AN APPEAL TO THE GODS.
“We be the gods of the East,
Older than all;
Masters of mourning and feast,
How shall we fall?”
Within forty miles of where the Himalayas rise from the plains, and the sunrise unveils the blushing snows—and precisely half a koss from the Kanāt river—lies the hamlet of Haru, surrounded by a tangle of castor-oil plants, mango trees, and tamarinds, and standing in the midst of a fertile tract of cane, corn, and poppy. The scarlet-and-white poppies, the stiff, green cane, the waving yellow wheat, also the village (which boasted nine hundred souls at the last census), were the joint property of two wealthy zemindars. The northern part of Haru—including the crops sown for the opium department—was the inheritance of Durga Pershad, a tall, dark, gaunt man, with an unpleasant and sinister expression. The wheat, cane, and southern end of the town belonged to Golab Rai Sing, who bore but a scant resemblance to his name—“the King of Roses;” he was, in fact, a stout, smiling, pock-marked person, with a glib tongue, and a close fist. These two zemindars hated one another as thoroughly as men in their position were not only bound, but born to do. They had not merely been bequeathed adjoining lands, and a whole village between them, but a venerable blood feud, which had been conscientiously handed down from generation to generation.
In good old days—days within living memory—there had been desperate outbreaks, dacoities, and murders, attended with the usual sequel: hanging or imprisonment beyond the seas. Now, in more civilized times (although the vital question of the well by the temple was yet in abeyance, passed on from collector to collector), the rival factions were content with pounding each other’s cattle, burning each other’s fodder, and blackening each other’s characters. Both had a large following of tenants, relations, parasites; and he who brought tidings that evil had befallen the enemy was a truly welcome guest! When the great men met, they simply scowled and passed on their way, and their women-folk laid every sin to the charge of their neighbours that it is possible for the depraved imagination of a practised native slanderer to conceive.
Golab Rai Sing was the richer of the two zemindars, though Durga Pershad owned a larger extent of ground; but it was whispered that he had lost much money in a law-suit, and that Muttra Dass (the soucar) held a mortgage on his best crops; nevertheless, he carried his head high, and his wife had real silver tyres to the wheels of her ekka!
It was the first moon in the new year, and the collector’s camp was pitched under the mango tope, between the village and the river; he had but recently returned from two years’ furlough, and from the whirl of politics and the turmoil of life at high pressure; also, he was new to the district.
As he stood meditating on the river bank at dawn, and saw the snows rise on the horizon with the sun, watched the strings of cattle soberly threading their way to pasture, heard the doves cooing in the woods, and the rippling of the river through the water plants, he said to himself, “Here at least is rest and peace.” Casting his eyes toward the red-roofed houses, half concealed among bananas and cachar trees,—with their exquisite purple flowers—
“I am not sure that these people have not six to four the best of it,” he remarked aloud (no one but his dog received this startling confidence), as he gazed enviously at a group of lean brown Brahmins who were dipping piously in the Kanāt, and pouring water from their brass lotahs; he thought of his own tailor’s and other bills, his wife’s insane extravagance, her flirtations, his hard work, his years of enforced exile.
“Yes,” he continued, “we know nothing about it. We wear ourselves out running after phantoms. Here is contentment, assurance of future happiness, and present peace.”
But then, you see, he was a new man—a visionary—and was totally ignorant of the internal condition of this picturesque and primitive hamlet.
