Part 7

"My father, I embrace thy knees! Not heaven itself can annul the past, and Amra is mine beyond the power of fate or vengeance to disunite us--but by death!"

"Hah!" said the Brahman, stepping back, "it is then as I feared! and this is well too!"--he muttered; "Heaven required a victim!"

He moved slowly to the door, and called his daughter with a loud voice: Amra heard and trembled in the recesses of her apartments. The voice was her father's, but the tones of that voice made her soul sicken with fear; and, drawing her drapery round to conceal that alteration in her lovely form which was but too apparent, she came forth with faltering steps.

"Approach!" said the Brahman, fixing his eyes upon her, while those of Faizi, after the first eager glance, remained rivetted to the earth. She drew near with affright, and gazed wildly from one to the other.

"Ay! look well upon him! whom dost thou behold?"

"My father!--Ah! spare me!"

"Is he your husband?"

"Govinda! alas!--speak for us!"--

"Fool!"--he grasped her supplicating hands,--"say but the word--are you a wife?"

"I am! I am! _his_, before the face of Heaven!"

"No!"--he dropped her hands, and spoke in a rapid and broken voice: "No! Heaven disclaims the monstrous mixture! hell itself rejects it! Had he been the meanest among the sons of Brahma, I had borne it: but an Infidel, a base-born Moslem, has contaminated the stream of my life! Accursed was the hour when he came beneath my roof, like a treacherous fox and a ravening wolf, to betray and to destroy! Accursed was the hour, which mingled the blood of Narayna with that of the son of a slave-girl! Shall I live to look upon a race of outcasts, abhorred on earth and excommunicate from heaven, and say, 'These are the offspring of Sarma?' Miserable girl! thou wert preordained a sacrifice! Die! and thine infamy perish with thee!" Even while he spoke he snatched up the poniard which lay at his feet, but this he needed not--the blow was already struck home, and to her very heart. Before the vengeful steel could reach her, she fell, without a cry--a groan--senseless, and, as it seemed, lifeless, upon the earth.

Faizi, almost with a shriek, sprang forward; but the old man interposed: and, with the strong grasp of supernatural strength--the strength of despair--held him back. Meantime the women, alarmed by his cries, rushed wildly in, and bore away in their arms the insensible form of Amra. Faizi strove to follow; but, at a sign from the Brahman, the door was quickly closed and fastened within, so that it resisted all his efforts to force it. He turned almost fiercely--"She will yet live!" he passionately exclaimed; and the Brahman replied, calmly and disdainfully, "If she be the daughter of Sarma, she will die!" Then rending his garments, and tearing off his turban, he sat down upon the sacrificial hearth; and taking up dust and ashes, scattered them on his bare head and flowing beard: he then remained motionless, with his chin upon his bosom, and his arms crossed upon his knees. In vain did Faizi kneel before him, and weep, and supplicate for one word, one look: he was apparently lost to all consciousness, rigid, torpid; and, but that he breathed, and that there was at times a convulsive movement in his eyelids, it might have been thought, that life itself was suspended, or had altogether ceased.

Thus did this long and most miserable day wear away, and night came on. Faizi--who had spent the hours in walking to and fro like a troubled demon, now listening at the door of the zenana, from which no sound proceeded, now endeavouring in vain to win, by the most earnest entreaties, some sign of life or recognition from the old man--could no longer endure the horror of his own sensations. He stepped into the open air, and leaned his head against the porch. The breeze, which blew freshly against his parched lips and throbbing temples, revived his faculties. After a few moments he thought he could distinguish voices, and the trampling of men and horses, borne on the night air. He raised his hands in ecstacy. Again he bent his ear to listen: he heard the splash of an oar. "They come!" he exclaimed, almost aloud, "one more plunge, and it is done! This hapless and distracted old man I will save from his own and other's fury, and still be to him a son, in his own despite. And, Amra! my own! my beautiful! my beloved! oh, how richly shall the future atone for these hours of anguish! In these arms the cruel pride and prejudices of thy race shall be forgotten. At thy feet I will pour the treasures of the world, and lift thee to joys beyond the brightest visions of youthful fancy! But--O merciful Allah!"--

