In The Permanent Way Part 29

Govind shook his head.

"Profane not the great name of Love." He quoted to himself, being forced to this secrecy by the fact that the only language his mother understood has no word for love--as he meant it. So he added mournfully, "I am ready for my duty whenever you wish it, mother; that is enough."

Nevertheless, he dreamt dreams that night as he lay curled up on his short string bed, with the second volume of _Amor Vincit Omnia_ under the quilt, so as to be ready for the early summer dawn. Out under the stars in the bare, mud-walled courtyard, dest.i.tute to Western eyes of all comfort, he dreamt the dreams of his race--of a gorgeously attired bride, shy, yet alluring, looking at him for the first time.

"Thou hast a nightmare," said his mother crossly, when just before daybreak he woke them all by sitting up in his bed and declaiming, _Amor vincit Omnia_ in a loud voice. "'Tis that book under thy head.

Put it aside, and lie as thy forefathers lay; they dreamt not of pillows. So shalt thou sleep sound and let others sleep also."

She went yawning back to bed, and lay awake till dawn brought work, counting over the savings she had made, and calculating how much she could spare for flowers and sweets and spiced dishes, for all the hitherto unknown luxuries which, according to custom, were to make the boy's life a dream of pleasure for a time. Only for a time, since the scholars.h.i.+p had to be gained.

A month afterwards a red-curtained bridal palanquin containing a mysterious bride was carried over the threshold of the little mud courtyard, and Govind Sahai, with a silver triptych on his forehead, his ears ta.s.selled with evil-smelling marigolds, his scented tinsel coat hung with jasmine chaplets, dismounted from a pink-nosed pony amidst an admiring crowd. That was an end of the spectacle as far as the outside world was concerned. Within it was only beginning for those two fond women who had spun and sc.r.a.ped and saved for this great occasion ever since the bridegroom was five years old. Much had to be done ere they would sit down in proud peace knowing that no possible enhancement of delight had been omitted. The boy himself went through the countless ceremonies, all tending towards an apotheosis of the senses, with a certain shy dignity; perhaps the sight of master-_ji_ doing wedding guest in a copper-coloured alpaca coat gave him confidence by reminding him that even the learned stoop to folly. He was pale, partly from the turmeric baths, which are supposed to produce a complexion favourable to feminine eyes, partly because he really felt sick after the unusual sloth and sweets of the last few days. So much for his physical state. Of his mental condition this much may be presaged: that if either his inherited instincts or his acquired convictions had any reality whatever, it must have been chaos.

More chaotic than ever when, far into the night, after endless tests and trials, Nihali, the mysterious bride, proved beautiful as----as----?

Well, the fact was sure; only the comparison remained doubtful. The inherited instincts said a _peri_, the acquired convictions an angel.

Both, it will be observed, denizens of another world. But then there are more "other worlds" than one.

"Master Narayan Chand hath sent to remind us that school re-opens next week," said Govind's mother when nigh two months had pa.s.sed; two months during which the path of life had been smoothed, scented, and decorated for the special use of a boy and a girl. Govind Sahai looked up from his work, which was, briefly, holding Nihali's slim, ring-bedecked fingers. The fact that he did so on pretence of teaching her to write is of secondary importance. She was undoubtedly a very pretty girl, and her delicate, refined face was at that moment full of adoring tenderness for the lad beside her. Not thirteen at the most, she was taller than English girls of that age, but far more slender, with a figure still following the straight lines of childhood.

Graceful for all that, since her small head poised well over a round throat, and the want of contour was dexterously hidden by ma.s.ses of jewellery, gleaming through the tinsel-shot veil. Even from wrist to elbow the thinness of the arm was concealed by the bridal bracelets of white ivory lined with red, whilst the slender ankles beneath the scarlet, gold-bordered petticoat were hung with silver-gilt jingles.

A typical bride briefly, arrayed in all attractions, save for the big nose-ring, with its dangling golden spoon hiding the lip. Govind objected to its presence, his mother to its absence--both, curiously enough, for the same reason--because it served as a check to indiscriminate kissing of the bride. The pious widow used to blush over her son's habit of saying good-bye to his wife when he had to leave her for an hour or two. It might be English fas.h.i.+on, warranted by all the love-literature in creation; it was not decent. Neither did she approve of seeing them, as now, seated together over that ridiculous farce of pothooks. Marriage was one thing, love-making was another, so she spoke sharply.

"Well," answered the boy, utterly unabashed, "dost think I have forgotten, _amma jan?_ (Mother dear.) Nay! Nihali hath been hearing my holiday task half the morning. Hast not--O Nihali?"

