The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel

"Surely this is very rare?" I remarked, as looking through a herbarium of Himalayan plants belonging to a friend of mine, I came upon a small anemone which, contrary to the custom of that most delicate of flowers, had preserved its colour in all its first freshness. Indeed, the scarlet petals, each bearing a distinct, heart-shaped blotch of white in the centre, could scarcely have glowed more brilliantly in life than they did in death.

"Very rare," returned the owner after a pause; "I have reason to believe it unique--so far as collections go, at any rate."

"I see you have called it Remissionensis. What induced you to give it such an odd name?"

He smiled. "Dog Latin, I acknowledge. As for the reason--can you not guess?"

"Well," I replied, looking closer at the white and red flowers, "I have not your vivid imagination, but I presume it was in allusion to sins as scarlet, and hearts white as wool. Ah! it was found, I see, near the Cave of Amar-nâth; that accounts for the connection of ideas."

"No doubt," he said quietly, "that accounts for the connection in a measure; not entirely. The fact is, a very odd story--the oddest story I ever came into personally--is connected with that flower. You remember Taylor, surgeon of the 101st, who died of pyæmia contracted in some of his cholera experiments? Well, just after I joined we chummed together in Cashmere, where he was making the herbarium at which you have been looking. He was a most charming companion for a youngster eager to understand something of a new life, for, without exception, he knew more of native thought and feeling than any other man I ever met. He had a sort of intuition about it; yet at the same time he was curiously unsympathetic, and seemed to look upon it merely as a field for research, and nothing more. He used to talk to every man he met on the road, and in this way managed to acquire an extraordinary amount of information utterly undreamed of by most Englishmen. For instance, his first acquaintance with the existence of this anemone grew out of a chance conversation with an old ruffian besmeared with filth from head to foot, and it was his consequent desire to add the rarity to his collection, joined to my fancy for seeing a real pilgrimage, which brought us to Islamabad about the end of July, about the time, that is to say, of the annual festival.

"The sacred spring where the pilgrimage is inaugurated by a solemn feeding of the holy fish is some way from the town, so we pitched our tents under a plane-tree close to the temples, in order to see the whole show. And a queer show it was. Brummagem umbrellas stuck like mushrooms over green stretches of grass, and giving shelter to a motley crew; jogis, or wandering mendicants, meditating on the mystic word Om, and thereafter lighting sacred fires with Swedish tändstickors; Government clerks, bereft of raiment, forgetting reports and averages in a return to primitive humanity. Taylor never tired of pointing out these strange contrasts, and over his evening pipe read me many a long lecture on the putting of new wine into old bottles. For myself, it interested me immensely. I liked to think of the young men and maidens, the weary workers, and the hoary old sinners, all journeying in faith, hope, and charity (or the want of it) to the Cave of Amar-nâth in order to get the Great Ledger of Life settled up to date, and so to return scot-free to the world, the flesh, and the devil, in order to begin the old round all over again. I liked to think that crime sufficient to drag half Hindostan to the nethermost pit had been made over to those white gypsum cliffs, and that still, summer after summer, the wind flowers sprang from the crannies, and the forget-me-nots with their message of warning came to carpet the way for those eager feet seeking the impossible. I liked to see all the strange perversities and pieties displayed by the jogis and gosains. It was from one of the latter, a horrid old ruffian (so ridiculously like Il Re Galant 'uomo, that we nicknamed him Victor Emanuel on the spot), that Taylor had first heard of the Flower of Forgiveness, as the man styled it. He and the doctor grew quite hot over the possible remission of sins; but the subsequent gift of one rupee sterling sent him away asseverating that none could filch from him the first-fruits of pilgrimage--namely, the opportunity of meeting a Protector of the Poor so virtuous, so generous, so full of the hoarded wisdom of ages. I recognised the old humbug in the crowd as we made our way to a sort of latticed gallery belonging to the Maharajah's guest-house, which gave on the tank where the fish are fed. He salaamed profoundly, and, with a grin, expressed his delight that, after

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