"My son for one. He was wounded to the death. Ah! I knew it--though the brave lad--he was the son of mine old age--steadied his breath and smiled when I spoke to him. But there was little leisure for words with treachery to right and treachery to left, and none to trust fairly. For the world had changed even then, and there were but one or two of my kind left, and I was out of favour. Too old for the new court--too old for new pleasures. And the young Prince--lo! how he used to laugh at my worn flatteries--had many pleasures--so many of them that he took some of them from other folks" lives; thus he had foes. Aye! but friends, too, for he came nearer to kingliness than his brothers. And my son loved him.
"So when the danger came, and I knew by chance of the plot to kill the Prince as he slept, and gain the reward set on him by the English, I had no choice. Yet I dare trust no one in the skulking crowd which crept about the shadows of the old tomb. In those days it was every one for himself, and the Prince had scant following at best. And he lay drunk with wine and women, out of bravado partly to the skulkers--in one of the half-secret upper rooms. But I knew which, and I remember it so well. The grey spear point of the distant Kut showed through its open arch.
"And below, in a far nook of the crypt, where there was a secret swinging panel in the red sandstone wall, known only to the old, my son lay dying.
"He steadied his breath as I stooped over him, and whispered that he would soon be fighting for his Prince again.
""Soon, my son," I answered, waiting as he smiled. For I knew the silence was at hand--silence from all things save the breathing that would only steady into death.
"We, my servant and I, lifted him easily. He was but a lad, though he would have grown to greater stature than the Prince. His head lay so contentedly on my shoulder as I went backward up the stair, telling those who stood aside to let us pa.s.s, that he was better and craved the fresher air of the roof. "Better? Aye! he is better, or soon will be, old fool," said one with a laugh. Then clattered noisily after his companions, so noisily that the echo of the winding staircase sent their scornful mirth back to me. "He will be dead--like someone he followed--by morning."
"Before morning, if I did not fail, thought I, silently, as, searching the shadows, we sought the Prince"s hidden room. There was a youth ever with the Prince--a baby-faced, frightened, womanly thing--yet faithful as far as in him lay. Him, I caught by the throat, "They would kill thee, too," I said; "better take the chance of life. If fate be kind, ere dawn discovers the deceit, _he_ will be fit to fly."
"So after my servant and I, wailing at our lack of wisdom, had carried the Prince down, face covered as one to whom worse sickness had come suddenly, I crept to the upper room again. It was growing late, but the grey spear-head of the Kut still showed beyond the open arch as I covered the lad"s face, lest, for all his gay dress, the murderers might see too much.
""Dream thou art fighting for the Prince, sonling!" I said, knowing he was past even the steadying of his breath for an answer; but the smile had lingered on his face.
"Then I covered my face also, and, bidding the baby-faced one escape to the crypt as soon as it was possible, sate as a servant might have sate, at the turning of the ways from the stair head.
"Would those who were to come be familiar or strange? I wondered. The latter, most likely, since Chiragh Shah, the Chaplaoo, had long since pa.s.sed from court life, almost from remembrance.
"They were strange; as they challenged me, I drew the cloth from my face without fear.
""The Prince"s room!" they cried, dagger-point at my breast. But that could not be. There must be no suspicion, only certainty, only soothed certainty. "I have been waiting to show it to my lords," I answered.
"Lo! he sleeps sound--yea! he sleeps sound, his face toward the Kut."
"So, with smooth words, I led them in the dark----"
The memory of the darkness seemed to fall as darkness itself on the old brain, and Chiragh Shah sate silent in the sunshine for a few seconds.
When he spoke again, it was as if years had pa.s.sed. "It was the last lie that was worth the telling," he said, almost triumphantly.
"And a good lie, too," came the shrill voice from behind the door c.h.i.n.k. "See you, boy!--call the old man by his right name in your paper, or may G.o.d"s curse light on you for ever!"
Thus adjured, Prem Lal, who, throughout the whole tale, had been fluttering his dictionary from one synonym to another, suggested sycophant; that was, he explained, one who flatters and lies for personal profit.