His arm, under cover of the veil, stole round the girl's waist and remained there--a flagrant breach of decorum which, fortunately for the female accomplice, remained unnoticed by mother-in-law, who was busy over a knot in a thread she was skeining from her unending pirn.

Yet Nihali, despite this awful lapse, looked sweet and good enough to fill the heroine's part in any novel, and her looks did not belie her.

The past two months had been a fever of delight to Govind. With the curious apathetic resignation to the limitations of custom so noticeable in clever Indian lads whose brains are full of theories, he had accepted marriage in the spirit of his forebears, only to find that Love (with a big L) such as he had read of in books was actually within his reach. To be sure, in books the object was chosen by the lover; but what did that matter in the end? So he used up all the stock-in-trade of the sentimental novelist for little Nihali's benefit, and she listened to his rhapsodies on perfect marriage and twin souls, her eyes set wide with wonder, admiration, and belief. No "first lady" in white satin could have played her part more prettily than this Indian child of thirteen, who from her cradle had been taught to venerate her husband as a G.o.d, and who now, in a sort of rapture, found herself the object of a sentimental pa.s.sion absolutely novel and bewildering. She nestled her sleek head on his shoulder, telling him that she believed every word he said. And so she did; had he told her the world was flat, instead of explaining to her with great pomp and precision that she was living on an orange depressed at the poles, it would have been the same to her. The world she lived in was of his creating. Like most Hindu girls of the higher cla.s.ses, she had a marvellous memory, and Govind had hardly known whether to be pleased or pained at the discovery that, after hearing him read it over a few times, she knew his repet.i.tion better than he did himself; yet, shy of her own exploit, she only replied to his laughing reference to the holiday task by a timid squeeze of the hand still holding hers.

Mother-in-law broke the knot with a snap; a habit with the determined little woman, who thereinafter would twirl the ends together as if nothing had happened. One twist of the thumb, and all was as it had been.

"I know not what holiday tasks may mean," she said scornfully. "In my time work was work, and play play. So must it be now. Nihali's people have sent to ask when she returns to them, after established custom. I have answered, 'When school begins.'"

They had been so supremely, so innocently happy over their pothooks!

And now the consternation on their two young faces was quite piteous.

Mother-in-law, however, found it scandalous. Did not all decent girls cry to go home long before the honeymoon was over? Had not she herself wept bitterly in her time; and there was Nihali actually snivelling at the idea of leaving; before her husband, too! And Govind was no better.

"It is so soon," pleaded the boy, too much taken aback for instant revolt; besides, the situation had never come into any of the novels he had read, so he really felt unable to cope with it.

His remark only increased the pitch of his mother's voice. Soon, was it? Had he not had two months of billing and cooing, to gain which she and grannie had spun their fingers to the bone? Soon! Whose fault was it if time had been wasted over alphabets and pothooks? Her shrill tones brought grannie from her labours below, and before these two eminently respectable matrons the guilty pair could only hold each other's hands like the babes in the wood, feeling lost and miserable.

That afternoon he went over to the public library, for the first time since his marriage, and spent hours hunting up precedents on the subject, only to return discomfited and hopeless. Nihali would revolt, of course, if he bade her follow his lead; but how could he bear to have the finger of scorn pointed at her by those unacquainted with the theory of perfect marriage and twin souls? That night, when the rest of the little household retired from the roof, leaving the luxury of fresh air to the younger people, he and Nihali sat down under the stars on the still flower-strewn bed, and cried like the children they were.

So with awful swiftness the dawn came when Govind had to put on the pale-pink turban proclaiming him a first-cla.s.s middle student, and set off to school with his books under his arm; books, on the whole, less disturbing than _Amor Vincit Omnia_ and its congeners. Nothing further had been said about Nihali's approaching departure. It was inevitable, of course; meanwhile, they must make the most of the time left to them. So Govind looked haggard and feverish as he took his accustomed place; nevertheless, being student by nature, the work beguiled him.

By evening he was lighthearted enough to run home and race up the crumbling stairs leading to the roof, full of anecdotes and news for Nihali. There was no one to receive them. The roof itself had resumed its normal workaday appearance, and in the very place where the little bride had sat on her lacquered bridal stool, squatted his mother, piecing two broken strands of her skein together as if nothing had happened. And nothing out of the common had happened. Whose fault was it if Govind flung himself on his face and wept like a baby for what was beyond his reach?

His mother had expected so much when she planned her _coup d'etat_.

