CHAPTER II.
My first consciousness, my very first idea or remembrance of anything that I can recall, was on a hot sultry night in the city of Lucknow, in the year 18––, but no matter as to the exact date, for I do not know how old I was then, and do not now know the year in which I was born. I was awakened by the clinking sound of something that caught my ear; then turning my eyes I saw a number of beautiful round glittering things fall into my mother’s lap as she sat upon a charpoy. As I recall the scene, I think there must have been several hundred of these shining pieces. It is strange what an attraction there is in children for metal money, though they know nothing of its value. Is there not a latent love for it in them from a former birth as an inheritance?—but let that rest for the present.
My eyes then went to a man, as I now can designate him, for then it did not seem to me that I was conscious ofhim any more than that he was a thing of life, a being or something very indefinite, beyond my comprehension. I years after, recalled him as an Englishman, rather tall, of blonde complexion, with a cleanly-shaved face, except a heavy well-trimmed moustache. What struck me was the whiteness of his face and hands, so that I took him for a bhut or ghost, and quaking with fear gazed at him.
He was standing close to the charpoy looking down upon my mother, into whose lap he had thrown the shining things that I afterward learned were rupees and new, just brought from the treasury. After the clinking of the rupees I heard him say in Hindustani: “I must leave you, pyari. I am going to Wilayat, home, and may never see you again?”
“Jaoge! mujh ko chordoge?” said my mother, with trembling lips and a heart-breaking tone. “You are going and will leave me?” she repeated again, so plaintively. “Yes,” he said, “I have got leave and I must go. I have brought you five hundred rupees and hope you will be happy and take good care of the children. I have come to bid you good-bye.” Upon this my mother clasped her hands over her head and bent forward with a wail of anguish that was heart-rending. Amid her tears she exclaimed: “You always told me that I was your bibi, your own dear wife, that you would never leave me, and now you are going and will throw me away as the skin of the mango you have eaten, or as an old coat that you have worn out. You will leave me and go to Wilayat, where you will marry a young mem sahib as all the sahibs do, and she will never know that I am your wife. O Allah! Why did I ever listen to your soft words and become your pyari? Pyari, I have been and true to you in all things. Will you go away and leave me to be called a kusbi by all these people? O Allah! ya Shaitan! why am I thus to be accursed?”
Then she swayed back and forth, wailing as if her heart was breaking. She piteously asked, “Why not take me with you, as you often said you would?”
“That would be impossible,” he replied. “You would not be happy among my people in a strange land; you areof another caste or race, and it would only make you unhappy to go there.”
“I have been your beloved wife, your pyari bibi here, why could I not be there also? I have lived here all these years, discarded and despised by my people because I was a sahib’s aurat, woman, but I loved you, I lived upon the thought of you. The very sound of your footsteps thrilled me with delight. I have been good enough for you as your wife through all these years, for you have called me your pyari bibi, your darling wife, a thousand times, and now you will cast me off and get an English mem sahib. Allah! Allah! have mercy upon me! O my children, my children! They are your children. You were my God. I worshiped you when they were conceived. My love and adoration of you impressed your features upon them. They are more yours than mine, for I gave them no thought of myself but all of you. They are yours, of your own flesh and blood. How can you forsake them? How can you be so cruel to them and me?”
She ceased, bitterly weeping. He stood speechless, somewhat moved by her piteous appeals, yet as I remember him, he regarded her with a look of hardened contempt. A moment after uttering the last words she quickly threw the rupees from her lap, scattering them all over the floor and leaping from the charpoy, flung herself at his feet and putting her arms around his legs placed her face upon his boots, wailing piteously and praying him not to desert his children.
“Throw me aside forever,” she said, “but, oh! the children, your own children, do not forsake them! For Allah’s sake, take care of them.”
Her long abundant black hair fell over her shoulders. Her face showed the intense agony of her soul and her large eyes filled with tears that dropped from her face as if each one was a drop of hot blood from her heart. He remained silent, as I remember him, with a cold brutal indifference, without saying a word until she seemed nearly exhausted in her anguish. He then lifted her up and placed her upon the charpoy, and taking her hand saying, “I cannot help it, pyari, it is my kismet, I must go,” andkissing her, said: “Salaam, good-bye, God bless you,” and rushed from the room.
Is it strange that I should remember such a scene? This was my first consciousness of life. I remember nothing previous to that night, and what I saw and heard then was burned into my very being to remain a part of it as long as I continue to be. She was my mother, my own, my darling mama. I am now an old man and the sands in my hour-glass are nearly run out. I have had trials enough to have hardened all my feelings into iron, yet as I think of my dear little mama, in her agony and despair on that memorable night, great tears run down my furrowed cheeks. I cannot help their coming, and I would not if I could. Blessed tears! that relieve us in our sorrows and moisten our hearts with tenderness. It was a strange scene to me. I was frightened into silence and could not stir, and dared not cry. I could understand that my mama was in great trouble, though I knew not why it was, nothing of the cause of it. I sat in a corner partly concealed by a cloth hung on a rope that was stretched across the room. I now see every little thing as it was then, my mother’s eyes, the big tear drops on her cheeks are now in my sight, after all these years, just as I saw them then. I hear my mama’s voice, its wailing tones of entreaty, of despair. I see her body quivering in her agony as she was clinging to the feet of the sahib, just as vividly as if she was before me now.
