Island-India

[p. 3]

The Three Women in the Sacred Grove

IF the country-folk around Sangean hold in reverence the wood upon the steep hillside and believe it to be the haunt of nymphs and good genii, it is for the sake of the God-fearing prince who, many centuries agone, lived there a hermit, and whose tomb, as tradition has it, is the moss-grown mound on the skirt of the wood, between a clear well and a white-flowering kambodja thicket that strews the mound with its lustrous and fragrant chalices. The verses which the dalang, the poet-musician of Sangean, sings about him of an evening when many listeners are gathered about the flickering oil wick that illumines the manuscript - the children on the sleeping-mat in the dark corner stay awake to listen, the tale is so beautiful - say that he was a mild and gracious king over the many nations which his armies had subjected to his rule, and that from early youth upward he willed well and did well toward as many as approached him. But when he had reached the noon-height of his sun-like life, he forsook wealth, rule, and glory, and chose a hermit's life, for the sake of perfection. For well he knew, this man of most noble understanding, that the truth concerning the soul and the world and very virtue is not attainable by the man who is a lord over other men, and who never, as fellow-in-work and fellow-in-joy and fellow-in-sorrow of those whom yet God created his fellows, may build heart to heart together with them at the ever fairer edifice of the world.

When, therefore, he had given his last counsels to his son, and had laid his son's son, whom the women brought to him, back again on the breast of the palely smiling mother, blessing him, he said, ‘Fare ye well!’ to his faithful vassals, his victorious captains, and his well-tried counsellors, and left his splendid palace, followed of none, woman nor servant; for in the utmost shadow of the gate he, with an inexorable gentleness, had put aside the weeping ones who embraced his feet and pressed against their foreheads the hem of his poor garment. A little rice and salt, which he begged at the gate of a village, and water,

[p. 4]

dipped up out of a brook in the halved shell of a cocoanut, were fare enough for him on the journey to the hill-wood of Sangean, where a dream had shown him as his abode the spot between a kambodja thicket and a clear well.

Here he built himself a hut of branches and woven leaves. The fruit of the forest was his food, the water of the well his drink, thinking upon mankind and the world his life. He considered the many experiences of his life, the teachings of the wise, the songs of the poets, and words heard from children at play and from women who thought themselves unwatched. And whatsoever he perceived in the forest, by night or by day, the budding and the flourishing and the fading of the leafage, the blooming in the morning dew of blossoms, and the ripening of fruit and its wondrous perishing unto a new existence, and the life of the many animals, the strong ones and the timid, upon the ground, and in the branches the merry birds - all this too he considered well; and, that he might understand the law of their movements, he observed the powers that encompass and rule the earth and all lives thereon, the sky and the sun, the stars, the clouds, the rain, and the wind. As the shuttle which an able weaver throws forward and backward through the tense threads of her loom - threads it was, silk it grows to be - even so his thought moved forward and backward through things seen and remembered - things it was, wisdom it grew to be. The rumour went through all the land: ‘The great King lives as a hermit in the wood of Sangean!’

Then the many came to him who had not dared to approach him in the days of his power and glory. They begged wisdom of him - knowledge concerning what is good and concerning the right way of living. And he gave to every one according to his need and to the measure of his understanding. There came no one so darkened in thought, so sore with hatred, so wearied by manifold erring, but he went back walking lightly, his eyes ashine, and his hands longing to caress and to give; pure and mild as the water of the well he felt his heart within him. And thus, for many months and for many years, many hundreds and many thousands came sad and went away rejoicing, until, one morning before sunrise, first comers found not the hermit, but only his body, pale and transparently thin as a fallen petal.

All the people digged his grave and built his mound, every one desir-

[p. 5]

ing for himself, no one grudging any one else, the pious honour of doing an only and last service to him who had served all by his wisdom and gentle virtue. As they laid him to rest they remembered and repeated his words, remembered the grace and pleasantness that had come thereof, peace of heart in sorrow as in gladness, and sweet security of fraternal life in labour as in pleasure; so that enemies forgot the evil they had planned to do unto each other, and mighty ones promised redress to the poor man they had oppressed, and such as sorrowed over an unforgettable loss felt a new strength arise in their hearts and were lonely no longer.

Then it seemed to them that the well-beloved one had not altogether departed. Some rays of his soul's light still shone on the spot of his dwelling and of his long rest. Henceforth, even as hitherto, whosoever came in longing won his blessing, and his grave was sought by pilgrims as for many years his cell had been.

So it is even at this present day. Longing ones come, each with his own longing, for great and permanent things the one, for small things the other. The shepherd boy who rears a singing-dove for the match - secretly, for his father frowns when he sees the child standing head on one side, listening to the cooing from a cage hung up in a tree, and all his thoughts thoughts about doves, whilst the buffalo wanders unheeded into the sprouting field - the shepherd boy hides his dove in the kambodja thicket near the grave, to the end that the virtue of the holy place may impart to her voice the true high ring which takes the prize at the match. The merchant about to undertake a perilous voyage over sea lays his offering upon the grave. Women go thither to pray for a child. And many are the tales and experiences of good fortune fallen to them who invoked the memory of the bountiful king.

Therefore Mboq-Inten of Djalang Tiga nowise doubted that the dream spelled truth which showed her her daughter Inten, who had died in child-birth, seated at the grave in the Sacred Grove, smiling and crowned with flowers like a bride.

And all men and women of Soombertingghi said this about poor Sameerah - Sameerah who in her happy days was so much like Inten (the Jewel, as her name rightly declared her to be) that even old friends greeted one girl with the other's name - if Sameerah had been allowed to perform a pilgrimage to the tomb, as she so fervently de-

[p. 6]

sired to do, then, of a surety, she would have become a mother, and the shame of sterility and the sorrow of her heart would never have addled her poor wits.

The young wife of the Resident of Sangean, Elizabeth of the fair face which would bend over in so sisterly a way toward dusky faces, loved to listen to the many tales about the miraculous tomb of the King who, for fraternity's sake, became a beggar. But when a woman whose child she had cured of a heavy sickness told her of poor Sameerah's longing and sorrow, and of Mboq-Inten's constant hope, she looked up with a new light in her eyes. And after that day her husband often found her alone and silent, deep in thought.

