The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

Oman’s face was alight, and he longed for money wherewith to repay the man for his information. The farmer, however, expected no such unusual thing as money out of a mendicant, and hoped for no more than a blessing from this one, which he got. Then Oman passed on, his face turned to the southwest.

For five days, and more than five, he journeyed toward the sunset. He was all aflame with eagerness and delight; but he would ask his way no more. He had a strange notion that it would be a shame to him were he unable, now, to find the country of his heart’s desire; and he kept his eagerness within himself, never allowing himself to say to any one the words that burned on his lips: “I go south, to Mandu! To the plateau of Mandu!” though the pride in him was almost too great to be restrained.

It had served him better, indeed, if he had put away his hesitancy. For he was now in the region where all men knew Mandu, and he might have saved himself a weary walk. At the end of six days’ journeying, about the full-moon day of the Sravana month (March), he came to the southern boundary of the Vindhyas, and, through an opening on the slope, looked out over the Dekkhan. It was the first time in eleven years that he had seen the plain; and there was joy in the sight,—but anxiety also. For where was Mandu, high Mandu, “that stands on the edge of the plain”? Had he come too far to the west, or was he yet too near the rising sun? Fortunately, a little below him, on the hillside above the flat land, he perceived a town, whither he directed his steps, and there, because it was become a necessity, asked his way. He was answered, readily, that Mandu was still a day’s journey to the east; and he was furthermore given directions so minute, that, pausing only to eat a piece of bread and drink some goat’s milk offered by a hospitable peasant, he started again that same night, under the light of the radiant moon. Again he took his way up into the hills, following the course laid out for him, until, about dawn, he found a well-kept roadway such as he had not before seen in the Vindhyas. And now, his uncertainty banished at last, he lay down beside the road, in the shadow of a pipal tree, to sleep.

When he awoke, it was noon. For a little while he lay still, puzzled and thinking, for he had slept heavily. Suddenly it rushed upon him, the great sense of finality. And, with a prayer in his heart, he rose up, and took the road, starting southward at a rapid pace. The way wound round and down, through a rocky gorge which he had a vague sense of having passed through before. Then it began to re-ascend, and Oman’s excitement grew. He felt that he was nearing the climax of his life. It was just this that he had unconsciously waited for through the years. And now it had come! At the top of the eminence the veiling trees suddenly parted, and, in the flooding light of afternoon, he found himself looking along the stone-built causeway that Rai-Khizar-Pál, returning from triumphant war in the north, had crossed, with his captives, thirty-one years before.

Faint, quick-breathing, Oman halted, leaning on his staff, to gaze upon the scene. It appeared to him most natural, most right, that, at this moment, with its familiar little whirring sound, a slender-winged gray bird should come hovering up from the wood and seek shelter in his breast. With the advent of this companion creature, his vision was doubled. Twice before had he known this road. There had been a bride of Dhár, and a captive from Delhi. The feelings of both were mingled in him:—bitter pain, veiled joy, curiosity, hope, weariness. He saw the bright pageants pass slowly before him; and then, leisurely, he moved downward to the bridge.

All was exactly as it had been, thirty years before. From the watch-towers the soldiers looked out and up into the hills, taking no notice of the solitary, toil-worn mendicant who passed toward the plateau. If they perceived the bird in his bosom, they only thought him some dealer in magic who had trained the creature to be his oracle. Nor, indeed, did Oman notice them. They were part of the whole scene, but not to be singled out. His eyes rested on the fields that stretched along beside two roads that wound, one to the right, the other to the left, along the plateau. Which of the roads to choose, he scarcely knew. Memory did not serve. The fields, already planted, were empty; and he bethought himself that it was the time of the Sravana ceremony, when all the people would be in the town, sacrificing and celebrating in temple and bazaar. At a venture, he turned to the left, and walked for some time past fertile rice-fields, and through a patch of woodland; and all the while, as he went, his heart was full to bursting, and his eyes were bright with tears. For he had come home—home. This land was home. He knew the feel of it. The very air was familiar to his cheek. The little sounds of animal and bird life were as the sounds of childhood heard again after many years. A great restfulness pervaded him. The tears that were in his eyes fell, slowly. Then his heart swelled with a mighty prayer of joy and thanksgiving. His way had been very long, very dark and dreary; but it was traversed now. His struggle and his loneliness were over. Behind him lay the wilderness, and all about him was the promised land.

CHAPTER XIII
A BROTHER OF THE SOUL

Thirty years had passed over Mandu since that strange time of death, when, in a single day and night, a Rajah, his minister, his Ranee, and his favorite slave had perished, each in his own way. During those thirty years Bhavani, the only son of Rai-Khizar-Pál, had been nominal ruler of Mandu. A boy of eleven at the time of his father’s death, he had of his own will placed himself and Mandu under the guardianship of Manava, a minister grown old in service, who acted as regent till, on his twentieth birthday, the young man took the cares of government upon his own shoulders. So well did Manava acquit himself during the nine years of his regency, that, at the end of that time, had he chosen to take the throne from Bhavani and install himself thereon, Mandu would willingly have hailed him Rajah. But if Manava had been capable of such an act, he would not have been the ruler he proved himself to be; and he had his reward for faithful labor in seeing, before he died, his young charge come to be called “beloved” by his people.

Bhavani, indeed, spite of many evil influences that surrounded his youth, had grown into a beautiful manhood. From some unknown source he had gained that kind of spirituality that is not inherited, and yet is scarcely to be acquired. His father before him had been high judge of his people. Bhavani was their friend. If Rai-Khizar-Pál had been absolutely just, Bhavani was more than that: he was charitable. The old Rajah had been most of all a warrior, loving the sound of battle, first for himself, and afterward for the glory it would bring his people. Bhavani hated war, because it carried with it death; and for death he cherished a horror of which he never spoke. It had been born in the moment when, stealthily following Kasya and Churi in their dread morning’s search, he had looked on the body of Ragunáth, stiff and bloody, under the champaks near the water-palace, where he had himself left the Lady Ahalya the evening before. No one had ever got Bhavani to tell what he knew of the happenings of that night. In the beginning, he did not himself understand the part he had played in the tragedy; but the horror of it was rooted deep in his secret soul. And, little by little, as he came to manhood, he began to realize something of the drama that had been played before his childlike innocence; though, with strange perversity, his interpretation did injustice to the slave. And the memory of the two he had loved, Ahalya and Fidá, became embittered; for he endured for them all the shame that they had never known themselves.

The influence of this dreadful incident of his childhood had had an incalculable effect on his character. To it Mandu owed the fastidiousness of this beloved ruler. There was but one misdeed in the calendar of crime toward which Bhavani was immovably severe. By him adulterers were punished to the fullest extent of the law. Nor had he ever been known to consider an extenuating circumstance. He was himself a man of the most rigid chastity; and, though he conformed so much to custom as to marry while still very young, he had but one wife, attended by women only. And, there being no zenana in his palace, he employed no eunuchs elsewhere.