But he continued to cry--which she did not expect; for something more complex than simple pa.s.sion had been aroused in the boy. Of that he might have been ashamed; in this he gloried. Was it not, in short, a legitimate subject for self-glorification? So he wept himself sick in a subdued docile sort of way. Finally, master-_ji_ called one day in consternation to say that, though painstaking as ever, poor Govind could not remember the simplest problem; while as for riders, he just sat and looked at them. The scholars.h.i.+p was thus in danger. She tried scolding the boy in good set terms, but he met her reproaches with an invulnerable superiority before which she stood aghast. What was to be done? Perhaps this spiriting away of the bride in order to avoid a scene had been an error, but was that any reason why she should be requested to return? To begin with, it would be an appalling breach of etiquette, and then there was the risk of consequences much to be deprecated between such very young people. The whole household, including master-_ji_, puzzled over the difficulty, which seemed all the more puzzling because it was so uncalled for, boys having been married at fifteen and sent to school again afterwards since time began without any fuss. But then, those boys, had not read _Amor Vincit Omnia_ and learnt to mix sentiment with pa.s.sion.

While matters were at this deadlock, Nihali's mother arrived on the scene unexpectedly, and, _en pet.i.t comite_ with the women-folk, gave a new turn to affairs. The possibility suggested was in a measure disconcerting, but, on the other hand, afforded Govind's mother an opportunity of retreating with dignity, since the girl must not be allowed to fret as she had been fretting.

The result being that a week afterwards Govind Sahai did a difficult rider in a way which made Narayan Chand dream dreams of a future when folk would say, "This eminent man received primary and secondary education at the hands of our most successful teacher of youth, Pundit Narayan Chand." It was a dream he frequently indulged in about his pupils.

The little strip of roof was once more frequented by pigeons, and the snappings and joinings of threads relegated for the most part to the court below. Yet the boy's appet.i.te did not return, and as winter came on he developed a teasing cough in that narrow chest of his. The fact was that he burnt the candle of life at both ends in more ways than one. Perhaps if his soul could have been left in peace he might have pa.s.sed through the ordeal safely, as many a boy manages to do in India. But it was not. Poor Govind had no rest. He strung himself up to the highest pitch in obedience to the mixed result of his birth and education. Then on this quivering instrument he proceeded to play scales. It was Tausig's exercises on a zither. He had to teach himself, teach Nihali, think of the coming baby, and go through the whole gamut of intellectual and physical emotion of which he had read.

The first string gave way when his mother, laughing, crying, and blessing him all in a breath, put a boy baby into his arms on his return from school one day. He sat down stupidly on the lowest step of the mud stairs, gazing at what he held in a sort of bewildered amaze at finding himself thus, till his mother angrily s.n.a.t.c.hed the child from him, saying he should be ashamed of shedding tears on a newborn baby's face. It was very like Nihali, he thought, only years older with all those wrinkles. Then he thought helplessly how he had decided, with Nihali's consent of course, on a thousand contraventions of old customs at this time. Yet there was she upstairs in the hands of the wise women, and the baby ready to be doctored by its grandmother. What could a boy of sixteen do against such odds? So the little proselytising pamphlet he had read was put away with a sigh; and after all Nihali did very well under the old _regime_. He found her, when the wise women permitted him, in the seventh heaven over the baby. Was there ever such a doll, with its little sharp nose and pinched-up lips! And would he believe it?--the tiny creature was so lazy that grandmother had to tickle it so--on the mouth--before it would take any interest in the sugar and spices! By and by, when she could nurse it herself, it would be different. She lay smiling at the idea, while downstairs, as they left the house, the gossips were shaking their heads and saying calmly, "It is an unnecessary baby, but a forerunner. Others will come. There is plenty of time."

Even when Nihali could not nurse the child, and they had recourse to a Maw's feeder, which Govind, with many blushes, bought at the same shop which supplied him with slate pencils, those two young things feared nothing. He used to bring his books to the roof where she lay with the little quiet mouse of a thing tucked away in her veil. Then, while the sun set red over the dusty city, he worked away at all the "ologies"--worked somewhat feverishly, since more depended now on his success. Sometimes Nihali's smile gurgled over in laughter, and Govind, looking up, would find baby's fingers being clasped round his pen.

"Look you," she would whisper, as if in presence of some great potentate, "I asked my lord if he wished to be a writer too, and see how fast he holds!"

There was one thing, however, to which the baby did not hold fast, and that was life. But not till the very day before the eventful examination, which meant so much to Govind, did those two children read fear in each other's faces about that other child.

"Oh, Govind! what shall we do? what shall we do?" wailed Nihali, when the grandmother, seeing them wild with anxiety, told them the truth, while the great-grandmother stood by wagging her head and mumbling of others by and by. What was that to them now? How he got through the next day he never knew. He took the papers and went with them to his desk; nay, more, he did his level best with them, nerving himself to the effort chiefly by thoughts of master-_ji's_ disappointment if he failed. But his personal interest in the matter seemed gone; that was centred on a roof in the dusty city where one child sat crying over another. What were _plus_ or _minus_ to him save a world with or without an unnecessary infant?