The same day, as in duty bound, the two zemindars, each mounted on a pony, and followed by a crowd of retainers, waited upon the collector sahib, apparently on the most amicable terms. Just once a year they were compelled to masquerade as friends, though when they had the collector’s ear in private audience, their mutual complaints were both numerous and bitter. They bore, as offerings, fruit and wreaths of evil-smelling marigolds (that noxious flower so amazingly dear to the native of India); also Golab Rai Sing carried with him one thing which his rival lacked, and that was his son and only child, Soonder—i.e. “the beautiful”—a lively boy of five years, who was gaily attired in a rose-coloured satin coat, and wore a purple velvet cap and gold bangles. He was a sharp and unquestionably spoiled urchin. He sat with his father and friends, or with his mother and her associates, and listening open-eared, like the proverbial little pitcher, heard many things that were not good for his morals—heard perpetual ridicule and abuse of the enemy of his house; therefore, when he encountered Durga Pershad in fields or byways, he made hideous grimaces at him, squinted significantly, and called him “dog,” “pig,” “robber”—behaviour that naturally endeared him to Pershad, who yearned with irrepressible craving to find him alone! Subsequently the heir of Golab Rai Sing would return to his fond parents, boast of his performance, and receive as reward and encouragement lumps of sticky cocoanut and deliciously long, wormy native sweets.
On the supreme occasion of the yearly reception, the child Soonder was as prettily behaved and hypocritical as his elders. The collector’s lady noticed him—and that publicly. She knew better than to say he was a handsome boy (for, if she had no fear of the evil eye, it was otherwise with her audience), but she gave him a picture paper, and a battledore and shuttlecock, and his father swelled, beamed, and literally shone with pride—for was not the presentation made in the face of childless Durga Pershad, and all the elders of the people? And greater glory was yet in store for this fortunate zemindar. The collector, having looked over various papers, and heard witnesses (many false), actually deigned to visit the well in person, and concluded what he considered a shamefully procrastinated case, and finally made over the Kooah well, and all its rights, to Golab Rai Sing and his heirs for ever!
That night Golab made a great feast to all his followers, and bitter were the thoughts of his defeated rival, as he lay sleepless on his string charpoy, listening to the devilish exultation implied by the ceaseless tom-toms.
As days went on, his thoughts became still more poignant; it seemed to him that his friends were showing defection. Golab Rai had fine crops, on which there was no lien; he had a son to light the torch of his funeral pyre; he had the well. Of a truth, he had too much! And he, Pershad, had been flung in the dust, like a broken gurrah. Thus he reflected as he sat brooding on the river-bank at sundown. The cattle were strolling home through the marshes, the cranes were wheeling overhead, close by a fierce, lean, black pariah gnawed some mysterious and ghastly meal among the rushes, and on a sandbank lay three huge alligators—motionless as logs of wood—crafty as foxes, voracious as South Sea sharks. Durga Pershad glanced indifferently at the cattle, at the cranes, but as his eyes fell on the alligators they kindled, they blazed with a truly sinister flash—the alligators had offered him an idea!
It was the feast of lights or lanterns, the festival of Lucksmi, wife of Vishnu, and the goddess of festival. She, however, brought naught but sore misfortune to the house of Golab Rai, for since sundown the child was missing—was gone, without leaving a trace. Amongst the busy excitement of preparing the illuminations and decorations, he had vanished. His mother supposed he was with his father, and his father believed him to be with his mother. Every house, byre, and nook—yea, even the well, was searched in vain. Durga Pershad was humbly appealed to, as he sat on his chabootra stolidly smoking his huka.
“Why question me?” he replied. “How should I know aught of the brat? What child’s talk is this?”
A whole day—twenty-four long hours—elapsed, and suspicion pointed a steady finger at Durga Pershad. Of late it was noticed that he and the child had been friends—that he had given Soonder sweets—yea, and a toy. One man averred that he saw a pair resembling them going towards the river about sundown. The child was jumping for joy, and had a green air-balloon in his hand.
This, Durga Pershad swore, was a black lie; he had never left the village; his kinsman could speak.
“For how much?” scoffed the other side. “What fool will credit a man’s relations?”
Four days passed, and Golab Rai had aged by twenty years. His round, fat face was drawn and shrivelled; he was bent like an aged man, and tottered as he walked.
As for his wife, she had almost lost her senses, though both she and her husband clung wildly to hope, and he had lavished money unsparingly in rewards and horse-flesh. As a last resource, the miserable mother of Soonder came and cast her dishevelled person at the feet of Durga Pershad—Durga Pershad, whom all her life she had mocked, reviled, and figuratively spat upon.
