The flame-gatherers

by Margaret Horton Potter

The events of that afternoon, which formed the unpremeditated climax of two years of restraint on the part of both man and woman, threatened consequences that did not actually come. For some time after Oman’s bitter reproach, Bhavani did not go at all to the water-palace. And Mandu wondered and rejoiced. But to Zenaide, these weeks were the most terrible she had ever known. It was probably Oman who kept her from suicide; for, little as Oman could understand her or her passion, she seemed to cling to him, and to him only, in her stress. He felt himself both cowardly and hypocritical when she moaned to him of Bhavani’s sudden hatred of her; but he nevertheless held to his tenets as her one possible safeguard. At times, indeed, when he could see clearly, he felt that these two creatures had been given into his hands; that it was for him to keep them both from a relationship which would, in the end, shatter them morally and mentally. With Zenaide he dealt tenderly, for she showed herself to him in lights of unselfishness unsuspected by any one else. But he never concealed from her the fact that he would himself exert all his power to keep her true feelings from becoming known to the Rajah. And the woman after a time accepted, miserably, his view, and acquiesced in all that he told her about the necessity of constant struggle, constant watchfulness, constant self-restraint.

After some weeks it came about that Bhavani recovered his strength and went again to the water-palace, where, by degrees, the old relations were resumed. For this was possible, in that neither of the two entertained any suspicion of the other’s feeling. In these new days Oman was, by common desire, much with them. And nothing, probably, could have made the lonely creature happier than this. With these two people he found entire satisfaction. The two sides of his nature got sustenance; and he experienced for the first time the delights of true companionship:—a full and complete companionship, such as few normal people have the happiness to find. From the first it was plain that there was little danger of betrayal between the man and the woman. Oman watched their self-possession, wondering. Zenaide was no less steady, no less impenetrable, than the Rajah. Not a look, not a gesture, not a tone, ever conveyed to Bhavani her feeling for him. And Oman began to believe that she was really conquering her nature. The three spent many hours in the discussion of problems political, judicial, or philosophical; and, their minds being in harmony each with the others, these periods became the fullest in their lives.

To Oman, especially, had come the deep joy of unbreakable tranquillity. His life was flowing smoothly, in chosen ways. He had the assurance that his living was not in vain; and he knew also that he had succeeded in conquering himself. Bhavani, loving and honoring him, would have loaded him with gorgeousness. But Oman’s sense of fitness did not desert him. He had no desire to go unkempt; but he accepted only the state that a lower official of the royal house was entitled to hold. Gifts of precious metals or gems he refused. But, early in his coming to Mandu, he took the Asra ruby from its concealing box, and caused it to be set in a thin, golden chain which, henceforth, he wore about his neck; till it became known to all the plateau as his badge. The story of how it had come to him—from a mendicant who had died in his cave—he told, readily enough, to Bhavani. But anything further, the mendicant’s name, or the strange powers possessed by the stone, he kept to himself. The matter of reawakened memory, indeed, had come, little by little, to be a constant part of the secret understanding that was always with him. He knew that it had been decreed that he should learn something of the vast scheme of life and progress; but he knew also that this inner knowledge must not be taught to men.

Months passed quietly away. Summer came, with furious rains; and then the hot autumn, when the nights were cooled by winds from the hills. The late monsoon followed, and the fields were green as with spring. Mountain torrents plunged from the heights and over the plain to join the turbulent Narmáda stream. And winter was there again:—the mild, sunny winter of the upper Dekkhan, the winter of flowers, the winter of Eden. Great riches brought these seasons to the man who had come, a year before, out of the hills to Mandu. He was known now to every soul in the plateau; and he viewed his adopted land with enchanted eyes. He knew places and parts of Mandu that were not known to men born on its soil. Often he walked alone through the still palace, living amid scenes of the long past, seeing in silent rooms faces of those long since consigned to crematory flames. There were days when memory was on him overpoweringly: when Rai-Khizar-Pál and Ragunáth walked abroad through the corridors and assembly halls; when the Ranee Ahalya, attended by Neila, sat at her embroidery in the tiny room, dreaming of him who was to come to her by night; when Fidá, the slave, watched near the zenana door, waiting, with trembling limbs, for the hour when he might seek his love. These times of vision laid hold of Oman like dreams that are not to be shaken off. But he pursued his way quietly, in the face of the double life decreed for him by his distorted Fates.

