Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1891-01-02
BEYOND THE PALE.

co his own caste, race and breed. Let the
white go to the white and the black to the
black. Then, whatever trouble falls is in
! the ordinary course OF things neither
sudden, alien nor unexpected.
This is the story of a man who willfully
| stepped beyond the safe limits of decent
| every day society, and paid for it heavily.
He knew too much in the first instance,
and he saw too much in the second. He
took too deep an interest in native life, but
he will never do SO again.
| Deep away in the heart of the city, be-
| hind Jitha Megji's bustee, lies Amir Mathis
| gully, which ends in dead wall pierced
| by one grated window. At the head of the
| gully is a big cowbyre, and the walls on
either side of the gully are without win
| dows. Neither Suchet Singh nor Gaur
| Chand approve of their women folk look
| ing into the world. If Durga Charan had
been of their opinion he would have been
happier man today, and little Bisesa
would have been able to knead her own
i bread Her room looked out through the
| grated window into the narrow. dark
gully, where the sun never came and where
the bmfaloes wallowed in the blue slime.
She was widow, about 15 years old, and
| she prayed the gods day and night to send
| her lover, for she did not approve of iv-
| ing alone.
| One day the man-Trejago his name was
came into Amir Mathis gully on an aim
! less wandering, and after he had passed
the buffaloes stumbled over big heap of
cattle food
Them he saw that the gully ended in a
trap, ard heard little laugh from behind
the grated window. 1t was pretty little
laugh, and Trejago knaawing that, for all
practical purposes, the old AraUisslT Nights
are good guides, went forward to the win
dow and whispered that verse of s'The
Love Song of Har Dyal'' which begins:
Can stand upright in the face of the
naked sun, or a lover in the presence of his be-
loved?
Ii my feet fail me- O heart of my heart, am I to
blame being blinded by the glimpse of your
beauty?
There came the faint tchinks Of 81 wonl-
ans bracelets from behind the grating, and
a little voice went on with the song at the
fifth verse:
| Alas alas! can the moon tell the Lotus of her
love when the gate of heaven is shut and the
clouds gather for the rains?
They have taken my beloved, and driven her
with the pack horses to the north.
There are iron chains on the feet that were set
on my heart.
Call to the bowmen to make ready
The voice stopped suddenly, and Trejago
walked out of Amir Mathis gully wonder
ing who in the world could have capped
''The Love Song of Har Dyal" SO neatly.
Next morning as he was driving to Office
an old woman threw packet into his dog
| cart. In the packet was the half of a
! broken glass bangle one flower of the blood
red dhak, pinch of bhusa or cattle food
| and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a
! letter-not clumsy, compromising letter,
but an innocent, unintelligible lovers
| epistle.
| things, as | have said. No English man
should be able to translate object letters.
! But Trejago spread all the trihes on the
| lid of his Office box and began to puzzle
| them out.
| A broken glass bangle stands for Hin
| doc widow all India over; because, when
| her husband dies, a woman's bracelets are
broken on her wrists. Trejago saw the
meaning of the little bit of the glass. The
flower of the dhak means diversely "de
SIRE" ''come," "write,' or danger" ac-
cording to the other things with it. One
cardamon means jealousy" but when
any article is duplicated in an object letter
it loses it's symbolic meaning and stands
merely for one of a number indicating
time, or, if incense, curds, or if saffron be
sent also, place. The message ran then:
"a widow-dhak flower and bhusa-at Il
O'clock The pinch of bhusa enlightened
Trejago. He saw-this kind Of letter
leaves much to instructive knowledge
that the bhusa referred to the big heap OF
cattle food over which he had fallen i
Amir Mathis gully, and that the message
must come from the person behind the
grating, she being d widow. So the mes
sage ran then, "a widow, in the gully in
which is the heap of bhusa, desires you to
come at II o'clock"
Trejago threw all the rubbish into the
| fireplace and laughed He knew that the
| men in the east do not make love under
| windows at II in the forenoon, nor do
women fix appointments week in adj
| vance. So he went that very night at II
into Amir Mathis gully clad in a boorl1a,
which cloaks a man as well as a woman
Directly the gongs in the city made the
hour the little voice behind the grating
took up ''The Love Song of Har Dyar' at
the verse where the Panthan girl calls
upon Har Dyal to return. The song is
really pretty in the vernacular. In English
you miss the wall OF it. 1t runs something
like this:
| Alone upon the housetops to the north
| turn and watch the lightning in the sky;
| The glamor Of thy footsteps in the NORTH
| Come back TO me, beloved, or die.
| Below my feet the still bazaar is laid,
Far, far below the weary camels lie,
The canels and the captves Of Thy raid;
Come back TO me- beloved, or | die!
My fathers wife is Old and harsh with years
And drudge of all my fathers house am +;
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears,
Come back 10 me- beloved, or die
As the song stopped Trejago stepped up
under the grating and whispered: - am
! here"
Bisesa was good to look upon.
That night was the beginning of many
strange things, and OF a double life so wild
that Trejago today sometimes wonders if
it were not all u dream. Bisesa or her old
handmaiden, who had thrown the object
letter, had detached the heavy grating from
the brick work of the wall; so that the
window slid inside, leaving only a square
of raw masonry into which an active man
might climb
In the daytime Treiago drove through
his routine of office work, or put on his
calling clothes and called on the ladies of
the station; wondering how long they
would know him if they knew of poor little
Bisesa. At night, when all the city was
sulll, came the walk under the evil smell
ing boorka, the patrol through Jitha
A