CHAPTER II.
From this moment the Pariah’s family prospered. With the Emperor’s benefaction, he purchased a large quantity of cattle, which he fed with grass from the jungles. By selling these he soon increased his two thousand rupees, and in a few years, by a course of active industry, became a wealthy man. His daughter Yhahil realised, as she grew up, the promise of her babyhood. Her beauty was the theme of every tongue, yet no one sought alliance with the Pariah, and she remained unwedded, which to every Hindoo woman is the sum of human misery. All the members of her own tribe were poor destitute objects, from aunion with whom her soul sickened, and she in vain directed her thoughts to becoming the bride of a man of caste. She considered her case deplorable, and began to pine in secret at her unhappy lot.
Her father was grieved to observe her sadness, but could not alleviate it. He perceived that the web of life was a tangled tissue, which never could be perfectly unravelled. The very fortune which had elevated him above his compeers, had already put forth the buds of misery that seemed but too likely to blossom and ripen into fruit. It began to be clear to him that a man may be as wretched under the bright sun of prosperity, which may scorch and wither his peace, as under the cloud of bereavement, where oft amid the darkness a faint light glimmers that imparts a momentary joy, the more exquisite in proportion to the briefness of its duration. He had become wealthy, but his riches, elevating him above the society of his fellow outcasts, rendered him comparatively a solitary man. They had placed a bar betwixt his child and that blessed boon which is the inheritance of all God’s creatures,—the union of hearts in a bond of reciprocal affection. She was excluded from the greatest of immunities to the Hindoo, the privilege of perpetuating her race, unless by an alliance which her proud but sensitive heart could not stoop to embrace.
Many a Pariah had sighed in vain to win the affections of the beautiful Yhahil, but she could not yield to solicitations coming from beings who were but too commonly little above the brute in understanding and familiar with habits which outraged humanity. Hers was no unnatural pride, but she saw in the members of her own tribe much to pity, and nothing to love. Fortune had raised her above them, and she could not stoop to an alliance with those who often fed upon the garbage cast to beasts of prey, and had no better home than the perilous retirement of the jungle, where, in common with creatures of rapine and of blood, they shared a precarious abode.
Though the Pariah could bestow upon his daughter a dowry that would have rendered her an eligible object of alliance had she been blessed with the proud distinction of caste, no one out ofher own tribe proposed for one of the loveliest specimens of nature’s craft that could be exhibited to the admiration of man:—the gentle girl was doomed to pine in utter hopelessness.
A young Pariah had sighed in vain for the love of the beautiful Yhahil. He had sought her notice by every attention, but her averted eye and compressed lip showed that he had no place in the affections he sought to win. He was a well-looking youth, with an elevation of mind and a natural refinement of character much above the generality of his race; still he was not beloved. He, nevertheless, laboured with unwearying assiduity to thaw the frost that seemed to have incrusted the heart of her for whom he would have gladly died, had such a sacrifice been demanded of him. Whenever she quitted her home he was sure to be in the way with some humble offering of attachment, which she invariably refused with gentleness, though in a manner that showed her sincerity.
“Yhahil,” he one day said, “why am I despised?”
“You are not despised, Goutama; not to love a man is not to despise him, and you know that our affections are not in our own keeping.”
“But why can you not love me? You cannot desire to live unmarried; and where will you find a husband, if you do not wed a Pariah?”
“It is true, indeed, that I would be married; but I must find a husband whom I can love, otherwise I shall submit to the curse of maidenhood,—for I never could attach myself to a man who had not obtained an entire ascendancy over my heart.”
“But where do you think of seeking for such a man, if you reject the whole race to which you and your family belong?”
“If I find not a man of caste, I tell you honestly I shall never marry.”
“Alas! Yhahil, you would spurn from you one who venerates the earth you tread upon, for a phantom which you can never possess. Would you marry a Brahmin only because he is a Brahmin?”
“Not without he had won my affections; but, in truth, thedegradation attached to the Pariah excludes him from those affections.”
“Would you refuse to wed a Pariah if you loved him?”