When the wise woman who had driven life, together with the child, out of Inten's tortured body, laid the new-born babe upon Mboq-Inten's lap, she never looked at her grandchild. She never took her eyes off that closed face and that passive body, still at last from weeping and writhing. The women who folded the white grave-cloth around the dead one had to loosen the chilled hand out of the mother's clasp. She sat stunned when the babe's father called together kinsmen and neighbours for the choosing of the name, and did not even look up when a young friend of Inten, who had just become a mother herself, laid little Kaïran to her breast, and took him away to her home, to nurse him together with her own child.

But then the dream came. Crowned with flowers like a bride, and her long tresses that flowed over her shoulders and her knees so profusely interwoven with flowers that she seemed to be clothed in blossoms, Inten was seated at the grave, and she herself, holding little Kaïran by the hand, was hastening toward her, crying: ‘O my child, art thou then at last come back?’

Mboq-Inten woke up with that cry of joy. She ran to Kaïran's foster-mother. The kind-hearted young wife was suckling him; he drank eagerly. Jealously she looked on. Would she had been able to do it herself, would she could have fed Inten's child with her own life! With a passionate tenderness she stroked the soft little body. ‘Ah! how I will

[p. 7]

take care of him! How I will feed him and foster him, that he may grow up tall and handsome, that thou mayest rejoice when thou seest him again, my jewel!’

She could hardly await the day for the fetching him home. She would sit with the child in her lap, feeding him with rice and banana kneaded together into sweetly nourishing mouthfuls. All day long she carried the little one about with her, lying in her carefully arranged slendang as in a hanging cradle. He slept by her side on the bale-bale, which she had spread with a new sleeping mat. The first thing she saw on awaking at dawn was the little round downy-black head; the eyes lay closed, the long lashes on the cheeks like two delicately striped streaks of shadow. The mouth was a little open, the tiny white teeth showing. Mboq-Inten raised herself on her elbow to gaze at him for a long while. She let her eyes have their fill of him. And still, when looking thus upon Inten's child, she would think of the days when she had looked in this same way upon Inten.

Paq-Inten had marked the grave with two ornamental wooden posts finely carved and sculptured, at head and foot, that Mboq-Inten might find it when, on the many Days of Remembrance that mothers hallow, she would bring to Inten's grave the sacrifice of food by which souls are sustained in the Land of Shadows. Mboq-Inten, however, observed such days only as are strictly prescribed by the Adat, the Law of Ancient Custom; and after a while she altogether ceased visiting the grave. But to the Sacred Grove she would go again and again; and as she laid the wreath of jessamine on the tomb and strewed handfuls of rose leaves over the moss, she would whisper, her eyes full of tears: ‘Do not stay away for too long a time, child of my heart! Come back soon, ah! soon! to thy dear mother!’ Kaïran was far too little a child as yet to understand; but all the same she put flowers into his small hands sometimes and made him lay them on the tomb, and then she would say that this was to make his mother come back the sooner, and that when she came she would bring him whatever he wanted or could think of for a present. Paq-Kaïran did not busy himself much with his child. And he never spoke of Inten. He went in and out of his parents-in-law's house and the chamber where he had lived together with Inten, as if everything within were still as it had always been. Mboq-Inten thought that this was because he, like herself, was waiting for Inten's return,

[p. 8]

though he would neither hear nor speak of it, and though his face would darken when she said to little Kaïran: ‘When Mother comes back -!’

But one morning he went out of the house as if he were going to the passar at Sangean, to look on and lay wagers at the cock-fight, and did not come back at night, nor next morning. It became time to plough the sawah - but he did not come home. And Paq-Inten, sighing and shaking his head, took to the pawn-house gear that he could not well dispense with, in order to get money to hire a helper in his son-in-law's stead. Some weeks after, a villager who had made the journey from Sumatra with the pilgrims' ship came and told Paq-Inten and Mboq-Inten how he had seen Paq-Kaïran in Medan. He was earning a good deal of money on a tobacco estate; and he had married a Battak woman out there.

Mboq-Inten cried shame upon him. The old man only sighed and said that it was too bad. What was to become of the field-work now, and the day's wages growing higher and higher and his limbs growing stiffer and stiffer? He kept on lamenting long after Mboq-Inten had put away all thought of the man who had abandoned her daughter; there were many men far better than he in Java! Inten would have a husband for the choosing, when she came back! But the loss which Paq-Inten was for ever bemoaning must be made good again; Inten should not return to a beggared home!

And the mother took up again the delicate work which, a few years agone, she had left to her daughter's younger eyes and suppler fingers, but which formerly she had done surpassingly well herself: the batikking of sarongs and head-kerchiefs and slendangs. The Chinaman in town - how sharply he used to look at the work through his large horn-rimmed spectacles! - always gave more for hers than for that of any of the other women. She feared, it is true, that she should no longer be able to do it so well. But with the thought of Inten in her heart she did her utmost.

Her batikking-frame stood under the eaves, there where the shadow stayed longest. She squatted down before the length of white cotton cloth hanging from the frame, and, intent upon the work, began drawing the figures of the design she had planned. The fine jet of molten wax running from the spout of the tiny batikking-bowl, no larger than

[p. 9]

the cup of an acorn, fashioned leafy tendrils on the web, and flowers, and all manner of wonderful birds fluttering on butterfly-like wings. Blue, brown, bright yellow, and purple the dye-vats gleamed in the shadow of the lemon thicket. How many times from childhood onward had she not prepared those dyes, after the same prescription always; how often with the little jet of molten wax, blackened by reiterated use, and scraping off, and melting down again, traced that design exactly as she had seen it growing under her mother's batikking-bowl, and as she well knew that her mother's mother had traced it in her day! Over a thousand years old the pattern was, she had often heard it said. A princess had imagined it as she sat all alone amongst the flowers and birds and small animals of the Sacred Grove, where she chose to live rather than in the Kraton of her father the Sultan. The nymphs who have their abode in the wood were her companions. She never stood in need of food or of the things necessary to her work; for the wood-doves brought her plenty of sweet berries and nuts out of the tall trees; the grey monkeys knew when she was thirsty and came to her carrying in their hands ‘the little cool well-spring that hovers in the air,’ the ripe fruit of the cocoa-palm, that has sweetly flavoured water within its kernel; and the tiny bees, which neither sting nor buzz, made their nest in the tree overshadowing her, so that she need but stretch out her hand for the wax with which to trace her design, whilst on all the bushes the most beautiful flowers bloomed for her to gather and prepare dyes from. The little jester of the wood, the dwarf hart, that is wittier and merrier than all other animals, would caper and frolic before her and tell her all manner of stories, the drollest it could think of.

