The Flower of Forgiveness. Flora Annie Webster Steel
cotton ordained by ritual to the Brahman, the boy should be held of pure blood; but the admixture of anything pointing to the despised Sudra would make him anathema maranatha, and render his master impure, and therefore unfit to lead the devotions of others.
"I cannot attempt to describe the scene which followed; for even now, the confusion inseparable from finding yourself in surroundings which require explanation before they can fall into their appointed place in the picture, prevents me from remembering anything in detail--anything but a surging sea of saffron and white, a babel of wild cries, 'Hurri! Gunga-ji! Dhurm! Dhurm!' (Hurri![2] Ganges! the Faith! the Faith!) Then suddenly a roar--'Gopi! a miracle! a miracle! Praise be to the Shining Ones!'
"It seemed but a moment ere the enthusiastic crowd had swept the jogi from his pedestal, and, crowned with jasmin chaplets, he was being borne high on men's shoulders to make a round of the various temples; while the keepers of the shrine swelled the tumult judiciously by cries of 'Oblations! offerings! The Shining Ones are present to-day!'
"In my excitement at the scene itself I had forgotten its cause, and was regretting the all too sudden ending of the spectacle, when Taylor touched me on the arm. 'The tragedy is about to begin! Look!'
"Following his eyes I saw, indeed, tragedy enough to make me forget what had gone before; yet I knew well that I did not, could not, fathom its depth or measure its breadth. Still, in a dim way I realised that the boy, standing as if turned to stone, had passed in those few moments from life as surely as if a physical death had struck him down; that he might indeed have been less forlorn had such been the case, since some one for their own sakes might then have given him six feet of earth. And now, even a cup of water, that last refuge of cold charity, was denied to him for ever, save from hands whose touch was to his Brahmanised soul worse than death. For him there was no future. For the old man who, burdened by the weeping girl, stood opposite him, there was no past. Nothing but a hell of defilement; of daily, hourly impurity for twelve long years. The thought was damnation.
"'Come, Premi! come!' he muttered, turning suddenly to leave the platform. 'This is no place for us now. Quick! we must cleanse ourselves from deadly sin--from deadly, deadly sin.'
"They had reached the steps leading down to the tank when the boy, with a sob like that of a wounded animal, flung himself in agonised entreaty at his master's feet. 'Oh, cleanse me, even me also, oh my father!'
"The old man shrank back instinctively; yet there was no anger, only a merciless decision in his face. 'Ask not the impossible! Thou art not alone impure; thou art uncleansable from birth--yea! for ever and ever. Come, Premi, come, my child.'
"I shall never forget the cry which echoed over the water, startling the pigeons from their evening rest amid the encircling trees. 'Uncleansable for ever and ever!' Then in wild appeal from earth to heaven he threw his arms skyward. 'Oh, Shining Ones! say I am the same Amra, the twice-born Amra, thy servant!'
"'Peace! blasphemer!' interrupted the Brahman sternly. 'There are no Shining Ones for such as thou. Go! lest they strike thee dead in wrath.'
"A momentary glimpse of a young face distraught by despair, of an old one firm in repudiation, and the platform lay empty of the passions which had played their parts on it as on a stage. Only from the distance came the discordant triumph of the jogi's procession.
"I besieged Taylor's superior knowledge by vain questions, to most of which he shook his head. 'How can I tell?' he said somewhat fretfully. 'The cord was manipulated in some way, of course. For all that, there may be truth in Gopi's story. There is generally the devil to pay if a Brahmani goes wrong, and she may have tried to save the boy's life by getting rid of him. If you want to know more, I'll send for Victor Emanuel. Five rupees will fetch some slight fraction of truth from the bottom of his well, and that, as a rule, is all we aliens can expect in these incidents.'
