Son of Power Part 9

As they walked slowly into the open, listening to the voices of the child-people, the name "Rana Jai" recurred often.

"I haven't heard what that word means yet," Skag said.

"Rana Jai?" Cadman repeated. "The exact translation is Prince of Victory; but Dhoop Ki Dhil made her meaning clear--Son of Power; a great deal more."

After that, they had little to say. Certainly Cadman would never forget the length of time he had seen the looming head--less than two feet from Skag's face--the incredible power that flamed up out of the young man's eyes. Certainly Skag was full of content as to the safety of the people.

But all realisations were lost in a gnawing depression about Dhoop Ki Dhil.

When they came to Sehora, the station-man held out a letter in quaintly written English; it read:

_From the wayside Dhoop Ki Dhil sends greetings to Son of Power, most exalted; and to his guardian, most devoted._

_She pays votive offerings from this day, at sunrise and at sunset, for those men--incense and oils and seed--to safety from all evil, and fulfillment of their so-great destiny._

_The G.o.ds, all-beneficent, have preserved him--Jiwan Kawi, the man of men! He met her in the night-paths; and he goes now with her--to her own people. Jiwan Kawi, the man of men!_

_The Gra.s.s Jungles are in her heart, like dead rose-leaves; their perfume in her blood, is forever before the G.o.ds--remembering Son of Power and his guardian._

_Dhoop Ki Dhil touches their holy feet._

The two Americans looked into each other's eyes, without words--the Calcutta-bound train was alongside.

"Remember, I'm responsible for you from now on, son!" Cadman said, as he loosed Skag's hand.

CHAPTER IV

_The Monkey Glen_

Skag and Cadman were back in Hurda where d.i.c.kson Sahib lived, and the younger man was disconsolate at the thought of Cadman's leaving for England. During those few last days they were much together in the open jungle around the ancient unwalled city; and once as they walked, two strange silent native men pa.s.sed them going in toward the wilderness.

"The priests of Hanuman," Cadman whispered.

Skag enquired. He had a new and enlarged place in his mind for everything about these men. Cadman explained that these priests serve the monkey people: to this purpose they are a separate priesthood.

Abandoning possessions and loves and hates of their kind, they live lives of austerity, mingling with the monkey people in their own jungles; eating, drinking with them; sleeping near; playing and mourning with them--in every possible way giving expression to good-will. All this they do very seriously, very earnestly, with reverence mingled with pity.

"The ma.s.ses here think these men wors.h.i.+p the monkeys," Cadman added.

"It's not true. Most Europeans dismiss them as fanatics--equally absurd. I've been out with them."

Skag had actually seen the faces of the two men just pa.s.sed. The impression had not left his mind. They were dark clean faces, grooved by much patient endurance, strong with self-mastery and those fainter lines that have light in them and only come from years of service for others.

Cadman certainly had no scorn for these men. He had pa.s.sed days and nights with their kind in one of the down-country districts. His tone was slow and gentle when he spoke of that period. It wasn't that Cadman actually spoke words of pathos and endearment. Indeed, he might have said more, except that two white men are cruelly repressed from each other in fear of being sentimental. They are almost as willing to show fear as an emotion of delicacy or tenderness.

"The more you know, the more you appreciate these forest men," Cadman capitulated and laughed softly at the sudden interest in Skag's face as he added: "I understand, my son. You want to go into the jungle with these masters of the monkey craft. You want to read their lives--far in, deep in yonder. Maybe they'll let you. They were singularly good to me. . . . It may be they will see that thing in your face which knocks upon their souls."

"What is that?"

Cadman laughed again.

"In the West they know little of these things; but the fact is, it's quite as you've been taught: the more a man overcomes himself, the more powers he puts on for outside work. And when a man is in charge of himself all through, he has a look in his eye that commands--yes, even finds fellows.h.i.+p with the priests of Hanuman."

"Would these priests see such a look?"

"Of course!"

"But why?"

"Because they have it themselves. It's evident as sun-tan, to the seers, who are what they are because they rule themselves. Your old Alec Binz had it right. You handle wild animals in cages or afield just in proportion as you handle yourself. Those who command themselves see self-command when it lives in the eye of another. . . .

They called me--those priests did--years ago. I almost wanted to live with them for a while; but it was too hard."

"How was that?"

