The next day they were back again, and the tw.a.n.g of that infernal instrument broke in on the pundit"s impa.s.sioned regrets over the heroic days of his favourite poems. "By the by," I interrupted, "can you tell me what that boy is singing? I can"t make out a word, and yet--But it was no use bringing fancy to bear on Narayan Das, so we went out to listen. They were sitting under a trellised arch covered with jasmin and roses, and a great Gloire de Dijon had sent a shower of blown petals over Seeta"s veil.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," quoted Narayan Das sententiously, after listening a while. "It is Ramayana, the immortal poem your honour reads even now; but debase, illiterate. You say wrong, boy! it is thus."
Ramchunderji waited till the pompous periods ceased; then he shook his head gravely. "We did not sing it so in the days before the great flood came."
His words gave me a curious thrill; but there is no more matter-of-fact being in the world than a Calcutta Bachelor of Arts; so the pundit at once began a cross-examination that would have done credit to a Queen"s counsel. "What flood? who were "we"?" These and many other questions put with brutal bluntness met with a patient reply.
It had been a very big flood, somewhere, G.o.d knows how far, in the south country. One, two, three years ago? Oh, more than that! but he could not say how much more. The bard who sang and the woman who carried the _vina_ had disappeared, been swept away perhaps. Since then he, Ramchunderji, had wandered over the world filling his stomach and that of his wife Seeta with songs. Their stomachs were not always full; oh, no! Of late (perhaps because the _vina_ was so old) people had not cared to listen, and since the great flood nothing could be got without money. Seeta? Oh, yes! she was his wife. They had been married ever so long; he could not remember the time when they had not been married.
It was Narayan Das"s opportunity for shaking his head. These infant marriages were subversive of due education. Here was a boy, who should be in Standard II. doing the compound rules, idling about in ignorance.
It struck me, however, that Ramchunderji must be pretty well on to vulgar fractions and rule of three, with himself, Seeta, and the world as the denominators, so I asked him if his heart were still so devoid of greed that another four-anna bit would be welcome. His face showed a pained surprise. The Presence, he said, must be aware that four annas would fill their stomachs (which were not big) for many days. They had not come for alms, only to make music for the Presence out of grat.i.tude. Thinking that music out of an ill-tuned _vina_ was hardly the same thing, I forced another four-anna bit on the boy and sent him away.
Nearly a month pa.s.sed ere I saw him again, though Narayan Das and I used, as the days grew warmer, to sit out in the trellised arch, within sight of the road. My knowledge of Sanskrit increased as I read of Ramchunderji"s long exile, shared by Seeta, his wife; of how he killed the beasts in the enchanted forest; how she was reft from him by Ravana, the hydra-headed many-handed monster; and of how finally she was restored to his arms by the help of Hanuman the man-monkey, the child of the wild winds. But though the pundit used to waste many words in pointing out the beauties of a poem which held such hold on the minds of the people that their commonest names were derived from it, I never seemed to get into the spirit of the time as I had done when I listened with closed eyes to the boy"s debased, illiterate rendering of the _s"lokas_.
It was after the school vacation had sent Narayan Das to see his relatives at Benares that the odd little couple turned up again.
Ramchunderji"s face looked more pinched and careworn than ever, and as he held the _vina_ across his knees, Seeta, losing its contours, seemed more than ever inadequate to her veil.
"Perhaps one of the many devils which beset the virtuous has entered into the instrument," he said despondently; "but when I play, folk listen not at all. So greed remaineth in the stomach, and the heart is empty."
I offered him another four-anna bit, and when he demurred at taking it before beguiling the time with music, I laid it on the flat skin top of one of the gourds, hoping thus to ensure silence.
The wrinkles on his forehead seemed to go right up into his turban, and his voice took a perplexed tone. "It used not to be so. Before the flood Seeta and I had no thought of money; but now--" He began fingering the strings softly, and as they thrilled, the four-anna bit vibrated and jigged in a murmur of money that fitted strangely to the sort of rude chant in which he went on.
"Money is in the hands, the head, the heart; Give! give, give, before we give again; Money hath ten heads to think out evil-doing; Money hath twenty hands to mete out pain.
Money! money! money! money!
Money steals the heart"s love from our life.
Money I have not--say! art thou hungry, wife?"
