The Missionary: An Indian Tale; vol. III

by Lady Morgan

  CHAPTER XVI.

  It was night when the travellers reached the suburbs of the ancient cityof Tatta; the caravan had been lessened of its numbers during itsprogress; those who remained, now dispersed in various directions: theInquisitors, instead of proceeding with their charge to a _Caravansera_,carried him and the Neophyte to a small fortress which belonged to aSpanish garrison; a guard of soldiers, headed by the two Inquisitors,who had preceded the caravan, received them at its portals.

  The Missionary guessed his fate,--dreadful as it was, he met it notunprepared: he saw himself surrounded by an armed force; he knew that,were he inclined to offer it, all resistance would be vain; and hesubmitted, with all the grandeur of human dignity, with all the firmnessof religious fortitude, to a destiny now inevitable.

  But Luxima still clung to him: the gloomy air of all around her, thefierce looks of the soldiers, their arms glittering to the dusky lightof a solitary lamp, which hung suspended in the centre of a vast anddesolate guardroom; the black cowls and scowling countenances of theInquisitors, all struck terror on the timid soul of the Indian. She castround a fearful and terrified glance, and would then have sunk upon thebosom of her sole protector and friend on earth, but, exposed as theywere to the observation of their persecutors, the Missionary, for hersake even more than for his own, rejected the impulse of his feelings,and, turning away his head to conceal the agony of his countenance, heheld her from him.--It was then that the heart of Luxima, sinking withinher bosom, seemed to have received its death wound;--she fixed herclosing eyes on him, who thus almost seemed to resign her to misery andto suffering, unsupported and unpitied--but she wept not, and one of theInquisitors bore her away, unresisting, and almost lifeless, in hisarms. An exclamation of horror burst from the lips of the Missionary;and, with an involuntary motion, he advanced a few steps to follow her;betraying, in his wild and haggard looks, the feelings by which his soulwas torn. But the guards interposed--he could not even himself desire,that she might remain with him; and the Inquisitor, fixing his eyes onhis agitated countenance, with a look of scoffing malignancy, said:“Fear not for your concubine, she shall be taken care of.”--At thesewords, a deep scarlet suffused the cheek of the Missionary; fire flashedfrom his dark rolling eye, and he cast a look on his insultingoppressor, so blasting in its glance, that he seemed to wither beneathits terrific influence.--“Observe!” he said, with a voice of thunder, “Irepeat it to you, it is a Christian Neophyte, pure, spotless, andunsullied, which you have now taken under your protection; looktherefore that you consider her as such, as you shall answer it to thatGod, to whom she is about to consecrate her sinless life; as you shallanswer it to that Church, whose ministers you are.--Be this rememberedby you as priests; as _men_, forget not _she is a woman_!” Then, turningto his guards, he said with haughtiness, “Lead on;”--as though he stillcommanded, even in obeying; and he was immediately led to a tower in aremote part of the fortress.

  The members of the Inquisitorial Court, into whose power a singularcoincidence of circumstances had thrown the Missionary, were returningfrom visiting the Christian institution at Lahore, of whose abuses anddisorders the grand Inquisitor had received secret intelligence, whenthe chief of the party, who had been raised to his present dignity bythe low arts of cunning and duplicity, discovered in the supposed loverof a fugitive Indian, that once infallible man, of whose rigid virtue,and severe unbending justice, he had been the victim; conscious, that indetecting and exposing the frailty of one who had “bought goldenopinions, from all sorts of persons,” he should, while he gratified hisown private vengeance, present a grateful victim to the Jesuits andDominicans, who equally hated the Franciscan, for his order, hispopularity, and his unrivalled genius,--he soon sought and foundsufficient grounds of accusation, to lay the basis of his future ruin.With an artifice truly jesuitical, he drew the Missionary into aconversation, which he obliged one of his brethren to listen to, andnote down; and, from the freedom of those religious opinions he hadinduced the Missionary to discuss, and from the tender natureof the ties which seemed to exist between him and his lovelyassociate,--Heresy, and the seduction of a Neophyte, were the crimes tobe alleged against a man, whose disgrace was destined to be commensurateto the splendour of his triumphs.

  On the day following their arrival at Tatta, the Missionary was conveyedon board a Spanish vessel, which lay in the Indus, and was bound forGoa. On his way he passed the _litter_ which Luxima, he believed,occupied; but it was closely covered. He shuddered, and for a momentthe heroism of virtue deserted him--he doubted not that she would beconveyed in the same vessel with him to Goa; and, as he knew thatsupplication would be fruitless, and that in humbling himself tointreaty he would not effect the purpose for which he stooped, he madeno effort to obtain an interview with her: he believed too that theinsatiable desire of the Jesuits for conversion would render her safetyand preservation an object to them; and that she would owe to thebigotry of their zeal, that mercy which she could not expect from thesuggestions of their humanity--but that he should never again beholdher, the object of his only love, the companion of his wandering, andthe partner of his sufferings, was an idea dictated by despair, fromwhich religion withdrew her light, and hope her solace. Placed in aclose and unwholesome confinement, it was in vain he sought to catch thesound of Luxima’s voice; it was in vain he hazarded an inquiry relativeto her situation: silence and mystery still surrounded him; no beamshone upon the darkness of his days; no answer was returned to hisinquiries; no pity was given to his sufferings; all was dreary hopelessgloom! all was the loss of fame, the loss of love! of all that the highambition of piety had promised! of all that the exquisite feelings ofnature had bestowed!--Still pursued “by thoughts of lost happiness andlasting shame,” and joined only in _equal ruin_ with her for whom hehad encountered misery and affliction, and on whose innocent head hehad heaped it,--he now saw that the sufferings of man resulted less fromthe constitution of his nature, than from the obstinacy with which heabandons the dictates of Providence, and devotes himself to thoseillusions which the law of human reason, and the impulse of humanaffection, equally oppose. He remembered the feelings with which theBrahmin Priestess and the Christian Missionary had first mutually met;he contrasted their first interview with their present situations, alikeas they now were _the victims of mistaken_ zeal; and he accused thatmisconstruction of the laws of Providence, those false distinctions,which superstition has erected between the species, as the source ofthe severest sufferings to which mankind was condemned. For himself, hehad no hope: he knew the character of his judges, the sentiments theybore in general to his order, and in particular to him; he knew theinfluence of the tribunal at which they presided, he knew that thosewhom they intended to destroy, no human power could preserve. But whilehe accused himself of relaxation in his zeal, of negligence in hismission, of suffering a guilty passion to subdue the force of his mind,and the influence of his religion, he believed his enemies to be but theblind agents of that Heaven, whose wrath he had justly provoked; for,still bringing his new-born feelings to the test of his ancientopinions, he continued to oppose religion to nature, and deemed himselfsunk in guilt, because he had not risen above humanity.

  It was on a day bright and sunny as that on which the Apostolic Nuncioleft _Goa_ in all the triumph of superior and unrivalled excellence thathe returned to it a _prisoner_ and in _chains_. His enemies haddetermined that his disgrace should be as striking and as public as histriumph; that the idol of the people should be dashed before their eyesfrom the shrine erected to his glory; and that envy and bigotry, underthe guise of religion and justice should gratify the insatiate spirit ofpersecution and vengeance. Before the illustrious criminal was permittedto land the intelligence of his return under circumstances so differentfrom those his departure had promised, and dark inuendos of the natureand extent of his fault, were artfully circulated through _Goa_, tillthe public mind, soured by the disappointments of its hopes and itsconfidence, was prepared to receive the Nuncio with a contempt equa
l tothe admiration it formerly bestowed on him. At last a guard of Spanishsoldiers, accompanied by the officers of the Holy Office, were sent toconduct him to the prison of the Inquisition. A multitude of persons hadassembled to see him pass; but they no longer beheld the same creaturewhom they had last so loudly greeted with acclamations of reverentialhomage, and on whose mild and majestic brow passion had impressed notrace, whose commanding eye was brightened by holy joy, and whose lifeof sinless purity was marked in the seraphic character of his inspiredcountenance! His person was now almost as changed as his fate: it wasworn away by suffering, by fatigue, by internal conflicts, and faded byits exposure to the varying clime; the experience of human frailty inhimself, and of human turpitude in others, marked his brow with tracesof distrust and disappointment;--his enthusiasm was fled! his zealsubdued by the fatal consequences of its unsuccessful efforts! and love,and affliction, and shame, and indignation, the opprobrium he endured,and the innocence he could not establish; the injustice under which helaboured, and the malignity he despised--all mingled their conflicts inhis soul, all shed over his air and look the sullen grandeur of a prouddespair, superior to complaint, and inaccessible to hope; yet “not all_lost_ in _loss_ itself,” gleams of his mind’s untarnished glory stillbrightened at intervals his look of gloom--and, still appearing littleless than “archangel ruined,” he proceeded, manacled, but lofty andtowering above the guards who surrounded him. An awful silence reignedon every side; and even those who deemed him culpable, saw him so mightyin _his fall_, that while they accused him of guilt, they believed himsuperior to weakness; respecting while they condemned, and admiringwhile they pitied him. As a member of the noble house of _Acugna_,whatever were the charges brought against him, he could not fail toexcite interest in Goa, where the Portuguese were coalesced by a commonfeeling of suffering under the oppression of the Spanish government:but the terrors which surrounded the most dreadful of all humantribunals; a tribunal which was seconded, in the hierarchy of Goa, byall the influence of civil authority; its being invested with the powerof life and death, and superstitiously believed even with that ofsalvation itself, awed the boldest heart, and alike silenced thefeelings of patriotism, and stilled the impulse of humanity! Not even amurmur of resistance was heard; the accused and his guards passedsilently on to the prison of the Holy Office; they reached its gloomycourt; the portals closed upon the victim, and the light of hope wasshut out for ever!