At the same moment a long, loud, and piercing shriek was heard from the women's apartments, followed by lamentable wailings. He made but one bound to the door. It resisted, but his despair was strong. He rushed against it with a force, that burst it from its hinges, and precipitated him into the midst of the chamber. It was empty and dark; so was the next, and the next. At last he reached the inner and most sacred apartment. He beheld the lifeless form of Amra extended on the ground. Over her face was thrown an embroidered veil: her head rested on the lap of her nurse, whose features appeared rigid with horror. The rest of the women, who were weeping and wailing, covered their heads, and fled at his approach. Faizi called upon the name of her he loved: he snatched the veil from that once lovely face--that face which had never been revealed to him but in tender and soul-beaming beauty. He looked, and fell senseless on the floor.

The unhappy Amra, in recovering from her long swoon, had fallen into a stupor, which her attendants mistook for slumber, and left her for a short interval. She awoke, wretched girl! alone, she awoke to the sudden and maddening sense of her lost state, to all the pangs of outraged love, violated faith, shame, anguish, and despair. In a paroxysm of delirium, when none were near to soothe or to save, she had made her own luxuriant and beautiful tresses the instrument of her destruction, and choked herself by swallowing her hair.

When the emissaries of the sultan entered this house of desolation, they found Faizi still insensible at the side of her he had so loved. He was borne away before recollection returned, placed in the litter which had been prepared for Amra, and earned to Ferrukabad, where the sultan was then hunting with his whole court. What became of the old Brahman is not known. He passed away like a shadow from the earth, "and his place knew him not." Whether he sought a voluntary death, or wore away his remaining years in secret penance, can only be conjectured, for all search was vain.

Eastern records tell, that Faizi kept his promise sacred, and never revealed the mysteries intrusted to him. Yet he retained the favour of Akbar, by whose command he translated from the Sanscrit tongue several poetical and historical works into the choicest Persian. He became himself an illustrious poet; and, like other poets of greater fame, created "an immortality of his tears." He acquired the title of _Sheich_, or "the learned," and rose to the highest civil offices of the empire. All outward renown, prosperity, and fame, were his; but there was, at least, retributive justice in his early and tragical death.

Towards the conclusion of Akbar's reign, Abul Fazil was sent upon a secret mission into the Deccan, and Faizi accompanied him. The favour which these celebrated brothers enjoyed at court, their influence over the mind of the sultan, and their entire union, had long excited the jealousy of Prince Selim,[25] the eldest son of Akbar, and he had vowed their destruction. On their return from the south, with a small escort, they were attacked by a numerous band of assassins, disguised as robbers, and both perished. Faizi was found lying upon the body of Abul Fazil, whom he had bravely defended to the last. The death of these illustrious brothers was lamented, not only within the bounds of the empire, but through all the kingdoms of the East, whither their fame had extended; and by the sultan's command they were interred together, and with extraordinary pomp. One incident only remains to be added. When the bodies were stripped for burial, there was found within the inner vest of the Sheich Faizi, and close to his heart, a withered Lotus leaf inscribed with certain characters. So great was the fame of the dead for wisdom, learning, and devotion, that it was supposed to be a talisman endued with extraordinary virtues, and immediately transmitted to the sultan. Akbar considered the relic with surprise. It was nothing but a simple Lotus leaf, faded, shrivelled, and stained with blood; but on examining it more closely, he could trace, in ill-formed and scarcely legible Indian letters, the word AMRA.

And when Akbar looked upon this tender memorial of a hapless love, and undying sorrow, his great heart melted within him, and he wept.

HALLORAN THE PEDLAR.[26]

"It grieves me," said an eminent poet once to me, "it grieves and humbles me to reflect how much our moral nature is in the power of circumstances. Our best faculties would remain unknown even to ourselves did not the influences of external excitement call them forth like animalculae, which lie torpid till awakened into life by the transient sunbeam."

