Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

In a few minutes the lights were extinguished, the wolfish-faced crowd had melted away, and Durga Pershad found himself alone. He stumbled out of the shrine, and by the cold, keen starlight descried the edge of a large tank, which was surrounded by temples. He had never visited the place of his own free will, but he recognized it from description as undoubtedly the most holy Gola, where two hundred thousand pilgrims flocked to worship once a year.

At daybreak he made his way to the bazaar, and there sold a silver chain,--for he had no money. It might be imagination, but he believed that people looked upon him with suspicious eyes. Three days later, he was at home once more. He told no one that he had been kidnapped--no, not even his mother or his wife.

By the end of a month, Durga Pershad had become an altered man. He looked wofully lean and haggard, he scarcely ate, slept, or smoked, and appeared dreadfully depressed. He now cared nought for taxes, rents, or crops, and complained of a strange numbness in his limbs. Much to the surprise of his household, he undertook a pilgrimage to Hurdwar, the source of the Ganges (some one had suggested most holy Gola--some one ignorant of Durga’s enforced expedition). He had barely returned from Hurdwar when, as if possessed by a fever of piety, he set forth for Badrinath, in the Himalayas. After that long and arduous journey, he passed rapidly down to Benares. From thence, concluding an absence of four months, he returned finally to Haru, and shut himself up within his own courtyard and in his own house, refusing to see even his nearest of kin. And now it began to be whispered about from ear to ear that Durga Pershad, the son of Govindoo Pershad, was smitten with the kôrh--or black leprosy.

Yes, the grasp of that terrible disease was upon him. His features altered, thickened, and took the fatal and unmistakable leonine look. In a surprisingly short time he had lost the fingers of both hands. To show himself abroad would simply be to proclaim his guilt, and the judgment of Mahadeo--whose wrath he had invoked. For weeks and weeks he successfully evaded his enemies, fortified within his own house, and protected by his wife and mother, whose shrill tongues garrisoned it effectually.

When it became known that the hours of Durga Pershad were numbered, a body of the elders, led by the village priest, came and sternly demanded an entrance. They would take _no_ denial. After frantic clamour and frenzied resistance, they gained admittance--admittance to the very presence of the leper, who lay in a darkened room, huddled up on a string bed.

“Behold,” cried the priest in a sonorous voice, “the finger of Mahadeo, and the punishment of the slayer of a child! Speak, ere your tongue rot away, and declare unto us what befell the boy at thy hands, O Durga Pershad, leper!”

“Begone!” screamed his wife. “Depart, devil, born with the evil eye, come to mock at the afflicted of the gods!”

“When he hath spoken, we will go our ways,” answered a solemn voice; “but otherwise, we remain until the end.”

Durga Pershad raised himself laboriously on his charpoy; his head was muffled up in a brown blanket, he was nearly blind, and cried aloud, in a shrill, piercing falsetto--

“Yea, here is the answer--the god’s answer”--and he thrust out a leprous arm--“I did it.”

“How? Hasten to speak, O vile one!”

“I long desired his life,” he panted. “He came with me to the river-bank of his own accord, for I had promised him a rare spectacle. My heart was hot within me--yea, as a red-hot horse-shoe. Even as he clamoured for my promise, I flung him to the alligators. It was over in a minute--but--I hear his scream now!”

Then Durga Pershad covered his face, and lo! as he turned to the wall, he died.

TWO LITTLE TRAVELLERS.