“i heard the ‘click, click’ of the hot-weather bird to-day,” observed robin; “the warm season will burst on us soon.”
“soon indeed!” exclaimed alicia, fanning herself as she spoke. “you need not speak of the future; have we not grilling days already? are you not all driven into this little room because the morning sun makes the veranda like a furnace?—o harold, surely the heat without and the fires within have made our bungalow habitable now!”
“scarcely yet, my love,” was harold’s reply.
alicia would have laughed at petty discomforts in cooler weather; but with the thermometer making a sudden rise to ninety, with no intention of resting at that point, and with a host of flies and musquitoes coming out to enjoy the warmth, she felt her power of endurance rather severely tried.
“oh, these hateful musquitoes!” exclaimed the young wife, trying, but with indifferent success, to ward off their attacks with her fan.
“i prefer the musquito to the fly,” observed robin, whose face showed numerous signs that the former had not left him in peace. “the vulgar fly comes buzzing about you with apparently no definite object, settles on your pen and drinks the ink, and then makes a dash at your eye. the musquito is a more chivalrous foe: he blows his trumpet as a challenge, and defies you to single combat. he is vigilant and active; so must you be if you wish to bring him down with a blow. you see my hand is now resting perfectly still on my knee: this is a ruse to invite an attack. the enemy sees it, and—there!” a sharp slap on that hand given by the right one resounded through the room; but the musquito had been too quick even for robin, and soared aloft unhurt, blowing its horn in triumph. “i’ll have him yet,” said robin gaily.
“you make a joke of everything,” remarked alicia.
“it is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles,” was robin’s cheerful reply. “we missionaries should not want to roll along life’s road in an easy carriage, bolstered up, and enclosed in a musquito-net.”
“the weather makes my head ache,” said alicia. “robin, why do you smile?”
it would not have been easy for robin to have explained the cause of that smile. it was the remembrance of his own prognostications. alicia, made a little irritable by the heat and insect tormentors, felt somewhat annoyed.
“i will go to the fort,” she said, as she rose from her seat; “i have not been there for a week.”
“is not the weather too hot for you?” asked harold, glancing up from his desk; “the sun has now a good deal of power.”
“the sun is hot, but there is at least breathing-space in the fort,” said alicia, who disliked the cramped accommodation of the crowded bungalow.
“i am sorry that i cannot procure for you kripá dé’s escort to-day,” observed harold.
“i do not want it; i know the way now; i can go by myself,” said alicia. she did not choose to set robin smiling again at any weakness of hers.
when once in her doli, alicia repented of the passing peevishness into which she feared that she had been betrayed. “it is a wrong, a mean thing,” thought the young wife, “to feel cross because others take small worries more patiently than i do. robin is right: it is better to laugh than to cry over tiny troubles. a poor missionary i must be, indeed, if my fortitude cannot stand a hot room or the stinging of a musquito. oh for a calm, firm, quiet spirit!”
alicia had almost forgotten her headache before she reached the fort. for once the court-yard was clear of cattle, and the dogs seemed to understand that the white visitor was not a bear to be baited; they did not even growl. alicia, not unmarked but unmolested, made her way up the dark stair to the women’s apartments.
again there was the interchange of saláms, again was the charpai dragged out and spread, again alicia attempted to read, and again had the young missionary the vexation of being interrupted by irrelevant questions. as a resource from such tiresome and often puzzling inquiries, alicia again sang that bhajan of which native women never seem to be weary, a chord in their hearts being touched by that verse which may be thus rendered, though its melody suffers by the translation,—
“in this world happiness never can be found;
it is as water-drops spilt on the ground.”
“these women have hearts, if one could but reach them,” thought alicia, as she saw tears rise to the eyes of a bibi. “they feel that the world is fleeting and vain. oh, when shall we persuade them to raise their eyes to another, whose joys will never pass away! i am like one trying to open an iron door which is locked, and of which i have not the key. oh, my lord, do for me what i am unable to do! make a clear way for thy feeble, unworthy child, and give her courage to enter and patience to persevere.”
the young widow premi approached with a fat heavy boy of some two years old sitting astride on her hip, after the indian fashion of carrying children. the slight frame of the girl seemed unsuited for supporting the weight; she was looking weary and ill.
