ATMÂ.

A ROMANCE

BY

A.C.F.

(CAROLINE AUGUSTA FRAZER)

"When âtman (nom. sing. Atmâ) occurs in philosophical treatises ... it has generally been translated by soul, mind, or spirit. I tried myself to use one or other of these words, but the oftener I employed them the more I felt their inadequacy, and was driven at last to adopt ... Self as the least liable to misunderstanding."

Max Muller, in North American Review for June, 1879.

Montreal:

JOHN LOVELL & SON,

23 St. Nicholas Street.

Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1891, by John Lovell & Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at Ottawa.

ATMÂ

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

O that Decay were always beautiful!

How soft the exit of the dying day,

The dying season too, its disarray

Is gold and scarlet, hues of gay misrule,

So it in festive cheer may pass away;

Fading is excellent in earth or air,

With it no budding April may compare,

Nor fragrant June with long love-laden hours;

Sweet is decadence in the quiet bowers

Where summer songs and mirth are fallen asleep,

And sweet the woe when fading violets weep.

O that among things dearer in their wane

Our fallen faiths might numbered be, that so

Religions cherished in their hour of woe

Might linger round the god-deserted fane,

And worshippers be loath to leave and pray

That old-time power return, until there may

Issue a virtue, and the faith revive

And holiness be there, and all the sphere

Be filled with happy altars where shall thrive

The mystic plants of faith and hope to bear

Immortal fruitage of sweet charity;

For I believe that every piety,

And every thirst for truth is gift divine,

The gifts of God are not to me unclean

Though strangely honoured at an unknown shrine.

In temples of the past my spirit fain

For old-time strength and vigour would implore

As in a ruined abbey, fairer for

"The unimaginable touch of time"

We long for the sincerity of yore.

But this is not man's mood, in his regime

Sweet "calm decay" becomes mischance unmeet,

And dying creeds sink to extinction,

Hooted, and scorned, and sepultured in hate,

Denied their rosary of good deeds and boon

Of reverence and holy unction—

First in the list of crimes man writes defeat.

These purest dreams of this our low estate,

White-robed vestals, fond and vain designs,

I lay a wreath at your forgotten shrines.

Nearly four hundred years ago, Nanuk, a man of a gentle spirit, lived in the Punjaub, and taught that God is a spirit. He enunciated the solemn truth that no soul shall find God until it be first found of Him. This is true religion. The soul that apprehends it readjusts its affairs, looks unto God, and quietly waits for Him. The existence of an Omnipresent Holiness was alike the beginning and the burden of his theology, and in the light of that truth all the earth became holy to him. His followers abjured idolatry and sought to know only the invisible things of the spirit. He did not seek to establish a church; the truths which he knew, in their essence discountenance a visible semblance of divine authority, and Nanuk simply spoke them to him who would hear,—emperor or beggar,—until in 1540 he went into that spiritual world, which even here had been for him the real one.

And then an oft-told story was repeated; a band of followers elected a successor, laws were necessary as their number increased, and a choice of particular assembling places became expedient. And as

"the trees

That whisper round a temple become soon

Dear as the temple's self,"

so the laws passed into dogmas having equal weight with the truths that Nanuk had delivered, and the places became sacred.

Nanuk's successors were ten, fulfilling a prophecy which thus limited their number. The compilation of their sayings and doings to form a book which as years went on was venerated more and more, and the founding of Oomritsur, chief of their holy places, were the principal things that transpired in the history of the Khalsa during a century and a half, save that the brotherhood was greatly strengthened by Moslem persecution, occurring at intervals.

But with the death of the ninth gooroo, by Moslem violence, and the accession of his son Govind, the worldly fortunes of the Khalsa changed. Under the leadership of Govind, a young man of genius and enthusiasm, who comes before us in the two-fold character of religionist and military hero, the Sikhs moved on to a national greatness not dreamed of by Nanuk. Govind, who bestowed on himself and his followers the title of Singh, or lion-hearted, hitherto an epithet appropriated in this connection by the Rajpoot nobility, devoted the strong energies of his vigourous and daring nature to the purpose of establishing the faith of Nanuk by force of arms. To this end he constituted the sword a religious symbol, and instituted a sort of worship of steel. The Khalsa became an aggressive force bent on the salvation of surrounding nations by violence, and succeeded so well, that, eighty-five years after Govind's death, the Sikhs, still retaining their character of a religious fellowship, were consolidated into a powerful nation under Runjeet Singh. The dream of her tenth and last gooroo was realized, the Khalsa was at her height of worldly prosperity, but her life was no longer the spirit life which had been revealed to her first founder.

