BEYOND THE PALE.
"Love heeds not caste nor sleep a broken bed. I went in search of love and lost myself."
Hindu Proverb.
A man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race and breed.Let the White go to the White and the Black to the Black. Then, whatevertrouble falls is in the ordinary course of things--neither sudden,alien, nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who wilfully stepped beyond the safe limitsof decent every-day society, and paid for it heavily.
He knew too much in the first instance; and he saw too much in thesecond. He took too deep an interest in native life; but he will neverdo so again.
Deep away in the heart of the City, behind Jitha Megji's bustee, liesAmir Nath's Gully, which ends in a dead-wall pierced by one gratedwindow. At the head of the Gully is a big cow-byre, and the walls oneither side of the Gully are without windows. Neither Suchet Singh norGaur Chand approved of their women-folk looking into the world. IfDurga Charan had been of their opinion, he would have been a happier manto-day, and little Biessa would have been able to knead her own bread.Her room looked out through the grated window into the narrow dark Gullywhere the sun never came and where the buffaloes wallowed in the blueslime. She was a widow, about fifteen years old, and she prayed theGods, day and night, to send her a lover; for she did not approve ofliving alone.
One day the man--Trejago his name was--came into Amir Nath's Gully on anaimless wandering; and, after he had passed the buffaloes, stumbled overa big heap of cattle food.
Then he saw that the Gully ended in a trap, and heard a little laughfrom behind the grated window. It was a pretty little laugh, andTrejago, knowing that, for all practical purposes, the old ArabianNights are good guides, went forward to the window, and whispered thatverse of "The Love Song of Har Dyal" which begins:
Can a man stand upright in the face of the naked Sun; or a Lover in the Presence of his Beloved? If my feet fail me, O Heart of my Heart, am I to blame, being blinded by the glimpse of your beauty?
There came the faint tchinks of a woman's bracelets from behind thegrating, and a little voice went on with the song at the fifth verse:
Alas! alas! Can the Moon tell the Lotus of her love when the Gate of Heaven is shut and the clouds gather for the rains? They have taken my Beloved, and driven her with the pack-horses to the North. There are iron chains on the feet that were set on my heart. Call to the bowman to make ready--
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago walked out of Amir Nath's Gully,wondering who in the world could have capped "The Love Song of Har Dyal"so neatly.
Next morning, as he was driving to the office, an old woman threw apacket into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a brokenglass bangle, one flower of the blood red dhak, a pinch of bhusa orcattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter--not aclumsy compromising letter, but an innocent, unintelligible lover'sepistle.
Trejago knew far too much about these things, as I have said. NoEnglishman should be able to translate object-letters. But Trejagospread all the trifles on the lid of his office-box and began to puzzlethem out.
A broken glass-bangle stands for a Hindu widow all India over; because,when her husband dies a woman's bracelets are broken on her wrists.Trejago saw the meaning of the little bit of the glass. The flowerof the dhak means diversely "desire," "come," "write," or "danger,"according to the other things with it. One cardamom means "jealousy;"but when any article is duplicated in an object-letter, it loses itssymbolic meaning and stands merely for one of a number indicating time,or, if incense, curds, or saffron be sent also, place. The message ranthen:--"A widow dhak flower and bhusa--at eleven o'clock." The pinch ofbhusa enlightened Trejago. He saw--this kind of letter leaves muchto instinctive knowledge--that the bhusa referred to the big heap ofcattle-food over which he had fallen in Amir Nath's Gully, and that themessage must come from the person behind the grating; she being a widow.So the message ran then:--"A widow, in the Gully in which is the heap ofbhusa, desires you to come at eleven o'clock."
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the fireplace and laughed. He knewthat men in the East do not make love under windows at eleven in theforenoon, nor do women fix appointments a week in advance. So he went,that very night at eleven, into Amir Nath's Gully, clad in a boorka,which cloaks a man as well as a woman. Directly the gongs in the Citymade the hour, the little voice behind the grating took up "The LoveSong of Har Dyal" at the verse where the Panthan girl calls upon HarDyal to return. The song is really pretty in the Vernacular. In Englishyou miss the wail of it. It runs something like this:--
Alone upon the housetops, to the North I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,-- The glamour of thy footsteps in the North, Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
Below my feet the still bazar is laid Far, far below the weary camels lie,-- The camels and the captives of thy raid, Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
My father's wife is old and harsh with years, And drudge of all my father's house am I.-- My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears, Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!
As the song stopped, Trejago stepped up under the grating andwhispered:--"I am here."
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many strange things, and of a doublelife so wild that Trejago to-day sometimes wonders if it were not all adream. Bisesa or her old handmaiden who had thrown the object-letter haddetached the heavy grating from the brick-work of the wall; so that thewindow slid inside, leaving only a square of raw masonry, into which anactive man might climb.