Whoever knew about this would easily recognize it all in the batik-design; although much of it had been lost at the hands of careless batikkers, whose thoughts were of other things, so that the true shape of what the Princess-in-the-Wood had imagined no longer appeared upon their cloth, but only a shadow as unsteady and distorted as the shadows upon the wall when the flickering oil wick is lit. Nor had Mboq-Inten herself ever seen a good design or made one herself, although her work, which she did lovingly, excelled that of the other women. But as now she set about her task, her heart full of that vision of Inten in the Sacred Grove, the slack lines regained vigour, shrivelled contours unfolded, clumsiness was changed into grace. The

[p. 10]

loveliness of a heart at peace with itself and the loveliness of the forest blossomed forth under the flow from the tiny batikking-bowl. Wondering and rejoicing, she saw how the flowers she traced with yellow wax upon white cloth nevertheless resembled the splendidly coloured blossoms amongst the green leafage of the forest, and how the design on the wings of her butterflies verily was the jewel-like scintillation that so alluringly flashes out and again vanishes fluttering athwart the dappled shades and the sudden sunbeams there. The rippling gleams of the well-spring broke forth from wavy circlets and serpentine meanders. She remembered stories of nymphs and heroes and high adventures in the wood, when the dragon she had drawn with a long twisting body and gripping talons opened his perilous eyes and looked upon her. The bird that sailed so stately, his gorgeous wings outspread, was a messenger of the Gods.

There were five colours in Mboq-Inten's pattern; five times she had to dip the sarong into one of the five dyes corresponding to the part of the design in hand, all the others being covered with wax; and as each time a different part was stained, and again covered up with wax, whilst another was laid bare and, after another immersion, changed from white into its appointed glow of red or blue or rich brown - the ground being a lucid yellow, and a touch of black emphasizing an important feature here and there - Mboq-Inten each time saw a different element of the design appearing in a vigour and purity hitherto unknown. But as, after the fifth immersion and the removal of all the wax, it shone out in its full perfection and harmony, she stood motionless with joyous surprise. And the women of the village, one calling to another to come and see Mboq-Inten's sarong-batik, exclaimed that a Regent's consort, ay, a princess in the Kraton at Djocjakarta, might well be glad to wear so rich a garment!

The Chinaman in town wiped his spectacles on his grey silk badju, the better to inspect the batik as Mboq-Inten spread it out on his counter. And in his eagerness to possess it he hastily named a high price, so that he at once had to take back his word. But Mboq-Inten, who used to stand in so great fear of him, drew away the sarong from under his hands and left the shop with it, and he ran after her as far as the passar, with the money heavy and shining in his hand. Mboq-Inten went home well content. It made her proud to feel how heavily little

[p. 11]

Kaïran, asleep in the hanging cradle of the slendang, weighed upon her hip. Soon he would be big enough to walk all the long way! She could give him what his little mouth would savour, what his little heart would have; enough of everything there would be for him. Oh, how Inten would smile, when she saw him so tall and so handsome! The offering she laid on the tomb in the Sacred Grove that day was even richer than the usual one. How long still would the time be, ah! how long? But she wiped away the tears that rose to her eyes, scalding. She would wait, she would wait patiently.

Even thus the husbandman waits who has sown his rice. He does not think of the emptiness in his barn; he thinks of the coming fulness on his field.

But after a very different manner did she wait who in the days of her happy girlhood had been Inten's very image, and as comely and as merry of heart as she; after a very different manner poor Sameerah waited for salvation out of the Sacred Grove; in vain longing, helpless, scorned.

At the same time as Inten's parents, the parents of Sameerah had prepared their daughter's marriage, in the good time of the year, the glad time, the time of plenty, the rice-harvest.

It is the marriage feast of the Rice. The two tallest and finest ears in the field, which have been tied together with a garland of flowers and set under a little dais of tressed leaves, are carried to the garner in a procession, surrounded by a guard of honour. And they who celebrate the feast, youths and maidens, promise each other their own marriage. Parents consult the learned concerning the omens, intermediaries come and go, presents are offered and accepted ceremoniously. Then the musicians make the merry marriage music to resound out of their bronze instruments, neighbours and friends bring gifts for the wedding banquet, the two who were alone in longing, far from one another, sit side by side in the place of honour crowned with flowers. And when once more the marriage of the Rice is celebrated, proud mothers appear amongst the shy girls in the harvest field. At last year's feast they carried a sheaf of rice-ears in their arm; at this, they carry a child.

[p. 12]

Thus Inten and Sameerah had held their wedding feast on the same day in the same year. Not knowing about each other and what had happened to each other, they were as twin sisters in fate, even as they were twin sisters in form and face.

But when the next harvest of the rice came, Inten's companions mourned for her. And Sameerah's place remained empty in the file of young women walking to the rice field. She kept within the house, empty-armed, disgraced.

Another harvest feast came. She would not go to the field so poor as she would have stood there, the one woman childless amongst so many mothers. Her husband had not as yet reproached her, though his mother often spoke bitter words. But when, on the way to the passar or to the field, she saw him turn his head to look after a woman walking proudly with a baby in her carrying scarf, she felt her heart shrink till her breast ached; and in the night her sleeping-mat would be wet with tears. A good-natured neighbour had advised her to go in pilgrimage to the King Eremite's tomb. And ah! how she longed to go! When she went out at the village gate and took the main road, her eyes would seek the distance, where the hill-wood was dark against the sky. But her husband's mother, old Mboq-Noordin, kept the money of the family, and Sameerah did not dare ask for any, even of what she had earned herself, to pay for the journey with the fire-car to Sangean; she well knew she should meet with a contemptuous refusal.

Mboq-Noordin hated her with a hatred that grew ever bitterer; as she believed, because Sameerah bore her no grandchild, but of a truth because Sameerah was unhappy and ashamed. Even as the fowls in the garden hacked with sharp beaks at a sick hen till the wound with which it would have hidden itself lay open and bleeding - strong healthy creatures that crowded out of life a feeble and ailing thing - thus she with her contemptuous glance and scornful words hacked at Sameerah's barrenness. Those eyes, always east down and so often red with crying, that timid attitude, goaded her into a venomous rage. She could not bear that poor weak sickly thing near her, she wanted it gone from the world, she must needs thrust at it with the sharpness of her eyes and her voice, with words that were like the sting of a scorpion. And because of the evil she did to Sameerah in her hatred, she hated her all the more. She gave Noordin no peace, she was for ever begging and

[p. t.o. 12]

Sameerah

[p. 13]

urging him to repudiate Sameerah - a woman whom Tooan Allah rejected, whom he had marked with the shame of barrenness!

