Part 6

They sat before queer little tables; some beat out on the rich gold trinket the pattern which was to hold the colour--mixed to some secret prescription, old as the City, of precious stones ground fine as powder; others painted--their pallet, slabs of brass with five finger marks for hollow; their brush, steel needles. All the light and colour in the sky seemed entrapped in that workshop. And now, suddenly the light has gone, and the workmen grope after their tools and pack them away; and the roof is left to the women and me.

They were telling me a story--the old-time one of that Queen who full of grief at her lord’s cowardice in refusing to stand by his overlord, had buried herself alive under a sour plum-tree, which ever after grew and flourished exceedingly in appraisement of her deed. “Tchut”! said one: “Bury herself--what work! Better far have girt his sword upon that not-man, and sent him forth in the name of his Fathers, and of all the fighters yet unborn.”... And all the other women wagged their heads in appreciation of this sentiment.

Now I had heard that story last in Bengal. But far other was the comment. The Bengal variant tells of the clever subtlety with which the husband avoided the battle, and how it was only the wife’s action which betrayed him to the overlord, who said, “Because this woman had shame in her heart for a man’s cowardice, the women of this house shall for ever be called ‘Queens,’ but their husbands shall not be Kings.”

And when they get as far as that, the women say: “What! can any desire widowhood? Alas, what little love the Ranee had, not to rejoice that her lord was saved the danger of death! Alas! what defect in love to cast blame upon him in dying!”

But it is never in Bengal that the story is followed by another old as the Sack of Chittore. The Rajput widow is about to spring into the flames when she sees the boy who saw her husband die. She pauses awhile, and “Oh Badal,” says she, “tell me ere I go hence to join my lord--tell me how he bore himself against his enemy.” And Badal: “He was the reaper of the harvest of battle. I followed his steps as the humble gleaner of his sword, on the bed of honour he spread a carpet of the slain--a barbarian Prince his pillow, he laid him down: and he sleeps ringed about by his foes.”

Hearing which she of the warrior caste, goes smiling through the fire to her tryst.

The fact is, you see, the ideals of the women are not the same. Both have given to the world, do give to the world, new types of perfection in love; but to one, love means the service of the world, and compulsion of the highest in her Beloved to that end; to the other it means just the service of her lord, it means self-abnegation and worship to the exclusion of all criticism.

She of Rajputana although giving royally, demands something, and gets it: she of Bengal demands nothing, she is here to give, not to get; and if by chance she is thrown a crumb, she is grateful to pathos.

The one type, if I may so put it, is masculine, the other the quintessence of femininity ... and it is a difference easily explained. It is the outcome of the history of the two peoples. The Fighter demands that his womenkind should be of the stature of the Mothers of Fighters. So to the beauty of subjection, she adds the beauty of self-respect. In the other, self is so submerged that there is no room even for respect of self. And, the sainthood of the women apart, one questions the wisdom of the second type, for the man.

The _Khettrya_ Rajputni of to-day though very strictly Purdahnashin is still _an individual_: still does she claim and keep the spirit which is hers by inheritance. The festival and practice of the Bracelet has its place in her life even now, though the fighting days are over ... still is hers the reverence of the Flower Festival. But the custom of the Mahommedan has affected her also: she lives much in the Zenana, attending to her gods, her house, and children.

The _Shudra_, who has no purdah, and the _Veishya_, whose purdah means two veils and a number of women attendants, may be seen in the street: and, as we look at her in her pretty red draperies, carrying so gracefully her pyramid of water-pots, or trudging sturdily through the burning dust to the shrine beside the Lake--we see in level brow, in frank open countenance and carriage, the spirit of the free--and we say to ourselves, “No! the personality of the Rajputni is not dead, it is only domesticated.”

But we carry our questionings no further: “By God, I am a Rajput and a King. I do not talk of the life behind the curtain!”

X

THE QUEEN WHO STOOD ERECT

It was a spacious roof-terrace--large even for the house of a King: for an earthquake had destroyed almost an entire story, and no one had troubled to do more through the years that followed than move away the _débris_.

So the Zenana had a whole wing of open spaces at the top of the landing, and here it was that we sat, under a sky that was like a pink opal, while the swallows and the yellow-beaked _mainas_, and crows, flew overhead to roost. Bats there were too--“devil’s mice”--flapping the sleep out of their wings: and now, a red-brown throated, red-brown coated _brahmini-kite_, to whom the women made prayerful salutation. A kingfisher had just flashed past, bright as the sea at noonday, bright even in that darkening light, and knowing the reverence of the Rajputni for the kingfisher, I thought the gentle courtesy his.

It was _Nanni-Ma_, Baby’s Grandmother, she who had the face of victory over death, who explained. “_Kali Ma_ chose once to take that form,” she said, inclining her head towards the red-brown one. A sudden swoop brought him almost within reach of the baby plaything and those lonely widow-women, and with terror in loving eyes the child was clasped close. Who shall tell what mixture of dread was in their hearts? dread of the big bird’s talons and dread of _Kali_ the Destroyer, to whom if she wanted a life, that one life which was theirs, it must be yielded, cost what it might.... But the love which was the parent and the offspring of that terror was spilling out of their eyes as they handed the child each to each--first Mother clasping him, and then Big-Mother, while the white-sheeted waiting-women huddled on their haunches, cloth drawn beseemingly over mouth, gurgled “Hi! hi!” wagging their heads, and swaying with sympathy. It is unique, the attitude of a Hindu widow to her baby, unique in its beauty even among baby lovers. For the child represents more to these lonely ones than just a soft lovesome bit of flesh and laughter, of pretty pursed lips and rounded limbs, and great mop of soft black hair; more too than the gift of him they love. It is now in itself their passport to heaven, their token of the visit of God to the world: it is to be, presently, the saviour of those who have been closest to them in life--husband, father....

“One small flicker in the lantern of the body--should any put out this light, who will relight it? For us, not even the Creator himself, in this life, not even the Creator....”

And the home of Love was the eyes of those two women as they passed the boy back and forth between them; and the home of tears was their heart.

And he?--darling rogue of but a dozen or so bright fortnights of the moon, would tyrannize in his manhood even as he tyrannized now; nor would he hear reproach in that household of devoted women. Did not his Father likewise?--who, dying, confessed to _Nanni-Ma_, that the sins he had committed would need many sacrifices and much offering of the sacred cake for expiation. And she, blaming him not, set patiently about his bidding, sparing nothing--the one note of joy in that chaunt of sorrow being this: “He came to his Mother, he loved her enough to come, to trust her;” ... and, as the half-understood regret passed like a shadow over the dying mind, she used all her art to brush it away. “Fear not, my Son; was it not written? Is this not fruit of that past birth of which you have no remembrance. All is illusion even sin; all is good, yes, even sin could we know it ... and your death-ceremonies shall be to be envied of men, buying you sinlessness through many future births. Fear not.... And, when he is of age, the boy, he also shall perform your ceremony ... a new birth to righteousness. Do not fear, my Son.”

It is this memory which is in the soul of Big-Mother, as she plays with her son’s son on the terrace in the mystic hour between the lights.

But the boy will grow, and there will be a bride to be found for him. What great excitement this means for the Zenana, few know who have not gone in and out among the women. There is the search among caste folk near at hand, or at a distance. Often the Priest of the family goes a tour to consult the horoscope of likely candidates.... There are tragedies when Priest meets Priest and doctors the horoscope to fit desire or sloth; but that chance must be faced by all alike.... No need, at any rate, to fear that marriage will take the boy away, it but brings one more daughter to Big-Mother ... a shy, small person--among the orthodox, aged ten or thereabouts, who keeps eyes on floor demurely the first year of marriage, in the presence of whomsoever; and always, always runs out of the room, or hides face and head, standing reverently in the presence of her lord. Even many years of marriage do not relax this reserve when third persons are by. I have known mothers of grown sons who will carry one aside to whisper what is necessary to be said, but which cannot be said direct to their husbands in the presence of others.... “Let the women be silent.” That a wife may not take her husband’s name is a very general rule throughout India.

