Between the Twilights/Chapter 13
XIII
A CHILD OR TWO
In an orthodox Hindu house of mine acquaintance are to be found two darling Babies, aged four and five. They are girls, one named “Lightning-Beloved,” the other after a Greek Goddess.
I made their acquaintance first in the Summer, and they were most seasonably dressed in gold waist-bands and an amulet a-piece—for the Goddess of Learning, a bear’s claw, and for “Lightning-Beloved,” a little gold box of mystic “spare-me-s” against the blue sword of her tempestuous Lord. … I was much in request for games, and daily beguiled into longer and longer visits; how could one resist Babies who were just being introduced to the joys of childhood? And, when I left the “Inside,” there would be one Baby on my hip—they taught me that, and it is quite easy, I assure you—and one clinging to leg and hand as I walked downstairs.
But joy was at the full when I invited them to come and see me. The hour fixed was at a distance of a week, and every day I was asked “has it come?” When it did come I was sitting at my window, and seeing the Raj carriage and pair, with all its pomp of liveried attendants, dash up the drive, I smiled to myself, thinking of the semi-nude atoms which would presently issue thence. Little did I know. The atoms, my very own Baby friends of the waist-band and necklet, were translated. At the door, hand in hand and very shy, stood two of the quaintest oddities I have ever seen—my Babies, sure enough, but dressed as English widows, crêpe veil and all, with long false curls of rusty black hair adown their poor little black-gowned backs. Oh! but how I laughed! And they stood by, rueful and disappointed, while I stripped them, even to their natural clothing.
“Then the Miss Sahib loved not the English clothes; nor” (with a gasp of wonder) “the hair of another.”
“No! No!”
And two pairs of brows knit themselves in solemn puzzlement over this contrariety. Then, “But the Miss Sahib said she loved the children people of the English.”
“Yes! what then?” (but I had guessed). “We want the Miss Sahib to love us.” … The darlings! Then it was all made clear, helped out by the Amla. They had, even as they said, laid their little plot to win love. They would dress like the children-people of the English. But how to compass this! Their Mother undertook to arrange; and a clever Amla went to a second-hand clothes shop near by, which often supplied Theatrical Companies. “No! they had no dress of the English children-people; but stay—an English Mem-Sahib had sold them a dress not long since. They could make two small copies of this.” And the Babies were reproduced in the sad image of some English widow (curls and all), who had evidently fallen on evil days or the brighter days of second marriage, and got rid of her panoply of mourning.
I think my Goddess of Learning and “Lightning-Beloved” know by now that these foreign arts are unnecessary in the way of love. I have had no widow repeats, but in my heart I hide the realization of a pathos and charm hitherto unsuspected in the consciousness of Babydom.
It was in connection with “Lightning-Beloved,” whose Mother was seeking a husband for her four-year-old, that I came across the “orphanless child,” as he was described in a petition. She explained to me that as she was sonless, “Lightning-Beloved” must be married quickly to someone without fortune or family, though of the right caste. He would then be even as her son, and be supported by her in return for the honour of an alliance. This extraordinary position, “domesticated son-in-law,” as it is called, has been accepted even by adults, and is very familiar in Bengal. I know of one instance where a man waited to propose to the lady of his choice (it was a reformed Hindu family), till he could prove himself capable of supporting her, only to discover that a younger and rather lazy brother had forestalled him by accepting the position of the “domesticated.” However, it was useless arguing the indignity of dependence with “Lightning-Beloved’s” mother, and one’s only chance lay in expounding Sanskrit scripture as to the possibility of waiting for marriage till a later age. Unfortunately, it is a question of Priest-gifts desired at this particular moment, and counter-texts are produced for my consideration, proving that delay means risk of a first-class heaven; so that nothing but the woman’s faith in my assurance that I will use my influence with the spiritual Powers to secure her the coveted position, nevertheless, saves the situation.
For the Goddess of Learning is desired an adopted son, heir to a Raj. I am pleased with this choice, the boy has a face like Rossetti’s Blessed Damozel, and a charming disposition; and we have just been in time to save a threatened repudiation of him by his adoptive Mother. It would have been a dreadful thing, for having by adoption lost for ever all spiritual rights in his natural family, he would, on repudiation of adoption, be left without ancestors for whom to pray; and this, for a Hindu, is terrible indeed.