In her wretchedness Sameerah at last plucked up courage for a deed. One day when Mboq-Noordin and Noordin had gone together to a distant passar, she stole to the kind-hearted neighbour and begged the loan of a little money for the journey to Sangean. And the good woman not only gave her the money, and that at a very low rate, but when Sameerah said, sadly, that Mboq-Noordin had taken away to the passar all the finest fruits in the garden, and had counted all the others one by one, so that she dared not take a single one, she also gave her some bananas for an offering upon the Saint's tomb, and even some precious balm upon a leaf, that the offering might be the more acceptable.

Sameerah put on festive raiment; she fastened a silver pin to her kabaya, an oleander-blossom in her hair. On the village road she smiled at the children. Soon, soon, she too would have a little one like that in her arms! Confidently she took her place in the long file of women walking down the main road to the station. But a suspicious fancy had caused Mboq-Noordin to turn back on her way to the passar. Suddenly she stood before her daughter-in-law. The very last women in the file heard the names she called her, in so loud a voice did she shriek out her fury. They shook their heads at it; Mboq-Noordin insulted her son's wife in all too vile a manner, truly. And there were Hollanders upon the highway who heard - did she never notice? It was the carriage of the Tooan Resident that drove past just now.

Stricken dumb with terror and shame, Sameerah suffered herself to be driven back home. The old woman threatened: if Noordin heard what she had secretly dared to do, he would grind her knees against one another so that it would take a month to heal the wounds; he would tie her to a post of the house, when he went on a day's journey again! Sameerah answered not a word; not even with a look did she defend herself. Truly there was no need for the mother-in-law to take away her good clothes, leaving her nothing but outworn dingy things in which no decent woman would show herself out of doors; there was no need for her so to burden Sameerah with toil that from dawn to dusk she found no time even to go to the river where the women bathed. Sameerah felt too deeply ashamed at that public humiliation to venture

[p. 14]

out amongst people. She hid away even from the kind neighbour when she went to pound the rice in the back garden: she had heard the word Mboq-Noordin threw at her, over the hedge! Within the house she glided along the walls like a shadow. Her husband and his mother hardly knew whether she was or was not there. Noordin but rarely spoke to her; his mother never but to give her harsh words, to which she had no answer. By and by she lost the habit of speech.

There was but one happy moment in her day: at dawn, when she went to feed the turtle-dove that sat high in its little bamboo cage in the cotton-tree by the well. Within the silent house Noordin and Mboq-Noordin still lay asleep. On the darkling jessamine shrubs that chilled her ankles with dew as she brushed past, the white star-like blossoms unfolded, sending forth an arrowy fragrance. As she loosened and paid out the rope and the cage came down, dark, and swinging a little, the sky into which she looked up grew ever whiter. The dove sat cowering, benumbed with cold and darkness; she held the little creature to her throat, bending down her cheek upon it, fondled it, talked baby-talk to it. She let it peck grains of rice from her finger-tips and from her lips. When, with a last caressing touch on its silky feathers, she had put it back into the cage, she would linger to see how it rejoiced in the new sunshine, how it threw out its downy breast, preened its wings, and, its black eyes all aglisten, turned its delicate little head hither and thither, gracefully.

She heard Mboq-Noordin's shrewish voice; hastily she hoisted the cage to its place in the tree and hurried into the house to prepare the morning meal. The villagers, catching a glimpse of her as she stole along the hedge, in dingy clothes, her hair rough and carelessly twisted, dull-eyed and dumb always, never answering even a word of friendly greeting, said amongst each other, pitying her, that her great sorrow had darkened her mind. And perhaps she had indeed, as the unhappy days went on, grown to be different from other people. She seemed no longer to feel Mboq-Noordin's taunts and cruelties, nor Noordin's contempt, which sometimes turned to rough usage. Her face grew still and rigid as the countenance of the stone images in the great temple, the Boro Buddhur.

At sight of children, only, it quickened. Naked little ones, toddling on plump legs, played at the garden gate. One dangled a cockchafer

[p. 15]

tied to a thread; another held a cricket clutched in his chubby little fist, and laughed to see it angrily grasping with its hooked feet at the blade of grass with which he tickled it; a third had a bow made of a shred of palm leaf and fibre twisted into a string, which made a shrill whirring sound as he swung it through the air with a twirl, as he had seen his big brother do.

Sameerah softly crept nearer. What chagrin it was to her that she had nothing to tempt a baby with, no flower, no fruit, no piece of sweetmeat! Her arms ached with longing for such a smooth soft little body. With a beseeching smile and hands outstretched she squatted down before the child. It stood still and looked at her dubiously. An anxious voice called it; it toddled away, never looking back. Sameerah stole away, her eyes full of tears. Afterward she was even duller and more listless than usually.

But that passive and silent obedience gradually began to chafe Noordin even worse than his mother's ceaseless urging of a divorce. And one evening - it was the third rice-harvest after the wedding - when handsome Sedoot, the Hadji money-lender's daughter, had smiled at him, standing between the sheaves on her father's field, he came home with an evil look in his eyes.

Sameerah had been doing rough work, late as it was in the day. There was dust on her unkempt hair; her sarong, which she had gathered up and fastened under her naked arms, hung slovenly about her. With eyes east down she set the evening meal before her husband. He thrust her away.

‘Thy face irks me! Get thee gone! Leave my house!’

Frightened, she looked into his scowling face.

But Mboq-Noordin pounced upon her, seizing her by the arm. ‘Why tarriest, thou? Dost thou not hear what my son says?’ She feared that perhaps he might forget his anger if the divorce had to wait for the Modin and his decision. As Sameerah stood there in her beggarly clothes, tired out with labour, empty-handed, she thrust her out of the house.

She stood all alone on the empty village road. It was almost night.

She never hesitated, never turned her head. Thoughtlessly sure as one who walks in his sleep, she went out at the village gate and took the road to the Sacred Grove.