  No breath transpired of the dark mysterious deeds which passed withinthe mansion of horror and superstition; and its awful investigationswere conducted with a secresy which baffled all inquiry:[13] theimpenetrable cloud which hung over the fate of the Missionary, couldonly be cleared up when that dreaded day arrived, upon which thedungeons of the Inquisition were to yield up their tenants topunishment, to liberty, or--to death!

  At this period a sullen gloom hung over the city of Goa, resembling thebrooding of a distant storm:--it was rumoured, that the power of theSpanish government in Portugal and its colonies was on the point ofextinction, and it was known by many fatal symptoms, that the Indianswere ripe for insurrection. The arts used by the Dominicans and theJesuits for the conversion of the followers of Brahma, the evilconsequences which had arisen by forfeiture of cast, (for many familieshad shared the ignominy heaped on the devoted head of the individualapostate) with the coercive tyranny of the Spanish government, hadexcited in the breasts of the mild, patient, and long-enduring Hindus, aprinciple of resistance, which waited only for some strong and suddenimpulse to call it into action[14]; and it was observed that thisdisposition had particularly betrayed itself on a recent and singularoccasion.

  A woman who bore on her forehead the mark of a descendant of Bramah (thesacred _tellertum_), and round her neck the sacrificial threads or_dsandam_ of their tutelar god, was seen to enter a convent ofDominican nuns, led by an officer of the Inquisition, and surrounded byDominican and _Jesuit priests_! The faded beauty of her perfect form,her noble and distinguished air, the agony of her countenance, and thesilent tears which fell from her eyes when she turned them on those ofher own cast and country, who stood near the litter from which shealighted, awakened a strong and powerful emotion in their feelings; andit was not decreased, when a Cashmirian, who was present, declared thatthe said apostate was Luxima, the Brahmachira and prophetess ofCashmire. The person who industriously circulated this intelligence, wasthe _pundit_ of Lahore, the preceptor of the Missionary. His restlessand unsettled spirit had led him to Goa: some imprudent and severeobservations which he had let fall against the Inquisitorial power, hadnearly proved his destruction, but his talents had extricated him; hehad engaged as secretary and interpreter to the Spanish Viceroy, andobtained his favour and protection by those arts of conciliation, ofwhich he was so perfectly the master. His hatred of the Inquisition andhis love of intrigue and of commotion, which gave play to the finesse ofhis genius, and the activity of his mind, led him to seize everyopportunity of exciting his compatriots to resist the European power inGoa; and it was about this period that the arrival of Luxima furnishedhim with an event favourable to his views. He had in vain sought toattract her attention on her way to the Convent of the Dominicans; noruntil her arrival at its portal had he succeeded in catching her eye; hethen effected it by dropping his muntras at her feet. Absorbed as sheappeared to be, this little incident did not escape her attention: sheraised her tear-swollen eyes to his, with a look of sudden recognition,for she had known him in the days of her glory; but the Cashmirian, withan almost imperceptible motion of his finger across his lips, implyingsilence, carelessly picked up his beads and passed on, as the doors ofthe Christian sanctuary shut out from the eyes of the multitude thepriestess of Brahma.

  It was on the eve of St. Jago de Compostello, that the usually tranquilabode of the Dominican sisters exhibited a scene of generalconsternation: the _Indian Catechuman_, committed to their pious care,had mysteriously disappeared a few days after her reception into theirOrder. Her conduct had not prepared them for an event so extraordinaryfrom her: either unable or unwilling to speak their language, they hadnot once heard the sound of her voice, save that at sun-set she sung afew low wild notes, through the bars of the casement of her cell, whichthe younger nuns delighted to catch in the garden beneath, believingthat the day was not distant, when a voice so angelic would blend itsmelody with the holy strains of the Christian choir; but she appeared inevery other respect docile, unresisting, and timid almost to wildness.She had suffered them to exchange her Indian dress for the habit of anovice of St. Dominick; she had unreluctantly accompanied them to theirchurch, and assisted at their devotions: her looks were indeed wanderingand wild, and seemingly always sent in search of some particular object;but she made no inquiry, she uttered no complaint, and the secretdisorder of her mind was only visible in her countenance; which wore thegeneral expression of confirmed melancholy, the sadness of unutterableaffliction. A meekness so saintly, a gentleness so seraphic, excitedhopes in the breast of the abbess and the sisterhood, which weresuddenly destroyed by the miraculous disappearance of the Catechuman.The convent grounds, the gardens of the Viceroy, which were only dividedfrom them by a low wall, were vainly searched; and no circumstanceattending her flight could be ascertained, but that she had escaped bythe casement of her cell; one of the bars of which had been removed fromthe brick-work. The _Provincial_ of the Order having been madeacquainted with the event, which was placed to the account of _pagansorcery_, an order was issued from the Holy Office, offering a reward towhoever should give up the _relapsed infidel_, and threatening death tothose who should conceal her; but week after week elapsed, and no onecame forward to claim the recompense, or to avert the punishment. Thepagan sorceress was no where to be heard of.[15]