This is generally true. How many walk through the beaten paths of every-day life, who but for the novelist's page would never weep or wonder; and who would know nothing of the passions but as they are represented in some tragedy or stage piece? not that they are incapable of high resolve and energy; but because the finer qualities have never been called forth by imperious circumstances; for while the wheels of existence roll smoothly along, the soul will continue to slumber in her vehicle like a lazy traveller. But for the French revolution, how many hundreds--_thousands_--whose courage, fortitude, and devotedness have sanctified their names, would have frittered away a frivolous, useless, or vicious life in the saloons of Paris! We have heard of death in its most revolting forms braved by delicate females, who would have screamed at the sight of the most insignificant reptile or insect; and men cheerfully toiling at mechanic trades for bread, who had lounged away the best years of their lives at the toilettes of their mistresses. We know not of what we are capable till the trial comes;--till it comes, perhaps, in a form which makes the strong man quail, and turns the gentler woman into a heroine.

The power of outward circumstances suddenly to awaken dormant faculties--the extraordinary influence which the mere instinct of self-preservation can exert over the mind, and the triumph of mind thus excited over physical weakness, were never more truly exemplified than in the story of HALLORAN THE PEDLAR.

The real circumstances of this singular case, differing essentially from the garbled and incorrect account which appeared in the newspapers some years ago, came to my knowledge in the following simple manner. My cousin George C * * *, an Irish barrister of some standing, lately succeeded to his family estates by the death of a near relative; and no sooner did he find himself in possession of independence than, abjuring the bar, where, after twenty years of hard struggling, he was just beginning to make a figure, he set off on a tour through Italy and Greece, to forget the wrangling of courts, the contumely of attornies, and the impatience of clients. He left in my hands a mass of papers, to burn or not, as I might feel inclined: and truly the contents of his desk were no bad illustration of the character and pursuits of its owner. Here I found abstracts of cases, and on their backs copies of verses, sketches of scenery, and numerous caricatures of judges, jurymen, witnesses, and his brethren of the bar--a bundle of old briefs, and the beginnings of two tragedies; with a long list of Lord N----'s best jokes to serve his purposes as occasion might best offer. Among these heterogeneous and confused articles were a number of scraps carefully pinned together, containing notes on a certain trial, the first in which he had been retained as counsel for the crown. The intense interest with which I perused these documents, suggested the plan of throwing the whole into a connected form, and here it is for the reader's benefit.

In a little village to the south of Clonmell lived a poor peasant named Michael, or as it was there pronounced Mickle Reilly. He was a labourer renting a cabin and a plot of potatoe-ground; and, on the strength of these possessions, a robust frame which feared no fatigue, and a sanguine mind which dreaded no reverse, Reilly paid his addresses to Cathleen Bray, a young girl of his own parish, and they were married. Reilly was able, skilful, and industrious; Cathleen was the best spinner in the county, and had constant sale for her work at Clonmell: they wanted nothing; and for the first year, as Cathleen said, "There wasn't upon the blessed earth two happier souls than themselves, for Mick was the best boy in the world, and hadn't a fault to _spake_ of--barring he took a drop now and then; an' why wouldn't he?" But as it happened, poor Reilly's love of "_the drop_" was the beginning of all their misfortunes. In an evil hour he went to the Fair of Clonmell to sell a dozen hanks of yarn of his wife's spinning, and a fat pig, the produce of which was to pay half a year's rent, and add to their little comforts. Here he met with a jovial companion, who took him into a booth, and treated him to sundry potations of whiskey; and while in his company his pocket was picked of the money he had just received, and something more; in short, of all he possessed in the world. At that luckless moment, while maddened by his loss and heated with liquor, he fell into the company of a recruiting serjeant. The many-coloured and gaily fluttering cockade in the soldier's cap shone like a rainbow of hope and promise before the drunken eyes of Mickle Reilly, and ere morning he was enlisted into a regiment under orders for embarkation, and instantly sent off to Cork.

Distracted by the ruin he had brought upon himself, and his wife, (whom he loved a thousand times better than himself,) poor Reilly sent a friend to inform Cathleen of his mischance, and to assure her that on a certain day, in a week from that time, a letter would await her at the Clonmell post-office: the same friend was commissioned to deliver her his silver watch, and a guinea out of his bounty-money. Poor Cathleen turned from the gold with horror, as the price of her husband's blood, and vowed that nothing on earth should induce her to touch it. She was not a good calculator of time and distance, and therefore rather surprised that so long a time must elapse before his letter arrived. On the appointed day she was too impatient to wait the arrival of the carrier, but set off to Clonmell herself, a distance of ten miles: there, at the post-office, she duly found the promised letter; but it was not till she had it in her possession that she remembered she could not read: she had therefore to hasten back to consult her friend Nancy, the schoolmaster's daughter, and the best scholar in the village. Reilly's letter, on being deciphered with some difficulty even by the learned Nancy, was found to contain much of sorrow, much of repentance, and yet more of affection: he assured her that he was far better off than he had expected or deserved; that the embarkation of the regiment to which he belonged was delayed for three weeks, and entreated her, if she could forgive him, to follow him to Cork without delay, that they might "part in love and kindness, and then come what might, he would demane himself like a man, and die asy," which he assured her he could not do without embracing her once more.

Cathleen listened to her husband's letter with clasped hands and drawn breath, but quiet in her nature, she gave no other signs of emotion than a few large tears which trickled slowly down her cheeks. "And will I see him again?" she exclaimed; "poor fellow! poor boy! I knew the heart of him was sore for me! and who knows, Nancy dear, but they'll let me go out with him to the foreign parts? Oh! sure they wouldn't be so hard-hearted as to part man and wife that way!"

After a hurried consultation with her neighbours, who sympathised with her as only the poor sympathise with the poor, a letter was indited by Nancy and sent by the carrier that night, to inform her husband that she purposed setting off for Cork the next blessed morning, being Tuesday, and as the distance was about forty-eight miles English, she reckoned on reaching that city by Wednesday afternoon; for as she had walked to Clonmell and back (about twenty miles) that same day, without feeling fatigued at all, "_to signify_," Cathleen thought there would be no doubt that she could walk to Cork in less than two days. In this sanguine calculation she was, however, overruled by her more experienced neighbours, and by their advice appointed Thursday as the day on which her husband was to expect her, "God willing."

Cathleen spent the rest of the day in making preparations for her journey: she set her cabin in order, and made a small bundle of a few articles of clothing belonging to herself and her husband. The watch and the guinea she wrapped up together, and crammed into the toe of an old shoe, which she deposited in the said bundle, and the next morning, at "sparrow chirp," she arose, locked her cabin door, carefully hid the key in the thatch, and with a light expecting heart commenced her long journey.

It is worthy of remark, that this poor woman, who was called upon to play the heroine in such a strange tragedy, and under such appalling circumstances, had nothing heroic in her exterior: nothing that in the slightest degree indicated strength of nerve or superiority of intellect. Cathleen was twenty-three years of age, of a low stature, and in her form rather delicate than robust: she was of ordinary appearance; her eyes were mild and dove-like, and her whole countenance, though not absolutely deficient in intelligence, was more particularly expressive of simplicity, good temper, and kindness of heart.

It was summer, about the end of June: the days were long, the weather fine, and some gentle showers rendered travelling easy and pleasant. Cathleen walked on stoutly towards Cork, and by the evening she had accomplished, with occasional pauses of rest, nearly twenty-one miles. She lodged at a little inn by the road side, and the following day set forward again, but soon felt stiff with the travel of two previous days: the sun became hotter, the ways dustier; and she could not with all her endeavours get farther than Rathcormuck, eighteen miles from Cork. The next day, unfortunately for poor Cathleen, proved hotter and more fatiguing than the preceding. The cross road lay over a wild country, consisting of low bogs and bare hills. About noon she turned aside to a rivulet bordered by a few trees, and sitting down in the shade, she bathed her swollen feet in the stream: then overcome by heat, weakness, and excessive weariness, she put her little bundle under her head for a pillow, and sank into a deep sleep.