The winter passed. Spring stole upon the land, and grew, and proclaimed herself again, and got joyous welcome from all the earth. And it was only now, when he had been a year in Mandu, that Oman learned of a strange custom of the new rule. Down upon the shore of the Narmáda, five miles west of Mandu, at the spot where, thirty-three years before, the bodies of the Ranee Ahalya and Fidá had been washed ashore close locked in each other’s arms, there had been raised a little stone temple, whither, once in two years, on the anniversary of the death, the Rajah of Mandu, his officers, and the Brahmans repaired to serve the high gods for the souls of the sinful twain. This custom, inaugurated during the regency of Manava, had been continued through his reign by Bhavani, in whom the act was the one sign of countenance granted toward any one guilty of the degrading sin. The alternating anniversaries of the quadruple death were given to mourning services at the magnificent tomb of Rai-Khizar in the palace temple. And the incongruity of the two acts was much whispered about, but never mentioned before the Rajah.

It was the year of the river pageant, for which preparations were begun a week or more before the fourth of April. On the morning of that day, the whole palace was astir by dawn; and, in the early light, a large company set out on foot to descend from the plateau; for horses could only await them in the plain, below. Oman found that the descent was easy enough, for, directly behind the palace, where the slope was less steep than anywhere else, a long flight of steps had been cut in the rock, and the plain could be reached thereby in less than half an hour. Oman and Bhavani started first and were on level ground in advance of the rest of the party. There, at the base of the plateau, they found horses and donkeys assembled, all yellow-caparisoned, and wearing high funeral plumes in their crests. Presently there was a general mounting: priests, lords, and officials, according to their rank, ranged two and two on their steeds; and after them, on foot, a number of villagers and country-folk, for whom the day was a holiday. In the first hour of sunrise the cavalcade was set in motion and began to wind across the plain to the river bank:—a long, slow-moving line of pinkish yellow, that saddest of Indian colors.

To Oman, the sensation of riding was novel enough, and far from unpleasant. Everything—the sweet, early morning air, the silvery mist on the plain, the rushing river-song, the rolling hills in the distance, and the grave-eyed, silent man beside him, all worked themselves into his mood, deepening the impression of the hour. By nine o’clock the little temple was in sight. When it first appeared, a dim, bluish blot in the flat distance, the heart of Oman rose within him. His face grew very white. On his breast the Asra ruby burned, and the light of it, shining blood-red in the sunlight, or the fact that he had gazed too long at the temple, or perhaps some still more natural cause, made him suddenly dizzy and faint. In the whirl of his feeling, he looked toward Bhavani beside him. The Rajah sat stiffly in his saddle, his yellow turban throwing into pale relief his stern, set face and deeply glowing eyes. He gazed unwinkingly forward, and Oman’s look followed his.

Directly in front of them it lay now,—a small, square building of grayish white stone cut in heavy blocks. The top of the structure was flat and square, but from the middle of it rose a conical, pagoda-like dome, also of stone:—to the Indian eye a sufficiently symmetrical finish to the whole. The entire building was ornamented with innumerable bas-reliefs, flutings, and carvings, crude enough in themselves, but, taken in the mass, giving an effect of considerable richness. Neither wing, veranda, nor jut marred the straight lines of the side walls; and for this, the temple was probably unique in the jumbling architecture of its period. As it stood here, silent, deserted, on the edge of the wild-rushing stream, surrounded by shadowy plain and backed by high-reaching hills, it gave an impression of loneliness that no momentary spectacle of trooping horses and men could shake off.

It was some time before ten o’clock when the procession halted and dismounted at its destination. There was a pause, while the priests opened the long-locked doors and kindled a fire inside, before the small, stone image of the god. Then, Bhavani leading the way, with Oman close behind him, the throng passed into the stone-lined chamber. Oman entered with closed eyes. There was an oppression on him that would not be shaken off. He shook and shivered in the chill of the little place. When he finally looked about him, the chant of prayers had begun, and he was surrounded by silent, motionless men. There were no windows, and little light entered through the doorway, which was occupied by villagers who strove to hear something of the service. The audience, therefore, could see only by means of the flickering firelight. Everything—roof, walls, floor, and the image of the god, were of the same grayish-white stone, polished, but not carved. In the centre of the floor, however, close to where Oman stood, was the marble tomb that had been built over the ashes of the two whom they came to mourn. The whole of this sarcophagus was covered with inscriptions and carvings gracefully arranged. And this was all that the temple held. A single glance was enough to take it in. Oman saw it so; and then he stood listening dully to the meaningless words of the chant, while the ruby burned upon his breast, and his brain throbbed with the pain of memory.

When the prayers were finished, every one left the temple and went out into the open, where a meal was to be served. But, while priests and people ate, in separate groups, Oman and Bhavani, who were of one mind, returned to the building, and silently reëntered it. Advancing to the sarcophagus, they paused, one on either side of it, Oman resting both hands on the chilly marble. The eyes of the two met, and each found in the other’s look what lay in his own:—bitterness and sadness. When they had stood there for a long time, each wrapped in his own thoughts, Bhavani murmured, quietly, as if to himself: