Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/349

1858.] be disquieted for the rupees, though the seersuckers had been but vanity, and the castor-oil vexation of spirit."

"Produce the documents," said the Baboo, with a business-like impassibility that in Wall Street would have made him a great bear;—"where are the receipts?"

"My Lord, I know not. Prostrating my unworthy turban beneath the lovely lilies of your feet, I swear to my gureeb purwar, the destitute-and-humble-protecting lord, by the Holy Water and the Blessed Cow, by the beard of my father and the veil of my mother, that I settled the little account long ago!"

That unhappy speculator in seersuckers and castor-oil died in prison, and a gooroo (that is, a spiritual teacher) feed by the Baboo, desolated his last hour with the assurance that he should transmigrate into the bodies of seven generations of gharree-horses, and drag feringhee sailormen, in a state of beer, from the ghauts to the punch-houses, all his miserable lives.

Now whether or not the unlucky little speculator had in good faith discharged the debt will, in all the probabilities of human rights and wrongs, never appear this side of the last trump; for the Holy Water and the Sacred Cow, his father's beard and his mother's veil, were not good in law, the documents not forthcoming.

But it is certain that his widow had faith in his integrity; for at once, with all her sorrows on her head, she sallied forth in quest of justice; and from Brahmin post to Sahib pillar she went crying, "See me righted! Against this hard and arrogant Baboo let my wrongs be redressed, or fear the evil eye of Dookhee the Sorrowful, of Haranu the Lost!"

But utterly in vain; for the clamor of the Hindoo widow, however bitterly aggrieved, is but a nuisance, and her accusation insolence. So in her pitiful outcasting, in all the forlorn loathsomeness of leprosy, and the shunned squalor of a cripple, she sat down at the Baboo's gate, to wait for justice till the gods should bestow it,—till Siva, the Avenger, should behold her, and ask, "Who has done this?"

And who shall challenge her? Who shall bid her move on? Mamoul has crowned her Queen of Tears, and her sublime patience and appealing have made a throne of the wayside stone on which she sits; there is no power so audacious that it would give the word to depose her; her matted gray locks and her furrowed cheeks, her sunken eyes and her hungry lips, are her "sacred ashes" of the high caste of Sorrow.

The Brahmin averts his face as he passes, and mutters, "She is as the flower which is out of reach,—she is dedicated to God." That insolent official, the Baboo's pampered durwan, sees in her only Mamoul; he would as soon think of shaving himself as of driving her away. So, as the Baboo passes in or out through the great gate, the solemn coachman whips up the spanking Arabs, and the syces bawl louder than ever, and Kalidas Ramaya Mullick turns away his eyes. But for all that, the durhna woman heaps dust upon her head, which he sees, and mutters a weird warning, which he hears; and though the lawn is wide, and the banian topes are leafy, and a gilded temple, the family shrine, stands between, and the marble veranda is spacious, and the state apartments are remote, they do say the shadow of the durhna woman falls on the iced Simpkin and the steaks, in spite of Young Bengal.

Mootrib i koosh nuwà bigo,

Tazu bu tazu, nou bu nou!

Baduè dil kooshà bidoh,

Tazu bu tazu, nou bu nou!

Koosh biu sheen bu kilwulé

Chung nuwaz-a sa-uté,

Bosu sitan bu kam uz o,

Tazu bu tazu, nou bu nou!

Songster sweet, begin the lay,

Ever sweet and ever gay!

Bring the joy-inspiring wine,

Ever fresh and ever fine!

With a heart-alluring lass

Gayly let the moments pass,

Kisses stealing while you may,

Ever fresh and ever gay!"