On waking she perceived with dismay that the sun was declining: and on looking about, her fears were increased by the discovery that her bundle was gone. Her first thought was that the good people, (i. e. _the fairies_) had been there and stolen it away; but on examining farther she plainly perceived large foot-prints in the soft bank, and was convinced it was the work of no unearthly marauder. Bitterly reproaching herself for her carelessness, she again set forward; and still hoping to reach Cork that night, she toiled on and on with increasing difficulty and distress, till as the evening closed her spirits failed, she became faint, foot-sore and hungry, not having tasted any thing since the morning but a cold potatoe and a draught of buttermilk. She then looked round her in hopes of discovering some habitation, but there was none in sight except a lofty castle on a distant hill, which raising its proud turrets from amidst the plantations which surrounded it, glimmered faintly through the gathering gloom, and held out no temptation for the poor wanderer to turn in there and rest. In her despair she sat her down on a bank by the road side, and wept as she thought of her husband.

Several horsemen rode by, and one carriage and four attended by servants, who took no farther notice of her than by a passing look; while they went on their way like the priest and the Levite in the parable, poor Cathleen dropped her head despairingly on her bosom. A faintness and torpor seemed to be stealing like a dark cloud over her senses, when the fast approaching sound of footsteps roused her attention, and turning, she saw at her side a man whose figure, too singular to be easily forgotten, she recognized immediately: it was Halloran the Pedlar.

Halloran had been known for thirty years past in all the towns and villages between Waterford and Kerry. He was very old, he himself did not know his own age; he only remembered that he was a "tall slip of a boy" when he was one of the ---- regiment of foot, and fought in America in 1778. His dress was strange, it consisted of a woollen cap, beneath which strayed a few white hairs, this was surmounted by an old military cocked hat, adorned with a few fragments of tarnished gold lace; a frieze great coat with the sleeves dangling behind, was fastened at his throat, and served to protect his box of wares which was slung at his back; and he always carried a thick oak stick or _kippeen_ in his hand. There was nothing of the infirmity of age in his appearance: his cheek, though wrinkled and weather-beaten, was still ruddy: his step still firm, his eyes still bright: his jovial disposition made him a welcome guest in every cottage, and his jokes, though not equal to my Lord Norbury's, were repeated and applauded through the whole country. Halloran was returning from the fair of Kilkenny, where apparently his commercial speculations had been attended with success, as his pack was considerably diminished in size. Though he did not appear to recollect Cathleen, he addressed her in Irish, and asked her what she did there: she related in a few words her miserable situation.

"In troth, then, my heart is sorry for ye, poor woman," he replied, compassionately; "and what will ye do?"

"An' what _can_ I do?" replied Cathleen, disconsolately; "and how will I even find the ford and get across to Cork, when I don't know where I am this blessed moment?"

"Musha, then, it's little ye'll get there this night," said the pedlar, shaking his head.

"Then I'll lie down here and die," said Cathleen, bursting into fresh tears.

"Die! ye wouldn't!" he exclaimed, approaching nearer; "is it to me, Peter Halloran, ye spake that word; and am I the man that would lave a faymale at this dark hour by the way-side, let alone one that has the face of a friend, though I cannot remember me of your name either, for the soul of me. But what matter for that?"

"Sure, I'm Katty Reilly, of Castle Conn."

"Katty Reilly, sure enough! and so no more talk of dying; cheer up, and see, a mile farther on, isn't there Biddy Hogan's? _Was_, I mane, if the house and all isn't gone: and it's there we'll get a bite and a sup, and a bed, too, please God. So lean upon my arm, ma vourneen, it's strong enough yet."

So saying, the old man, with an air of gallantry, half rustic, half military, assisted her in rising; and supporting her on one arm, with the other he flourished his kippeen over his head, and they trudged on together, he singing Cruiskeen-lawn at the top of his voice, "just," as he said, "to put the heart into her."