[p. 16]

It is a way of many miles from Soombertingghi to Sangean. She walked all night. She went on without resting; she felt no fatigue. It was dark at first and lonely; she never knew. Then it grew light, and the highway was full of people; she never knew. She knew of one thing only: of her longing for the miraculous tomb where she would find happiness. The desire was as an inmost spot of smarting life within her, all around it numb, dead.

It was passar day at Sangean. From all the villages of the neighbourhood, market folk were on their way. Along the footpath on either side of the wide road, where bullock-carts were slowly jolting on and horsemen cantered past, long files of women walked, bearing on their heads flat baskets heaped with fruit and confectionery, or carrying on their hips bundles of sarongs and scarves. Each had a baby in her carrying- scarf; children trotted after them; their ceaseless chatter about goods and prices made a sound like a brooklet clucking. The men walked with arms swinging idly, at leisure. Many carried a pigeon in a small cage overspread with a silk kerchief; a match of singing doves was to be held at the passar. Every man praised his bird's voice, but they whispered about the goldsmith of Sangean, who made a practice of passing over his dove's bill and tongue a golden ring on which magic characters were graven, in order to give her a fine voice; was not it sure to be the winner?

As they overtook Sameerah, who walked ever more slowly, men and women and even children turned the head to look at her, wondering at this woman who was going the way to the passar empty-handed and so dirty and poorly dressed, and whose dull eyes had a look as if they did not see. They pointed her out to one another: ‘Eh! a crazy woman!’

The Resident and his lady drove past on their daily morning tour, in the gleaming carriage with the tall Australian horses. At the approaching hoof-beat native horsemen dismounted, drivers of bullock-carts guided their team to the side of the road, and the horde of pedestrians squatted down in the dust. And the Resident too looked with amazement at the native woman, continuing her way, all alone, through the humbly motionless crowd; and he too judged that she must be of diseased mind. Even Elizabeth almost thought so, as, stirred by a faint remembrance, she looked back at the pitiable figure, wandering alone with failing gait.

[p. 17]

Sameerah never saw, nor heard, nor felt. As the river flows past a stone that in flood-time has been washed down from the green bank and left on a sandy shallow, where not one of the countless wavelets quickens it into new freshness and sprouting greenery, while dry and dead it lies in the scorching heat of the sun - so that full river of human beings, with all their desires and energies and joys, flowed past her without stirring her to a single emotion. The market folk overtook her, passed, disappeared into the distant flicker of sunlight between the shadows of the tamarinds on either side the highway. The last had vanished as she attained the steep that ascends to the tomb in the grove.

Out of the deep shadow it shone on her, all alight with flowers. She stretched forth her arms, and sank against it.

It was very still in the wood. The multitudinous jubilation of song that had burst out in the enrapturing red of dawn had fallen silent before the ever higher, ever hotter ascent of the sun over the tree-tops. No least breath of wind stirred the leafage. The murmuring of the spring was all but inaudible. A cool smell rose out of it, the smell of water over stones, which lured the butterflies. Big black-and-yellow ones, like a play of sunshine amidst shadows, and crowds of very tiny ones, coloured a dull and tender blue, came fluttering and drank. Others alighted upon the harvest of flowers heaped up on the tomb, their little airy shadows gliding over Sameerah's head, sunk back among the flowers, over her closed eyelids. For a long while she lay thus, motionless.

But then a sound broke upon the great silence which awakened her dull senses: very softly, a turtle cooed in the kambodja-tree over her head. It was the singing dove belonging to Marjoos of Sangean, the little son of the dalang, the poet-musician, who, of an evening, would recite so many and beautiful poems about the Sacred Grove and its nymphs and good genii. The small boy kept his bird in the kambodja-tree, hidden away from every one. He secretly took to it carefully selected food, and water out of the sacred well, every morning when he drove the buffalo herd of the village to the pasture on the yonder side of the wood. Thorny twigs and bunches of prickly leaves, twisted around the branch on which the cage was hung, kept off small beasts of prey that climb the trees; the kambodja leafage screened it from

[p. 18]

peering eyes. Marjoos himself could not discover it when, on going, he lingered yet a little while among the bushes to listen to the contented cooing and crooning of his little songster.

It was the hour when he was wont to come; the turtle was calling for him.

It seemed to Sameerah that she heard her own dove. Her poor heart, which had kept itself close shut for so long, because nothing ever came near but to hurt it, unfolded. And as, with a dawning smile, she listened to that gentle cooing, all the manifold pleasantness of the wood softly stole upon her quickening perception. She breathed the subtle scent of water and cool moist earth, of leafage in damp shadow, of flowers just blooming, out of which the first whiff of odour ascended together with the vanishing dews of night; she gazed at the butterflies that sat drinking on the wet stones on the brink of the bubbling spring, wings tremulously erect, and suddenly fluttered away, through sunbeams and airy shadows; she gazed at the flowers here and there, small specks of clear colour shining through the green dimness of the wood. She heard a woodpecker hammering and sought and found the green bird amongst the green leaves; his head, hastily hammering, flickered like a green jewel. Two squirrels, chasing each other along the branches of a kenaree-tree - they had paused in their game of flight and pursuit at her coming, but begun again when they saw her so very quiet - leapt and darted athwart the lightly stirred leafage, out of which the ripe nuts fell down with a soft rustle. The grey monkeys, to which the country folk bring sacrifices, came; as usually, the women going to the passar had laid down fruits for them on the open space before the tomb. They suffered the mothers to go first, who carried their little ones hanging to their breasts, the tiny hands grasping their fur, the small heads, with the pale, naked ears, pressed to their dugs. The troop waited patiently whilst those who gave food fed themselves. Not as a thought, as a sensation only, indistinct, but deep and strong, there welled up in Sameerah an assurance of happiness, of which there was enough in the world for her too. It seemed as if it would come soon. Here in the Sacred Grove, at the tomb of the good prince who, of his loving-kindness, had conferred happiness upon so many unhappy ones - here it would come to her. She must adorn herself for it as girls in

[p. 19]

harvest-time adorn themselves for coming happiness, as a bride adorns herself for her bridegroom. She must be cleanly and crowned with flowers.