Out of all this knot of etiquette, born, it seems to me, of some distorted view of danger to modesty, as well as of a becoming respect and reverence, it is hard to disentangle the Indian conception of the love of a maid for a man. But this is certain, it is unlike what is the ideal in the West. There is worship; he is her God; he has brought God close to her. She is created to serve him with all her powers of mind and body, to serve and never criticize or question. The habit of her life is expressive of the relationship. The day is planned round his needs. She brings water to wash his feet, cooks for him, anticipates his smallest want while he eats; if he leaves on the green plantain leaf of orthodoxy one mouthful for the faithful slave, how happy she is the day long!

At his hands she holds her life.... I remember a poor little woman who had been induced by some modern-minded friend to resent the drunken belabourings of her husband.... She ran away to the protection of a relative, and all the Zenana held up hands of horror, not at the beating but at her resentment of it. “What! did she not know that Hindu wives belonged to their husbands, to be done with as they would? Would she not give her body to be burned at his desire? Why not then give it to be beaten at his desire?” And no reasoning would convince them of a difference. That this conception of devotion can rise to great heights one knows. It is not uncommon for a Hindu wife to make way of her own accord for some younger wife, even though retaining her passion of love for her husband, or rather perhaps, if one could conceive it, because she has arrived at Love’s perfection.... And I have seen her charming to the second lady: “Whom my Lord honours, shall I not love?” But there is little _camaraderie_, except sometimes in old age, when the grandchildren are growing up; there can be little between such differences of levels--and very little community of interest either in work or play--where one is educated and the other not, where one may go about the world unveiled, and the other is hedged round with protection of wall and curtain.

Again, as there is no choice in marriage, since the orthodox marry in childhood, there is little chance for love except after marriage. “We grow up to think that such an one belongs to us,” explained an Indian girl to me of her boy husband; “we take the relationship as you do brothers and sisters; you do not choose them; you do not, however, therefore of necessity, resent them.” That attitude then is the beginning. That it does lead, as a rule, to loyalty and worship we know; that it often leads to a very high type of love, where each goes with each, all the way, in perfect sympathy, has also been known.

And the man? “English people,” said a Hindu to me, “do not understand our relationship to our wives; they treat their wives as we treat--left-handed relations.” It is true, the Hindu considers any show of feeling an insult; he almost neglects his wife in the presence of third persons. Necessary courtesies are left to brother, father, trusted old servant.... As they grow older she graduates in giving, he in taking. Is he paying the highest price possible to him in--_taking_, I wonder? Who shall say? My own impression is that he does not think about it at all, seeing it has been the habit of generations of Indian men. One does not think about what is natural. The pity is that the standard of ethics is different for men and women--and this surely is wrong in principle. “As you sow, so shall you reap,” is orthodoxy for the man. “As you sow, so shall they reap whom you best love--your son, your husband”--is the woman’s religion. She reaps herself, yes, but as a secondary result, and her own benefit certainly never enters into the calculation of the individual woman.

Do good if you can, but if you cannot, or will not, stand up to your penalty like a man; or rather lie submissive under the full flood of it. Count the cost, the degradation to the lowest order of creation, the weary re-start through the gradations of re-genesis. At least there has been no deceit. Sometimes you may buy back part of the penalty by counter-balancing good deeds. An Eastern loves a bargain, and the business of salvation is one great mercantile transaction; but only men are allowed on this Rialto.

Vicarious _suffering_ with a woman for chief actor is one of the tenets of the male.