“is premi, young as she is, the mother of that big boy?” asked alicia. the bibis laughed, as they were wont to do on suitable or unsuitable occasions. several answered at once, and it was with some difficulty that alicia made out that the fat boy was a grandson of premi’s deceased husband, and the fifth child of darobti. indian relationships are extremely puzzling to strangers, not only from the numerous words used to express them (there are at least five species of aunts), but from the custom of disregarding accuracy, and calling those indiscriminately “brothers” and “sisters” who may be cousins in a distant degree.
the fat infant was deposited in the arms of the fat mother, and forthwith began to torture her by dragging at her huge ear-rings—a favourite amusement of native babies, who appear to consider these glittering ornaments as made for their own special diversion. poor premi was sent off again to pound rice with the club which she was almost too feeble to wield.
the sound of the thud, thud of that club went to the gentle heart of alicia. “premi looks so ill,” she observed.
“only because yesterday was her fast-day,” said jai dé, an old woman who had but one eye, the other having been lost in small-pox, and who possessed but two teeth, which seemed by their extra size to try to make up for the absence of all the rest.
alicia did not understand the word for “fast,” and it took her some time to make out, partly by means of signs, that on the preceding day premi had touched no food, and that she was fasting still.
“what bad thing has she done that you should starve her?” exclaimed the indignant lady.
the hindus looked surprised at the question, which betrayed such ignorance of what they thought that every one knew or ought to know.
“premi is a widow: of course she fasts every fortnight,” said chand kor; and so, as if tired with conversation on so insignificant a subject, she asked alicia to sing.
alicia was in no mood for singing; she rose and made her excuses as well as she could for not lingering longer in the zenana. “the sun is hot; my head pains me,” she said, in reply to the women’s expostulations. the words were true; but it was rather pain in the heart than pain in the head which so shortened alicia’s visit. amidst the sound of the jabber of many voices, and a child’s loud roar which reached her as she groped her way down the stair, there came to the lady’s ear that hateful thud, thud which told of the hopeless toil of a weak and helpless slave. alicia’s soul was full of indignant pity.
“oh, this cruel, wicked system!” exclaimed alicia. “how long shall the cry of innocent young victims, doomed to life-long misery, go up to heaven? before the english took possession of the panjab, the probable fate of this fair girl-widow would have been to be burned alive with the corpse of an old man whom she could never have loved; but was such a fate worse than that which the young creature must endure for perhaps forty—fifty years,—even more? it is shameful—it is horrible! but this one victim may be rescued. i have a plan in my head, and i will speak of it to my husband. i think that the merciful being who breaks the captives’ chains may have sent me to this dark spot to set one prisoner free.”
alicia’s mind was absorbed in forming projects as she was carried home in her doli. she found harold and his father sitting in the veranda, as the sun was no longer pouring his beams from the eastern quarter, and the veranda did not face the south. the season had not yet arrived when it might be needful to close doors and windows to exclude the hot air, and to live in a kind of twilight; because light is connected with heat. before fiery june should arrive the new bungalow might be pronounced dry enough to be used by its owners, who would not, however, sleep in it, but aloft on the roof.
“o harold, i must tell you of what i have seen, and what i have been thinking, and consult you as to what i must do,” cried alicia, as, heated and flushed, she threw herself on the chair which her husband had vacated on her entrance.
alicia in a hurried way described what she had seen in the fort, mr. hartley and harold listening to her story with silent attention. neither of the missionaries was wont to give violent expression to his feelings; nor was the sad subject of a hindu widow’s wrongs at all a new one to them.
“and now i will tell you what i am set on doing,” continued alicia; “i mean, of course, if my husband humour his little wife, as he always does. when our paradise is ready (this sun must have made it as dry as a bone), i mean to bring premi to live in that nice little convenient room behind my own, which robin calls my box-room. i do not intend to call her my ayah [a servant], but i will teach her to keep all my things neat, and in her leisure time she shall learn to sew and knit and sing. if premi turn out in the least bit clever—and there is intelligence in her fine dark eyes—i will teach her to read the bible. premi will be sure to become a christian, and she will be the first woman baptized in talwandi!” alicia’s face beamed with pleasure as she added, “is not mine a capital plan?”
“it would be, were it practicable,” said harold hartley. he was sorry to throw any shadow of disappointment on the sweet countenance now so bright with hope.
“but where is the difficulty?” cried alicia; “i can see none. premi has nothing to make her wish to remain in that fort, where probably nobody wishes to keep her.”