She rose and, descending into the sacred well, bathed. Then, going hither and thither wherever a flower shone, she gathered all she could find. And returning to the tomb with her arms full of buds and blossoms, she sat down in the kambodja shade and began to weave a garland. It grew into circlets that fitted her arms a little way under the shoulder, at the place where a bride wears the solemn ornament. And then she made smaller wreaths for her wrists; then a necklace so long that it went around her neck thrice, as a bride's necklace does, all but covering her shoulders and hanging down over her bosom, strand under flowery strand. Finding a long trailing spray on which clusters of purple chalices shone, she bent it around her brow like a diadem. And still her lap was full of flowers, and out of the kambodja branches more flowers fell down upon her and all around her - great white blossoms that lay lustrous among the shadows of the sparse-set rosettes of pointed leaves overhead. She picked up one and, inhaling its subtly sweet scent, set it in the deep fold of the sarong between her breasts. Her hair had slid out of its coil. As she felt it gliding over her shoulder, she spread it all around her and with deft finger-tips hung among the long black tresses small flowers and leaflets and softly clinging rose petals and jessamine buds that had fluttered out of the sacrificial wreaths on the tomb, until as she gazed down upon it the flower-spangled darkness looked to her like a rich black silk scarf cunningly wrought with pelangi-work in purple, white, blue, and green, such as in the happy days of long ago she herself had made and proudly worn. Meet ornament it seemed to her for the feast of her life.

Suddenly the dove in the kambodja-tree uttered a loud, joyful note, then was silent. Marjoos had come.

With eager hands the small boy loosed the knot by which the cage hung. The hour had come to match his pet against the singing doves of all the countryside. He had seen the goldsmith going to the passar, with his dove in a cage under a red silk kerchief, and that golden ring of his with the magic characters on his finger. Ah! would not the virtue of the Sacred Grove prove more potent? As, carefully shielding the cage, he made his way through the undergrowth around the kambodja,

[p. 20]

Marjoos rapidly recited once more the invocation with which suppliants implore aid from the Sultan-Hermit and from the most gracious of all gentle genii, the Princess-in-the-Forest.

He emerged in the open space by the tomb, and stood still, startled. There, in a robe of flowers, and with a crown of purple flowers on her head, sat the Princess-in-the-Forest! Rapt in her dream, Sameerah had not heard the slight rustle among the bushes. But before her cast-down eyes a shadow appeared upon the sunlit ground - the motionless shadow of a child with a bird-cage in his hand, and, behind the delicate little shadows of the trellis, the shadow of a dove turning hither and thither its head and ruffling its feathers. She looked up.

At that deep still gaze Marjoos felt his heart give a great throb and stand still. With a sobbing gasp for breath he fled.

The highway was empty. Never daring to look back, he ran until he reached the passar. There, plucking up courage again at the sight of so many people, and of his father seated within the ring of onlookers and bettors at the match of the singing doves, he made his way through the crowd, and, trembling and panting, stammered out the story of his wonderful adventure.

In an instant it had spread all over the passar. Men and women left their talk, their meal, and their chaffering to hear it with their own ears from the lips of Marjoos, who had to repeat it again and again as he stood there within the ring of pigeon fanciers, forgetful of their birds and their bets. The crowd hesitated between eager belief and contemptuous disbelief, some saying with a shrug that this was the mere day-dream of a good-for-nothing boy who had idled away his morning in the wood instead of minding the buffaloes; and others contending that nevertheless such things had been, and why should not Marjoos be favoured with a sight of the heavenly one, good little lad as he was, and a son moreover to the Dalang, the learned one, well versed in secret lore, who had by heart, and sang passing well, so many and beautiful poems in praise of the divine batikker for whose sake flowers bloom in the Sacred Grove - even the Princess-in-the-Forest?

Suddenly some one cried that he was going to make sure; and at once a score of people were with him on the way to the wood. Then all the passar followed - folk of Sangean, folk of Djalang Tiga, folk of Soombertingghi, men, women, and the smallest of small children that

[p. t.o. 20]

Sameerah in the Sacred Grove

[p. 21]

could walk alone, all hastened toward the Sacred Grove. The Modin was amongst the crowd, the regulator-of-hours at the Mosque, who used to shake his head in so grave a disapproval at tales of genii and nymphs haunting the wood. And, followed by his servant, who carried the box of condiments for sirih-chewing, the Assistant Wedana led the way, a scion of a most noble family. From the Kawedanan, whither a clerk, sent out to enquire about the cause of the turmoil on the passar, had brought the tidings, the Wedana himself came hurrying on horseback. He whipped up his pony, much disquieted by these extraordinary events and desirous of obtaining immediate certainty that no harm could come thereof, nor anything for which who could tell but he might be held responsible, as having authority over the native population of the district? Gathering volume as it went, like some rivulet swelling to a river as from either side brooks come pouring into it, the crowd, swelled by groups hastening toward it out of fields and houses, had become a multitude before its leaders reached the Sacred Grove.

Mboq-Inten, who, holding little Kaïran by the hand, and followed by Paq-Inten, was coming down the road from Djalang Tiga, bearing a flower-offering for the Sultan-Hermit's tomb, stood aside, amazed, from the approach of the Tooan Wedana, the Assistant Wedana, and the Modin. As soon as, for good manners, she dared, she asked a passer-by for what cause all these many people, leaving the passar, too, were going to the Sacred Grove.

‘Eh! hast thou not heard, Mother-of-Inten, that the Princess-in-the-Forest is there? Marjoos the Dalang's son saw her, sitting by the Sultan's tomb, all clothed in flowers and crowned with flowers like a bride.’

Mboq-Inten uttered a cry that made the hastening throng to stand still and look up with startled faces. ‘Not the Princess-in-the-Forest, not the Princess-in-the-Forest, but Inten, Inten, my dear daughter, come back to me at last!’ Sobbing and laughing, the tears running down her face as again and again she called out Inten's name in a desperate jubilation, the old woman, catching her grandchild up to her

[p. 22]

breast, ran up the hill with the light-footed speed of a girl. Sameerah, awakened from her dreamy trance by that sudden multitude that filled the forest with a rumour as of surging waters, sat gazing wide-eyed, slowly paling under her purple crown. Hundreds of faces were bent upon her. She put both hands over her eyes and shrank back into herself, bowing down so deeply as all but to disappear under her hair, which fell forward in a soft cloud of flower-starred darkness.