If anything was possessed of a devil it was that four-anna bit. It buzzed, and hummed, and jigged infernally, as the boy"s finger on the strings struck more firmly.
"I"ll tell you what it is, Ramchunderji," said I uneasily, "that _vina_ is enough to ruin Orpheus. As you don"t care for my money, I"ll give you another instrument instead. I have one inside which is easier to play, and more your style in every way."
So I brought out a _ravanastron_, such as professional beggars use, a thing with two strings and a gourd covered with snake-skin. To my surprise the boy"s face lost its impa.s.sive melancholy in palpable anger.
"The Presence does not understand," he said quite hotly. "We do not beg; Seeta and I fill ourselves with songs. That thing whines for money, money, money, like the devil who made it. Rather would I live by _this_ than by mine enemy." And as he spoke he struck the snake-skin with his supple fingers till it resounded again. "Yea! thus will I find bread," he went on, "but the _vina_ must find a home first. Therefore I came to the Presence, hearing that he collected such things. Perhaps he will keep it in exchange for one rupee. It is worth one rupee, surely."
His wistful look as he handed me the instrument made me feel inclined to offer a hundred; but in good sooth the _vina_ was worth five, and I told him so, adding, as I looked at some curious tracery round the gourds, that it appeared to be very old indeed.
"The Presence saith truly; it is very old," echoed Ramchunderji drearily. "That is why folk will not listen. It is too old; too old to be worth money."
Nevertheless he cheered up at the sight of his rupee; for he would not take more, saying he had every intention of returning to claim the _vina_ ere long, and that five rupees would be beyond his hopes of gain.
A fortnight after I came home from my early morning ride by the police office, which stood outside the native town, close to a brick-stepped tank shaded by _peepul_-trees, my object being to check the tally of poisonous snakes brought in for the reward given by Government for their capture. The first time I saw some six or seven hundred deadly serpents ranged in a row with all their heads one way, and all their unwinking eyes apparently fixed on me, I felt queer, and the fact of their being dead did not somehow enter into the equation. But habit inures one, and I walked along the thin grey fringe of certain death spread out on the first step of the tank with an air of stolid business, only stopping before an unusually large specimen to ask the captor, who sat behind awaiting his pence, where he had come across it.
"Six hundred and seventy in all, _Huzoor_" remarked the Deputy Inspector of Police, following me, resplendent in silver trappings and white cotton gloves. "That is owing to the floods, and the season, since this is the sixth of _Bhadron_ (August) the month of snakes. Yet the outlay is excessive to the Government, and perhaps with justice the price of small ones, such as these, might be reduced one-half."
I looked up, and behind a fringe of diminutive vipers sat Ramchunderji and the bundle he called Seeta. On his bare right arm he wore a much beta.s.selled floss silk bracelet bound with tinsel.
"I am glad to see the greed is in your heart again," said I, pointing to the ornament.
"The _Ram-rucki_ is not bought, but given, as in the days before the flood," replied the boy. "Every one wears the _Ram-rucki_ still, every one!"
The Deputy Inspector pulled down the cuff of his uniform hastily, but against the gleam of his white gloves I caught a glimpse of bright colours. The _Ram-rucki_, he explained evasively, was the bracelet of luck given to Ramchunderji in old days before his search for Seeta, and common, ill-educated people still retained the superst.i.tious custom of binding one on the wrist of each male during the month of _Bhadron_.
There was so much deplorable ignorance amongst the uneducated cla.s.ses, and did the Presence look with favour on the proposal for reducing the rewards? Perhaps it was Ramchunderji"s eager, wistful face hinting at the way promises were kept before the flood, which made me reply that I considered no one but the Viceroy in Council had power to reduce the price of snakes.
Several times after this I found the odd little couple disposed behind their tally of small vipers; then the season of serpents ceased, and one by one the _habitues_ of the tank steps dropped off to pursue other professions. The fringe broke into isolated ta.s.sels, and finally the worn, ruddy steps lay bare of all save the flickering light and shade of the leaves above.
November had chilled the welcome cool weather to cold, when a report came in the usual course that a boy calling himself Ramchunderji, and a girl said to be his wife, had been found in a jasmin garden outside the city, half dead of exhaustion and without any ostensible means of livelihood. They had been taken up as vagrants and sent to hospital, pending Government orders. Now the Jubilee year was coming to a close, leaving behind it a legacy of new charities throughout the length and breadth of India. Of some the foundation stone only had been laid by direct telegram to the Queen-Empress; others had sprung to life in a manner suggestive of workmen"s tenements. Among the latter was a Female Boarding School and Orphanage for the children of high-caste Hindus, which had been built and endowed by a number of rich contractors and usurers, not one of whom would have sent their daughters to it for all their h.o.a.rded wealth. Persistent pennies had attracted a creditable, if intermittent, supply of day-scholars to its stucco walls; but despite an appropriate inscription in three languages over the gate, the orphanage remained empty. Money can do much, but it cannot produce homeless orphans of good family in a society where the patriarchal system lingers in all its cra.s.s disregard of the main chance. So at the first hint of Seeta I was besieged on all sides. A real live, genuine, Hindu female orphan going a begging! Preposterous! Sacrilegious! The Chairman of the Orphanage Committee almost wept as he pictured the emptiness of those white walls, and actually shed tears over the building estimates which he produced in order to strengthen his claim to poor little Seeta. Was it fair, he asked, that such a total of munificent charity should not have a single orphan to show the Commissioner-_sahib_ when he came on tour? His distress touched me.
Then winter, hard on the poor even in sunlit India, was on us; besides, Narayan Das tempted me further, with suggestions of a Jubilee Scholarship at the district school for Ramchunderji himself.
I broke it very gently to the boy as he lay on a mat in the sun, slowly absorbing warmth and nourishment. He was too weak to contest the point, but I felt bad, exceedingly, when I saw him turn face down as if the end of all things was upon him. I knew he must be whispering confidences to Mother Earth respecting that happy time before the flood, and I slunk away as though I had been whipped.
Now, if in telling this veracious history I seem too intermittent, I can but offer as an excuse the fact that an official"s work in India is like that of a Jacquard loom. A thread slips forward, shows for a second, and disappears; a pause, and there it is again. Sometimes not until the pattern is complete is it possible to realise that the series of trivial incidents has combined to weave an indelible record on the warp and woof. So it was early January before the Ramchunderji shuttle stirred again. Narayan Das came to me with a look on his face suggestive that neither the _Rig-Veda_ nor _The Spectator_ was entirely satisfactory. The boy, he said, was not a bad boy, though he seemed absolutely unable to learn; but his influence on Standard I. was strictly non-regulation, nor did any section of the Educational Code apply to the case. If I would come down at recess time, I could see and judge for myself what ought to be done. When I reached the play-ground the bigger boys were at _krikutts_ (cricket) or gymnastics, the medium ones engaged on marbles, but in a sunny corner backed by warm brick walls sat Ramchunderji surrounded by a circle of Standard I. Small as he was, he was still so much larger than the average of the cla.s.s, that, as he leant his high yellow turban against the wall, with half-closed eyes, and hands upon his knees, the memory of India"s Court came back to me once more. He was reciting something in a low voice, and as the children munched popcorn or sucked sweeties their eyes never left his face.
"Look!" said Narayan Das in a whisper from our spying-ground behind the master"s window. The song came to an end, a stir circled through the audience, and one by one the solid children of the fields, and the slender, sharp little imps of the bazaars, rose up and put something into the singer"s lap. A few grains of corn, a sc.r.a.p of sweet stuff, and as they did so each said in turn, "Salaam, Ramchunderji!" "No wonder the boy has grown fat," I whispered, dropping the reed screen round which I had been peeping.
Narayan Das shook his head. "If it were only comestibles," he replied gravely, "I could arrange; but when they are devoid of victuals they give their slate-pencils, their ink-pots, even their First-Lesson books. Then, if n.o.body sees and stops, there is vacancy when such things are applied for. Thus it is subversive of discipline, and parents object to pay. Besides, the _in forma-pauperis_ pupils come on contingent with great expense to Government."
I looked through the screen again with a growing respect for Ramchunderji. "Does he eat them too?" I asked.
The head-master smiled the sickly smile of one who is not quite sure if his superior officer intends a joke, and fell back as usual on quotation, "The ostrich is supposed by some to digest nails, but--"
I laughed aloud, and being discovered, went out and spoke seriously to the offender. His calm was not in the least disturbed. "I do not ask, or beg," he replied; "they give of their hearts and their abundance, as in old days before the flood. Is it my fault if they possess slate-pencils, and ink-pots, and First-Lesson books?"
I must confess that this argument seemed to me unanswerable, but I advised him, seeing that the flood _had_ come, to return such offerings in future to the store. He did not take my advice, and, about a week after, being discovered selling these things to the bigger boys at a reduced price, he was caned by the head-master. That night he disappeared from the boarding-house and was no more seen. His name was removed from the rolls, his scholarship forfeited for absence without leave, and the arrears absorbed in refunds for slate-pencils and ink-pots. So that was an end of Ramchunderji"s schooling, and Standard I. once more became amenable to the Code.
Winter was warming to spring, the first bronze vine leaves were budding, and the young wheat shooting to silvery ears, before the Commissioner, coming his rounds, was taken in pomp to visit the Orphanage and its occupants. I remember it so well. The Committee and the Commissioner, and I, and every one interested in female orphans and female education, on one side of a red baize table decorated with posies of decayed rosebuds and jasmin in green-gla.s.s tumblers; and on the other Seeta and the matron. The former, to enhance her value as a genuine half-caste waif, was still a mere bundle, and I fancied she looked smaller than ever; perhaps because the veil was not so large.
Then the accounts were pa.s.sed, and the matron"s report read. Nothing, she said, could be more satisfactory than the general behaviour and moral tone of the inmates, except in one point. And this was the feeding of the monkeys, which, as every one knew, infested the town.
The result being that the _bunder-log_ had become bold even to the dropping down of stones into the court--quite large stones, such as the one placed as a stepping-stone over the runnel of water from the well.
Here I unguardedly suggested an air-gun; whereupon Narayan Das, who always attended these functions as an educational authority, reminded me reproachfully that monkeys were sacred to the G.o.d Hanuman, who, if I remembered, had finally rescued Seeta from the ten-headed, many-armed monster Ravana, the inventor of the _ravanastron_ or beggar"s fiddle.
It was at this juncture that I suddenly became aware that the Jacquard loom of Fate was weaving a pattern; Ramchunderji! Seeta! the exile! the killing of the wild beasts! the ten-headed, many-handed monster Ravana!
Yet I could tell you almost every word of the Commissioner"s speech, though he prosed on for the next ten minutes complacently about the pleasure he felt, and the authorities felt, and the whole civilised world felt, at seeing "Money, the great curse and blessing of humanity, employed as it should be employed in s.n.a.t.c.hing the female orphan of India from unmerited misfortune, and educating her to be an example to the nineteenth century." Every one was highly delighted, and the Committee approached me with a view of adding the Commissioner"s name as a second t.i.tle to the school.
But I awaited the completion of the pattern. It was on the eleventh of April, that is to say, on the High Festival of Spring, at the fair held beside the tank where humanity in thousands was washing away the old year, and putting on the new in the shape of gay-coloured clothing, that my attention was attracted by a small, dense crowd whence came hearty guffaws of laughter.
""Tis a performing monkey," said a bearded villager in response to my question as to what was amusing them so hugely. "The boy makes him do tricks worthy of Hanuman; yet he saith he taught him yonder down by the ca.n.a.l. Will not the Protector of the Poor step in and see? Ho, ho!
"twould make a suitor laugh even if the _digri_ (decree) were against him." But I recognised the pattern this time, and I had made up my mind not to interfere with the shuttle again. As I turned away, another roar of laughter and a general feeling in pockets and turbans told me that the final tip had succeeded, and that collection was going on satisfactorily.
A few days later the Chairman of the Committee came to me in excited despair. The real, genuine female Hindu orphan was not to be found, and the stucco walls were once more empty. Inquiries were made on all sides, but when it came out, casually, that a boy, a girl, and a monkey, had taken a third-cla.s.s ticket to Benares I said nothing. I was not going to aid Ravana, or prevent the due course of incarnation, if it _was_ an incarnation. That great city of men, women, and monkeys should give the trio fair play.
Last year, when I was in Simla, I overheard a traveller giving his impressions of India to a lady who was longing all the time to find out from a gentleman with a mustache when the polo-match was to begin at Annandale next day.
"The performing troupes are certainly above the European average," he said. "At Benares, especially, I remember seeing a monkey; he, his master, and a girl, did quite a variety of scenes out of the Ramayana, and really, considering who they were, I--"
"Excuse me,--but--oh! Captain Smith, is it half-past eleven or twelve?"