Читать книгу Tara: A Mahratta Tale - Taylor Meadows - Страница 16

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A thick heavy rain was falling, which had lasted nearly all day without intermission, and the afternoon was now advanced. The sky was one uniform tint of dark grey, in which, near the horizon, some yellowish, lurid colour occasionally appeared. Dark masses of cloud came up slowly from the south-west at times, causing a deeper gloom as they passed overhead, accompanied by bursts of rain, which sometimes fell in sheets, deluging the ground, and dashing up muddy spray from the soft earth. The air was stifling; and there was a strong sulphurous smell with the rain, which increased the disagreeable effect of the close, hot atmosphere. Sometimes a gentle breeze, hardly sufficient to give the rain a slanting direction, arose, and felt refreshing; but as the heavy clouds passed, it died away, and the rain fell perpendicularly again, with a constant monotonous plash, which, coming from a wide plain, sounded like a dull roar.

Little could be seen of the plain itself; for not only was the rain too thick to allow of any distance to appear definitely, but there was a steamy mist rising from the previously heated earth, which increased the already existing dimness and gloom. Sometimes a few trees in the vicinity, which appeared tall and ghostly in the grey light and thick air, stood out more in detail as the rain slackened for a while, and seemed to give promise of breaking; and on these occasions two villages became dimly visible; one of them nearly a mile distant, the other perhaps half a mile farther, situated to the right and left of what, in dry weather, was a well-beaten road-track, but which could only now be known as such, by being bare of grass, and by the slightly raised banks, covered here and there by low bushes, which bounded it.

The place we are about to describe occupied the summit of a small eminence, below which, in a valley watered by a rivulet, was a village surrounded by tall crops of grain, now coming into ear, mingled with fields of cotton, as yet very low, and pulse, and other cereals, generally about waist-high. This difference in the height of the crops left the valley comparatively open; and the road-track could be followed by the eye, whenever the mist and rain cleared a little—through the fields to the gate of the first village, before which there was an open piece of ground, past a small Hindu temple surrounded with trees, and up a slight ascent beyond, to a plain, along which it continued, till it disappeared among the tall jowaree fields and other cultivation of the next village. These two villages were called the greater and less Kinny.

The valley, or hollow, was little more than a descent in the undulation of the country; but, when the rain fell heavily at the nearer village, so as almost to conceal it, the effect from the eminence we describe was, as though it were actually deep and broad; and then also the farther village, with its trees, appeared distant, and sometimes was not visible at all. Thus alternating, as sometimes plainly in view, and at others not to be seen, these villages appeared to be objects of deep interest to three men, who occupied the spot we have just mentioned. Occasionally, and as the rain cleared a little, one or other of them would proceed to the top of a heap of stones near at hand, and look anxiously along the line of road, past the fields and the open space before the gate of the first Kinny, up the ascent beyond, and over the plain to the second; and there were moments when a man on horseback might easily have been descried even at the further village, certainly at the second, or between them, had such a person been upon the road; but no one appeared.

The spot was remarkable as the highest point for a long distance either way upon the road-track; and indeed, had the day been clear, a large extent of country could have been seen from it in all directions. Now, however, the view was very limited; and on the opposite sides from the two villages nothing could be seen but a plain, thinly covered with grass and bushes, and strewn thickly with black stones, which, uncultivated as it was for miles, looked doubly desolate through the misty air, being partially covered with pools of water of a yellowish brown colour, the result of the present rain. Over this plain, three roads or paths diverged from the place the men occupied. The main track, which had the appearance of being somewhat beaten, was broader than the others, and led westward to the town of Allund, about six miles distant—the others to villages from two to four miles to the south and west.

The plain was, as we have said, very stony, and at the place we allude to, the heap of stones had been formed gradually by travellers who, coming from all sides, took up one from the path, and threw it, with a prayer to the local divinity, upon the pile. This had been done, no doubt, for centuries; still the stones upon the path appeared as thick as ever, and sorely impeded and harassed all travellers, whether on foot or horseback.

Over this heap of stones grew a large banian, and close to it several scraggy neem trees; a peepul, too, had once existed, but was dead. Part of the trunk and one large branch remained standing, white and dry, and a portion of another lay on the ground, from which chips of firewood had been cut from time to time. It looked as if it had been struck with lightning, which, indeed, was not improbable, as several branches of the banian were scathed and riven, probably from the same cause. Of all these trees, however, the banian or "burr," as it is called in the language of the country, was most remarkable.

Not possessed of the luxuriant foliage common to this tree in other places, probably because the soil was too poor and rocky, its huge gnarled boughs were bare of small branches and leaves; some were naked and actually withered, others apparently so, and all stretched their white gaunt arms into the sky, with a wild and ghastly effect against the leaden grey of the clouds. In process of the centuries of its existence, several boughs had become detached from the parent trunk, and were upheld by stems which had once been pendant roots, and had struck into the ground. These portions, if anything more bare, and more gnarled and twisted than the parent tree, rose loftily into the air, and with the same effect we have already noticed.