“Certainly not, if I loved him, but I never could love him. You, Goutama, would have secured my affection, if it had been possible that it should fix upon one of your tribe, but it is not; I feel my blood curdle at the very name. My repugnance is invincible. We are outcasts, and I would live united by that social bond which would make me a member of a respected community.”
“Alas! you are preparing a load of misery for yourself, as well as for one who would gladly endure it, provided he could bear it in conjunction with you. I see nothing but a gloomy prospect before us both. Will you afford me no hope?”
“It were hypocrisy in me to encourage hope, as I never can become your bride; fate has placed an impassable bar betwixt us.”
“Nay, not fate, Yhahil, but woman’s pride.”
“As you will. The bar is nevertheless fixed, and there is no removing it. Seek, Goutama, some worthier object, and leave me to my destiny.”
Yhahil’s parents were unhappy at not seeing their daughter married. She was in her fourteenth year, and still a maiden. She was their only girl, and tenderly beloved by both. The father would have gladly seen her united to a man who could have borne her into society which she could not be considered to contaminate; but, rather than she should not be married at all, he would willingly have consented to her becoming the wife of a Pariah. Among Hindoo women celibacy is the greatest stigma they can undergo; nevertheless the beautiful Yhahil was determined to bear the stigma, since she was precluded from becoming the wife of a husband who could lift up his head among his fellows without exhibiting the brand of pollution upon it.
Goutama, who had aspired to her affections, was an amiable youth, but poor in circumstances, and necessitated to labour in the most degrading vocations, in order to satisfy the demands ofnature. His general employment was that of scavenger in a neighbouring village, to collect cow-dung to plaster the floors of the poorer and lower caste of Hindoos, to prepare bodies for the funeral pile, and similar degrading avocations. The lovely girl whose heart he sought to win was repelled from him by the very necessities of his condition, and though she acknowledged him amiable, and occasionally admitted him to her presence, she could not look upon him without a sickening revulsion of heart. She felt ashamed of her feelings, but was unable to control them, and her coldness frequently wrung tears of deep distress from the rejected suitor.
Her mother pitied him, and would gladly have consented to her daughter’s union with him, had she not perceived the girl’s untractable repugnance. Observing this, she could not forbear offering some gentle expostulations.
“Yhahil,” said she, one day, “why, my child, do you look so coldly upon poor Goutama? He loves you: is not that enough to endear a man to a woman’s heart?”
“No, my mother. We cannot prepare the channel for the current of our own feelings; they will take what course they list. We may control them, nay, we may master, but cannot change them; they are independent of our will. I cannot love Goutama, and will never wed a Pariah. In this world if there be little happiness, there is, at least, a choice of miseries, and mine shall be those arising from unwedded life, rather than from a union which could never render me happy.”
“But why should you seek to elevate yourself above the condition to which you were born?”
“Because it is one of acknowledged disgrace. No mortal was ever born degraded, and the stigmas imposed by conventional prejudices I am unwilling to sanction by perpetuating them. I would emerge from the atmosphere of social degradation by which I have been for years surrounded. I feel within me the elements of that nobility which is indigenous in every living soul, the nobility of mind, and have a strong presentiment that I shallelevate myself above the present abasement to which destiny seems to have consigned me.”
“Daughter, these are dangerous sentiments to encourage; they will plant thorns in your bosom which you will find it difficult to pluck out.”
“If the thorns are there, the roses will grow upon them, and I am content.”
“But is it not better to have the humblest flower blossom within your heart, than to find nothing but the bitter root growing there, which puts forth neither flower nor fruit?”
“Those joys, my mother, are the sweetest which have sparkled from a cup impregnated with the bitters of affliction. Enjoyment is enhanced by suffering, and I trust I am only passing through the ordeal of the one, to bring me into the enviable inheritance of the other.”