And so under Asiatic skies as well as amid European civilization, man laboured to redeem the world, making frantic war on the lying creeds of past ages and proclaiming the merits of his latest discovery.

It is a strange development of human nature this animosity to creeds no longer our own. Why, if I suffer the loss of faith and hope, must I hasten to introduce my brother to my sad plight? I may do so, and perhaps enjoy good conscience in the act by vaunting that I shed light on his spiritual vision. God help my brother if his light be from me. And God help me also, if I have attained so high rank among the blessed before I have learned that the human soul is beyond human aid; that in its eternal relations each soul travels in an orbit of its own and holds correspondence only with its Sun.

CHAPTER II.

A century and a half after, Govind Singh had kindled the hearts of his countrymen with his prophetic visions of a military church regnant on the hills of Kashmir, there took place the struggle which we call the second Sikh war, culminating on the twenty-first of February in the Battle of Gugerat followed by the surrender of the Sikhs to the British under Lord Gough and the disbandment of the Sikh army. And, lo, the Khalsa was as a tale that is told, its clang and clash of warlike achievements a thing that could be no more, its Holy War transformed by failure into a foolish chimera, and the only thing that lived was a memory lingering in quiet souls of the truths that Nanuk taught.

"For shapes that come, not at an earthly call,

Will not depart when mortal voices bid."

But many whose faith was in their religion rather than in God felt their spirit falter, and believed that the universe grew dark. This is ever the weakness of disciples, and thus it is that while many flocking to the new standard see all things made plain, others whose hopes are entwined about the displaced creeds suffer an eclipse of faith.

Among those who in the fall of the Khalsa suffered life's last and sorest loss was Raee Singh, an aged man, in whose veins ran the blood of the gentle Nanuk. On that March morning when the disbanded army went to lay down their arms before a victorious foe, he descended the mountain slope very slowly. The rest walked in bands of five, of ten, of twenty, but Raee Singh walked alone. Although his flowing beard was white, he did not bear himself erect in the dignity of years; his eyes were fixed on the ground, for the shadow of defeat and dishonour which rested on him was hard to bear.

Presently he stood before the tent of the British general. A great heap of weapons lay there glittering in the sun. As he looked, the pile grew larger, for each Sikh cast his sword there. Raee also extended his arm, grasping his tulwar, but he did not let it go until an officer touched his shoulder and spoke. The blade fell then with a clang, and he turned away. He passed from the camp without seeing it, and took his homeward way as silently as he had come. The dreams of youth make the habit of age, and Raee had revered the Khalsa in childhood, and in manhood he had urged its high commission to his own hurt. As a Khivan proverb has it, "That which goes in with the milk only goes out with the soul," and the soul of Raee Singh gathered the fragments of its broken faith and prepared to depart with them to the Land of Restoration.

He lay for four days, taking no food, and only wetting his lips with the water which his sole surviving son proffered from time to time. His heart was crushed, he was full of years, his end was near; and his son, knowing this, was dumb with sorrow. On the evening of the fourth day he turned his face to the boy, and spoke,

"Son, well beloved,

My parting hour is nigh;

A heavenly peace should glorify

A life approved

By God, by man, by mine own soul;

The record of my stainless years unroll—

My years beset

From infancy to age with pitfalls deep

In pathway winding aye on mountain steep

Of perilous obedience, and yet

In bitterness of soul I lay me down,

Of home bereft, with hope and creed o'erthrown

In woe that will not weep;

My reeling spirit ere from sense set free

Is loosed from mooring, beaten to and fro,

And in the throbbing, quick'ning flesh I know

The lone desertion of the Shoreless Sea.

O Brotherhood!

O hope so high, so fair,

That would the wreck of this sad world repair

Had ye but stood!

Can God forget?

