CHAPTER V.

THE MESSENGER.

FAREBWALA had gone, though but for a time. It was morning; Bandhu had bathed, and holding water in his hands had offered it to the sun. He had then resumed his upper garments, which were of a very shabby description, for Farebwala spent very little of the boy's own money upon him. Bandhu stretched himself on the ground, listening to the songs of some wild young companions near, songs which I could not write down without blotting my pages. The janeo was to the weak-minded Bandhu what a new toy is to a child; he was perpetually feeling for the end of the string to be sure that he actually wore it.

Presently the songs ceased, and a voice from another quarter, exquisitely sweet, began to recite the following verses of the renowned Goru Nanak:—

"Kindness, the cotton; Contentment, the thread; Truth, the twist,—this be the sacred cord of the creature; thou O Pandit! put it on. This does not break, nor doth filth stick to it, nor is it burnt, nor does it go off. Blessed is that man, O Nanak, who departs, having put this on his neck."

Bandhu turned his head to see who was the reciter of the verses, and beheld a fair youth, simply dressed, but in pure white garments, and with a face most pleasant to look on, for kindness and love were written upon it.

"Who are you? Your countenance is new to me," said Bandhu to the stranger.

"My name is Prem Chand, and I am a messenger from the king," was the reply.

The words drew around the young stranger Bandhu's companions.

One of them exclaimed, "You a messenger from the king! Where are your credentials?"

"I have such credentials to show," replied Prem Chand, "as will infallibly prove me to be a messenger from the lord of a thousand realms." He took a roll from his bosom, but not one of his hearers could read.

"Wherefore come you?" asked Bandhu.

"I come on your account," was the reply; "if you be, as I suppose, Bandhu, he whom my sovereign saved from destruction, he for whose welfare the king has so tenderly cared."

"My name is Bandhu, and I know that there is a king," said he of the janeo, "but as for his saving or caring for me, of that I know nothing at all. I am an attendant of the great Farebwala, and what I require he provides."

An expression first of indignation, then of deep sadness, passed over the face of Prem Chand. He could not speak quite so freely as he would otherwise have done, because of Bandhu's companions, who continued to throng around, some from curiosity, some to find some theme for mocking.

"My lord the king hath sent me to call you to himself," said the messenger gently; "he offers to his adopted son a welcome and a home."

Farebwala had so poisoned the mind of the wretched Bandhu, that he regarded his royal benefactor with some fear, but nothing like love. The lad had not the slightest wish to appear before the king, and with some impatience, he exclaimed, "Even were your message true, which I do not believe, I could not possibly go to the court now, as I start on a pilgrimage to a holy place to-morrow."

"Yes," cried his companions together, "Bandhu is going on holy pilgrimage."

"About as holy as the songs which you were singing just now," observed Prem Chand.

"What! See you no merit in pilgrimage!" exclaimed Bandhu, with mingled surprise and displeasure. "You will next say that there is no merit in bathing in holy rivers, or in the austerities of the Jogi." *

Prem Chand replied in the words of the sage Kabir—

"If by wandering about naked union † be obtained, Then every deer of the forest will become emancipated. If by shaving the head perfection is obtained, The sheep is emancipated, no one is lost. Who perform ablution in the evening, and at dawn They become like frogs in the water."

* Men who, to acquire fancied merit, put themselves to various tortures; some holding up an arm till it withers, or clenching a hand till its nails grow into the flesh.

† Union—that is absorption into the Divine nature, which leaves no individual sense of existence. "When by thousands of meritorious acts through a great many successive births, a man becomes perfectly holy, he becomes one with the Supreme Being, just as a drop becomes one with the ocean by falling into it."—Rev. Ishuree Dás's "Domestic Manners and Customs."

The young men around burst out laughing; Bandhu looking perplexed. His mind, drugged with superstition, was too dull to take in at once the wit of the ancient poet of Hindustan. But a Brahmin had approached the spot whilst Prem Chand was speaking, and had listened with a countenance darkened by anger. This was the same Brahmin as he who had pretended to find out by divination that Bandhu was a Chhatri; while the real truth was that the boy's father was a herdsman, and that the string which his fancy had turned into a janeo, was in fact only one used for tying up goats. The wise Brahmin knew nothing of this, and merely said, for the sake of a few rupees, what Farebwala told him to say. For the bribe of a hundred rupees, he would have declared the herdsman's child to be the son of a rajah.

"Who are you, O ass, and son of an ass, who would pour contempt on holy devotees!" cried the angry Brahmin.

The youths around, easily moved to mirth or to mockery—as the chaff is whirled round by a light puff of wind—joined in the insulting Cry, "O ass, and son of an ass!"

Prem Chand kept his temper, and waited till the noise had sunk into silence, before he made reply to the Brahmin.

"I came for a day's hospitality, I came with a message from the king," he began.

But the Brahmin cut him short with the words, "We want neither you nor your message! The jackal who sneaks into the camp, finds there nothing to eat, but blows. Go to him who sent you, and come near us no more!"

"Go back to him who sent you!" echoed the youths; and one of them, picking up a handful of dust, threw it over the messenger's pure white garments.

"Is this your treatment of strangers who seek your hospitality?" said Prem Chand. "Is it not written in the Rájneet, 'Even towards an enemy going to our house the offices of hospitality must be exercised, as the tree impedes not even the woodcutter who stands under its shade.'"

The mild manner in which insult had been borne, and the graceful proverb so aptly quoted, were not without some effect. Prem Chand was suffered to retire without further molestation. The hospitality denied to him by Bandhu and his companions, the king's messenger found in the tent of a poor shepherd.

Prem Chand, though baffled in his first attempt to deliver his message, had by no means lost hope.

"I must not go to Bandhu when he is surrounded by his gay associates," said Prem Chand to himself, "nor when that old Brahmin is near. I will return in a few hours, in the heat of the day, when he may be resting alone. I have that to tell Bandhu which must stir his heart, if any heart beat in his bosom. From his shabby appearance, I can see that he has been cruelly cheated, and from his conversation I learn that he has been grossly deceived. Bandhu has doubtless been kept ignorant in order that he may safely be robbed. Any labour I shall count light, any insult I shall readily bear, if I can but rescue this poor victim from Farebwala, and bring him in safety to his merciful king."

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