A new little settler has lately sought the shelter of this Raj, a six-year-old Baby in self-protective exile from her own Estate. Under local law she succeeds as the only unmarried “female” to a considerable inheritance, and as a consequence all around her, grandmothers and sisters included, are interested in her death. They have been drugging her, and she has been brought into headquarters under Police guard. I found her in a wretched house set down in a swamp, and furnished with a hard plank-bed and a box. “Lotus-born,” that is her name, is a miserable shrimp of a Baby, arms like sticks, and a plaintive long-suffering little face, like a cry for help sounding in my ears to this day. She was very ill indeed, burning with malarial fever, and aching, she said, in every limb. She lay on the hard “takht-posh,” and beside her sat her nurse, another baby, eight years old. She sat like a frog, legs crunched up, and her nursing consisted in giving the sufferer a loving pinch every now and then, murmuring, “There! that makes it better.” And the six-year-old, in a monotonous little voice which struggled after cheeriness, would answer, “Yes! Oh! yes.”
I found that the Nurse had tied herself to “Lotus-born” in friendship by a ceremony peculiar to this part of the country. Two tanks are dug, contiguous, and the children make a play with fishes and boats, floating them in the water, and offering rice and feastings on the grass. Quaint songs are sung.
“Who is worshipping the water with garlands of flowers while the sun is overhead?”
“It is I, chaste and virtuous, lucky sister of a Brother. May I have sons who will not die.”
But “Lotus-born” lived not long enough to find fulfilment of her prayer. Better nursing came too late, and the petals of the Lotus curled together in eternal sleep. ***** The mother of “Lightning-Beloved” is in great spirits this morning. The son-in-law elect was ill, and I had pointed the moral about letting children get past baby troubles before you betroth them; it is so one lessens the risk of widowhood.
“Well! at any rate,” she said, “you should be pleased with me. Your ‘Lightning-Beloved’ is not yet a widow. I saved her from being born a widow.”
This was startling, but I waited explanation.
“When ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was on the way to life,” she said, “there came a Guru from a far country who told my Guru of a game the women play there. Two women who are friends, and are about at the same time to be dowered with the life-gift, betroth two balls of flowers. If both children are of the same sex there is no result of the ceremony, but if of opposite sexes and one die the other is a widow. … She may even be born a widow.”
“But you would not hold to that?”
“Where it is the custom who can escape? Yet ‘Lightning-Beloved’ was not born a widow; for this I should have praise from the Miss Sahib.”
“But it is not your custom.”
“What matter? I should have praise. She is not a widow!” ***** I was musing sadly on children-widows that morning, because of a story told to me by a friend. Someone visiting a local prison was attracted by the misery of a woman who had murdered her child. He spoke to her, and she said she wished that her own life had been taken, for she loved her child, and all she had done was to right the wrong of early widowhood. “Her husband died when she was five. Do not I, who have lived a lifetime of widowhood, know what that means? Was I wrong to try to save her from misery like to mine?”
In truth, apart from the written law, it is difficult to judge the woman. She loved her child, and in her own opinion did no more than pull her gently away from under the wheels of that Jagannath Car of Hindu widowhood.
There was my “Dog-girl,” now just dead, poor child. What of her Mother? she who has made war upon her only daughter since her second year. What of her? There is no law to meet her case. What of her? “God has not said a word.”
It is a graphic quarrel in three generations of women, and of women living in the same Palace, only a courtyard dividing each from each. Sullenly they lived, silently year in year out, not a single interest coming from the outside world to distract their attention from their hates and resentments. Traffic indeed with the world they had none. Palace walls shut them in securely, shut them in with their broodings and bemoanings, with the intrigues and loyalties of their several waiting-women, and with one gray-white Sarus, the red-throated, a ghost-bird, walking restlessly on his high stilts from courtyard to courtyard.
I saw the solitary creature first in the cow-dust hour before the stars come out, and he seemed to me somehow the embodiment of that quarrel, the lost soul of the inharmonious.