But even as it vanished Mboq-Inten had recognized the face which, throughout the days and the nights of three long years, had smiled upon her steadfast hope. And, falling on her knees by the side of that cowering shape, she seized Sameerah in both arms and through flowers and locks kissed her forehead and eyes and cheeks with passionately tender kisses, saying over and over again the same words of endearment: ‘O Inten, O my child, O my heart's jewel, at last, at last, at last thou art come! Alas, wherefore didst thou not return at once to thy mother? I have been longing for thee these three long years!’ And, raising in both hands the face, from which she gently put the hair back, she gazed into the shy eyes, and began again to weep for happiness. ‘In no wise art thou changed, my little golden daughter! Ah! I cannot satiate my old eyes with the sight of thee! How have I longed, all these many years, to feel thee again, thus, close against me! Of a truth, child of my heart, I would not have remained alive, after thou hadst died; nay, I myself too would have died of sorrow, but for the dream of thy return which Tooan Allah sent me. Thus, thus I saw thee in my dream, crowned like a bride, here, on this very spot - waiting for me and for thy child. Behold him, my Inten! look upon him! Thou didst not see him when thou broughtest him forth, thou my poor one! thy eyes were dark with death, already. Rejoice in him now! Is he not tall and handsome?’

She had set Kaïran in Sameerah's lap; shy and half afraid, he looked at the strange woman. Smiling out of tear-dimmed eyes, Mboq-Inten gazed upon the two.

‘Well? What does Kaïran say to his sweet mother?’

Sameerah's arms closed round the child, round the soft little body that felt warm against her breast. She did not think, she did not attempt to understand or to guess, she did not even wonder - this small creature that she was pressing against her was her child. Her lips that

[p. 23]

had forgotten speech began to murmur softly. ‘So sweet!’ she whispered, ‘so sweet!’

Kaïran took courage. He thought of the many things that had been promised him for Mother's return. Between vanishing shyness and beginning confidence he peeped up at her from under his eyelashes. ‘What has Mother brought Kaïran?’

A deep laughter welled up into Sameerah's throat, a light broke from her eyes. ‘Say that again, ah! do say that again, my little heart - say “Mother” to me!’

Somewhat confused and doubtingly the child obeyed. ‘Mother!’ Then hastily: ‘Has Mother brought Kaïran a dove?’ For, even now upon the highway, Mboq-Inten, who could not get him away from the caged turtle of a passer-by, had promised that Mother would bring him one when she came home.

She said, laughing proudly: ‘He is so clever, the little one! He remembers everything! So thou wert too, my child, wise from childhood onward. He is like thee in all things.’

Sameerah looked at the woman who had put the child in her lap so kindly; gratefully she smiled at her.

Mboq-Inten took her hand and stroked her own face with it. ‘Do thou also say “Mother, dear Mother,” now. Dost know thou hast not yet greeted me with a single little word, my child?’

Will-less and happy, Sameerah repeated: ‘Mother! dear Mother!’

Mboq-Inten turned toward the multitude. ‘Be witness, all of ye, that Inten has recognized me, and that she has recognized her child! Come, Paq-Inten! come hither! Here is our daughter.’

The people stood silent. They were at a loss what to think. Was this not, indeed, Inten, having Inten's face, Inten's shape? There were many folk from Djalang Tiga who had known Inten from a child, and women who had seen her die, and men who had carried her to the grave. But none the less, there they beheld her, even as it had been prophesied that they would behold her, crowned with flowers like a bride, sitting by the tomb in the Sacred Grove; they beheld her living and smiling, holding in her arms Kaïran as her child, and herself held in Mboq-Inten's arms, as in her mother's arms a daughter. No nymph of the woods this, as Marjoos had believed and still maintained, all but crying

[p. 24]

with disappointment; no heavenly apparition, but in very deed and truth Inten, risen from the grave!

There were, indeed, people from Soombertingghi too, who had heard Mboq-Noordin's frightened exclamation, ‘It is Sameerah!’ as, together with Noordin and Sedoot, they hastily fled out of the wood. But in that smiling happy one, a mother and a daughter, caressing and caressed, none recognized poor lonely Sameerah whose eyes were always red with weeping, and who shrank so shyly from Mboq-Noordin's reviling; in that radiant apparition, flower-crowned and clad in flowers, was to be traced no likeness to the wretched sloven toiling in Noordin's house. And they too thought this must be the fair one who in the happy days of her girlhood was Sameerah's counterpart - even that same Inten who used to be hailed by Sameerah's name, being so like her. Many miracles had happened at the Sultan-Hermit's tomb: why, then, not this one of Inten returning from the grave?

So that as Paq-Inten, irresolute and something afraid, came forward, the crowd urging him on encouragingly, every one expected him to declare: ‘This is, truly, my daughter Inten.’ He saw it. And, in his heart, he had thought of how he should fare if, in presence of so many people and of the headman of the village and of the Wedana himself, he dared to gainsay Mboq-Inten - Mboq-Inten who brought such a great deal of money into the house, and managed the household so exceedingly well, and had her way in all things and with every one! And at the same time he reflected that, with so fair a daughter in the house, he should not have to wait much longer for a son-in-law who would help him in the field. And as, with these many thoughts in his mind, he looked at the young woman whom Mboq-Inten was holding in her embrace, he said in all sincerity: ‘Truly, this is Inten! - Come, our daughter, come home with us, and we will prepare a feast and offer up a sacrifice to the spirits, in order that all our friends and thy playmates of past days may rejoice with us over thy return from the Land of Shadows.’

He raised her. Then all saw how fair she was as, with Kaïran in her arms and smiling for happiness, she stood in the mantle of her long hair all pranked and pied with flowers and about her brow the purple radiance of her wreath, that shone transparent in the sunlight. No wonder, said more than one, that Marjoos should have believed her to

[p. 25]

be a nymph, a Widadari! She was fair as the bride of the God of Love! Joyfully the villagers of Djalang Tiga formed into a procession to conduct her home.

But, suddenly, all changed.

The Wedana, able no longer to bear the sense of his responsibility and his anxiety as to the possible results of the affair to himself - how carefully he had to watch over the chances of a promotion, hoped for, ah! for how long a time, which of a certainty would be ruined if there occurred any disturbance whatsoever in his district! - the Wedana had ridden to the Resident in hot haste, mercilessly whipping up his pony and muttering incantations all the while to make it carry him more swiftly than the wind. And the day was a lucky one! He was hardly out of the shadows of the Sacred Grove when he saw the gleaming carriage, with the police mandoor on the box, the yellow of his uniform all ashine, and the pair of tall horses, powerfully trotting, come down the road in a whirling cloud of dust. Hastily dismounting, he stood bareheaded by the roadside, where the Kandjeng Resident's gaze might fall on him. Ah! what to say now, so that even the faintest semblance of a fault might be far from him?

