The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

Fortunately his fire had not quite gone out; and, with a little effort, he revived it. Then he cooked himself some food, ate, threw himself upon the bed where Churi had died, and fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, it was afternoon. Clouds were rolling up the west, and there was promise of more rain. Oman went slowly out of his cave, with a new sense of desolation on him. The air was cold. The surrounding hills lay wrapped in still, gray shadows. All the morning joy had left the world. Reluctantly, with dread in his heart, Oman made his way down the eastern slope to the place of the funeral pyre. There lay a heap of wood ashes, mingled with white bones, a few scraps of cloth, and some pieces of charred and blackened flesh. That was all. The fire had done its work well. A week of rains and wind, and no trace would remain of him who had ascended the Silver Peak to die. The sight was less dreadful than Oman had feared; and he returned to his cave with a lighter heart.

During the remainder of the daylight, Oman occupied himself in a desultory way by reviewing his depleted resources. His fire-wood was nearly gone; and, the woods around being soaked with rains, it would be a month or more before a new stock could be gathered and sufficiently dried to burn. His food supply was also very low. This fall he had neglected to care for his grain field; and the crop, which, by this time, should have been harvested, still lay in the soil, draggled with mud and mildewed with wet. He had yet a little millet from the last season, and some rice and dried dates brought by visitors, before the rains. But, fast as he might, these could not suffice for the winter. Tired and heavy-hearted, he sat in the doorway of his cave and watched night and the storm come on together. Then, while the rain beat into his shelter, and a fierce wind raged without, he rekindled his fire in the farthest corner of the cave, and lay down upon his grass bed, thinking to sleep.

But rest was not yet for him. By degrees he was seized with a great restlessness of mind and body. He tossed and turned, nor was able to shut his eyes, which stared wide into the light-streaked gloom. His brain burned, and was filled with chaotic visions. The spirit of Churi moved close beside him; and he chilled with dread. Where was the calm of his former high estate? Alas! It had of late become a mockery. On his breast the ruby burned; and at length he took it out and gazed at it by the light of the fire. Again it brought upon him strange thoughts, bathed him in a stream of remembrances so vivid that he felt himself of another life. Under this influence, after a long time, he fell asleep, only to find his dreams taking the same direction as his waking visions. He found himself standing on a great eminence, a vast plateau, rising sheer out of a fertile plain. Behind him were rice-fields, trees, running water, and vast buildings. He was standing with his back to one of these buildings, which was half hidden in clustering tamarinds and bamboo; and the structure was called, in his dream, the water-palace. In the dying light of day he stood there, looking down over the far plain, to a broad river that rushed through the fields. His old calm was upon him, for he was at home. This, he perceived, was the land of his desire, the place where he should find welcome and rest. And so the vision faded and his sleep became dreamless.

When he awoke, the morning was well along. He found that he still clasped the ruby in his right hand; and, returning it to its box, he prepared to go about the duties of his day. He was determined now to force himself to a long period of reflection, as a remedy for the restlessness brought about by recent happenings. But, to his great disturbance, he found his determination easier made than carried out. True, he meditated. Long habit had not so basely deserted him. But his meditations were no longer satisfying, and, when they were over, the dreaded mood, a restless loneliness, an unquenchable yearning, crept upon him again, till he soothed himself anew with thoughts of the ruby, the power of which never failed.

All this could end only in one way. For three weeks longer he dwelt on his height; and then, suddenly abandoning a useless battle, made ready to leave the mountain top. At dawn of a December day he stood for the last time on the summit where he had dwelt for so many years; and then, at last, not without a pang of regret, he turned his steps downward, toward the haunts of men.

CHAPTER XII
MANDU IN MALWA

Late in the evening of the same day that he had left the height, Oman appeared at the door of Poussa’s hut; and found that the years had changed it little. Poussa, now a woman of some authority in the village, though she was not yet thirty, received him with joyful acclaim, and with a reverence that she gave neither to the head-man nor to the priest of her community. She feasted him on rice and curry, millet bread, dried fruits, and sweetmeats, and gave him to drink out of a jar of mellow (not too precious) wine. They ate alone, he and she; and he slept the whole night in her hut before she deigned to acquaint the village that the great hermit was among them.

Oman, who had expected to spend the next day at the loom, to pay his debt of food to Poussa, found himself, instead, a centre of attraction to the whole village, and was obliged to submit, for a matter of twelve hours, to the entertainment of the chief citizens of the hamlet, and as many visitors as had time to reach him that day. At dusk he was borne to the room of the gods in an old palanquin, carried on the shoulders of eager Vaisyas. And there a sacrifice was conducted, and Soma was drunk, and fires were lighted in the council square. They also demanded of him an address; and Oman talked, preaching a little of his own creed, couched in the simplest language. His audience, accustomed, like all Hindoos, to thoughts of the broadest abstraction, gave close attention, and, getting his meaning, approved it, because of the novelty of his ideas. Later he was borne back, triumphant, to Poussa’s hut.

That night Oman could not sleep for very joy. Here at last was—success. At last men had given him free right of brotherhood, and more. He had known the respect, the reverence, of his own kind. By a miracle, the outcast was become the acclaimed among men. The cost of it, those bitter years of loneliness and despair, was not counted now. Oman knew only that he was welcome, was honored among the people; and his heart went out to them in praise and thanksgiving.