Subura

“ Ah, Sire, how thou dost fret thyself!
Teja (anxiously) .
Didst thou ever see him?
Balthilda.
Never.
Teja.
God be thanked! For hadst thou ever seen him as I saw him on the morning of the battle in which he fell ... arrayed in golden armour ... and the white steed pranced beneath him, and his yellow locks streamed like sunlight about him. And he laughed the foe in the face.... Laughed like a child!... Ah, laughing to die like him!
Balthilda.
His lot was easy, Sire! He went from hence, but left to thee as an inheritance the half-destroyed kingdom.... How shouldst thou then have laughed? ”

“ No, nothing is impossible in reality. But still Su was born in the house of Banikantha instead of in the royal family of the deserted Patala and could, by no means, astonish Protap, a scion of the Goswami family.
Subha was growing fast. By degrees, she could, as it were, realise her own self. As if, on a certain full-moon night a flood-tide from an unknown sea was filling her innermost self with a new unutterable sense of life. ”

“ From Mazaba and Seilani and Subo, by the course which we came, towards the south part, take care; for there are many shoals, and they are very bad; for this a canoe would not stop which met us in this course.
From the mouth of the channel of Subo and Matan we went west in mid-channel, and met with the town of Subu, at which we anchored, and made peace, and there they gave us rice and millet and flesh; and we remained there many days; and the king and the queen, with many people, became Christians of their free will. ”

“ Teja.
(Remains standing before her and takes her head in his hands.) To me, it is as if in this hour we had strayed hand in hand through a whole world of joy and sorrow. That disappeareth--all disappeareth. I am again the--I was--nay, I am not he.--But be thou high above all the women, the Queen ... Wilt thou?
Balthilda.
Sire, what dost thou require of me?
Teja.
Thou wilt not entreat and wilt not cry out?
Balthilda.
Nay, Sire.
Teja.
The day draweth nigh. Before us standeth death.
Balthilda.
Sire, I understand thee not. None can attack us, and until the ships come----
Teja. ”

“ And it was not long before the Human Fly gave way to the Only Genuine Blood-Sweating Behemoth of Holy Writ Now in Captivity. Then Sube truly lost his heart.
The longer he gazed at the behemoth the more [Pg 209] he admired it. It was, indeed, a case of love at first sight. Under his fascinated scrutiny the shifty eyes became kind; the broad ugly nose and cavernous mouth seemed to smile at him; the wrinkled hide looked as soft as a baby's skin. How he would have liked one for a pet!
In his mind as he stood there a definite idea assumed form; he would never be a lawyer when he grew up. ”

“ Exeunt the watchers.
(Bishop lets go the hands of the bridal pair, and turns back to Amalaberga.)
(Teja stands gloomy and brooding. Balthilda casts a shy imploring look around her. Painful silence.)
Ildibad (softly) .
Now must thou say something, King, to welcome thy young wife.
Teja (softly) .
Must I? (Taking one of the choir-boys by the nape of the neck.) Not so vehemently, boy; the smoke cometh up into our nostrils. What dost thou when thou wieldest not thy censer?
Boy.
I wield my sword, King.
Teja.
That is right. But make ye haste with wielding the sword, or ye may easily be too late. ”

“ And when in the mid-day, the fishermen and the boatmen retired for their meals, when the householders enjoyed their siesta, the birds hushed their singing, the ferry-boats stopped their course, when the noisy world suddenly stopped in the midst of its work and assumed an awful aspect of solitude, then under the great fiery firmament sat silent and face to face, mute Nature and a mute maiden, one under the wide expanse of sunlight, the other under the shade of trees.
Not that Subha had not a number of intimate friends. These were the two cows of the cow-shed—Sharvasi and Panguli. ”

“ The third class cultivate the soil as proprietors, and engage in trade and commerce. The Sudra is the servant of all the others. Resulting from the intermarriage of members of different castes there are various mixed classes. The lowest is the child of a Brahmin mother and a Sudra father, though in Southern India the Pariah is still lower. ”

