart in honor, and so add one more jewel to the crown
of thy worth. See, here is the coin Bhamaraya says was stolen from thee
by the man Bijoo, my husband.' And, unwinding the gold piece from my
head, I laid it at his feet.
"Thereupon he raised me from the ground, and because great fear was upon
me, and because my limbs shook, he seated me upon his bed, whereon was a
leopard's skin. Then, filling a crystal vessel with sparkling waters
that bubbled and frothed, he bade me drink. And my courage revived, and
once more I made plea for Bijoo.
"And then I noticed, for the first time, that the air of the tent was
heavy with the odor of attar; slumbrous music came from a magical box on
the table, and the thought of Bijoo seemed to go far from me, as though
he were in another land, and I became as one who had smoked apheem or
churrus. Then the sahib bound the gold coin on my brow again, and spake
words to me such as I had never heard from man, assuring me of Bijoo's
safety, and calling me Queen of the Stars, Dew of the Morning, Breath of
Roses, and putting a strange stress upon me that cared not for any
consequences.
"When I had flown, as it seemed to me, to the highest peak of elation,
he gave me another draught of the sparkling waters, and, as I sank back
on the pillows, the last thing I had sense of was his hand on mine. Oh,
Nana Debi, that I had never waked again! Aho, aho!"
And once more the woman stopped to indulge her grief.
"When I waked again," she resumed, "the sahib sat by the table, asleep,
with his head on his arm, the light still burning brightly over him. A
bird cheeped uneasily in the peepul-tree above the tent, and through the
chink of the doorway I could discern the faint glimmer of the false
dawn. Fearing to be seen in or near the sahib's tent by the servants,
who would soon begin to stir, I made shift to rise from the bed, but my
head swam from the effects of the strong waters I had drunk, and I fell
back on the pillows and shut my eyes for a few moments.
"When I looked again Bijoo stood within the doorway. Holding up a
menacing finger that enjoined silence, he advanced stealthily on Trenyon
sahib with an unsheathed khookri. Arrived within striking distance, he
touched the sahib on the shoulder, and, as the sleeper raised his head
from the table, the heavy blade descended on it and shore it from the
shoulders, and Trenyon sahib passed from sleep to death without any
waking.
"Tearing the coin from my forehead, Bijoo wound his fingers in my hair
and bade me follow him without any outcry on pain of instant death.
"When we had passed into the jungle a mile from the camp he bade stand,
and then, O my father, he inflicted the punishment our men exact from
unfaithful wives."
"O Moonlight of my Heart, say not thou art a nakti! Not that! not that!"
For answer she rose slowly to her feet and turned towards him. Drawing
from her face the chudder, which was soaked with blood, she disclosed to
his horrified gaze a countenance with a hideous gap between the eyes and
mouth, and bearing no resemblance to that of the once beautiful
Chandni.