“But what will Father Anthony say to-morrow?”
“Let us see if he finds it out.”
“But the curse will come, whether Father Anthony knows or not.”
“Your father shall charm it away, and you shall have your rings; and the rest shall be sold at the fishery. Then we will build a house, and we will each have new clothing, and we will be married.—But let us hide the chanks. If my father finds them, he will sell some. If Neyna finds them, she will ask for rings too. We will hide them in the rushes.”
Marana dared not resist, but her horror of the curse grew every moment. She did not think at all the worse of her lover for his determination. She rather admired the bravery of it, her thoughts being employed, not on the sin, but on its apprehended consequences. She doubted whether her father had a charm strong enough to obviate the effects of her lover’s rashness; and she was far less afraid of anything that might come out of the rushes than of what might come out of the deed which Rayo went to do there.
When the torches were lighted, without which it is unsafe to penetrate the places where leopards may be crouching on dry sand, hidden by the silky rushes, she went first, fearing, not the glaring eye of a savage beast, but the vigilant glance of some saint or demon whom her religion or the old superstitions of the country taught her to regard as the dispenser of punishment from above. She started as the night-wind swept among the reeds, not so much from dread of some velvet paw that might be stealing towards her, as from expectation of some token of wrath. All was quiet, however. The curse was not perceived immediately to light, and the lovers parted in safety at the door of her father’s hut.
Marana stood for some time hesitating between lying down at once on her mat to sleep, and waking her father, to trouble him for a charm without loss of time. A better plan than either flashed across her mind, and found more and more favour the longer she entertained it. It might avert the curse without exposing Rayo to shame; and the loss of the chanks (which was involved in her scheme) was a small price to pay for such security. She hoped Rayo might be brought to think so; and if not, she could rather bear his anger than see the curse light upon him. The chanks were intended chiefly for her; and she could do without them for ornaments, and had rather marry Rayo without a house and without new clothing, than expose him to the curse: and thus, by a process of reasoning over which the fear of a curse presided, she convinced herself that the best thing she could do was to restore the chanks to their oozy bed.
Without a torch, for she had not now the means of getting one, she stole out, and crept to the hiding place among the rushes. Without bite from snake, or alarm from any living thing more formidable than a bat, she made her way out again. Without help or hinderance, she pushed the little raft into the water, hoisted its mast and mat, and stood out alone into the shining sea. What kind of malignant beings she could imagine to be hovering between the glorious constellations and their earthly mirror, it was for her to tell. The miseries which she believed them commissioned to dispense came from a much nearer place than the nearest of those radiant spheres, or even of the dense clouds which began to show like a low wall along the horizon. The miseries under the pressure of which her lover had committed crime, and she was now dreading the atonement, came from the corrupt desires and infirm judgments of men near at hand, whose passion was for the possession of the powers of the earth, and not for alliance with the powers of the air.
When Rayo rose in the morning at his father’s call, to trim the boat for a fishing expedition, he was surprised to see no sign of his little raft on the beach. It might have been washed away,—the sea being no longer so smooth as it was a few hours before: or some unscrupulous neighbour might have used it for his own convenience. It was of little consequence; a raft being the simplest and cheapest of all contrivances by which a Cingalese can set himself afloat.—The disappearance was explained when old Gomgode’s flat-bottomed fishing-boat, containing himself and Rayo, had made some progress from the land, and was pitching in the rising swell, while the young man threw out his nets.
“Rayo, Rayo,” said Gomgode, “what is floating out beyond? Rayo, Rayo, tell me whether it is not your raft.”