"Profit!" echoed the voice. "Small profit dada gained. Was not the Prince killed with his brothers next day by Hudson Sahib; so there was no one left even to reward the old man?"
"Save G.o.d," suggested Prem Lal, piously trying to escape somehow from the dilemma.
"And there is gain, and gain," admitted the spokesman, combining new and old, east and west.
"Hush!" said one of the two small boys again; "dada is going to talk--he may know----"
So once more the old voice rose in unconscious apology for the difficulty of condensing what etomologists call his life history into a census paper.
"Yea, it was good, and hard--yet not so hard as the first. _That_ never left me, despite the long years."
It seemed, indeed, as if it had not, for something of childlike complaint came into the old voice. "It was my first day at court.
Mother had cut my father"s khim-khab robe--crimson with gold flowering--to fit me, despite her tears. Her eyes were heavy with them when she kissed me; but I had no fear for all I was so young. I knew the women"s bread depended on my tongue--though it was my heritage also to be Chaplaoo.
"And the King was pleased. Mother had tied my turban so tall and he laughed at that. It was out in the garden, he under the gilt canopy, the n.o.bles round and beyond the flowers, and birds fluttering among the roses.
"And I was standing beside the king, and he was laughing--for I knew my part.
"Then the fluttering came closer, closer, and lo! a bird settled on my wrist. It was Gul-afrog--I had left it with my sister, but it had followed me--for we loved each other. So, on my wrist it sate joyful, and salaamed, as I had taught it, drooping its pretty wings.
"Then the King cried, "How, now, whose pretty bird is this?" and someone laid a warning hand upon my shoulder. But I knew before what I must say if I was to stand in father"s place. I knew! I knew!
""It is yours, my king."
"So I said, kneeling at his feet! "It is yours, it is yours," and Gul-afrog had been with me since it fell out of the bulbul nest in the rose tree. Then they brought a golden cage ..." The old man sate staring out into the sunshine in silence, and only the littlest of the two boys wept softly.
"We will call him "Flatterer for Gain."" said Prem Lal, in desperate decision, and perhaps the description came as near to old Chiragh Shah"s profession as was possible in a census schedule.
A MAIDEN"S PRAYER
"That is over! Thanks to Kali Ma!" sighed Ramabhai, fanning herself vigorously as the last man shambled, a trifle sheepishly, from the inner apartment. She--was a stoutish Bengali lady, with red betel--stained lips and smooth bandeaux of shiny black hair.
Good-looking, good-natured, at the moment distinctly excited as she went on garrulously. "Muniya! down with the curtain, there is no further use for it now that crew has gone! And to think that the master will have to give each one of them five rupees! And for what? Forsooth!
for the first seeing of such a bride as not one of them ever saw before. Lo! Shibi, marriage-monger!" Here she turned accusingly on one of the women who were busy unveiling themselves, chattering the while with shrill voices. "Hast no mind at all? Thou mightst have found newer words for thy description of my daughter!--"beautiful as a full moon, symmetrical as a cart-wheel, graceful as a young goose." What are these for perfection? And thou didst use the same last week for Luchi Devi"s girl, who is pock-marked and blind of an eye! But there! "What"s a fowl to one who has swallowed a sheep." Parb.u.t.ti,"--here she transferred her attentions to a young girl who was seated on a cushion resting her face in her henna-dyed hands, as if she felt dazed or tired--"an thou hast a grain of sense have a care of that nose-ring thy paternal auntie lent for the occasion or there will be flies in the pease porridge--there always is in that family. Yea! it is well over; and thank the G.o.ds, the priest found good omen in the morning watches, so I have not to dine the creatures. Fish curry and kid pillau is too much to pile on the getting of a trousseau; yet one must have meats at a wedding feast, if one in Sakta; and the bridegroom"s folk are strict. As for clothes, I tell you, sisters, that "boycotts" is well enough to play with every day, but when it comes to weddings and tinsel, "tis a different matter.