"So the old ruffian came and sat ostentatiously far from our contaminating influences in the attitude of a bronze Buddha, his mustaches curled to his eyebrows, his large lips wreathed in solemn smiles. 'It was a truly divine miracle,' he said blandly. 'Gopi, the bikshu, never makes mistakes, and performs neatly. Did the Presence observe how neatly? Within the cotton marking the Brahman came the hempen thread of the Kshatriya, inside again the woollen strand of the Vaisya; all three twice-born. But last of all, a strip of cowskin defiling the whole.'
"'Why cow-skin?' I asked in my ignorance. 'I always thought you held a cow sacred.'
"Victor Emanuel beamed approval. 'The little Presence is young, but intelligent. He will doubtless learn much if he questions the right people judiciously. He will grow wise like the big Presence, who knows nearly as much as we know about some things--but not all! The cow is sacred, so the skin telling of the misfortune of the cow is anathema. Yea, 'twas a divine miracle. The money of the pious will flow to make the holy fat; at least that is what the doctor sahib is thinking.'
"'Don't set up for occult power on the strength of guessing palpable truths,' replied Taylor; 'that sort of thing does not amuse me; but the little sahib wants to know how much truth there was in Gopi's story.'
"'Gopi knows,' retorted our friend with a grin. 'The Brahman saith the boy was gifted to him by a pious woman after the custom of thanksgiving. Gone five years old, wearing the sacred thread, versed in simple lore, intelligent, well-formed, as the ritual demands. Gopi saith the mother, his wife, was a bad walker, even to the length of public bazaars. Her people sought her for years, but she escaped them in big towns, and ere they found her she had gained safety for this boy by palming him off on Sukya. 'Twas easy for her, being a Brahmani. Of course they made her speak somewhat ere she fulfilled her life, but not the name of the anchorite she deceived. So Gopi, knowing from the mother's babbling of this mongrel's blasphemous name, and the vow of pilgrimage for the expiation of sins, hath come hither, led by the Spirit, every year. It is a tale of great virtue and edification.'
"'But the boy! the wretched boy?' I asked eagerly. Taylor raised his eyebrows and watched my reception of the jog's answer with a half-pitying smile.
"'Perhaps he will die; perhaps not. What does it matter? One born of such parents is dead to virtue from the beginning, and life without virtue is not life.'
"'He might try Amar-nâth and the remission of sins you believe in so firmly,' remarked Taylor, with another look at me.
"Victor Emanuel spat freely. 'There is no Amar-nâth for such as he, and the Presence knows that as well as I do. No remission at all, even if he found the Flower of Forgiveness, as the doctor sahib hopes to do.'
"'Upon my soul,' retorted Taylor impatiently, 'I believe the existence of the one is about as credible as the other. I shall have to swallow both if I chance upon either.'
"'That may be; but not for the boy Amra. He will die and be damned in due course.'
"That seemed to settle the question for others, but I was haunted by the boy's look when he heard the words, 'Thou art uncleansable for ever and ever.'
"'After all 'tis only a concentrated form of the feeling we all have at times,' remarked Taylor drily; 'even I should like to do away with a portion of my past. Besides, all religions claim more or less a monopoly of repentance. They are no worse here than at home.'
"We journeyed slowly to Amar-nâth, watching the pilgrims pass us by on the road, but catching them up again each evening after long rambles over the hills in search of rare plants. It is three days' march, by rights, to Shisha Nag, or the Leaden Lake, where the pilgrimage begins in real earnest by the pilgrims, men, women, and children, divesting themselves of every stitch of raiment, and journeying stark naked through the snow and ice for two days--coming back, of course, clothed with righteousness. But Taylor becoming interested over fungi in the chestnut woods of Chandanwarra, we paused there to hunt up all sorts of deathly-looking growths due to disease and decay. I was not sorry; for one pilgrim possessed by frantic haste to shift his sins to some scapegoat is very much like another pilgrim with the same desire; besides, I grew tired of Victor Emanuel, who felt the cold extremely, and was in consequence seldom sober, and extremely loquacious. I thought I had never seen such a dreary place