“ The Sudra should perform all the duties laid down for him, properly and according to the ordinance. He should always wait, with obedience and humility, upon person of the three other orders and serve them with care. Always adhering to the path of righteousness, the Sudra should cheerfully do all this. He should honour the deities and persons of the regenerate orders. He should observe the vow of hospitality to all persons. With senses kept under subjection and becoming abstemious in food, he should never approach his wife except in her season. ”

“ Perhaps, in the parts west from the river Kali, the Hindus from the south have not, in fact, been so bad as they pretend; and, although no one is willing to acknowledge a deficiency of zeal, or a descent from barbarians, yet, in fact, they may have permitted to remain such of the cultivators as chose to adopt the rules of purity, and to take the name of Sudras. ”

“ To show fear, is to whet an Indian's appetite for blood: coolness confounds and awes him when anything will.
If Sublette had longed for excitement, while an invalid in his lonely lodge on Bear River, he longed equally now for that blissful seclusion. Listening for, and hearing one's death-warrant from a band of blood-thirsty savages, could only prove with bitter sharpness how sweet was life, even the most uneventful. ”

“ The ships come never more.
(Balthilda strokes herself on the cheeks, and then stands motionless.)
Teja.
But we men are going forth upon the field, to fight.
Balthilda.
That can ye not do--that is surely--impossible.
Teja.
We must. Art thou the Queen, and perceivest not that we must?
Balthilda.
Yea--I--per--ceive--it.
Teja.
The King fights in the foremost rank, and we shall see each other no more alive.... Knowest thou that?
Balthilda.
Yea, I know it!... (Silence. They look at each other.) ”

“ After these, O Rama! had been laved by the water of Gunga, Bruhma, the lord of all, thus addressed the king: O chief of men! thy predecessors, {230} the sixty thousand sons of the great Sugura, are all delivered by thee: and the great and perennial receptacle of water, called by Sugura’s name, shall henceforth be universally known by the appellation of Sagura.26 As long, O king! as the waters of the sea continue in the earth, so long shall the sons of Sugura remain in heaven, in all the splendour of gods. ”

“ We were overjoyed to think that we had got to a resting-place, where we could repose our weary limbs, and recruit the lost strength of our sick. While Sublet was finishing his business with his Indian trappers, they delivering their peltry, and he remunerating them in his way with cloth, powder, ball, beads, knives, handkerchiefs, and all that gawdy trumpery which Indians admire, together with coffee, rice, and corn, also leather, and other articles,—we, being idle, had time to think, to reflect, and to be uneasy. ”

“ Her two elder sisters were called Sukeshini and Suhásini, and for the sake of alliteration the father gave the name of Subhâsini to his youngest daughter. And people abbreviated the name into Subhà.
The two elder girls had been matched at great expense and after a mighty hunt for a bridegroom; now the youngest one weighed heavily upon the oppressed heart of her parents.
It does not come home to every one that one who cannot speak, is capable of feeling; and so, everybody gave vent to their sense of dark misgivings with regard to her future in her very presence. ”

“ Professors of the healing art, mercenary soldiers, the priest who acts as warder of the house, and persons who devote a whole year to study without any profit, are all to be considered as Sudras. And those who impudently partake of food offered at ceremonials in a Sudra's house are afflicted with a terrible calamity. ”

“ The sudra is the servant of the race of men; he has no rights that others need respect; he may not hear the Vedas read, and it means death to him to look into the face of priest, or king, and naught but death can free him from his state of servitude. ”

“ All the men wear the kilt of the South Seas, the sulu, ridi, or lava-lava, and as often as not a tunic besides. Nearly all the women are clothed in “pinafore” dresses, infinitely graceful and becoming. Men and women alike adorn themselves with flowers, wreaths of flowers in their hair, flowers interwoven in their sulu’s, [Pg 50] garlands of flowers around the neck, in addition to countless strings of shells and beads.
That they loved Tusitala with a deep and lasting affection is undoubted, and if proof were needed this touching little story may be taken as but one of many evidences. ”