Kali Ma! what a price for _kulabatoon_! Parb.u.t.ti! an thou canst not remember that thou hast on thee four hundred rupees worth of Benares _khim-kob_, go put on the old Manchester. Thank Heaven!" Boycotts" is not so old yet, but one has stores left to come and go upon! Yea! Yea!
A wedding is a great strain on a mother; and then there is the parting with my daughter, too--my sweeting, my little lump of delight----"
Here Ramabhai discreetly dissolved into regulation tears, mingled with sharp sobs and little outcries. It came easily, for she was really devoted to Parb.u.t.ti, the little bride, who, in truth, looked distractingly pretty, all swathed in scarlet gold-flowered silk gauze, and hung with jewels galore.
Her grave open-eyed face looked, perhaps, a trifle stupid and obstinate, but there could be no question of its beauty.
"Mother!" she said seriously, "there is a smell of smoke--the tall one in the black coat smelt of it, and it is defilement. Had we not better pacify the G.o.ds?"
"Hark to her!" exclaimed Ramabhai, drying her facile tears triumphantly. "Saw you ever such a saint? He who gets my Parb.u.t.ti is certain of salvation."
Parb.u.t.ti sate silent. She did not even blush, though that is allowed to a Bengali bride. But for all her outward calm she was inwardly quivering all over; and small wonder if she was! After long years spent, not like an English girl, in ignorance and innocence of matrimony, but in matter-of-fact expectation of it, that one great event in woman"s life was close at hand. It had been delayed almost beyond propriety by the difficulty of finding a high-caste husband. For her father, though a Kulin Brahman, was sufficiently westernised not to hold with the caste habit of marrying a daughter to what may be called a professional husband: that is, to a Kulin who already possesses a score or two of wives. A suitable student had, however, been found at last, and the feminine portion of the household had plunged hysterically into all the suggestive ceremonials of a high-cla.s.s Bengali marriage. Even the widows let their blighted fancies dwell on kisses and blisses; so, feeling vicariously the sensuous pleasures of bridedom, vied with happier women in drugging the girl with sweets and scents, and secret whisperings of secret delights. The whole atmosphere was enervating, depraving; but Parb.u.t.ti took all the gigglings and t.i.tterings gravely as her right. For this was the consummation of her hopes ever since, as a child of five, she had been taught to worship the G.o.ds, to pray for an amorous husband, and curse any woman who might try to win love from her.
"Look! how the little marionette scowls over it," the women had t.i.ttered as they watched her, a bit of a naked baby, going through the formula of the Brata, as it is called. "Truly no co-wife will dare to enter her house." And certainly her energy was prodigious.
"Mata! Mata! Ma! Keep my co-wife far-- Shiv! Shiv! Shiv! Grant she may not live-- Pot! Pot! Pot! Boil her hard and hot-- Broom! Broom! Broom! Sweep her from the room-- Mud! Mud! Mud! Moist thee with her blood-- Bell! Bell! Bell! Ring her soul to h.e.l.l--"
and so on through every common and uncommon object on G.o.d"s earth--and beneath it!
The childish body had swayed to the rhythm of the chant; the childish voice had risen clear in denunciation; the childish soul had given its consent to every wish; for Parb.u.t.ti was nothing if not serious.
The very cantrips of the Sakta cult to which her parents--and some fifty millions of other Bengalis--belonged, were to her so many indispensable realities.
She, as an unmarried girl, ate her plateful of sacrificial meat contentedly, though her mother refused it. She sate wide-eyed, solemn, acquiescent, when after long fasting the whole family waited in the dead of the night till the auspicious moment for sacrifice arrived, and in the silence the only sound was an occasional piteous, half-wondering bleat of the miserable victim--a pet goat, mayhap! She did not wink an eye when the consecrated scimitar curved downwards, a jet of red, red bubbling blood spurted into the dim light, and a sort of sob from the dying and the living alike told that atonement was made.