Page:In Black and White - Kipling (1890).djvu/60

 like a dog. The strength is gone from me. I am an old man and the fire-carriage has made the ford desolate. They were wont to call me the Strong One of the Barhwi.

Behold my face, Sahib. It is the face of a monkey. And my arm. It is the arm of an old woman. I swear to you, Sahib, that a woman has loved this face and has rested in the hollow of this arm. Twenty years ago, Sahib. Believe me, this was true talk twenty years ago.

Come to the door and look across. Can you see a thin fire very far away down the stream? That is the temple-fire, in the shrine of Hanuman, of the village of Pateera. North, under the big star, is the village itself, but it is hidden by a bend of the river. Is that far to swim, Sahib? Would you take off your clothes and adventure? Yet I swam to Pateera—not once but many times; and there are crocodiles in the river too.

Love knows no caste; else why should I, a Musalman and the son of a Musalman, have sought a Hindu woman—a widow of the Hindus—the sister of the lambardar—the headman—of Pateera? But it was even so. They of the lambardar's household came on a pilgrimage to Muttra when She was but newly a bride. Silver clamps were upon the poles of the litter, and silken curtains hid the woman. Sahib, I made no haste in their conveyance, for the wind parted the curtains and I saw Her. When they returned from pilgrimage the boy that was her husband had died, and I saw Her again in the litter, By God, these Hindus are fools! What was it to me whether she was Hindu or Jain—outcaste, leper or whole? I would have married Her and made Her a home by the ford. The Seventh of the Nine Bars says that a man may not marry one of the infidels? Is that truth? Both Shiahs and Sunnis say that a Musulman may not marry one of the infidels? Is the Sahib a priest, then, that he knows so much? I will tell him something that he does not know. There is neither Shiah nor Sunni, lawful nor forbidden, in Love; and the Nine Bars are but nine little faggots