This Khalsa of his own supreme decree

Vanquished, debased, in loss of liberty

Has lost its own mysterious entity.

And yet, and yet,

A strange persuasion fills my breast that He

Who wrecked my home,

Who bade my people from their mountains flee

And friendless roam,

Will soon with tenderest pity welcome me,

And, if my lips be dumb,

Will frame the prayer that fills my dying breast,

And give my heavy-laden spirit rest,

And grant me what He will—His will is best.

I go—I know not where,

Upward or down, or toward the setting sun

None knows,—some shadowy goal is won,

Some unseen issue near,

So oft with death I journeyed hand in hand,

The spectral pageant of his border land

I do not fear.

Weep not when I have passed, but go thy way,

Thou art not portionless nor service free,

A warrior Sikh, for thee a high behest

Abides, to claim thy true-sword's ministry.

Go, Atmâ, from those echoing hillsides, lest

The haunting voices of the vanished say

'Vain is thy travail, poor thine utmost store,

We loved and laboured, lo, we are no more,'

And thy fond heart in fealty to our clay

Fail in allegiance to the name we bore.

Go, seek thy kinsman, to a brother's hand

I gave possession of a gem more fair,

More costly far than gold, than rubies rare,

Thy part and heritage, of him demand

Its just bestowal, and with dauntless tread

Pursue the pathway of thy holy dead."

When the old Sikh had ceased speaking, he lay greatly exhausted. The night deepened. It was a remote spot. Now and then the sound of trampling feet or the tread of a horse climbing the difficult road reached the ear. The hours were long and dreary, but they passed. Morning dawned, and Atmâ found himself alone. He had known that it would be so, and yet it came with the sharpness of an unexpected blow. He mourned, and, as is the way with mourners, he accused himself from hour to hour of having failed in duty to the departed during his lifetime. Looking on the face of the dead, he wondered much where the spirit that so lately had seemed to be with the frame but a single identity, one and indivisible, had fled. He recalled his father's words,

"Upward or down, or toward the setting sun,

None knows,"

and with the recollection, the sense of loss deepened. An old cry rose to his lips, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!"

The words by which his father had sought to comfort him still sounded in his hearing, but Grief is stronger than Wisdom. Human speech is the least potent of forces, and arguments that clash and clang bravely in the tournament of words, slaying shadows, and planting the flag of triumph over fallen fancies, on entering the lists to combat the fact of Death, but beat the air, and their lusty prowess only fetches a laugh from out of the silence.

CHAPTER III.

After his father's death Atmâ betook himself to Lahore, where dwelt Lehna Singh, only brother of the departed Sikh. A man of a totally different cast of mind, he had early adopted a commercial life, and now, in the enjoyment of a vast fortune, yet undiminished by the contingencies of war, lived in luxury and opulence, his dwelling thronged by Sikhs whose possessions, unlike his own, had melted away in the national catastrophe. The fact of his house being the rendezvous of a discontented faction did not escape British vigilance, the more so as Lehna Singh was one of the eight sirdars appointed to sit in council with the British Resident. But the confidence of his countrymen in him remained unshaken by the appearance among them of British envoys in military state, bearing despatches to the friend of the national foe, and the questionable attitude of Lehna became to the Resident daily more and more the subject of suspicious surmisings.

Indeed, a whisper was afloat of secret messages from Feragpore, whither, before the war, had been removed the Ranee Junda Kovr, deposed Queen of the Punjaub, as a consequence of a detected plot against the life of the Resident, which, together with her sullied reputation,—for she had many lovers,—had induced the council to pronounce her an unfit guardian for the little Maharajah, her son. This clever woman, a constant source of vexation to the Resident, had long forfeited the respect of friend and foe; but her intrepidity, cunning, and unscrupulous thirst for power conspired to render her formidable to the one, and to the other a partisan to be courted and retained. Her messages of insolent defiance to the Durbar are historic, but of the countless schemes and intrigues in which she continued to play the part of chief conspirator we have only heard a portion. Suffice it to say that the faithlessness of her policy alike towards adversary, or ally, and the scandal of her retinue of lovers, had gained for her an ill-repute, that combined with the watch set upon her movements by the British to render men chary of dealings with the little court at Feragpore, where she held mimic state.