“Take all I possess!” she cried—“my jewels, my eyes, my very life; but tell me what thou hast done with him? Doth he yet live? My life, all thou wilt, for his!”
As she spoke, a little cap was brought—a velvet cap, soaking with water. It had been found by a fisherman three miles down the river.
This was sufficient answer to the question, “Doth he yet live?” The child was no more, his cap bore witness; and Gindia, his mother, swooned as one that was dead.
Yes, Soonder had been thrown to the alligators, without doubt; cast into their jaws, like a kid or a dog. In their mind’s eye, the villagers beheld the hideous scene, they heard the shriek, saw the splash, and the ensuing scuffle. What death should Durga Pershad die?
The whole place was in an uproar; excitement was at fever heat. The police were sent for to Hassanpore, the nearest large station, and the suspected zemindar was marched away, and lodged in the Jail Khana; even his own people were dumb.
Durga Pershad stoutly avowed his innocence by every oath under a Hindoo heaven. He engaged, at enormous expense, an English pleader from Lucknow. He paid much money elsewhere. There was no case. If one man swore he met him with the child at sundown on the feast of lights, there were five unshaken witnesses who had seen him at the same hour in the village.
Therefore Durga Pershad was acquitted; and, moreover, in the words of the Sudder judge, “without a stain on his character!”
Nevertheless, matters were not made equally agreeable for him at home. His own partisans—save his tenants—held aloof with expressive significance, and those who were wont to assemble on his chabootra of an evening to smoke, argue, and bukh, were reduced by more than half.
But he held his head as high as ever, whilst that of his enemy lay low, even to the dust. Of what avail now to Golab Rai were his crops, his rents, his great jars of “ghoor” (coarse sugar), even his well, when he had no longer a child—a son and heir?
The immediate effects of the tragedy gradually faded away; it had ceased to be the sole daily topic, and it was again winter-time. One chill, starlight evening, as Durga Pershad was riding home alone among the cane-fields, he was suddenly set upon by a number of men, who had lain in ambush in the crops. A cloth was thrown over his head, he was dragged off his pony, and hustled into a doolie, which set off immediately, and at great speed. There were many riding and running beside it—the terrified prisoner heard the sound of steps and hoofs and muttered voices. It seemed to him that he travelled for days; but, in truth, he had only journeyed twenty hours, when he was suddenly set down, the sliding door was pushed back, and he was hauled forth. He found himself standing in a temple (an unknown temple), and by the light of blazing torches he recognized at least one hundred familiar faces, including those of Golab Rai and the priest of the village of Haru. He was so cramped and dazed that at first he could only stagger and blink; but as his hands were untied, he found his voice.
“What foul deed is this?” he demanded hoarsely. “Where am I?”
“Thou art within the most holy temple of Gola-Gokeranath,” answered the priest, impressively. “We have appealed to man for justice—and in vain. Therefore, we now approach the gods! Is it not so, my brothers?”
The reply was a prolonged murmur of hoarse assent from the quiet, fierce-eyed crowd.
“Behold the image of Mahadeo, the destroyer!” continued the priest, pointing to a conical stone in the middle of the temple, on which the holy Ganges water dripped without ceasing. “Here is the mark of Hanuman’s thumb, where he rested on his way to Ceylon to war against the great giant Ravan.”
A venerable Mahant, or high-priest of the Gosains, now advanced, and said, in a voice tremulous with age—
“Lay thy hand upon this spot, O Durga Pershad, and swear as I shall speak.”
Durga Pershad held back instinctively, but the pressure of fifty arms constrained him, and he yielded.
“If I have had part or lot in the death of Soonder, the son of Golab Rai Sing——”
There was an expressive pause for a full moment, and no sound was audible save the slow, monotonous dripping of the sacred stream.
Durga Pershad shuddered, but repeated the sentence somewhat unsteadily.
“—I call upon Mahadeo, the most holy, the destroyer, to smite me with the black leprosy in the sight of all men, and that within three moons. May I die in torture, and by piecemeal. May I be abhorrent alike to men and gods, and after death, may I hang by my feet for one thousand years above a fire of chaff.”
Durga Pershad echoed this hideous sentence with recovered composure. Truly, it was a vast relief to find that his end was not yet—his life in no present danger.
Here was a weird and ghostly scene! The dark, damp temple, at dead of night, the crowd of stern, accusing countenances, lit up by flashes of torchlight, the austere high-priest in his robe of office, and the haggard culprit, the central figure, glaring defiance, with his uplifted hand upon the cold wet stone! There seemed to the wretched accused some accursed power in this holy image; the stone clung tenaciously to his trembling flesh, and he was sensible of an awful, death-like chill that penetrated to the very marrow of his bones.
In a few minutes the lights were extinguished, the wolfish-faced crowd had melted away, and Durga Pershad found himself alone. He stumbled out of the shrine, and by the cold, keen starlight descried the edge of a large tank, which was surrounded by temples. He had never visited the place of his own free will, but he recognized it from description as undoubtedly the most holy Gola, where two hundred thousand pilgrims flocked to worship once a year.
At daybreak he made his way to the bazaar, and there sold a silver chain,—for he had no money. It might be imagination, but he believed that people looked upon him with suspicious eyes. Three days later, he was at home once more. He told no one that he had been kidnapped—no, not even his mother or his wife.
By the end of a month, Durga Pershad had become an altered man. He looked wofully lean and haggard, he scarcely ate, slept, or smoked, and appeared dreadfully depressed. He now cared nought for taxes, rents, or crops, and complained of a strange numbness in his limbs. Much to the surprise of his household, he undertook a pilgrimage to Hurdwar, the source of the Ganges (some one had suggested most holy Gola—some one ignorant of Durga’s enforced expedition). He had barely returned from Hurdwar when, as if possessed by a fever of piety, he set forth for Badrinath, in the Himalayas. After that long and arduous journey, he passed rapidly down to Benares. From thence, concluding an absence of four months, he returned finally to Haru, and shut himself up within his own courtyard and in his own house, refusing to see even his nearest of kin. And now it began to be whispered about from ear to ear that Durga Pershad, the son of Govindoo Pershad, was smitten with the kôrh—or black leprosy.
Yes, the grasp of that terrible disease was upon him. His features altered, thickened, and took the fatal and unmistakable leonine look. In a surprisingly short time he had lost the fingers of both hands. To show himself abroad would simply be to proclaim his guilt, and the judgment of Mahadeo—whose wrath he had invoked. For weeks and weeks he successfully evaded his enemies, fortified within his own house, and protected by his wife and mother, whose shrill tongues garrisoned it effectually.
When it became known that the hours of Durga Pershad were numbered, a body of the elders, led by the village priest, came and sternly demanded an entrance. They would take no denial. After frantic clamour and frenzied resistance, they gained admittance—admittance to the very presence of the leper, who lay in a darkened room, huddled up on a string bed.
“Behold,” cried the priest in a sonorous voice, “the finger of Mahadeo, and the punishment of the slayer of a child! Speak, ere your tongue rot away, and declare unto us what befell the boy at thy hands, O Durga Pershad, leper!”
“Begone!” screamed his wife. “Depart, devil, born with the evil eye, come to mock at the afflicted of the gods!”
“When he hath spoken, we will go our ways,” answered a solemn voice; “but otherwise, we remain until the end.”
Durga Pershad raised himself laboriously on his charpoy; his head was muffled up in a brown blanket, he was nearly blind, and cried aloud, in a shrill, piercing falsetto—
“Yea, here is the answer—the god’s answer”—and he thrust out a leprous arm—“I did it.”
“How? Hasten to speak, O vile one!”
“I long desired his life,” he panted. “He came with me to the river-bank of his own accord, for I had promised him a rare spectacle. My heart was hot within me—yea, as a red-hot horse-shoe. Even as he clamoured for my promise, I flung him to the alligators. It was over in a minute—but—I hear his scream now!”
Then Durga Pershad covered his face, and lo! as he turned to the wall, he died.