The larger boughs and stems were full of holes, which sheltered a numerous colony of small grey tree owls, whose bright yellow eyes stared from behind large boughs, and out of crevices in the trunks, or from among the ornaments of the roof of the temple below; while they kept up a perpetual twittering, as if they conversed together, which indeed perhaps they did. On hot bright days lizards, large and small, crept out of crevices and basked in the sun; and among them a family of huge black ones, with bright eyes and scarlet throats, which they inflated as they appeared to swell with importance. Shepherd boys believed these to be evil spirits, and if they were brave, pelted them with stones, or if otherwise ran off, as one of them issued forth and looked about curiously.

Some large holes, too, near the top of the tree, contained great horned owls, which, if attracted by any noise, sat, with stupidly-grave aspect and wide saucer-eyes, looking down upon the road—the tufts of feathers over their ears alternately erected and depressed—till they flew out with a loud hoot to look for some more undisturbed retreat. These owls, great and small, with the lizards, had the tree, for the most part, to themselves. Probably there was not enough foliage to tempt other birds to rest there; for except an occasional wandering flock of chattering parroquets, mynas, or green pigeons, none frequented it by day. By night, however, it was otherwise: for it was then the roosting-place of the vultures, eagles, and other carrion birds of the district, with whom the owls did not apparently interfere.

At the back, partly behind the parent tree and the heap of stones, was a small and evidently ancient Hindu temple, consisting of one chamber and a porch. The chamber was not much larger than sufficed to contain the image, and allow a priest to officiate before it in case of necessity, and was too low to admit of a man's standing upright. The porch, which was supported in front by two roughly-hewn stone pillars, was somewhat larger; and the three men we have mentioned, were enabled to sit in it comfortably, protected from the rain. The doorway was narrow and low, and the inside of the chamber was dark; but a small Phallic emblem could be seen within set upon a low altar, and a rudely-sculptured stone bull, in a sitting posture, had originally been placed before the porch facing the image. The temple, image, and bull showed that the grove had been originally dedicated to Siva, or Mahadeo, in the form of that ancient "pillar and calf" worship so fatal to the Israelites of old, and which for them possessed so strange a fascination.

The temple was deserted, and, except on the annual festival of the god, when some priest from a neighbouring village swept out the chamber, brought a light to burn before the image, poured the usual libations, and hung a few garlands of jessamine and marigold flowers over it, no one ever came with intent to worship, and the place was utterly neglected. Last year's garlands were now but dry brown leaves hanging to a cotton thread; the chamber was dirty, and strewn with dead leaves; the stone bull in front was overthrown, and lying on its side, and even in bright sunshine the place presented a melancholy, deserted appearance. Sometimes, in the heat of the day, village lads, in charge of goats and cattle, would meet there, but only in lack of other shelter from the sun; for indeed the spot had an evil reputation, and not without reason.

It is not surprising that it was believed to be the resort of malignant spirits which love to dwell in such places, and of tricksy and mischievous sprites which inhabited the large holes in the old trunks, sharing them with the owls and lizards that lived there: vexed travellers' horses, causing them to cast shoes in the stones, or led wayfarers astray, especially at night, among the many paths over the stony plain—or bewitched cows and buffaloes, and dried up their milk. So, ofttimes, shepherds came with flowers, and poured libations of milk and curds, after a rude fashion, over a few large stones which lay among the gnarled roots of the great tree, and had been placed there as devoted to the local divinities—Fauns and Dryads—and therefore held in rude reverence; and these, on such occasions, were smeared with red or black powder in a kind of deprecatory worship.

It was not for these reasons alone that the place was dreaded; it had, from other causes, even a worse reputation. It was notorious as the place of meeting for most of the gang robberies in the country; for assemblies of parties of highway robbers, and the distribution of stolen property. Watchmen on village towers at night, sometimes saw fires twinkling about the temple, and well knew the cause of them; and shepherd boys next day found rude clay crucibles and extinguished charcoal fires in one place where the trunk was hollow at the root of the tree, and thus knew that gold and silver had been melted there at night.

Murder, too, had been done there. On one occasion, not very long ago, several fresh corpses had been found in the old well barely concealed by leaves and bushes; and, more recently, a body found lying on the road had been dragged from the line of one village boundary to another—for several boundaries of village lands diverged from that spot—to escape the king's fine, till it was eaten by vultures and hyenas, and the bones lay and bleached under the great tree for many a day, to the terror of all wayfarers. In short, the place was thus esteemed evil for many reasons; and whether villagers or travellers came past it by any of the roads over the plain, or from the two Kinnys, alone or in company, they hurried past the temple, breathing a spell or prayer against the ghosts and spirits which dwelt in it, and heartily wishing themselves safe beyond its precincts.