Tara: A Mahratta Tale

by Meadows Taylor

"Look," said Zyna, with a tone of awe in her low voice, "if you can see her breathe. I have been watching for some time, and I cannot see the sheet over her move as it used to do. Mother! mother! she is not gone from us!"

"No, daughter," returned Lurlee, "she lives still, but she is near to death, fearfully near, and is in the hands of Alla. If she wake up restless, as she was before, we must put her on the floor, that the spirit may pass easily; but, as it is, we may yet hope, for there is rest now after her weariness, and she hath not asked for water all night. You have given her none, have you?" she asked of the women.

"No, lady," replied the elder of the two; "none since she went to sleep. It is near dawn, and if the soul had to pass it would be restless to go; yet she sleeps. We cannot move her, nor is there need; she breathes as gently as a child. Look!"

The woman took the lamp from the niche in the wall, and, shading it with her hand, yet so as to suffer a little light to fall on Tara's face, looked at it earnestly. "She smiles," she said in a whisper; "behold, lady, but do not rise, else it might wake her."

Lurlee and Zyna leaned forward and regarded her anxiously. Yes, the lips, though blistered with the parching heat of fever, seemed fuller and redder, and, as the sweet mouth was partly open, the light fell upon moisture on the white pearly teeth which glistened brightly. The cheeks were not so wan and sunken, and the eyes, instead of being partly open, with a dull glassy stare which, except when they flashed in delirium, had been their only expression for several days past, were now closed entirely, and the long eyelashes rested peacefully, as it were, on the cheek. One hand had been placed under her head, and the other lay across her bosom. Her breathing could scarcely be seen, and yet, if they looked intently, the arm across the bosom heaved slightly now and then, and as it were without excitement.

"It may be the flush of life which precedes death," said the woman; "yet then they do not often smile, nor dream. See, she is smiling again."

"Ah, there is no death in that smile, daughter! Look! O blessed saints, pray for her! O Prophet of God, she will be thy child soon; intercede for her, and have her spared! O holy Syud Geesoo Duraz! I vow a golden coverlet for thy tomb, and Fatehas to a thousand poor mendicants, if she be saved!" cried Lurlee, with clasped hands and streaming eyes. "O, give her to me! All have children but me, and this one strange child I took into my heart when ye sent her, and she abode there. O, take her not—take her not from me! What use would she be to ye now in her young life? Wilt thou not pray too, Zyna, for her?"

"Mother, I have prayed," replied Zyna earnestly. "Fazil hath prayed. We have vowed Fatehas to all the shrines, and to the holy Saint at Allund. Mother! I will send my gold anklets and her zone to the shrine there, if she but live, and will give her others."

So they watched and prayed, and saw the smile playing gently and sweetly over Tara's mouth and eyes. Was it to hear the whisper of the Angel of Death? It might be so, and then the last dread change would follow; the eyes would glaze and sink, the breathing become shorter and more difficult, and they must take her up and lay her down on the ground to die. Would it be so?

For many days Tara had lain between life and death. The great excitement she had passed through—during which her mind, strung by despair and superstitious belief, had sustained her—had passed away suddenly, and left its never-failing result in the utter prostration both of mental and physical power; and the exposure she had been subjected to in that wild night-ride from Wye, with the succeeding days of heat and fatigue, in the midst of constant alarm, had combined to produce severe fever. As she was lifted from the litter the evening she arrived by the women, she was entirely unconscious; but in Lurlee she had at once a skilful and loving nurse, and after a while she had recovered sufficiently to distinguish with whom she was, and to feel that the hideous insecurity of her life—nay, the imminent peril of a horrible and violent death—had passed away.