III
She sat in silence; and breaking upon it, they heard the soft tread of a man stop by their gate, and voices, and the servant who guarded the gate came in haste.
“Great Sir, here is the holy Brahman who is chief at the altar of great Jagannath in Chaki, and he would speak with you.”
“Bring him instantly hither. Stay! I go myself!” cried the Pandit, rising. He had forgotten his daughter.
“Father, have I your leave to go?” She drew the sari about her face.
“Daughter, no. This is a wise man and great. Be reverent and humble, and stay.”
She stood, trembling with fear to see one so holy. Surely it was a portent that the servant of the God should come on their reading. Yet she quieted her heart, and when her father, attending the great guest, placed him on his own seat, with the image of the wise Elephant-Headed One wreathing his trunk behind him, she bowed before him and touched his feet, for to her he was as Brahman and priest, an earthly God.
He was a man in middle life, tall and dignified in spite of a corpulence which gained upon him, and his features clear-cut in the proud lines that denoted his unstained ancestry. He knew himself the superior of kings. He would have spurned with his foot a jewel touched by the Mogul Emperor of India. Yet more. Had the Rajput Rana, a king of his own faith, sun-descended, royal, cast his shadow on his food in passing, he had cast it, polluted, away. So great is the pride of the Brahmans.
“Namaskar, Maharaj! What is your honoured pleasure?” asked the Pandit.
“I am on my way to Dilapur on the divine business,” he answered, with a voice like the lowest throbbing notes of the bronze temple gong. “But I would have a word with you, Brother, as I go.”
“Has my daughter your leave to depart, Maharaj?”
“Certainly, friend, though it is of her I come to speak. May I behold the face of the maiden? A Brahmani has no need to veil it. They are not secluded like the Toorki women.”
“Unveil before the Presence, my daughter, Radha.”
The guest started at the name so familiar to him in his devotions.
“It is singular, in view of my errand, that you should have given her this holy name, Pandit-ji.”
“She deserves it for the devoted love that she bears to Sri Krishna,” returned her father. “Of her face I say nothing, but her heart is flawless.”
“It is well!” said the priest Nilkant Rai, and turned gravely to Radha.
Many were the devidasis, the nautch girls of the God, in the Temple of Jagannath. His eyes, deep and glowing, were no strangers to beauty, for the fairest were gathered like flowers to adorn the altars of the God, to dance and sing before his divine dreams, in all things to abide his will.
Six thousand priests serve Sri Krishna as Jagannath, Lord of the Universe, at Chaki, for great is his splendour. The Raja of Dulai, royal though he be, is the sweeper of his house. More than twenty thousand men and women do his pleasure, and of the glories of his temple who can speak?
But never had Nilkant Rai beheld such beauty as trembled before him then—darkly lovely, whitely fair, the very arrows of desire shooting from the bow of her sweet lips, half-child, half-woman, wholly desirable.
His eyes roved from the wonder of her face to the delicate rounding of her young breasts and the limbs exquisitely expressed, yet hidden, by the sari.
He looked in silence, then turned to the Pandit.
“Surely she is an incarnation of Radha in face as in name. Brother, she has my leave to go.”
Yet, when she had fled like a shadow, Nilkant Rai did not hasten. The other waited respectfully. Pañ—the betel for chewing—was offered in a silver casket. A garland of flowers perfumed with attar of roses was placed about the guest’s neck. Refreshments were served and refused.
At length he spoke, looking on the ground.
“Brother, it is known to you that the God makes choice when he will of a bride, favoured above all earthly women. Beautiful must she be, pure as a dewdrop to reflect his glory and return it in broken radiance, young, devout— Surely, even in this land of devotion, it is not easy to find such a one!”
“It is not easy, holy one!” returned the Pandit, trembling as he foreknew the end.
The other continued calmly.
“Now it so chanced that the priest Balaram passed lately through this town, and going by the tank to the temple, beheld your daughter, and returning, he came to me and said: ‘The God has shown the way. I have seen the Desire of his eyes.’ ”
“Great is the unlooked-for honour,” said the Pandit trembling violently; “so great that her father and mother bend and break beneath it. But consider, Holy One—she is an only child. Have pity and spare us! The desolate house—the empty days!” His voice trailed broken into silence.