“and yet,” said mr. hartley very gravely, “were we to bring premi here, we might bring on a serious riot in the district. she, being kripá dé’s sister, must like himself be of brahmin caste. the hindus would combine as one man against us, declaring that the sanctity of their homes was invaded. the government so shrinks from interfering with social matters, that it would probably afford the poor widow no protection. premi would be dragged back to the fort, probably be never again seen by a european, and possibly be poisoned by her family on suspicion of having broken her caste.”
alicia turned inquiringly towards her husband, but could gain no hope from his looks.
“i have known three innocent persons arrested and brought into a european court of justice, on the bare charge of having abetted a hindu widow’s attempt to escape from the bondage of which she was tired.”[4]
“then can nothing be done for poor premi?” exclaimed alicia.
“you may do much, my love,” replied harold; “not by freeing the captive, but by giving her that knowledge which is better even than freedom. you can tell premi of a home beyond the grave, of a place at the saviour’s feet, of the joy which far outweighs even the heaviest afflictions of earth.”
alicia sighed deeply, for she was sorely disappointed by the collapse of her scheme. she could not dispute the opinions of those whose benevolence equalled her own, and whose experience was so much greater. “i will do what i can,” she said submissively; “and as a beginning i will learn the translation of ‘joyful, joyful!’ to sing to poor premi.”
4. a fact.
the entrance of kripá dé, the kashmiri convert, with robin gave a new form to the hopes of alicia.
“if we cannot free premi, surely her own brother can,” cried the young wife. “as premi seems to be an orphan, he is her natural protector; if kripá dé place her under our care, who has a right to object?”
harold in a few sentences explained to the convert the lady’s anxiety to rescue premi from her present wretched condition. “would it be impossible for you to bring her here?” he asked in conclusion.
kripá dé looked astonished at the question. “perfectly impossible,” was his reply. “i have no power in a matter like this.”
alicia felt provoked at a brother’s tamely acquiescing in what she thought tyranny and injustice. “harold or robin would not stand with folded hands,” thought she, “were a sister treated as a slave.” then she added aloud, “are you content that poor premi’s whole life is to be passed in nothing but sorrow?”
“she had a happy childhood, mem sahiba,” replied the kashmiri. “often we played together. she made my kites, and proudly watched them rising higher than those of my companions. often she laughed for joy when i gave her a share of my sweetmeats. her life was very different then from what it was after her marriage.”
“did premi’s marriage grieve you?” asked robin; “or were you too young to care about it?”
“did i not care!” exclaimed kripá dé—“did i not care to have my little playmate taken away, to be given to an old profligate who had had half-a-dozen wives already! mere boy as i was, i felt that the marriage was something cruel and wicked. when every one else was rejoicing—except the poor child who was crying—my soul was full of anger. i did not care for the fireworks; i would not touch the sweetmeats; i turned away my head, that i might not see the old bridegroom in his glittering dress, mounted on his white horse.”
“and did the marriage, mere ceremony as it was, quite separate you from premi?” asked robin.
“i was never able to play with her again, though i often saw her in the zenana,” replied kripá dé; “for she continued to live in the fort. she was kept a great deal more strictly, and it was as if a high wall had been raised between us. i hoped that the child was happy; the women said that she was so, for she had plenty of jewels; but i never heard her laugh again as she did in the days that were gone. i do not think that premi cared as much for jewels as our women usually do; she preferred chaplets of jasmine flowers. premi was unlike any one else in the zenana.”
“she looks very much unlike the rest, there is so much more soul in her expression,” observed alicia when harold had translated to her the words of kripá dé.
“one night,” pursued the kashmiri, “terrible news arrived. the bridegroom had had a fit, and fallen down dead. it was not he but his corpse that came back to talwandi. i heard the wailing and the beating of the breasts in concert which are the signs of hindu mourning. darobti wept loudest and beat hardest. she rushed at premi; she abused her; she struck her; she dragged the bracelets from the widow’s arms; she tore the rings from her ears;—she thought that she best honoured a dead father by heaping disgrace on his widow!”
“did you see this and not protect the innocent girl?” exclaimed robin fiercely.
“i could do nothing,” said kripá dé sadly. “was it not dastur [custom]? oh that the good god of whom you have told me would sweep all such customs away!”
mr. hartley rose from his seat and paced the veranda, with hands clasped and lips moving in scarcely audible prayer: “o lord, overthrow this jaggernath of cruel custom which is crushing under its iron wheels hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. let the lightning of thy power, or rather let the light of thy truth, burst forth. save india’s enslaved daughters—the poor child-widows—from bondage worse than death!”