"They said I must forsake all other things in life to serve the monkey people--that I must stay years with them, winning their faith, before I would be of value--that all life in the world must be forgotten."

Cadman laughed wistfully. "I wasn't big enough," he added, "or mad enough, as you like. Perhaps they'll know you at once, or it might take labour and patience to convince them you have not an unkind thought toward any of their monkey friends and no scorn of them because they serve in such service."

The out and out staring fact of the whole matter, Skag realised, was that these priests believed the monkeys to be a race of men who have been far gone in degeneration. They gave their lives to help the return progress. The order of Hanuman had already endured for many generations. The value of their work was hardly appreciable from any standpoint outside; they counted little the years of a man's life; they were trained in patience to a degree hardly conceivable to a Western mind.

". . . Of course they work in the dark," Cadman said. "The natives try to obey in these matters, but do not understand; and one young European with a rifle can undo a whole lot of their devoted labour among the tree-people. You see, the priests work with care and kindness, following, ministering, accustoming the monkeys to them, never betraying them in the slightest--"

Skag nodded, keenly attentive. He knew well from his experience as a show trainer what it means to get the confidence of the big cats; and how months of careful work could be ruined in a moment by an ignorant hand. Deep, steady, inextinguishable _kindness_ was the thing.

"Yes, to be kind and square," Cadman resumed. "And one of the strangest and most remarkable things that ever came to me in the shape of a sentence was from one of these priests. He was an old man, grey pallor stealing in under the weathered brown of his face. He had that look in his eye that has nothing to do with years, but means that a man is so sufficient unto himself that he can forget himself utterly. . . .

He spoke of the condition of the tree-folk, of the incommunicable sorrow of them--as if it were his own destiny. The one sentence of his, hard to forget--in English would be like this:

"_'After a man has lived with these monkey people for a long time, and always been kind, one of them may come and stand before him and let tears roll down his hairy face. And this is all the confession of sorrow he can make!'_"

Skag caught the deep thing that had stirred Cadman. The latter added with a touch of scorn:

"Once I told this thing, as I have told you, to a group of Europeans in a steamer's smoking room. And two of them laughed--thought I was telling a funny story. . . . These priests are apt to be very bitter toward one who wrongs one of their free-friends. They believe that it is a just and good thing to make a man pay with his life, for taking the life of a monkey; because it impedes his coming up and embitters the others. One way to look at it?"

Skag was in and out of the jungle most of the days after Cadman left for Bombay to sail. Closer and closer he drew to the deep, sweet earthiness and the mysteries carried on outside the ken of most men.

One dawn, from a distance he watched a sambhur buck pause on the brow of a hill. The creature shook his mane and lifted up his nose and sniffed the dawn of day.

Skag knew that it was good to him, knew how the sensitive grey nostrils quivered wide, drinking deep draughts of cool moist air. The gra.s.ses were rested; the trees seemed enamoured of the deep shadows of night.

The river gurgled musically from the jagged rocks of her mid-current to the overleaning vines and branches of her borders.

This was a side stream of the Nerbudda. Already Skag shared with the natives the att.i.tude of devotion to the great Nerbudda. She was sacred to the people, and to every creature good, for her gift was like the gift of mothers. When all the world was parched and full of deep cracks, yawning beneath a heaven white and cloudless, and rain forsook the land, and every leaf hung heavy and dust-laden; when heat and thirst and famine all increased, till creatures crept forth from their hot lairs at evening and moved in company--who had been enemies, but for sore suffering--then would she yield up her pure tides to satisfy their utmost craving. . . .

Skag lived deep through that morning. The rose and amber radiance of dawn fell into all the hearts of all the birds; and wordless songs came pulsing up from roots of growing things. The sambhur lifted high his head again and spread the fan of one ear toward the wind, while one breathed twice. Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and swift along the river's brim, the sharp, plaintive cry of monkeys, beating down through all the startled stillness with their wailing voices. These turned, hurrying away in one direction, with fearless leaps and clinging hands and ceaseless chattering. Their cries at intervals, bringing answers, until the air was a-din with monkeys, leaping along the highways of the trees.

Women of the villages, children tending goats, labourers among the driftings of the hills and on the open slopes, holy men and those who toiled at any craft--heard the shrill calls along the margins of the jungle and knew that some evil had fallen on a leader of his kind among the monkey people.