As I learned afterward, he used to come late at night, so that I was asleep in a little side room when he came. At the front of the court was a large gate, but I was told the sahib never came in by that way. At the back end of the court there was a little narrow door, through which the rubbish and sweepings were carried and thrown, into a gully that wound its way to the old canal beyond the city. It was by the gully where the rubbish lay and through the door by which the sweepings went out that the sahib came in, never by daylight, but always near dead of night.
Shall I now express my opinion of that very braveChristian English gentleman? coming up through that stinking gully, through that little back door at the hour of midnight?A man who would do that would not only destroy the woman he had called his wife, make outcasts of his own children, but would barter his own soul and betray his God to gratify his lust. But I must not let my feelings overcome me. Yet I cannot help saying that often since then, when I have thought of that night scene, I have felt like tearing a passion to tatters, aye more than that, to be really truthful, to murder somebody;even that man, my own father, for the infamous wrong done my darling mother.
As I have said, when this sahib so suddenly appeared I was terribly frightened. He seemed to me a giant, so tall and big. Then the ghastly pale face; the reddish hair; the strange clothes, he might be one of the bhuts or jins that carry away little boys and eat them, one each day, for his dinner. Was it strange then, that I sat crouching in my corner, scarcely daring to breathe, lest he might hear me and seize me for his next day’s meal?
The clinking of the rupees is written on the first page of my memory. The sound and sight of them gave me a thrill of pleasure, but a moment after came the fright at the sight of the strange being. Scared as I was, I saw everything, heard all that was said and felt a thousand times more than I now can find words to describe. All was so sudden, strange and incomprehensible, that I was dumb with fear at the great thing standing so high up in the room, and when my mother began her piteous wailings, I was hushed to silence with my intense feelings of sorrow for her.
As the sahib rushed from the place, my mama threw herself upon the bare earthen floor with a shriek, and there lay moaning and crying out in heart-piercing tones, “My Sahib! my Sahib!” I sprang from my corner, and sat down by her, and placing her head upon my lap stroked her hair back from her face and begged of her “mama, pyari mama! why do you cry so?” There was no answer, but “my Sahib! my Sahib!” O! the agony of that hour! It has never left me, it became a part of my life and is with me now, for I feel it. What could I do, a little tot that had never been out of the court? I do not know how long I sat there; I must have become exhausted and gone tosleep, for in the morning I found myself lying on the charpoy where I suppose my mama placed me.
As I awoke, my first thought was of her. I glanced around the room and saw her sitting on a low stool facing the court. Her eyes were turned towards the western sky, but evidently she was not looking at anything. I awakened as from a horrible dream and could not at once realize what had happened, but when I saw that haggard, pallid face, those wide open eyes, that looked and saw nothing, all the night scene flashed upon me and I cried out, “Mama, mama!” She turned her head, without a word, toward me and began again to look far away as if for something beyond mortal ken. I was told years after, that before that night she was the most happy woman of all in the court, always so pleasant to her neighbors, always smiling, laughing and romping with her children; but after that awful night, the light of her life had gone out into utter darkness, for she never smiled again.
The rupees were gathered up and put in the rough wooden box, fastened with a big padlock. They were taken out one by one to pay the rent and to buy a little flour, rice and bread and a few vegetables for our daily food. There was a little sister, too young, thank God, to know anything of the trouble in the house. An old woman went to the bazar to purchase our food and did the cooking. At first a few of the neighboring women looked in at the door and tried to be friendly, but the little mother took no notice of them and they ceased coming. One day I overheard one of them say to the other as an excuse for her silence, “Her Sahib has gone.”
The little sister and I passed our time as best we could with the few cheap playthings we had, eating our cheap food, occasionally delighted with some native sweets that the old woman bought for us. The dear mama would sit on her little stool with her hands clasped over her knees, her face turned toward the west, her large eyes strained wide open as if to see something in the far away distance.
At early morning I would find her sitting thus. Nearly all the day she would sit looking in utter silence. Sometimes the little sister and I would fall upon her knees andchatter to her. She would turn her head toward us for a moment and perhaps say a word or two and then take up her looking again. There was never a ripple of laughter, such as used to cheer everybody around her, as they told me years after, not even a smile for us, her children. She seemed to be alone, and as I remember her and am now able to think about her condition and actions, it appears to me her heart was dying, gradually, to be sure, but dying.
I could not understand anything about it then for I was too young to realize what had occurred. I had scarcely ever been outside our rooms and never outside the little court or muhalla. I had no companion but the little sister. I knew nothing of the great world or little world outside, and had only seen a few native people in the court as I looked down from our veranda. As to the names, father or papa, I had not heard them, and if spoken to me I would not have understood what they meant. I was not aware that I had a father or ever had one. It was better perhaps as it was, for had I been told that the sahib I saw was my father; that it was he who had treated my mama with such infamous cruelty; that for him she was breaking her heart, dying day by day, as she kept looking toward him in the west, as he was going home to enjoy life and get a new wife, forsaking our dear mama and casting off us, his own children, for whose being he alone was responsible; had I known this, my life would have undoubtedly been altogether different and not for the better either. Knowledge is power, but it is often best not to have too much of it, nor to have it before we are capable of using it.