Part 6

"'The worst of sins is uncharitableness; and to the uncharitable is awarded the severest punishment: for while the despisers of their spiritual guides shall live for a thousand centuries as frogs, and those who contemn the Brahmans as ravens, and those who scorn other men as blinking bats, the uncharitable alone shall be condemned to the profoundest hell, and their punishment shall last for ever.'"[24]

Govinda closed his book; and the old Brahman was proceeding to make an elaborate comment on this venerable text, when, looking up in the face of his pupil, he perceived that he was pale, abstracted, and apparently unconscious that he was speaking. He stopped: he was about to rebuke him, but he restrained himself; and after reflecting for a few moments, he commanded the youth to prepare for the evening sacrifice: but first he desired him to summon Amra to her father's presence.

At this unusual command Govinda almost started. He deposited the sacred leaves in his bosom, and, with a beating heart and trembling steps, prepared to obey. When he reached the door of the zenana, he gently lifted the silken curtain which divided the apartments, and stood for a few moments contemplating, with silent and sad delight, the group that met his view.

Amra was reclining upon cushions, and looking wan as a star that fades away before the dawn. Her head drooped upon her bosom, her hair hung neglected upon her shoulders: yet was she lovely still; and Govinda, while he gazed, remembered the words of the poet Calidas: "The water-lily, though dark moss may settle on its head, is nevertheless beautiful; and the moon, with dewy beams, is rendered yet brighter by its dark spots." She was clasping round her delicate wrist a bracelet of gems; and when she observed, that ever as she placed it on her attenuated arm it fell again upon her hand, she shook her head and smiled mournfully. Two of her maids sat at her feet, occupied in their embroidery; and old Gautami, at her side, was relating, in a slow, monotonous recitative, one of her thousand tales of wonder, to divert the melancholy of her young mistress. She told how the demi-god Rama was forced to flee from the demons who had usurped his throne, and how his beautiful and faithful Seita wandered over the whole earth in search of her consort; and, being at length overcome with grief and fatigue, she sat down in the pathless wilderness and wept; and how there arose from the spot, where her tears sank warm into the earth, a fountain of boiling water of exquisite clearness and wondrous virtues; and how maidens, who make a pilgrimage to this sacred well and dip their veils into its wave with pure devotion, ensure themselves the utmost felicity in marriage: thus the story ran. Amra, who appeared at first abstracted and inattentive, began to be affected by the misfortunes and the love of the beautiful Seita; and at the mention of the fountain and its virtues, she lifted her eyes with an expression of eager interest, and met those of Govinda fixed upon her. She uttered a faint cry, and threw herself into the arms of Gautami. He hastened to deliver the commands of his preceptor, and then Amra, recovering her self-possession, threw her veil round her, arose, and followed him to her father's presence.

As they drew near together, the old man looked from one to the other. Perhaps his heart, though dead to all human passions, felt at that moment a touch of pity for the youthful, lovely, and loving pair who stood before him; but his look was calm, cold, and serene, as usual.

"Draw near, my son," he said; "and thou, my beloved daughter, approach, and listen to the will of your father. The time is come, when we must make ready all things for the arrival of the wise and honoured Adhar. My daughter, let those pious ceremonies, with which virtuous women prepare themselves ere they enter the dwelling of their husband, be duly performed: and do thou, Govinda, son of my choice, set my household in order, that all may be in readiness to receive with honour the bridegroom, who comes to claim his betrothed. To-morrow we will sacrifice to Ganesa, who is the guardian of travellers: this night

must be given to penance and holy meditation. Amra, retire: and thou, Govinda, take up that fagot of Tulsi-wood, with the rice and the flowers for the evening oblation, and follow me to the temple." So saying, the old man turned away hastily; and without looking back, pursued his path through the sacred grove.