“If this hides reluctance!” Nilkant Rai began sternly. “If you have given a foul belief to any tale of the Temple——”
“I, holy Sir! I have heard nothing. What should I hear?” The old man’s voice was feeble with fear. “Do I disparage the honour? Sri Krishna forbid! No, it is but the dread of losing her—the empty, empty house!”
“And is she not at the age when marriage becomes a duty, and would she not leave you then? Unreasonable old man!”
“Holy Sir—Maharaj, I tremble before the honour. But if the girl married, she would bring her babe and make her boast and gladden our hearts. But thus she is lost to us. Have pity! There are other Brahmans rich in daughters. Take not the one from my poverty.”
Nilkant Rai rose to his feet with majesty.
“I go. Never shall the God be rejected and ask twice. But when your daughter, old and haggard, looks up at you, answer that it was her unworthy father who kept her as a drudge on earth, when he might have raised her to a throne in heaven.”
As the old man stood with clasped hands, Radha broke from the shadows and threw herself before him.
“My father, would you hold me back? What joy, what glory in all the world can befall your child like this? The bride of the God! O Father!”
The tears were running down her face like rain. They glittered in the lamplight. He could not meet her eyes. Nilkant Rai stood by, silent.
“She is beautiful as a nymph of Indra’s heaven!” he thought. “Not Urvasi and Menaka, the temptresses of sages, were more lovely!” He said aloud;
“The maiden is right. She is worthy of the God’s embrace. Is there more to say?”
“Maharaj, I worship you!” said the old man submissively (and still he had not looked at his child). “It is well. What orders?”
“Let her be perfumed and anointed daily. Let her food and drink be purer than the pure. Let her worship daily at the temple of Sri Krishna. The bridal shall be held in a month from this, that time being auspicious. The Car of her Lord shall come for her as the Queen she is, and all envy the Chosen.”
He turned to Radha, still at her father’s feet.
“Farewell, happiest Lady. Joys earthly and celestial await you. Rest in the knowledge of the favour of Sri Krishna. Hear of him, dream of him, until the glad truth slays all dream.”
He moved slowly toward the steps. Her father pursued him.
“Maharaj. Forgive, forgive! I neglect my manners. Thanks a thousandfold for the honour you have condescended to bring us this happy day. Your commands are ever before me.”
The words poured forth. He could not say enough.
“It is well, Pandit-ji. It is well. Say no more!” said the great guest, striding onward to the gate where two other Brahmans and his palki awaited him.
She stood in the shadows as the Pandit returned.
“Father, beloved, did I do wrong? Have you not taught me all my life that there is none like him—none?”
“My pearl, what is done is done. He cannot be resisted. It is well your heart goes with your feet. Now sleep.”
She passed in silently, and sat all night by the small cotton mattress laid on the floor. How could she sleep?
Nor was there sleep for the Pandit. Sita Bai needed little telling, for she had listened behind the curtains; and now, with a livid pallor upon her, she confronted him.
“Lord of my life, what is there to say? You know—you know!”
“I know,” he answered heavily.
Sita Bai was too dutiful a wife to reproach her husband with anything done; but his own thoughts returned to the long evenings spent in contemplating the Perfections of the God. He replied to his thought.
“Yet had she never heard his name, it had been the same. Nothing could have saved her from the temple of Jagannath.”
“Saved.” He caught the word back from his own lips in deadly fear, and added in haste: “Whom the God honours cannot set his grace aside, and there is none who would. None in heaven or earth.”
“None,” echoed the woman faintly. Then, in a whisper scarcely to be heard, “Whom Nilkant Rai chooses”—and steadily averted her eyes.
They dared say no more of this even in whispers to each other; for if this were reported, grief, ruin, death were the sure end.
One word more did Anand Pandit breathe:—
“She must keep her joy. It is the God’s. If he love her, he yet may save her. Let no word be said.”
She touched his feet in token of submission. All night they sat in a bitter silence.