Then she swayed back and forth, wailing as if her heart was breaking. She piteously asked, “Why not take me with you, as you often said you would?”
“That would be impossible,” he replied. “You would not be happy among my people in a strange land; you are of another caste or race, and it would only make you unhappy to go there.”
“I have been your beloved wife, your pyari bibi here, why could I not be there also? I have lived here all these years, discarded and despised by my people because I was a sahib’s aurat, woman, but I loved you, I lived upon the thought of you. The very sound of your footsteps thrilled me with delight. I have been good enough for you as your wife through all these years, for you have called me your pyari bibi, your darling wife, a thousand times, and now you will cast me off and get an English mem sahib. Allah! Allah! have mercy upon me! O my children, my children! They are your children. You were my God. I worshiped you when they were conceived. My love and adoration of you impressed your features upon them. They are more yours than mine, for I gave them no thought of myself but all of you. They are yours, of your own flesh and blood. How can you forsake them? How can you be so cruel to them and me?”
She ceased, bitterly weeping. He stood speechless, somewhat moved by her piteous appeals, yet as I remember him, he regarded her with a look of hardened contempt. A moment after uttering the last words she quickly threw the rupees from her lap, scattering them all over the floor and leaping from the charpoy, flung herself at his feet and putting her arms around his legs placed her face upon his boots, wailing piteously and praying him not to desert his children.
“Throw me aside forever,” she said, “but, oh! the children, your own children, do not forsake them! For Allah’s sake, take care of them.”
Her long abundant black hair fell over her shoulders. Her face showed the intense agony of her soul and her large eyes filled with tears that dropped from her face as if each one was a drop of hot blood from her heart. He remained silent, as I remember him, with a cold brutal indifference, without saying a word until she seemed nearly exhausted in her anguish. He then lifted her up and placed her upon the charpoy, and taking her hand saying, “I cannot help it, pyari, it is my kismet, I must go,” and kissing her, said: “Salaam, good-bye, God bless you,” and rushed from the room.
Is it strange that I should remember such a scene? This was my first consciousness of life. I remember nothing previous to that night, and what I saw and heard then was burned into my very being to remain a part of it as long as I continue to be. She was my mother, my own, my darling mama. I am now an old man and the sands in my hour-glass are nearly run out. I have had trials enough to have hardened all my feelings into iron, yet as I think of my dear little mama, in her agony and despair on that memorable night, great tears run down my furrowed cheeks. I cannot help their coming, and I would not if I could. Blessed tears! that relieve us in our sorrows and moisten our hearts with tenderness. It was a strange scene to me. I was frightened into silence and could not stir, and dared not cry. I could understand that my mama was in great trouble, though I knew not why it was, nothing of the cause of it. I sat in a corner partly concealed by a cloth hung on a rope that was stretched across the room. I now see every little thing as it was then, my mother’s eyes, the big tear drops on her cheeks are now in my sight, after all these years, just as I saw them then. I hear my mama’s voice, its wailing tones of entreaty, of despair. I see her body quivering in her agony as she was clinging to the feet of the sahib, just as vividly as if she was before me now.
As I learned afterward, he used to come late at night, so that I was asleep in a little side room when he came. At the front of the court was a large gate, but I was told the sahib never came in by that way. At the back end of the court there was a little narrow door, through which the rubbish and sweepings were carried and thrown, into a gully that wound its way to the old canal beyond the city. It was by the gully where the rubbish lay and through the door by which the sweepings went out that the sahib came in, never by daylight, but always near dead of night.
Shall I now express my opinion of that very brave Christian English gentleman? coming up through that stinking gully, through that little back door at the hour of midnight? A man who would do that would not only destroy the woman he had called his wife, make outcasts of his own children, but would barter his own soul and betray his God to gratify his lust. But I must not let my feelings overcome me. Yet I cannot help saying that often since then, when I have thought of that night scene, I have felt like tearing a passion to tatters, aye more than that, to be really truthful, to murder somebody; even that man, my own father, for the infamous wrong done my darling mother.
As I have said, when this sahib so suddenly appeared I was terribly frightened. He seemed to me a giant, so tall and big. Then the ghastly pale face; the reddish hair; the strange clothes, he might be one of the bhuts or jins that carry away little boys and eat them, one each day, for his dinner. Was it strange then, that I sat crouching in my corner, scarcely daring to breathe, lest he might hear me and seize me for his next day’s meal?