It appeared that there was a much shorter route to Allaha. Time being
essential, Bruce had had to make for the frontier blindly, as it were.
The regular highway was a moderately decent road which led along the
banks of one of those streams which eventually join the sacred Jumna.
This, of course, was also sacred. Many Hindus were bathing in the
ghats. They passed by these and presently came upon a funeral pyre.
Sometimes one sleeps with one's eyes open, and thus it was with
Kathlyn. Out of that funeral pyre her feverish thoughts builded a
frightful dream.
* * * * * * The drunken mahout slid off Rajah; the soldiers turned aside. Hired
female mourners were kneeling about, wailing and beating their breasts,
while behind them stood the high caste widow, her face as tragic as
Dido's at the pyre of Aeneas. Suddenly she threw her arms high over
her head.
"I am suttee!"
Suttee! It was against the law of the British Raj. The soldiers began
arguing with the widow, but only half heartedly. It was a pious rite,
worthy of the high caste Hindu's wife. Better death on the pyre than a
future like that of a pariah dog. For a wife who preferred to live
after her husband was gone was a social outcast, permitted not to wed
again, to exist only as a drudge, a menial, the scum and contempt of
all who had known her in her days of prosperity.
The widow, having drunk from a cup which contained opium, climbed to
the top of the pyre where her husband lay, swathed in white. She gazed
about wildly, and her courage and resolve took wings. She stumbled
down. A low hissing ran about.
"Make the white woman suttee in her place!" cried the drunken mahout.
The cry was taken up by the spectators. Kathlyn felt herself dragged
from the elephant, bound and finally laid beside the swathed figure.
There could be no horror in the wide world like it. Smoke began to
curl up from the underbrush. It choked and stifled her. Sparks rose
and dropped upon her arms and face. And through the smoke and flame
came Rajah. He lifted her with his powerful trunk and carried her off,
for hours and hours, back into the trackless jungle. . . .
Kathlyn found herself, all at once, sitting against the roots of an
aged banyan tree. A few yards away an ape sat on his haunches and eyed
her curiously. A little farther off Rajah browsed in a clump of weeds,
the howdah at a rakish angle, like the cocked hat of a bully. Kathlyn
stared at her hands. There were no burns there; she passed a hand over
her face; there was no smart or sting. A dream; she had dreamed it; a
fantasy due to her light-headed state of mind. A dream! She cried and
laughed, and the ape jibbered at her uneasily.