I have said the quarrel was in three generations—daughter, mother, grandmother—and, of course, like all Raj quarrels, it had been made by a third person to suit his own purposes. My connection with it was an attempt at Peacemaking, when the daughter was about fifteen, and could speak for herself. Not soon shall I forget my journeys … flat, mud-coloured country, with mud huts rising out of the ground, as if you had pinched up the earth into hiding holes … mud-coloured humans like detached pieces of their own houses herding undersized goats, or urging miserable beasts and an unwilling plough over the baked earth: little vegetation, but here and there a palm-tree, standing straight and solitary against the heat-hazed, pewter-coloured sky, as if even Nature had need here to throw herself on God … This was before the rain. In a week all was changed, the road was under water, and I had a weird, mysterious drive through the rivers of streets. The suspicion of a moon was overhead, and a glorious fresh breeze wandered the world. Silently we drove, swish, swish, fifteen miles of—a call to secrecy, as if all the world had finger on lip—“hush, hush” … the trees said it, the feathery bamboos whispering head against head, and the soft gray clouds, and that veiled moon, and that wistful breeze, and those muddy streets, they all said “Hush!” … even the bare legs of the saises, as they ran by the carriage, seemed to say the same. “Hush!” … All the world was slipping into a delicious forgetfulness and oblivion, and there was none to see, none save I, thrilling with sympathy, and that palm or two against the horizon looking on stiff-necked and aloof as if refusing to have part or lot in this flirtation of Earth and Cloudland. I did not mind the palms. I hugged myself with the delicious feeling of being in the secret of the world-things. Once or twice in our pathless journey we passed through a village, so close that I could reach a hand and scratch a soft pink nose of cow or buffalo at its tethering. The peasant house-holder lay stretched in his winding-sheet asleep on the unguarded threshold. No reason for worry or watch-dog when all your wealth is in dear Mother-Earth, guarded by the floating fluid come down from Heaven for that same purpose. How good will be the rice crop after this soaking he knows full well, that slow-minded one who sleeps so blissfully.
But it is after midnight, and we have arrived. And next morning there are secrets again, but of a different kind, in the air, and my work is cut out for me.
It was the little daughter who was most difficult to manage. “How could she visit her Mother?” she would be bewitched. Had they not on such-and-such a day—it was the fifth day of the dark fortnight in the month of the Spring games—had they not, her Mother’s minions, thrown mustard in her path as she walked? Did the Miss Sahib not know that that was a powerful breeder of demons? Oh! but yes! Colman’s mustard that you get in yellow tins from Europe shops. … And,—“once they bade her to a ‘peace-making meal,’ but there was poison in the food … How did she know it? Oh! she was not without sense, who does not know poison when they see it!”
The Grandmother spoke a more forcible tongue; charges under the Penal Code, with quaint excursions into the family history of the past for parallel to this unworthy widow of her son.
The Ranee herself was dignified. You can afford dignity when you hold the purse-strings, and your accusations take the form of reduced allowances. She entertained me much this lady. As soon as word was brought her of my arrival she went to bed, feigning sickness. How did she know what manner of woman I might be! It were best to be on the safe side; if you were ill and in bed you could, with courtesy, avoid seeing visitors. So she went to bed. But she sent her Prime Minister and her most confidential officers to call upon me, that they might report. Was their report favourable, or did curiosity get the better of discretion? I know not; but early next morning a long procession of Palace servants in red and gold liveries came with gifts of welcome. Each man bore a tray of fruits and things auspicious; one touches the trays, leaving a silver coin behind. They bore also a letter of compliments praying an early visit. “Such was the beneficent nature of my visit to her State, she was well. …” For me, after writing back elaborate congratulations on the quick recovery, I stood at the window watching the messengers. Their lithe, smooth bodies glistened in the sun, and on each tray reposed the red and gold livery of that visit of ceremony! Once through my gateway, what need to carry superfluous mark of civilization.
The days that followed brought their own burden … visits, morning and evening, to this lady or that at the Palace, and visitors calling all day, each one with some tale against his neighbour, some story of Court intrigue. … “Where all is unknown, best be on the safe side and accuse” was their motto. And silent patience in the hearer led to this much knowledge at least, that there was one man’s name held in detestation by all alike. … And when the sun set there was solitude, and I walked in the Temple Garden, a garden which was a wild bed of Indian jasmine and other sweet-scented flowers loved of the gods, or played with the children of the old Priest at the Monkey Temple; or anon, sat still, in the cleft of some low branch, while the Priest himself told legends of the countryside—quaint tales of miraculous cures, or gruesome tales of living corpses. … And once an old Mutiny soldier recited Persian verses to me in a voice that should have reached his old battlefield at Delhi, many miles away; and once again, on a dark night of stars, they showed me the King’s games of by-gone days—little green parrots turning somersaults in circles of fire, and torch-bearers dancing a wild tattoo. … So the days passed. … Of what account was Time to the believers in Eternity? They would not be hurried. But every day we gained ground, and at last all was ready for the great peace.