The tall horses stopped; he heard the imperious voice. Eyes cast down, he stammered. And the day was lucky indeed! The Kandjeng Resident laughed. The Wedana risked a stealthy glance and felt the thumping of his heart abate. The Njonja Besar was with the Kandjeng. She greeted him with a kindly look.

Being a prudent man, the Wedana had never let any Hollander perceive that he knew Dutch; and he modestly kept his eyes on the ground, and waited as one who lets alien sounds go past him, and does not desire to know more than his betters judge meet that he should know, whilst, entirely reassured, he heard the Resident say to his lady that, really, only in a district like Sangean, all overshadowed with legends and superstition, was a thing like this possible: that a street-dancer adorning herself for a feast in a secluded spot should by a little buffalo-herd be worshipped for a nymph, and embraced for her daughter, risen from the grave, by an old mother who for many years had

[p. 26]

mourned that daughter's death. To the cursory question about this foolish old woman's name the Wedana said, boldly, Mboq-Inten from Djalang Tiga, a village just outside the boundary of his district. And as to the woman in the wood, some believed her to be Sameerah from Soombertingghi, Noordin's wife, who for this long time past had been said to be darkened in mind, being childless and greatly despised on account of this.

Elizabeth uttered an exclamation at the two names. Oh, truly a miracle at the tomb of the royal Saint, this happy illusion that so graciously saved two lives lost to wretchedness already, and of two sadly solitary ones made a mother and a daughter! But the Resident, who at first had indulgently shrugged his shoulders, frowned at a sudden reflection. Was this child's talk about a woman risen from the grave as harmless as it appeared? He thought of disturbances that had originated in a similar tale of wonder - refusal to pay taxes and to obey orders at the behest of one risen from the dead, attempts at the overthrow of lawful authority in favour of some descendant of a Sultan's family, extinct long since. He would crush the dangerous folly in the germ.

As if she felt a menace to her new-won happiness at the approach of that tall, white-clad man with the severe face advancing through the crowd of natives, who as they made room for him, timorously squatted down, Mboq-Inten retreated toward the tomb; and, sitting down at the foot, she took into her lap her whom she would have for her daughter, thus proclaiming and maintaining her right to her in presence of all the village folk and of the Wedana and of the Kandjeng Resident himself.

Elizabeth touched her husband's arm. It was she, it was the poor brain-sick wanderer on the highway of that morning, crazed perhaps by who could tell what unbearable sorrow from which she was seeking deliverance at the tomb of the merciful Saint; it was the weeping one whom she had seen ill-treated by the cruel old woman - the despised childless wife, smiling now with a child in her arms! And her hand upon her husband's arm, her eyes upon his, implored: ‘Suffer these roses of imagination to become daily bread, to live by!’

But with an impatient gesture he warded off the unspoken prayer. No indulgence toward such superstitions, no weak shirking of the

[p. 27]

ruler's duty to maintain the established order in spiritual things as well as in material.

He addressed Mboq-Inten severely. ‘How dost thou dare, ancient one! to say this woman is thy daughter, whereas all men and women in thy village know that she died in child-birth, three years ago now, and the men are here who buried her? Enough of this folly! Let this stranger go, and do thou return to thy own house!’

Mboq-Inten looked up. She did not speak. But an unconquerable will stood in her eyes. Sameerah, frightened, hid herself against that one being who was kind to her; and she held Kaïran tight-locked in her arms.

Her gesture and deathly pale face touched the official. And certainly it was no rebellious desire for freedom such as he would have quelled, but only a childish love of the miraculous, which he noted in the many faces timorously gazing at him. But he was a guardian and educator of those eternally infantile ones: it was his duty to cure them of that childish craving for the impossible which loves to soothe and delude itself with a specious semblance, that conscious shirking of the truth for the sake of desire. And he said, though somewhat less severely: ‘If I cause thy daughter's grave to be opened, and show thee her bones within the grave, wilt thou then confess that she is dead and turned to dust? and that it is a stranger whom thou art holding embraced now?’

Fearlessly Mboq-Inten made answer: ‘Let the grave be opened in which Inten has lain! And let me stand by the open grave! I shall behold no bones in it; for she who died and was buried is arisen, and I hold her in my arms.’

The dull red of annoyance flushed the Hollander's face. He gave an abrupt order. The men went silently.

But Elizabeth caught at his hand. ‘Oh, why do a thing like this? Shall, then, a poor handful of death avail against life and the truth of life? Look, look at the love in Mboq-Inten's eyes! Her love it is that is arisen from the grave, her love it is that lives! That, surely, is the great miracle, that love always arises again in the heart that once has loved. It does not decay in any grave; no long years, no bitter sorrow, have power over it, to weaken or to discourage it. And for ever and ever again Love is the mother, and for ever and ever again Love is the child.

[p. 28]

And by love only we live and have our being, all of us, all of us, as many as we are human beings upon this world in need of love.’

She uttered the helpless disconnected words in a voice deeper than her own; she groped her way toward her thought; as one blinded with an excess of light she reached for a truth in comparison with which that other truth which men meant when they spoke of reality and justice and law was a little and empty thing, an ephemeral semblance. She stood pale and tremulous as a flame, herself a ray of that great light, its glories shining through her.

The native folk who did not understand her words yet understood herself, her pallor, the dark and fervid tenderness in her eyes, and her passionate voice. As toward their salvation, Mboq-Inten and Sameerah raised their eyes toward her. Elizabeth went up to them and gently took a hand of each into her hands. Thus she looked at her husband beseechingly. He stood in doubt still, dark. But then he looked into her eyes. The men who were to open the grave had stood still. He made the gesture for which he saw they were waiting. Well content, they receded into the crowd.

The three women smiled at one another.

Elizabeth and Mboq-Inten saw the calm light of reason dawning in the face of her who had been called Sameerah, but who, from this hour on, was Mother-of-Kaïran.

So fair a miracle, all the folk thought, was never yet wrought in the Sacred Grove.