Alas for those he had left behind! Govinda remained silent and motionless. Amra would have obeyed her father, but her limbs refused their office. She trembled--she was sinking: she timidly looked up to Govinda as if for support; his arms were extended to receive her: she fell upon his neck, and wept unrestrained tears. He held her to his bosom as though he would have folded her into his inmost heart, and hidden her there for ever. He murmured passionate words of transport and fondness in her ear. He drew aside her veil from her pale brow, and ventured to print a kiss upon her closed eyelids. "To-night," he whispered, "in the grove of mangoes by the river's bank!" She answered only by a mute caress; and then supporting her steps to her own apartments, he resigned her to the arms of her attendants, and hastened after his preceptor. He forgot, however, the materials for the evening sacrifice, and in consequence not only had to suffer a severe rebuke from the old priest, but the infliction of a penance extraordinary, which detained him in the presence of his preceptor till the night was far advanced. At length, however, Sarma retired to holy meditation and mental abstraction, and Govinda was dismissed.

He had hitherto maintained, with habitual and determined self-command, that calm, subdued exterior, which becomes a pupil in the presence of his religious teacher; but no sooner had he crossed the threshold, and found himself alone breathing the free night-air of heaven, than the smothered passions burst forth. He paused for one instant, to anathematise in his soul the Sastras and their contents, the gods and their temples, the priests and the sacrifices; the futile ceremonies and profitless suffering to which his life was abandoned, and the cruel policy to which he had been made an unwilling victim. Then he thought of Amra, and all things connected with her changed their aspect.

In another moment he was beneath the shadow of the mangoes on the river's brink. He looked round, Amra was not there: he listened, there was no sound. The grass bore marks of having been recently pressed, and still its perfume floated on the air. A few flowers were scattered round, fresh gathered, and glittering with dew. Govinda wrung his hands in despair, and flung himself upon the bank, where a month before they had sat together. On the very spot where Amra had reclined, he perceived a lotos-leaf and a palasa flower laid together. Upon the lotos-leaf he could perceive written, with a thorn or some sharp point, the word AMRA; and the crimson palasa-buds were sacred to the dead. It was sufficient: he thrust the leaf and the flowers into his bosom; and, "swift as the sparkle of a glancing star," he flew along the path which led to the garden sepulchre.

The mother of Amra had died in giving birth to her only child. She was young, beautiful, and virtuous; and had lived happily with her husband notwithstanding the disparity of age. The pride and stoicism of his caste would not allow him to betray any violence of grief, or show his affection for the dead, otherwise than by raising to her memory a beautiful tomb. It consisted of four light pillars, richly and grotesquely carved, supporting a pointed cupola, beneath which was an altar for oblations: the whole was overlaid with brilliant white stucco, and glittered through the gloom. A flight of steps led up to this edifice: upon the highest step, and at the foot of the altar, Amra was seated alone and weeping.

Love--O love! what have I to do with thee? How sinks the heart, how trembles the hand as it approaches the forbidden theme! Of all the gifts the gods have sent upon the earth thou most precious--yet ever most fatal! As serpents dwell among the odorous boughs of the sandal-tree, and alligators in the thrice sacred waters of the Ganges, so all that is sweetest, holiest, dearest upon earth, is mixed up with sin, and pain, and misery, and evil! Thus hath it been ordained from the beginning; and the love that hath never mourned, is not love.

How sweet, yet how terrible, were the moments that succeeded! While Govinda, with fervid eloquence, poured out his whole soul at her feet, Amra alternately melted with tenderness, or shrunk with sensitive alarm. When he darkly intimated the irresistible power he possessed to overcome all obstacles to their union--when he spoke with certainty of the time when she should be his, spite of the world and men--when he described the glorious height to which his love would elevate her--the delights and the treasures he would lavish around her, she, indeed, understood not his words; yet, with all a woman's trusting faith in him she loves, she hung upon his accents--listened and believed. The high and passionate energy, with which his spirit, so long pent up and crushed within him, now revealed itself; the consciousness of his own power, the knowledge that he was beloved, lent such a new and strange expression to his whole aspect, and touched his fine form and features with such a proud and sparkling beauty, that Amra looked up at him with a mixture of astonishment, admiration, and deep love, not wholly unmingled with fear; almost believing, that she gazed upon some more than mortal lover, upon one of those bright genii, who inhabit the lower heaven, and have been known in the old time to leave their celestial haunts for love of the earth-born daughters of beauty.

Amra did not speak, but Govinda felt his power. He saw his advantage, and, with the instinctive subtlety of his sex, he pursued it. He sighed, he wept, he implored, he upbraided. Amra, overpowered by his emotion and her own, had turned away her head, and embraced one of the pillars of her mother's tomb, as if for protection. In accents of the most plaintive tenderness she entreated him to leave her--to spare her--and even while she spoke her arm relaxed its hold, and she was yielding to the gentle force with which he endeavoured to draw her away; when at this moment, so dangerous to both, a startling sound was heard--a rustling among the bushes, and then a soft, low whistle. Govinda started up at that well-known signal, and saw the head of the mute appearing just above the altar. His turban being green, was undistinguishable against the leafy back-ground; and his small black eyes glanced and glittered like those of a snake. Govinda would willingly have annihilated him at that moment. He made a gesture of angry impatience, and motioned him to retire; but Sahib stood still, shook his hand with a threatening expression, and made signs, that he must instantly follow him.

Amra, meantime, who had neither seen nor heard any thing, began to suspect, that Govinda was communing with some invisible spirit; she clung to him in terror, and endeavoured to recall his attention to herself by the most tender and soothing words and caresses. After some time he succeeded in calming her fears; and with a thousand promises of quick return, he at length tore himself away, and followed through the thicket the form of Sahib, who glided like a shadow before him.

When they reached the accustomed spot, the mute leapt into the canoe, which he had made fast to the root of a mango-tree, and motioning Govinda to follow him, he pushed from the shore, and rowed rapidly till they reached a tall, bare rock near the centre of the stream, beneath the dark shadow of which Sahib moored his little boat, out of the possible reach of human eye or ear.

All had passed so quickly, that Govinda felt like one in a dream; but now, awakening to a sense of his situation, he held out his hand for the expected letter from his brother, trembling to learn its import, upon which he felt that more than his life depended. Sahib, meanwhile, did not appear in haste to obey. At length, after a pause of breathless suspense, Govinda heard a low and well-remembered voice repeat an almost-forgotten name: "Faizi!" it said.

"O Prophet of God! my brother!" and he was clasped in the arms of Abul Fazil.

After the first transports of recognition had subsided, Faizi (it is time to use his real name) sank from his brother's arms to his feet: he clasped his knees. "My brother!" he exclaimed, "what is now to be my fate? You have not lightly assumed this disguise, and braved the danger of discovery! You know all, and have come to save me--to bless me? Is it not so?"

Abul Fazil could not see his brother's uplifted countenance, flushed with the hectic of feverish impatience, or his imploring eyes, that floated in tears; but his tones were sufficiently expressive.

"Poor boy!" he said, compassionately, "I should have foreseen this. But calm these transports, my brother! nothing is denied to the sultan's power, and nothing will he deny thee."

"He knows all, then?"

"All--and by his command am I come. I had feared, that my brother had sold his vowed obedience for the smile of a dark-eyed girl--what shall I say?--I feared for his safety!"

"O my brother! there is no cause!"

"I know it--enough!--I have seen and heard!"

Faizi covered his face with his hands.

"If the sultan----"

"Have no doubts," said Abul Fazil: "nothing is denied to the sultan's power, nothing will be denied to thee."

"And the Brahman Adhar?"

"It has been looked to--he will not trouble thee."

"_Dead?_ O merciful Allah! crime upon crime!"

"His life is cared for," said Abul Fazil, calmly: "ask no more."

"It is sufficient. O my brother! O Amra!"--

"She is thine!--Now hear the will of Akbar." Faizi bowed his head with submission. "Speak!" he said; "the slave of Akbar listens."