Etiquette of the strictest was imperative: it needed some care to secure this without friction. As a personal favour the old Grandmother promised to come with me to the Ranee’s apartments; likewise the little daughter clinging tightly to my hand for fear of those same mustard demons.
As a personal favour also, the Ranee agreed to welcome her Mother-in-law in orthodox fashion.
Five o’clock of an afternoon, and a long dark room lined with waiting-women standing erect and silent, each waving a huge glittering fan planted like a flag in front of her … flap, flap, went the fans, like an elephant’s ears; and the serving-women’s ornaments shone like stars on arm or forehead. I had just arrived, the first and third generations in either hand, myself a little fearful as to possible backsliding. The old lady I seated; then going across to the Ranee at the other end of the room, “Your Mother-in-law,” I said, “has come to visit you. May I take you to her?”
It was thus, you see, we adjusted reconciliation, met each other half way, without too much sacrifice of pride … and, as I led my Ranee forward, “I want to see,’ I whispered, “if your ‘falling at the feet’ is as pretty as ours in the West Country.” “Prettier,” she said. “Look!” And, covering her face, she fell three times at the feet of the old dame, who stood there stern as an irrevocable sin. And she? She might have blessed the prostrate woman, but, at least, she cursed not; and so as not to strain forgiveness too far, I made excuse of heat and else, and had her conveyed back to her own courtyard.
The Mother and daughter were less ceremonious; the Mother wept much, and to seal the peace, made over to her daughter jewels of gold and precious stones, silver palanquins, silver bedsteads, silver toilet sets … all of quaint Indian patternings—the jewels, magnificent sets of emeralds and pearls, of rubies and topazes—nose-rings, ear-rings, armlets, bracelets, circlets for hair and forehead, decorations for the little bare feet, showers of emeralds and pearls falling from a band round the ankle, over the instep, and ending in a ring for each separate toe.
And behind the Curtain sat the Prime Minister and Treasurer reading a list of the gifts—a price list! totalling item by item, calling “Is it there?” “Is it there?”
The darkness deepened, we finished our inventory by the light of tall brass lamps—cotton wicks floating in open pans of oil—the handmaidens still lined the walls, still waved their jewelled fans. Once the daughter spoke. “A pearl is missing in this nose-ring!” she said. … Do not be hard on her, my poor little dog-girl. At first, I will own, I was so myself, chiding her gently for her attitude. All she said was, “I have known my Mother since I was two years old.” Then wonderingly, “So the Miss Sahib thought her tears true tears!” ***** Later I saw more of the child, and watched her grow human and childlike. The “dog-girl,” I called her, because she had a passion for dogs, would rescue the most mangy pariahs off the streets and care for them herself, fearless of consequences. I promised that my own dear “Chow” should visit her, but as he was, I explained, a high-caste dog, it could only be when the outcasts were out of the way! It was so I got rid of the yapping pack in the days of heat; but watching from her window, one later day of hail and thunder-showers, she saw some ill-treatment in the street, and re-admitted the “outsiders from Caste.” It was on this occasion she rebuked me. “Is the spark of life in Caste-Brother and outcast, in Chow dog and Pariah? Then why should I not care for these?”
“But you are a Hindu, Caste is your religion?”
“That is man’s invention; where man has not invented, let me hear the voice of God calling me to have compassion on a fellow life.”
And now she has heard the voice of God calling her out of this life of fellowship, perhaps, who knows, in supreme compassion of her own little stunted, shadowed life of high-castehood. …
So, after all, God has spoken. ***** I had taken these thoughts out for a walk on a sunny day in the hill country, and had now arrived at my destination, where I meant to leave a card.
It was a house which boasted an electric bell, and unlike Indian houses, had a closed door, overlooking the street. As I pressed the button two hill children, in blue and red kimonos, and long plaits of hair, stood watching me.
“Poor Miss Sahib,” said one to the other, “she is pressing a piece of wood, and thinks to open the door that way.”
The babies came nearer. “Poor Presence—pressing the wood at the side,” and they laughed.
I turned round and smiled at them, which gave the younger courage, “Doors,” she said, “open not with pressings of wood at the side; by the turning of yellow balls in the middle do the foreign people open doors. We have seen with our eyes.”
Then, as if apologizing for instructing me:
“Shut doors were ever a foolishness,” she added, and ran away.