The mother forbore to urge a measure to which she saw her child so decidedly opposed, but her disappointment was severe. She feared that her daughter would never perpetuate her race, and that she was destined to be the parent of a degraded offspring—degraded even among the outcasts of the Hindoo population. The father was no less unhappy, but he did not interfere with the prejudices of a beloved child. In truth, he felt the force of these prejudices, and forbore to divert them. He was a wealthy man, and there was no moral reason why she should not pursue the bent of her own conscience, when it did not lead her into practical dereliction. Yhahil was thus left uncontrolled to follow the impulses of her own feelings.
One morning she was bathing in the river with a female attendant. While standing in the water, draining it from her long flowing hair, a scream from the woman beside her directed her attention to an object which paralysed her with horror. A large alligator was rushing towards her with the velocity of a sunbeam. She shrieked and closed her eyes; in a moment a plunge near her caused her to look up, and she beheld the unhappy Goutama in the creature’s jaws. “I have saved thee, Yhahil,” he cried faintly, and the monster immediately plunged with its victim beneath thedeep dull waters. The surface was slightly tinged with blood; a few bubbles rose, which were the only indications of what was passing below.
The lovely Pariah made the best of her way to the bank, upon which she fainted. Her woman had witnessed the magnanimity of Goutama. Happening to pass at the moment of the alligator’s approach towards its intended victim, he had marked her peril, and, plunging into the stream, preserved her life at the expense of his own.
Yhahil returned to her home in tears. She thought that such a man should have been reserved for better things. She felt she could have loved him had he not been a Pariah, and his melancholy death cast over her spirit a gloom which did not readily subside. The intensity of his passion, proved by the sacrifice of his life, awoke in her bosom the tenderest sympathies. Still there was no disguising from her heart that she could not have married him, even had he escaped destruction, while that moral blight was upon him which rendered him an object of public scorn, and of silent, though undeserved, reproach.
Time sped on, but there was no change. The desolation of sorrow had passed over the outcast’s dwelling. His wealth was no blessing. He bowed to his idols in vain; they heard not his supplications, and his prayer returned to his own bosom. He still pursued his occupation, and money was daily added to his stores, but this did not render him happy. His daughter, the child of his tenderest attachment, was alone in the world, and with all his gold he could not purchase for her the boon she sought.
The death of poor Goutama, whom he respected for his worth, had cast a cloud over his peace. But for his noble sacrifice, the father would have been doomed to mourn the loss of a daughter, of whose virtues he was proud, and of her beauty vain. He presented the family of Goutama with a compensation sufficient to secure them from want for many a year, but this did not restore the son to the bosom of an anxious parent.
One night as Yhahil flung herself upon her couch, she laid her head upon a large snake which was curled upon her pillow. Feelingthe cold lubricous surface she suddenly raised herself, when the reptile rose, and, extending its hideous crest, wound itself gently round her neck. She was riveted to the spot; every muscle in her body became rigid, all vital action appeared suspended as she felt the venomous reptile spanning her neck within its horrible coil. She did not move; her breath was arrested, and her eyes fixed in mute horror, when the snake, gliding down her shoulder, passed round her arm, slid upon the palampore, and made its escape. She was uninjured. It was some time before she recovered her self-possession. Her women were summoned, and the apartment examined, but there was no snake seen.
She lay and mused upon the circumstance. Not being free from the superstition prevalent among her race, the circumstance affected her deeply. Her escape was one of those incidental chances of good fortune which occur once in an age. She had lately twice escaped death in its most terrible form. The gods of her country had surely heard her and her fathers prayers, and reserved the degraded Pariah for some future destiny. Her pulse rose with the excitement of her feelings. She could not sleep, but visions, almost palpable to the senses, passed before her. Although awake, she seemed to behold objects with all the accuracy and definite precision of sensible perception.
Towards morning she slept. Her dreams embodied the objects of her waking thoughts. She fancied herself surrounded by the pageantries of a court, and that thousands of her fellow-creatures bowed the knee before her. She was no longer an outcast—no longer a disgraced mortal, but a distinguished and adored woman. She awoke from the excitement caused by her dream, rose from her unquiet couch, and went forth to hail the rising sun, which marched up to heaven in its splendour as if in mockery of human woe. She looked upon the glorious orb, her heart dilated, and she became a silent worshipper of its glory.