“A crime no longer, Marana. He may take dollars from the Spaniard, and silk from the Italian, and cotton from the Englishman, and iron from the Russian, and grain from the American, and no one will ask him how he got his wealth, or threaten those who exchange with him. I will go with you, and plant and bless your first shrub with my own hands.”
“Rayo’s hands are too feeble to dig, and he cannot kneel for your blessing,” observed Marana, mournfully. “Will there be any more burning of cinnamon, father?”
“Never more till all people in every land shall have had their fill, and the cinnamon twigs with which we light our fires shall be used unbarked through their abundance. Why should there be destruction of any good thing when the many are to decide what price they will give, instead of the few what price they will take?”
This was the best news Marana had yet heard, and her father had no more to tell. While he was moving about, preparing for the exercise of his art, and leaving his mat for his daughter’s repose, he told of poverty and sickness among his neighbours, to whom it mattered not whether the fishery proved a rich or a ruinous one. In the former case, they derived none of the benefits; in the latter, they could scarcely be starved down to a lower point than they were sure to reach in the intervals of the seasons. His representations were confirmed to Marana when she went abroad in the morning to seek Father Anthony, and accost any friends she might meet by the way.
Old Gomgode, her father-in-law, lay on the beach, glancing about him with his restless eyes for something to feed his inquisitiveness. There was no inducement at present to go to sea in search of curiosities, there being no fair at this season, and none of his neighbours being wealthy enough to make purchases when each had no thing to do but to secure his own scanty provision for the day. Gomgode’s sole employment was asking questions of any one he could meet, and longing for the sight of an unaccustomed face.
He started up as he recognized Marana’s form, though wasted, and her gait, though feeble and spiritless. When he had asked a multitude of questions,—where was Rayo? how was Rayo? why did not Rayo come? and so forth, he was struck dumb by the tidings of his son’s afflictions. He silently pointed to the cottage where Neyna, his daughter, might be found, and lay down on his face to importune the saints with prayers for his children;—for Neyna, who was awaiting a dowry he could not earn for her; for Marana, who was likely to be a widow before she was a mother; and for the sufferer who was pining in his distant solitude.—Before his prayers were ended, Father Anthony had joined him, and was uniting in his intercessions when the young women appeared to ask the priest’s blessing.
Marana had not found Neyna in the cottage, but bathing with her companions in a reedy pool behind the dwellings. There was something left among these maidens of the sportiveness which seems to belong to the most refreshing exercise of bathing, and which was Marana’s wont in her younger days. There was now a song and now a laugh; now a conspiracy to empty all the waterpots at once on the head of one, and then the chace of a dusky beauty among the rushes,—of Neyna, who had forgotten for the moment her hopelessness of a dowry. She was startled by the apparition of a stranger, intercepting her with outstretched arms in her flight, and recovered her gravity at the first recognition of Marana’s faint smile. The other girls wrung out their dripping hair, and came up from the water to crowd round their old companion, to ask tidings of the rich land to the south, where, if there were no pearl-banks, there was every other wealth of nature; where, as the songs of their dancing-girls told them, life under the cocoa-nut trees was all that could be desired; where thousands of yards of cotton might be had from abroad, and hundreds of thousands of bags of rice were landed from foreign fleets. Marana pointed to her tattered garment, and let fall that it was long since she had tasted rice.
Why did she not seek relief from the English? she was asked. Did not the English come to provide for and protect the natives? Had not the English cotton enough to tapestry Adam’s Peak, and could not they purchase the rice grounds of the globe?
“We,” said they, “are too far off from this fountain of wealth and mercy. The English come for our pearls once a year, and then they see us gay, and observe that our shore is spread with wealth. They do not know how little of this wealth is ours, or suspect what our hunger and nakedness are when they withdraw the light of their faces. But you live in that light, and yet you are wasted and sorrowful.”
“The English themselves complain,” answered Marana. “When there is a bad cinnamon harvest, the Government complains that the richer of our countrymen pay no dues, and that feeding the poor is a costly burden. When there is a good cinnamon harvest, the Company complains of the abundance, and burns half the crop; so that the strangers are always complaining, and the labourers of the country are always poor. This is the way with us in the south.”