He answered, “They gave me an enchanted drink which made me forget you for a time, but I am weary of them all; let me but go and pay my mother-in-law the money I owe her for food and clothes, and I will return and live in my own land, for you are my first wife.”
“Very well,” she said, “you may take the bangle and sell it, and give the money to your second wife’s mother, but take me also with you when you go; do not leave me here all alone again.” Koila agreed, and they both set off together toward the Madura Tinivelly country.
As they journeyed, Krishnaswami,[102] who was playing at cards with his three wives, saw them, and when he saw them he laughed. Then his wives said to him, “Why do you laugh? You have not laughed for such a long time: what amuses you so much now?” He answered, “I am laughing to see Koila and his wife Chandra Ranee journeying toward the Madura Tinivelly country. He is going to sell his wife’s bangle, and he will only be killed, and then she in anger will burn up all the country. O foolish people!” The goddesses answered, “This is a very dreadful thing; let us go in disguise and warn him not to enter the country.” “It would be useless,” said Krishnaswami; “if you do, he will only laugh at you and get angry with you.” But the goddesses determined to do their best to avert the threatened calamity. So they disguised themselves as old fortune-tellers, and went out with little lamps and their sacred books to meet Koila as he came along the road, followed by his wife. Then they said to him, “Come not into the Madura Tinivelly country, for if you come you will be killed, and your wife in her fury will burn all the land with fire.” At first, Koila would not listen to them; then he bade them go away; and lastly, when they continued warning him, got angry and beat them out of his path, saying, “Do you think I am to be frightened out of the country by a parcel of old crones like you?”
Then Krishnaswami’s three wives returned to him, much enraged at the treatment they had received; but he only said to them, “Did not I tell you not to go, warning you that it would be useless?”
On getting near the Rajah’s capital, Koila and Chandra came to the house of an old milk-seller, who was very kind to them and gave them food and shelter for the night. Next morning Koila said to his wife, “You had better stay here; this good old woman will take care of you while I go into the town to sell your bangle.” Chandra agreed, and remained at the old woman’s house while her husband went into the town. Of course he did not know that the Rajah and his wife (the Coplinghee Ranee) were Chandra’s father and mother, any more than they, or Chandra herself, knew it, or than the three mango children knew the story of their mothers’ journey in search of Mahdeo.
Now a short time before Koila and Chandra reached the Madura Tinivelly country, Coplinghee Ranee had sent a very handsome pair of bangles to a Jeweler in the town to be cleaned. It chanced that in a high tree close to the Jeweler’s house two eagles had built their nest, and the young eagles, who were very noisy birds, used to scream all day long and greatly disturb the Jeweler’s family. So one day, when the old birds were away, the Jeweler’s son climbed up the tree and pulled down the nest, and put the young eagles to death. When the old birds returned home and saw what was done, it grieved them very much, and they said, “These cruel people have killed our children; let us punish them.” And seeing in the porch one of Coplinghee Ranee’s beautiful bangles, which the Jeweler had just been cleaning, they swooped down and flew away with it.[103]
The Jeweler did not know what to do: he said to his wife, “To buy such a bangle as that would cost more than all our fortune, and to make one like it would take many, many years; I dare not say I have lost it, or they would think I had stolen it and put me to death. The only thing I can do is to delay returning the other as long as possible, and try somehow to get one like it.” So next day, when the Ranee sent to inquire if her bangles were ready, he answered, “They are not ready yet; they will be ready to-morrow.” And the next day and the next he said the same thing. At last the Ranee’s messengers got very angry at the continued delays; then, seeing he could no longer make excuses, the Jeweler sent the one bangle by them to the palace, beautifully cleaned, with a message that the other also would shortly be ready; but all this time he was hunting for a bangle costly enough to take the Ranee as a substitute for the one the eagles had carried away. Such a bangle, however, he could not find.
When Koila reached the town, he spread out a sheet in the corner of a street near the market-place, and, placing the bangle upon it, sat down close by, waiting for customers. Now he was very, very handsome. Although dressed so plainly, he looked like a Prince, and the bangle he had to sell flashed in the morning light like seven suns. Such a handsome youth and such a beautiful bangle the people had never seen before; and many passers-by, with chattees on their heads, for watching him, let the chattees tumble down and break, they were so much astonished; and several men and women, who were looking out of the windows of their houses, leant too far forward and fell into the street, so giddy did they become from wonder and amazement!
But no one could be found to buy the bangle, for they all said, “We could not afford to buy such jewels; this bangle is fit only for a Ranee to wear.” At last, when the day had nearly gone, who should come by but the Jeweler who had been employed to clean Coplinghee Ranee’s bangles, and was in search of one to replace that which the eagles had stolen. No sooner did he see the one belonging to Chandra, which Koila was trying to sell, than he said to himself, “That is the very thing I want, if I can only get it.” So he called his wife, and said to her, “Go to that bangle-seller and speak kindly to him; say that the day is nearly gone, and invite him to come and lodge at our house for the night. For if we can make friends with him and get him to trust us, I shall be able to take the bangle from him and say he stole it from me. And as he is a stranger here, every one will believe my word rather than his. This bangle is exactly the very thing for me to take Coplinghee Ranee, for it is very like her own, only more beautiful.”
The Jeweler’s wife did as she was told, and then the Jeweler himself went up to Koila and said to him, “You are a bangle-seller, and I am a bangle-seller; therefore I look upon you as a brother. Come home, I pray you, with us, as my wife begs you to do, and we will give you food and shelter for the night, since you are a stranger in this country.” So these cunning people coaxed Koila to go home with them to their home, and pretended to be very kind to him, and gave him supper, and a bed to rest on for the night; but next morning early the Jeweler raised a hue and cry and sent for the police, and bade them take Koila before the Rajah instantly, since he had stolen and tried to sell one of Coplinghee Ranee’s bangles, which he (the Jeweler) had been given to clean. It was in vain that Koila protested his innocence, and declared that the bangle he had belonged to his wife; he was a stranger—nobody would believe him. They dragged him to the palace, and the Jeweler accused him to the Rajah, saying, “This man tried to steal the Ranee’s bangle (which I had been given to clean) and to sell it. If he had done so, you would have thought I had stolen it, and killed me; I demand, therefore, that he in punishment shall be put to death.”