In the day-time, Trejago drove through his routine of office-work, orput on his calling-clothes and called on the ladies of the Station;wondering how long they would know him if they knew of poor littleBisesa. At night, when all the City was still, came the walk under theevil-smelling boorka, the patrol through Jitha Megji's bustee, the quickturn into Amir Nath's Gully between the sleeping cattle and the deadwalls, and then, last of all, Bisesa, and the deep, even breathing ofthe old woman who slept outside the door of the bare little room thatDurga Charan allotted to his sister's daughter. Who or what Durga Charanwas, Trejago never inquired; and why in the world he was not discoveredand knifed never occurred to him till his madness was over, andBisesa... But this comes later.
Bisesa was an endless delight to Trejago. She was as ignorant as a bird;and her distorted versions of the rumors from the outside world that hadreached her in her room, amused Trejago almost as much as her lispingattempts to pronounce his name--"Christopher." The first syllable wasalways more than she could manage, and she made funny little gestureswith her rose-leaf hands, as one throwing the name away, and then,kneeling before Trejago, asked him, exactly as an Englishwoman would do,if he were sure he loved her. Trejago swore that he loved her more thanany one else in the world. Which was true.
After a month of this folly, the exigencies of his other life compelledTrejago to be especially attentive to a lady of his acquaintance. Youmay take it for a fact that anything of this kind is not only noticedand discussed by a man's own race, but by some hundred and fifty nativesas well. Trejago had to walk with this lady and talk to her at theBand-stand, and once or twice to drive with her; never for an instantdreaming that this would affect his dearer out-of-the-way life. But thenews flew, in the usual mysterious fashion, from mouth to mouth, tillBisesa's duenna heard of it and told Bisesa. The child was so troubledthat she did the household work evilly, and was beaten by Durga Charan'swife in consequence.
A week later, Bisesa taxed Trejago with the flirtation. She understoodno gradations and spoke openly. Trejago laughed and Bisesa stamped herlittle feet--little feet, light as marigold flowers, that could lie inthe palm of a man's one hand.
Much that is written about "Oriental passion and impulsiveness" isexaggerated and compiled at second-hand, but a little of it is true; andwhen an Eng
lishman finds that little, it is quite as startling as anypassion in his own proper life. Bisesa raged and stormed, and finallythreatened to kill herself if Trejago did not at once drop the alienMemsahib who had come between them. Trejago tried to explain, andto show her that she did not understand these things from a Westernstandpoint. Bisesa drew herself up, and said simply:
"I do not. I know only this--it is not good that I should have made youdearer than my own heart to me, Sahib. You are an Englishman. I am onlya black girl"--she was fairer than bar-gold in the Mint--"and the widowof a black man."
Then she sobbed and said: "But on my soul and my Mother's soul, I loveyou. There shall no harm come to you, whatever happens to me."
Trejago argued with the child, and tried to soothe her, but she seemedquite unreasonably disturbed. Nothing would satisfy her save that allrelations between them should end. He was to go away at once. And hewent. As he dropped out at the window, she kissed his forehead twice,and he walked away wondering.
A week, and then three weeks, passed without a sign from Bisesa.Trejago, thinking that the rupture had lasted quite long enough, wentdown to Amir Nath's Gully for the fifth time in the three weeks, hopingthat his rap at the sill of the shifting grating would be answered. Hewas not disappointed.
There was a young moon, and one stream of light fell down into AmirNath's Gully, and struck the grating, which was drawn away as heknocked. From the black dark, Bisesa held out her arms into themoonlight. Both hands had been cut off at the wrists, and the stumpswere nearly healed.
Then, as Bisesa bowed her head between her arms and sobbed, some one inthe room grunted like a wild beast, and something sharp--knife, sword orspear--thrust at Trejago in his boorka. The stroke missed his body, butcut into one of the muscles of the groin, and he limped slightly fromthe wound for the rest of his days.
The grating went into its place. There was no sign whatever from insidethe house--nothing but the moonlight strip on the high wall, and theblackness of Amir Nath's Gully behind.
The next thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like amadman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near theriver as the dawn was breaking, threw away his boorka and went homebareheaded.
What the tragedy was--whether Bisesa had, in a fit of causeless despair,told everything, or the intrigue had been discovered and she torturedto tell, whether Durga Charan knew his name, and what became ofBisesa--Trejago does not know to this day. Something horrible hadhappened, and the thought of what it must have been comes upon Trejagoin the night now and again, and keeps him company till the morning.One special feature of the case is that he does not know where lies thefront of Durga Charan's house. It may open on to a courtyard common totwo or more houses, or it may lie behind any one of the gates of JithaMegji's bustee. Trejago cannot tell. He cannot get Bisesa--poor littleBisesa--back again. He has lost her in the City, where each man's houseis as guarded and as unknowable as the grave; and the grating that opensinto Amir Nath's Gully has been walled up.
But Trejago pays his calls regularly, and is reckoned a very decent sortof man.
There is nothing peculiar about him, except a slight stiffness, causedby a riding-strain, in the right leg.