But of all these tales of craft and crime Atmâ knew nothing. To him all men were valiant and all women fair and good, and the wife and child of Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjaub, were invested in his fond imaginings with ideal excellence. "To the pure all things are pure," or, as a later genius has voiced it, "He who has been once good is forever great," and Atmâ lived in the corrupt atmosphere of his uncle's house, and took no hurt; nay, his spiritual life by its own dynamic force grew and thrived, for, governed by other laws than those that control our physical natures, the food of the soul is what it desires it to be, and moral poison has often served for nutriment. It is death to souls that desire death. In another sense than Bonaparte's, every man born unto the world may say, "I make circumstances."

And the spacious abode of Lehna Singh had loveliness enough to veil the sordid character of the life that was lived within its walls. Atmâ had not been ignorant of his kinsman's wealth and importance; but it is one thing to hear of wealth and to ponder in critical mood the fleeting nature of this world's weal, and quite another to gaze with the eye on the marvellous results of human thrift. He wandered through lofty and spacious apartments, whose marble arches seemed ever to reveal a fairer scene than had yet met his view. A mimic rivulet ran from room to room in an alabaster channel, and the spray of perfumed fountains cooled the air. Flowers bloomed, leafy vines trailed over priceless screens, and countless mirrors repeated the joyous beauty of the place. He beheld with admiration the gilded and fretted walls and stately domes, the new delights of a palace charmed every sense, and, appealing to poetic fancy, awoke a rapture whose fervency was due less to the entrancement of his present life than to the contemplative habit of one who had first known harmony whilst gazing on the stars, and awaked to the consciousness of beauty among the eternal hills. The ripple of the streamlet in these palace halls revived a half-forgotten music of the heart that had once responded to the gurgle of a brook.

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

The sympathies that had once been in unison with the rustling thicket stirred into more definite life when an artificial breeze swept by and stirred the heavy foliage of rare plants. He had caught in other days notes of Nature's vast melody. Stray notes were here made to beat to a smaller measure. Thus Art interprets Nature. It was not The Song, but a light and pleasant carol, which pleased the sense of many, and to the ear of the few brought a haunting pain of which they did not know the meaning. Such a one only sighed and said:

"In a former birth I was great and good, and my life was sublime. The ghost of its memory has touched me."

O melody divine, of fantasy

And frenzied mem'ry wrought, advance

From out the shades; O spectral utterance,

Untwine thy chains, thy fair autocracy

Unveil, have being, declare

Thy state and tuneful sovereignty.

Ye gifted ears,

To whom this burdened, sad creation

Sings, now in tones of exultation

Abruptly broken,

Anon in direst lamentation

Obscurely spoken,

Possess your souls in hope, the time

Is coming when th' harmonic chime

Of circling spheres in chant sublime

Will lead the music of the seas,

And call the echoes of the breeze

To one triumphal lay

Whose harmony, whose heavenly harmony

Sounding for aye

In loud and solemn benedicite,

Voices the glory of the Central Day,

And through th' illimitable realms of air

Is borne afar

In wafted echoes that the strain prolong

Through boundless space, and countless worlds among,

Meas'ring the pulsing of each lonely star,

And sounding ceaselessly from sphere to sphere

That note of immortality

That whispers in the sorrow of the sea,

And in the sunrise, and the noonday's rest,

And triumphs in the wild wind's meek surcease,

And in the sad soul's yearning unexpressed,

And unexpressive for perpetual peace.

But the loveliest of Lehna Singh's possessions was Moti, his daughter and only child, the fame of whose beauty had even reached Atmâ in his mountain home. Of her he had dreamt through boyhood's years, and a happy consciousness of her proximity foreshadowed the enchanted hour when he was to behold her and own that his fondest fancies were to her loveliness as darkness to noonday. Her name he had heard whispered in the gay throng of her father's guests, on the memorable first evening of his arrival there; but, strange to tell, next day, when these first hours in a palace seemed to his excited imagination a dream in which mingled in wildest confusion the glitter of diamonds, the perfume of a thousand flowers, the revel of dazzling colors, the bewildering music of unknown instruments, and the intoxication of wonder and bliss, there rang through all only one articulate voice, sounding as if from some leafy ambush amid vague laughter and murmurs of speech, saying:

"But I tell you that Rajah Lal Singh means to pluck the rose of Lehna Singh's garden!"