"In three months from this time," continued Abul Fazil, "and on this appointed night, it will be dark, and the pagodas deserted. Then, and not till then, will Sahib be found at the accustomed spot. He will bring in the skiff a dress, which is the sultan's gift, and will be a sufficient disguise. On the left bank of the stream there shall be stationed an ample guard, with a close litter and a swift Arabian. Thou shalt mount the one, and in the other shall be placed this fair girl. Then fly: having first flung her veil upon the river to beguile pursuit; the rest I leave to thine own quick wit. But let all be done with secrecy and subtlety; for the sultan, though he can refuse thee nothing, would not willingly commit an open wrong against a people he has lately conciliated; and the violation of a Brahminee woman were enough to raise a province."

"It shall not need," exclaimed the youth, clasping his hands: "she loves me! She shall live for me--only for me--while others weep her dead!"

"It is well: now return we in silence, the night wears fast away." He took one of the oars, Faizi seized the other, and with some difficulty they rowed up the stream, keeping close under the overshadowing banks. Having reached the little promontory, they parted with a strict and mute embrace.

Faizi looked for a moment after his brother, then sprung forward to the spot where he had left Amra; but she was no longer there: apparently she had been recalled by her nurse to her own apartments, and did not again make her appearance.

Three months more completed the five years which had been allotted for Govinda's Brahminical studies; they passed but too rapidly away. During this time the Brahman Adhar did not arrive, nor was his name again uttered: and Amra, restored to health, was more than ever tender and beautiful, and more than ever beloved.

The old Brahman, who had hitherto maintained towards his pupil and adopted son a cold and distant demeanour, now relaxed from his accustomed austerity, and when he addressed him it was in a tone of mildness, and even tenderness. Alas for Govinda! every proof of this newly-awakened affection pierced his heart with unavailing remorse. He had lived long enough among the Brahmans, to anticipate with terror the effects of his treachery, when once discovered; but he repelled such obtrusive images, and resolutely shut his eyes against a future, which he could neither control nor avert. He tried to persuade himself, that it was now too late; that the stoical indifference to all earthly evil, passion, and suffering, which the Pundit Sarma taught and practised, would sufficiently arm him against the double blow preparing for him. Yet, as the hour approached, the fever of suspense consumed his heart. Contrary passions distracted and bewildered him: his ideas of right and wrong became fearfully perplexed. He would have given the treasures of Istakar to arrest the swift progress of time. He felt like one entangled in the wheels of some vast machine, and giddily and irresistibly whirled along he knew not how nor whither.

At length the day arrived: the morning broke forth in all that splendour with which she descends upon "the Indian steep." Govinda prepared for the early sacrifice, the last he was to perform. In spite of the heaviness and confusion which reigned in his own mind, he could perceive that something unusual occupied the thoughts of his preceptor: some emotion of a pleasurable kind had smoothed the old man's brow. His voice was softened; and though his lips were compressed, almost a smile lighted up his eyes, when he turned them on Govinda. The sacrifice was one of unusual pomp and solemnity, in honour of the goddess Parvati, and lasted till the sun's decline. When they returned to the dwelling of Sarma he dismissed his pupils from their learned exercises, desiring them to make that day a day of rest and recreation, as if it were the festival of Sri, the goddess of learning, when books, pens, and paper, being honoured as her emblems, remain untouched, and her votaries enjoy a sabbath. When they were departed, the old Brahman commanded Govinda to seat himself on the ground opposite to him. This being the first time he had ever sat in the presence of his preceptor, the young man hesitated; but Sarma motioned him to obey, and accordingly he sat down at a respectful distance, keeping his eyes reverently cast upon the ground. The old man then spoke these words:

"It is now five years since the son of Mitra entered my dwelling. He was then but a child, helpless, orphaned, ignorant of all true knowledge; expelled from the faith of his fathers and the privileges of his high caste. I took him to my heart with joy, I fed him, I clothed him, I opened his mind to truth, I poured into his soul the light of knowledge: he became to me a son. If in any thing I have omitted the duty of a father towards him, if ever I refused to him the wish of his heart or the desire of his eyes, let him now speak!"