All that night was pa.s.sed beside Nihali, waiting for his mother's voice to say the end had come; but the morning found the little sleeper still in the young mother's arms. Perhaps there was still hope. He hastily swallowed some breakfast, and, delayed by this hint of respite, found himself five minutes late in the examination-room.

The first papers had already been given out, and to avoid possibility of fraud none save those present at the issue were allowed to compete.

So Govind had to sit idle for a while, knowing he had lost a definite number of chances. Nor was this the worst; the pause gave him time for thought. Hitherto, once within the familiar walls, old habits of attention and forgetfulness had possessed him. Now, with nothing to do, he remembered and yet forgot. So when the order to go up for the second paper came he rose with his brain in a whirl, a wild desire to cry, "Let me alone, my baby is dying!" seeming to blot out everything else in the world. Perhaps had he done so he might have had a chance in the examiners' human pity; as it was he pulled himself together, and failed hopelessly.

In the pause before the _viva voce_ he sat looking straight before him, dully conscious that he had done badly.

"Govind has never been the same since he married," whispered one boy, and the other giggled.

"Silence!" cried Narayan Chand fussily. "Govind Sahai, your name is first for _viva_. Come up, Govind Sahai, Kyasth." Then, as the dull yet anxious face pa.s.sed him, he whispered: "Now for value of light literature. You are best at colloquial, my pupil, so courage, and remember _Amor Vincit Omnia_ and such like things."

_Amor Vincit Omnia!_ The boy's last chance fled before those words.

When the ordeal was over, he turned back to his place mechanically. As he pa.s.sed the master-_ji_ once more, he read his fate in the disappointed face raised to his, then in the confident smile of the boy succeeding him, finally in the surprised nudging of the whole cla.s.s. Something seemed to snap in his brain; he paused, and, facing the examiners, raised his hand. The rush of thought was too much for him at first; then he broke silence in a gentle, deprecating voice: "If you will be kind enough to excuse me, Sirs, I will beg leave to retire. The exigencies of the case forbid explanation, but this much is admitted--that _Amor vincit Omnia_."

"That boy speaks better English than I thought for," said one examiner to the other, when the leave had been granted. "Give him five marks more; he's failed, of course, but it's as well to be just."

When Govind reached home Nihali's arms were empty. There is no need to say more. It was an unnecessary infant to all save those two.

"You have failed, failed badly, my poor pupil, owing, doubtless, to domestic bereavement," said the master-_ji_, when he called a week or two later full of vexed sympathy. "Such circ.u.mstances point to special privilege of entering again next year, for which we will apply. And then, Govind, there must be no killing of birds with one stone. There must be no complicated states of mind, confusing idiom."

But Govind Sahai, Kyasth, did not avail himself of the permission duly given, as the pundit-_ji_ put it, "in consideration of the strictly nonregulation death of his infant at a premature age."

The old grandfather, whose small life-pension had been the prop of the household, died of autumnal fever, and during the ensuing winter the result of his failure to win the scholars.h.i.+p came home to Govind with depressing force, since even from that poor ten rupees a month something might have been spared to stand between those three fond women and the grindstone, that last resort of poverty. Then Nihali's mother, coming over unexpectedly and finding her daughter at the mill, carried her off in a huff. This time Govind said nothing; the spirit had gone out of him, and for the girl's own sake he gave in to custom.

He worked very hard, but as the winter advanced his shoulders seemed to grow narrower and narrower, and the teasing cough became louder.

Good food, care, and rest might have done something perhaps; only perhaps, for there is not much to be done when the candle of life is alight at both ends, except to put it out. That is what happened one April morning when the bougainvillea round the arched verandah of the library looked like a crimson drapery. He used to go there every morning before school hours, for the memory of his failure in _viva voce_ rankled keenly, and he was possessed by a curious determination to prove Master Narayan Chand wrong in attributing it to Govind's unwise selection of books. So, secure at those hours from interruption, he used to sit and study the idiom of light literature.

"Thou art not fit to go," said his mother tearfully one morning after the boy had been kept awake all night by cough and fever.

"Reading will not hurt me, _amma jan_," he replied, "and the examination is next month."

They found him two hours afterwards seated at the desk before the ledger, his head resting on a novel he had just been entering in the register. A horrible stain of blood from the blood-vessel he had ruptured blotted the page, but through it you could still see, in his bold handwriting: