So Gokool sang to us two, the coolie boy and me, a song of ancient India, and danced it by moonlight here in this American jungle, and I dotted his dancing circle with pence, and a few bits, and even a shilling or two. And Gokool thanked me with dignity. And his face will long remain vivid, tense with feeling, forgetful of all but the loud-cadenced phrases, the quavering chant which broke in and out of falsetto so subtlely that no Western voice may imitate it. And I like to think that he enjoyed dancing for a sahib who loved Lucknow and the old ballads. And so we parted.
* * * * *
After I cached the vampire lantern behind its intrenched bulwark of books and magazines, I leaned far out of a window and thought over the night's happenings. It was long after midnight, and the steady throb of the tom-tom still kept rhythm with the beat of my temples, and I gave myself up to the lure of the hypnotic monotone.
One thought kept recurring—of the little girl far back in the dark depths of the wattled hut. She was so little, so childish, and her part that evening had been so slight and perfunctory, not as much as that of any of the other women and girls who had slovenly performed the half-understood rites. She had brought us milk regularly, and smiled when we wished salaam to her.
She knew less of India than I did. Guiana, this alien land, as humid and luxuriant as the Great Plains were dry and parched—this was her native country. And this evening was her supreme moment; yet her part in it had not seemed fair. She would have liked so much to have worn that pink dress which made her future husband a caricature; she would have adored to place the shining, tinseled head-dress on her black hair—more with a child's delight than a woman's. And now she would live in a house of her own, and not a play-house, and obey this kind-faced young man—young, but not in comparison with her, whose father he could have been. And she would have anklets and bracelets and a gorgeous nose-button if he could save enough shillings,—I almost said rupees,—and ultimately she would go and cut grass with the other women, and each day take her little baby astride her hip down to the water and wash it, as she, so very short a time ago, had been washed.
And so, close to the wonder windows, we had seen a marriage of strange peoples, who were yet of our own old Aryan stock; whose ceremonies were already ancient when the Christians first kept faith, now transported to a new land where life was infinitely easier for them than in their own overcrowded villages; immigrants to the tropical hinterland where they rubbed elbows with idle Africans and stolid Red Indians. And I was glad of all their strange symbolic doings, for these showed imagination and a love of the long past in time and the distant in space.
I wished a good wish for Budhany, our little milkmaid, and forgot all in the sound, dreamless sleep which comes each night at Kalacoon.