Vicarious _pleasuring_ with a man for chief actor is the woman’s.

I said that you took your penalty, you paid your price. True, but not always. In the highest scheme of punishment, whether for man or woman, some one else pays. The Gods strike at the thing you love best. If the Gods are angry with a woman they take away her husband. Is not the very treatment of the widow in India recognition of the fact, and does she not so accept it?

But to return to the husband’s respect for his wife, that is a good thing to record. Say it is only policy; “where women are honoured, there the Gods are pleased; but where they are not honoured, no sacred rite yields reward.”... Say it is grounded in the fact of her being his possession; possibly, but at any rate it is there. How pre-eminently he regards her as his _property_ there is proof upon proof. He leaves to no other hand punishment for encroachments; he shuts her away, lest eyes of others who do not own her should see and covet--it takes more than one generation to kill the anger in the eye of a man at a glance of admiration from another, honest though it be; and when he dies she remains his property still, that is the reason of perpetual widowhood; and till it was forbidden did she not, as suttee, acknowledge that she was his property, useless when no longer needed?

There is a temple on a City wall in a country of sand and low scrub, gray with dust. The Temple is beautiful with its outlook on the sea of sand, and the little earth holes of water where the women dig in the sand. It is a Temple to a woman. She was beautiful beyond words, and Kings sought her in marriage, and fought for her with the King to whom she was betrothed. And at last one of the Kings slew the Betrothed, and claimed the hand of Ranak Devi. But she, rather than betray the trust of him whom she had never seen, but whose she was nevertheless, sought refuge in suttee. It is her Temple which you find on the City wall, and round about it have gathered other women--there is a very forest of Suttee Stones. You may know them by this sign--the hand and arms of a woman graven in the stone, always the right hand, palm outwards.

And you find here also the _pallias_ or memorial stones to warrior Kings and to great rulers among women. For the place of memorial stones, of the dead, of silence, is a place of glory. To it come the bereaved, the empty-handed, to give thanks for those who have attained; to it come the young, bending beneath blessings; death and life walk ever hand in hand, and the white jasmine triangles of the newly-wed make a fragrant carpet in the Temple of Memory.

But one cannot write truly of the conception of Love in any nation without writing a book without end of the conception of each loving soul in its loneliness and aloofness. And, when I said this to my Wisest of the Wise, she made answer: “So it is, even so” ... and there was such beauty in her face that I wished it had been possible to hear her parable of Love. But silence of words was between us, naturally, on the things we most held sacred.

And it was one who sat by who took up the thought.

“There was a King who loved his Queen with all his soul, and one day, overcome of this love, he fell at her feet in an ecstasy, even in the presence of the co-wives, who being jealous, said: ‘Shameless one! lift up the hands of the King to your head.’

“And the King said: ‘Yea, my Queen, so even shouldst thou, when I have done thee this honour.’

“But she stood erect, smiling gladly. ‘Nay,’ said she, ‘not so; for both feet and head are my lord’s. Can I have aught that is mine?’”

XI

PORTRAITS OF SOME INDIAN WOMEN

Take first the Indian wife. Was there ever the world over a like conception of the married state? Chief priestess of her husband, whom to serve is her religion and her delight. One with him in the economy of the household, certainly, but moving in a plane far below him for all other purposes--religious, mental, social; gentle and adoring, but incapable of participation in the larger interests of his life, incapable of participation even in his games.

“We are richer,” “we are poorer”--that the bounds of a joint intelligence. To please his mother, whose chief handmaiden she is in things domestic, and to bring him a son--these her two ambitions; but the latter chiefly, for to the mother of a son will a husband forgive even wrangles in the house-place.

Oh, the worshipping of Gods, the consultings of oracles, the stealthy working of charms to this end! And if the Gods prove gracious, proud indeed is the little lady, a creature of good omen, a being to be welcomed at feasts, to be invoked by the childless. No longer is she a failure; even widowhood would leave her with the chastened halo of that son who is worthy to offer sacrifices.

Such an attitude of mind may seem irrational to the alien, but it should be remembered that the whole idea of marriage in the East revolves simply on the conception of Life; a community of interests, companionship--these never enter into the general calculation. Nor is this strange when one reflects on how large a place life must fill in the thoughts of a people believing in re-incarnation. As a life-bringer alone has a woman her place in the scheme of Hindu philosophy. For life and religion are inextricable in the loom of Time; and woman never did have a Vedic value.

Look at her, then, our little Hindu type of wifehood--gentle, submissive, a perfect house-mistress, moving softly about the women’s domain, “the Inside.” Up with the dawn, she bathes and worships, worships her own special godling and tends her sacred plant, then draws from some ancestral well the water for the household needs, scorning no domestic duty. A picture good to see is she on these occasions--her pretty red draperies girt out of harm’s way while she heaves aloft the shortening rope with subtle grace. Mark the poise of head, the turn of slender wrist, as the first shafts of daylight strike brilliance from mystic amulet or jewelled armlet. Further domesticities occupy the day, with perchance a little gossip in the house-place ere the evening meal brings fresh need for a skilful house-mother. She waits upon her husband while he feeds; silent in his presence, with downcast eyes, to look him in the face were bold indeed. Perhaps he talks to her of village or family interests; she would not think it strange did he not.

The boy! Ah, yes, he is a tie. Encouraged by her husband, she will quote his sayings or boast his feats and feignings. But there is no evening home life as in the land across the seas. After feeding, the man seeks his men companions, with their talk or their gambling. So, watch the little lady clean her pots and hie her safe to bed--content.

I would not have you think the picture one of shadows. Often, and especially where love has entered into the contract, ’tis a twilight study, softly lustrous. A wife respected as competent house-wife, as counsellor, as triumphant mother, sharing her husband’s anxieties for the upkeep and shepherding of their little family, aware of his ambitions, if little understanding them, and happy in their joint observance of orthodoxy--that sheet-anchor of safety to her conservative soul. You must be careful how you dress this lady in your picture. Wind her garments about her in established fashion, even to the smallest fold; make the red mark of wifehood on her ample forehead; oil her hair and plaster it tightly down behind her ears; forget not the ornaments for ear, for nose; and never, pray, forget that gold and ivory bangle--“marriage lines” to her. About her toe rings you may suit yourself. Some find them irksome, and anklets jingle pleasingly in any case. You must make her plump, there has been no chance of exercise to tone down outlines; uxorious, too selfless for vanity; placid, never roused except in defence of her man or her brood, but with a reserve of obstinacy which all the wild horses in the empire would fail to move. She is the true guardian of the past; and uneducated, the true enemy of Progress in India. This is our lady of the middle class. The peasant’s wife has compensation, for often she shares her husband’s work in the fields, and that makes common topic. Moreover, being unlettered, he has fewer temptations than his wealthier brethren to live an individual life.

For our studies in sad monotone we must go to the wives of one section of the “England-returned,” as they are called.

Try to picture this lady. She can speak her own vernacular, perhaps read it, but Western influences have passed her by. Greatly skilled is she in things domestic. She has watched her husband with awe through the throes of his local university, and then he sails away out of her ken to that unknown land beyond the “black waters” of separation. Dimly through the years does she hear of him, and great fears are at her heart as she thinks of the women he must meet in that land of “the unveiled”; but these are fears she may tell to none. What pre-emption can she have in his affections? Then he comes back, wearing a bright pink shirt, an English top-hat, and patent leather shoes. He drives a dog-cart, and divides his time between his office and his club; he dines at English houses--new fears here for breach-of-caste rules.... But she worships nevertheless. To buy him blessings is still left to her, and Indian wifehood was ever a school for altruism; but in a family group you will grant the inharmoniousness of the anachronistic.