"O my father!"--

"No more," said the Brahman, gently, "I am answered in that one word; but all that I have yet done seems as nothing in mine eyes: for the love I bear my son is wide as the wide earth, and my bounty shall be as the boundless firmament. Know that I have read thy soul! Start not! I have received letters from the south country. Amra is no longer the wife of Adhar; for Adhar has vowed himself to a life of penance and celibacy in the temple of Indore, by order of an offended prince;--may he find peace! The writings of divorce are drawn up, and my daughter being already past the age when a prudent father hastens to marry his child, in order that the souls of the dead may be duly honoured by their posterity, I have sought for her a husband, such as a parent might desire; learned in the sciences, graced with every virtue; of unblemished life, of unmixed caste, and rich in the goods of this world."

The Brahman stopped short. Faizi, breathing with difficulty, felt his blood pause at his heart.

"My son!" continued the old man, "I have not coveted possessions or riches, but the gods have blessed me with prosperity; be they praised for their gifts! Look around upon this fair dwelling, upon those fertile lands, which spread far and wide, a goodly prospect; and the herds that feed on them, and the bondsmen who cultivate them; with silver and gold, and garments, and rich stores heaped up, more than I can count--all these do I give thee freely: possess them! and with them I give thee a greater gift, and one that I well believe is richer and dearer in thine eyes--my daughter, my last and best treasure! Thus do I resign all worldly cares, devoting myself henceforth solely to pious duties and religious meditation: for the few days he has to live, let the old man repose upon thy love! A little water, a little rice, a roof to shelter him, these thou shalt bestow--he asks no more."

The Brahman's voice faltered. He rose, and Govinda stood up, trembling in every nerve. The old priest then laid his hand solemnly upon his bowed head and blessed him. "My son! to me far better than many sons, be thou blest as thou hast blessed me! The just gods requite thee with full measure all thou hast done! May the wife I bestow on thee bring to thy bosom all the felicity thou broughtest to me and mine, and thy last hours be calm and bright, as those thy love has prepared for me!"

"Ah, curse me not!" exclaimed Govinda, with a cry of horror; for in the anguish of that moment he felt as if the bitter malediction, thus unconsciously pronounced, was already fulfilling. He flung himself upon the earth in an agony of self-humiliation; he crawled to the feet of his preceptor, he kissed them, he clasped his knees. In broken words he revealed himself, and confessed the treacherous artifice of which he was at once the instrument and the victim. The Brahman stood motionless, scarcely comprehending the words spoken. At length he seemed to awaken to the sense of what he heard, and trembled from head to foot with an exceeding horror; but he uttered no word of reproach: and after a pause, he suddenly drew the sacrificial poniard from his girdle, and would have plunged it into his own bosom, if Faizi had not arrested his arm, and without difficulty snatched the weapon from his shaking and powerless grasp.

"If yet there be mercy for me," he exclaimed, "add not to my crimes this worst of all--make me not a sacrilegious murderer! Here," he added, kneeling, and opening his bosom, "strike! satisfy at once a just vengeance, and end all fears in the blood of an abhorred betrayer! Strike, ere it be too late!"

The old man twice raised his hand, but it was without strength. He dropped the knife, and folding his arms, and sinking his head upon his bosom, he remained silent.

"O yet!" exclaimed Faizi, lifting with reverence the hem of his robe and pressing it to his lips, "if there remain a hope for me, tell me by what penance--terrible, prolonged, and unheard-of--I may expiate this sin; and hear me swear, that, henceforth, neither temptation, nor torture, nor death itself, shall force me to reveal the secrets of the Brahmin faith, nor divulge the holy characters in which they are written: and if I break this vow, may I perish from off the earth like a dog!"

The Brahman clasped his hands, and turned his eyes for a moment on the imploring countenance of the youth, but averted them instantly with a shudder.

"What have I to do with thee," he said, at length, "thou serpent! Well is it written--'Though the upas-tree were watered with nectar from heaven instead of dew, yet would it bear poison.' Yet swear--"

"I do--I will--"

"Never to behold my face again, nor utter with those guileful and polluted lips the name of my daughter."

"My father!"

"Father!" repeated the old man, with a flash of indignation, but it was instantly subdued. "Swear!" he repeated, "if vows can bind a thing so vile!"