CHAPTER IV.

Atmâ loved to wander apart. One day he penetrated to a secluded court, whose beauty and silence charmed him more than anything he had hitherto seen. It was Moti's garden.

"High in air the fountain flung

Its living gems, on sunbeams strung

They wreathed and shook the mists among;

A thousand roses audience held,

For floral state the place was meet,

With blissful light and joy replete,

And depths of sweetness unrevealed.

Glittered and sparkled the revelling spray,

Swelled and receded its silvery lay,

Rustled the roses in fervid array,

In fragrance declaring their costly acclaim,

Wafting on soft winds the redolent fame

Of fantasy, fountain, and tuneful refrain.

Joy, Happiness, and Bliss had here

Alighted when from Eden driven,

Poor wanderers of far other sphere

They languished for their native heaven;

And lingering they glamoured all the place,

The flowers bloomed in airs of Paradise,

That lulled the days to dreams of changeless peace.

No marvel were it if to mortal eyes

This garden seemed the threshold of the skies.

But fountain and roses and glittering spray,

Ambrosial converse and redolent lay

Saddened and dimmed in the radiant day,

Unbroken the yellow sunbeams streamed,

As ever the flashing jewels gleamed.

But a shadow fell

And a silent spell

In homage of one who was fairer than they.

And who was the despot whose wondrous array

Of tyrant charms thus over-wrought

With hues of soft humility

The joys of this enchanting spot?

There stood she, envied of the closing day,

Loved by the evening star,

Moti, than costliest jewel of Cathay

More rare and lovelier far.

Weep balmy tears,

O dear white Rose, and tell to am'rous airs

They waste their sweetness on thy charms, and chide

Their ling'ring dalliance, o'er the whole world wide

Bid them on buoyant morning wings to move,

And whisper "Love;"

Fair winds, be tender of her blissful name,

On soft Æolian strings weave dainty dream,

Let but the dove

Hear a faint echo of her happy name;

But tell her worth,

Say that at sight of her the evening dies

Upon the earth,

And bees and little flower bells still their mirth

And jasmines whisp'ring of her starry eyes.

And Atmâ spoke, with love and wonder bold,

"Tread I the valley where the fadeless vine

Drops dew immortal and sweet spices grow

From fragrant roots which in that blessed mould,

Watered by tears of penitential woe,

Drank deep of primal peace and balm divine,

When in the morn of time the tale was told

Of forfeit happiness and ruined shrine?

Tell me, O beauteous Spirit of the bower,

Is it thy gentle task when others sleep,

To guard all that a fallen world may keep

Of pristine bliss and lost felicities,

The fragrant memory of a purer hour,

The healing aroma of Paradise?"

Sweet then the blushing maid replied,

"Among the roses I abide,

I wake the bird, I watch the bee,

No greater toil is set for me;

But tell me, pray thee, with what charge indued

You wander in this quiet solitude."

And Atmâ spoke with joyful fervency,

"I hither came on embassy unguessed,

Most blissful vision of my raptured view,

The dusk delights of quietness and rest

Desired I, nor thought to bid adieu

To all content my fond heart ever knew.

Descending angels of my wisest dreams,

Ye kindly genii, bending from above,

Say, in th'allotment of my life's high themes,

Were hours left for love?

A great design and just my soul employs,

Can high resolve and trancéd rest agree?

Or is there aught than loss in changeful joys

Of mortal love, most mortal in its wane

Which I shall see

And call aloud, 'O Love,' in vain, in vain."

"Bloomy roses die,

Sunbeams have no morrow,

Sweetest songs give place to sigh,

Ah, the speechless sorrow,

Pain of by-and-bye.

I too well have known

Gladness lives a-dying,

Joys are often prized when flown,

Loved when past replying,

Sought when left alone.

Sad when roses pine,

Ah, but love is dearer,

Who would dare to quaff this wine

Knowing Fate the bearer,

Guileful fate of mine?

Moti, peerless flower,

Queen of love and gladness,

Tell me in this happy hour,

Will Joy turn to sadness,

And Love's death-night lower?"