“ When we leave the higher circles of the twice-born, the difficulty of finding a uniform basis of classification becomes apparent. The ancient designation Sudra finds no great favour in modern times, and we can point to no group that is generally recognized as representing it. The term is used in Bombay, Madras and Bengal to denote a considerable number of castes of moderate respectability, the higher of whom are considered ‘clean’ Sudras, while the precise status of the lower is a question which lends itself to endless controversy. ”

“ Sugura, perceiving that his sons had been absent a long time, thus addressed his grandson, illustrious by his own might: Thou art a hero, possessed of science, in prowess equal to thy predecessors. Search out the fate of thy paternal relatives, and the person by whom the horse was stolen, that we may avenge ourselves on these subterraneous beings, powerful and great. ”

“ Balthilda.
Beloved, doest thou justly?
Teja (surprised) .
Nay! (He sets the throne up again, leads her to her former place, and places her head against the seat.) There indeed thou art well seated--yea!... And we trespass not against this trash. If the Bishop had seen that--he, ha, ha, ha! Wait, I will eat again!
Balthilda.
There, take!
Teja.
Still--remain quite still! I shall fetch it for myself. (He kneels upon the podium beside her.) Now I am quite upon my knees before thee.... What is there that we do not learn!... Thou art beautiful!... I never knew my mother! ”

“ If in this garden—this conservatory of Nature, where all her choicest luxuries are assembled—there is one spot more favoured than all the rest, it is “Cashmere,” the beautiful seat of Clement Sutherland.
The brothers Sutherland emigrated from the old dominion, and settled on the Pearl river, in those palmy days of cotton-planting, when every planter seemed a very Midas, turning all he touched to gold, and when the foundations were laid of some of the present enormous southern fortunes. It was no love for the land of sun that brought the Sutherlands there. ”

“ A little to the left is Sudbury, which stands upon the River Stour, mentioned above—a river which parts the counties of Suffolk and Essex, and which is within these few years made navigable to this town, though the navigation does not, it seems, answer the charge, at least not to advantage.
I know nothing for which this town is remarkable, except for being very populous and very poor. They have a great manufacture of says and perpetuanas, and multitudes of poor people are employed in working them; but the number of the poor is almost ready to eat up the rich. ”

“ Menezes dispatched the homeward trade from Cochin, and sent other ships to various parts of India, some of which went to Sumatra.
The island of Sumatra extends in length from the north-west to the south-east, for about 220 leagues, by 70 in its greatest breadth, and is cut nearly in two equal parts by the equinoctial line. It is separated from Malacca by a narrow strait, and its most southern point is parted from Java by one still narrower. Java is above 100 leagues long by twelve in breadth. ”

“ Then shall they take wives and children into the midst of them, and, head high, with naked swords, descend straight through the Byzantian camp toward Naples, to buy a piece of bread. And I tell ye, with such fear shall they be gazed at, that not even once shall a dog of the Huns dare to bark at them.
Teja.
Wife and child! Wife and child! What have we to do with them? Athanaric. King, thou revilest the dearest of our possessions.
Teja.
Maybe!--I know only that there were too many mouths in the morning when the rations were divided. Otherwise we might have been able to support ourselves. ”

“ A few moments later he was standing before his beloved poster regarding his heart's desire with a sense of peculiar proprietorship. After a little he sat down on the grass; and while Sport, his old spotted dog, lay at his feet lazily digging at one ear with a rheumatic hind-foot, Sube drew from his pocket and read aloud in a halting monotone certain portions of the fortieth chapter of the Book of Job, often pausing between verses to verify the observations of the Patient Prophet by comparison with the portrait taken from life. ”

“ Then there are places where the grassy hillocks stand up so high that they hide the town altogether, and we seem to be looking out upon the broad vista of the valley from an isolated peak. At all times it is beautiful; but choose a stormy day in springtime, when the clouds are driving upwards from the plain only lately covered with mist, and the nearer hills are dark their cities catching the late evening sunshine as it breaks through the storm, while wind-swept Subasio looks bleak in the white light showing here and there patches of palest green. ”