It became clear on the morning after Hinnihami had been given to the vederala that the sanyasi had rightly interpreted the will of the god, and that the devil had left Silindu. His eyes no longer presented the glazed appearance, which is the sign of possession. He ate eagerly of the scanty morning meal; and, though still weak, walked with a vigour unknown to him since the night when he fell beneath the banian-trees in the jungle. Throughout the homeward journey strength and health continued to return to him; and by the time they reached the village, the colour of his skin showed that he had been restored to his normal condition. Though they travelled very slowly, they had not again seen the vederala and Hinnihami on the way home. Punchirala made no haste to return to the village, and he only appeared there two days after Silindu arrived. He showed no signs of pleasure in his triumph; he was more quiet and thoughtful than usual. In the house he seemed to his mother to be uneasy, and a little afraid of Hinnihami.
The girl had yielded herself to him in silence. In the long journey together through the jungle he had, without success, tried many methods of breaking or bending her spirit. But he had failed: his jeers and his irony, his anger and his embraces, had all been received by her in sullen silence. He would have put her down to be merely a passionless, stupid village woman had he not seen the light and anger in her eyes, and the shudder that passed over her body when he touched her.
On the morning after she arrived in the village, Hinnihami was alone in Punchirala's compound; the vederala had gone out, and his mother was in the house. She saw Silindu coming along the path, and ran out eagerly to meet him. They sat down under a tamarind tree, just outside the stile in the compound fence.
'The yakka has gone,'said Silindu. 'The god drove him out after the vederala took you. But now what to do? The house is empty without you, child.'
'I must come back, Appochchi. I cannot live in this house.'
'But, is it safe? Will not he bring evil again upon us? The god said one must be given, and now if I take you again, will he not kill you?'
'The god said that one must be given, and it was done. I was given, and the man took me. Surely the gods cannot lie. The evil has been driven out; and as for the man, I am not frightened of him.'
'Ané!' said the mocking voice of the vederala behind them. 'They are not frightened of the man. Oh no, nor of the devils either, I suppose.'
Silindu and Hinnihami got up; the old fear came upon Silindu when he saw Punchirala, but the girl turned angrily upon the vederala, who was astonished by her violence.
'Punchirala,'[39] she said, 'I am not frightened of you. The god did not say I was to live with you. There is no giving of food or clothing. I was given that the devil might leave my father. Was the god disobeyed? I was given to you, you dog; the devil has flown; the god heard us there at Beragama; he will not allow you again to do evil.'
'Mother, mother, come out! Listen to the woman I brought to the house; she has become a vederala. The pilgrimage has made her a sanyasi, I think, knowing the god's mind, skilled in magic.'
'Keep your words for the women of the house. I am going.'
'And are there no other charms, Silindu? No other devils in the trees? You have learned wisdom surely from a wise woman.'
'Do not listen to him, Appochchi. He can no longer harm us. The god has aided us.' She turned upon Punchirala. 'Do you wish me to stay in the house? Yes, there are still devils in the trees. Do not I too come from the jungle? I shall be like a yakkini to you in the house, you dog. You can tell them, they say, by the eyes which do not blink. Rightly the village women call me yakkini. I will stay with you. Look at my arms. Are they not as strong as a man's arms? I will stay with you, but as you lie by my side in the house I will strangle you, Punchirala.'
Punchirala instinctively stepped back, and Hinnihami laughed.
'Ohé! Are you frightened, Punchirala? The binder of yakkas is frightened of the yakkini. You can tell her, they say, because her eyes are red and unblinking, and because she neither fears nor loves. It is better for you that I should go—to the trees from which a I came, mighty vederala. Otherwise, I would strangle you, and eat you in the house. Come, Appochchi, we will go out into the jungle together again as we did long ago—aiyo! the long time. I was a little thing then—and the little sister too. Come, Appochchi; do not fear this Rodiya dog: he is frightened: and now I will never leave you.'
Punchirala was really frightened. He stood and watched the girl walk slowly away with Silindu along the path. Things had not happened quite as he had expected or hoped. He had enjoyed his first triumph over the girl, but he had soon grown to doubt whether her continued presence in his house would add to his comfort. He had felt, without understanding, that the giving of her body to him had only made her spirit more unyielding. Even on the way from Beragama he had felt nervous and uncomfortable with her. He was angered by his defeat and by her taunts, but he watched her disappear with a distinct feeling of relief.
The vederala made no further attempt to molest Silindu, and the next nine months were a period of unwonted prosperity and happiness in the 'Vedda' family. Towards the end of October great clouds rolled up from the northeast, and great rains broke over the jungle. For days the rain fell steadily, ceaselessly. The tank filled and ran over; the dry sandy channels became torrents, sweeping down old rotten trunks and great trees through the jungle; a mist of moisture rose from the parched earth, and hung grey upon the face of the jungle. Suddenly the ground became green, and soon the grass stood waist-high beneath the undergrowth. The earth at last was sodden; and as the rain still fell and the streams overflowed, the water spread out in a vast sheet beneath the trees.
Not for forty years, it was said, had rain fallen so abundantly. A great chena crop was assured. The more energetic began to talk of rice cultivation, now that the tank was full, and to regret the want of seed paddy. Then a rumour spread that the Government was going to make advances of seed, and at last one day the Korala Mahatmaya appeared in the village, and the rumour was confirmed. Promissory-notes were signed; buffaloes were borrowed to turn up the soil of the fields; and at last, after twelve years, the village again saw paddy standing green in the water below their tank.
Silindu's family, principally owing to Babun, had a large share in the prosperity which came to the village from the wonderful chena and rice-crops. Their store was full of kurakkan and millet and rice. They were well fed, and even Silindu became happy. After the return of Hinnihami he seemed to change greatly. They were almost always together, and the fearlessness which she had shown towards Punchirala, and which seemed to have changed her suddenly from a child into a woman, inspired him. The fear of evil overhanging him no longer oppressed him. He worked with Babun cheerfully in the chena and rice-fields: he began again to talk with Punchi Menika. And sometimes he would sit in the compound and tell his strange stories to her and to the child, who had been born to her eighteen months before, and he was happy as he had been happy with her and with Hinnihami years ago when they were children. His happiness and Hinnihami's was greatly increased when she gave birth to a daughter. The child, conceived during the pilgrimage, was a pledge to them from the god that, as his word had been obeyed, the evil had been finally conquered. To the physical joy which Hinnihami felt as she suckled the child, was added her exultation in the knowledge that she was holding in her arms a charm against the evil which had threatened Silindu. Her hatred for the father only increased therefore her love for his child.
But the love and care which she showed from the moment of her birth to Punchi Nona, as she called her daughter, were from the first to be shared with another. On the morning following the evening on which the child was born, Silindu came back from the jungle carrying in his arms a fawn newly dropped by its mother. He went straight to Hinnihami, who lay in the hut nursing the child, and kneeling down by her placed the fawn in her arms. Hinnihami with a little laugh took it, and nestling it against the child was soon suckling the one at one breast and the other at the other. Silindu watched in silence: he was very serious.
'It is well, it is well,' he said when he saw that the fawn was sucking quietly and nestling against Hinnihami and the child.
'The little weakling,' said Hinnihami, gently touching with her fingers the soft skin of the fawn. 'How hungry for milk the little one is! Where has it come from?'
'It has come to you from the jungle. The gods have sent it.'
She bent her head, and very softly drew her lips backwards and forwards over its back.
'It takes the milk like the child. Has the god given another gift, Appochchi?'
'The god sent it. Last night I went to the water-hole, but nothing came while the moon was up. Then clouds gathered and the moon was hidden, and it became very dark. I heard a doe cry near by in pain, "Amma, amma",[40] but it was too dark to see, so I lay down and slept on the top of the high rock. I woke up with the first light, and, as I lay there, I heard below the moving of something among the leaves. Very slowly I looked over the rock, and there below in the undergrowth I saw the back of a doe. Her head was down, hidden by the leaves, and she murmured, licking something on the grass. Slowly, slowly I took up my gun and leaned it over the rock and fired. Everything was hidden from me by the smoke, and I lay quiet until the wind blew it from before me. When I looked again I saw the doe stand there still, the blood running down her side; and she stretched up her head toward me from the jungle, and her great eyes rolled back with fear and showed white, and she opened her mouth and cried terribly to me. I was sorry for her pain, and I said, "Hush, mother, the evil has come. What use to cry? Lie down that death may come to you easily." But again she stretched out her neck toward me, and cried loud in pain, "Amma! amma! Aiyo! aiyo! It is you who have brought the evil, Yakka. To the child here that I dropped last night and that lies now between my feet. Little son, I have borne you to be food for the jackal and the leopard." Then I came down from the rock and stood by her and said, "Mother, the daughter at home this night bore a child. I will take this one too to her, and she will give it the breast." Then she stretched out her head, and she cried out again, and fell dead upon the ground by the side of the fawn.'
Hinnihami pressed the fawn to her.
'Yes, he has come to me out of the jungle, a sign from the god, a great charm against evil. Did not the god himself take the doe as his mistress? They told it to us at Beragama. And now in the same night he has sent me a son and a daughter from the jungle.'
So Hinnihami suckled the child and the fawn together. The village looked on with astonishment and disapproval. 'The woman is as mad as the father,' was the general comment. It was commonly rumoured that she showed more love for Punchi Appu, as the fawn was called, than for her daughter. And though she did not realise it herself, it was true. 'The son from the jungle' inspired in her a passionate love and tenderness—the great eyes which watched her and the wonderful skin that she was never tired of caressing. He had come to her out of the jungle, with something of the mystery and exaltation which she had felt in Beragama towards the god who went by upon the elephant. And her love was increased by the attachment of Punchi Appu to her. Long before Punchi Nona could crawl about the compound, the fawn would trot along by her side crying to be taken up and fed; and even after it grew old enough to feed upon grass and leaves, it never left her, following her always about the house and compound, and through the village and jungle.
The year of the great rains and rice and plenty was followed by a year of scarcity and sickness. For four months, from June to October, the sun beat down from a cloudless sky. The great wind from the south-west failed at last, but even then the rain did not come, and the withering heat lay still and heavy over the jungle. The little puddle thick with mud in the tank, which supplied the village with water, dried up, and the women had to go daily four miles to fetch water from an abandoned tank in the jungle. In November the chenas were still standing black and unsown. At last a little rain fell and the seed was sown. The crop just showed green above the ground, and drought came again, and the young shoots died down.
Then, when it was too late to save the crops, the rains came, and with them sickness. Want had already begun to be felt by bodies weakened by the long drought, and fever and dysentery swept over the country. There was not a family in Beddagama which did not suffer, nor a house in which death did not take the old or the children. The doctor Mahatmaya, whom Punchirala despised, appeared in the village, bringing the medicines which he despised still more; but his efforts were no more or less successful than those of the village vederala. When at last the sickness passed away, it was found that the village had lost sixteen out of its forty-one inhabitants. And the jungle pressed in and claimed two of the eight houses, after dysentery and fever had taken the men, the women, and their children, who lived there.
Even Silindu's house did not escape: there death took its toll of the young. First Punchi Menika's child sickened, and then Punchi Nona. Day after day the mothers, helpless, watched the fever come and shake the children's bodies, and sap and waste their strength. The wail of the two women, each for her dead child, was raised in one night.
It was Silindu who seemed to feel the loss of the children more than any one else in the house. This time clearly the envious powers had grudged him his little happiness. He had been foolish to show his pleasure in the children crawling about the house. He had brought disaster upon them and upon himself. The misery he had felt at losing Punchi Menika came upon him again. It was his own fault: he was a fool to tempt the evil powers that stood around him eager for their opportunity.
After their first wild outburst of grief, Punchi Menika and Hinnihami felt their loss less than Silindu. The death of the child is what every mother must continually expect. They had seen it too long in the village to be surprised at their own suffering: the birth of children every year and then the coming of the fever to carry them off. Their grief was lightened by the feeling of resignation to the inevitable. And in Hinnihami's case there was a further consolation. She still had Punchi Appu, in whose attachment she could forget the child's death. All her love for the child was now merged in her love for him: he was the mysterious gift and pledge of the god; and she felt that so long as he followed by her side, so long as she felt the caress of his lips upon her hand, no real evil could come to her.
Hinnihami's extraordinary love for the deer was well known in the village, and had never been approved. At first it was regarded merely as the folly of the 'mad' woman. These views were, however, very rarely expressed to the girl herself, for most of the villagers stood in some fear of her passionate anger. But about the time when the epidemic of fever and dysentery was decreasing, a new feeling towards them made its appearance in the village. It was started by Punchirala. 'The mad woman and her child,' he would say. 'What sort of madness is that? An evil woman, an evil woman. I have some knowledge of charms and magic. I took her to my house to live with me. But did I keep her? I drove her away very soon. I did not want the evil eye and a worker of evil to bring misfortune on my house. My mother knows, for she heard her call herself a yakkini. Only because of my knowledge of charms was I able to keep away the evil with which she threatened me. And then comes this deer which they say is found in the jungle. Was not the woman herself in travail that very night? Do not she-devils give birth to devils? Do village women suckle deer? Surely it is a devil, born of a devil. Look at the evil that fell upon the village when it came. The crops withered, and the old and the young died. It has brought us want and disease and death.'
The village soon came to believe in Punchirala's opinions. Small children were hurried away out of sight of Hinnihami as she passed. The deer was certainly a devil, who had brought misfortune on the village. Some said that at night it went out and ate the corpses in the new graves. It had been clear for some time that the ill-feeling against them had been growing, when an event occurred which required immediate action. The son of the headman died suddenly, and apparently for no cause. Then it was remembered that, three days before, the child had been carrying some leaves when he met the deer and Hinnihami. The deer had gone up to the child and tried to nibble the leaves, but the boy had snatched them away. The headman and the vederala were convinced that Hinnihami and the deer were the direct cause of the child's death. There was much talk between Babehami and Punchirala; other villagers were sent for; there was much coming and going and discussion in the headman's compound, and eventually action was decided upon.
The next day Hinnihami was collecting firewood in an old chena. The deer was with her, feeding at a little distance from her upon the young leaves and grass. Suddenly she was aroused by noise and movements near her. A small band of men and boys from the village had crept quietly through the jungle, and now were between her and the deer. As she looked up the first stone was thrown: it missed its mark, but another followed, and struck with a thud upon the deer's side. He bounded forward. Hinnihami cried out and ran towards him: at the sound of her voice he stopped and looked round. A shower of stones fell about him; thin streams of blood began to trickle down his flanks; suddenly he plunged forward upon his head, his two forelegs broken at the knees. A cheer broke from the men. Hinnihami, as she dashed forward, was caught by two men and flung backwards upon the ground. She fell heavily and for a moment was stunned; then she heard the long, bleating cry of pain, and saw the deer vainly trying to raise itself upon its broken legs among the jeering knot of men. She felt the blood surge up to her forehead and temples as a wave of anger came over her, and she flung herself upon the two men who barred her path. Swinging their arms wildly, they gave her blow upon blow with the open hand upon her head and breast. Her jacket was torn into shreds, and at last she fell exhausted.
The sight of the bleeding deer and the woman lying on the ground, naked to the waist, seemed to send a wave of lust and cruelty through the men. They tore Hinnihami's cloth from her, and, taking her by her arms, dragged her naked up to the deer.
'Bring the vesi to her child,' they shouted. 'Comfort your yakka, yakkini. Is there no milk in your breasts for him now?'
They held her that she might see what they did. The deer was moaning in pain. One of the men cut a thick stick and struck him upon the hind legs until they were broken. Hinnihami fought and struggled, but she was powerless in their hands. At length, when they had become tired of torturing them, they threw her down by the deer's side and went away.
Hinnihami was unhurt, but she was stunned by the violence of anger and horror. The deer moaned from time to time. She tried to lift him with some vague idea of carrying him back to the house. But he screamed with pain at the slightest movement, and he had grown too big for her to carry. She felt that he was dying. She flung herself down by him, caressing his head, and calling to him not to leave her. 'Punchi Appu! Punchi Appu!' she kept repeating, 'you must not die. Surely the god who gave you to me will save you. Punchi Appu, Punchi Appu, you cannot die.'
Then gradually a sense only of dull despair settled upon her. She sat through the long day unconscious of the passing of time. She was unaware when the deer died; she knew that he was dead now, and that with him everything had died for her. There was nothing for her to live for now, and already she felt life slipping from her. She thought of the child who had died too: she had missed her, and grieved for her, but she had never loved the child as she loved the deer. He had come to her, a wild thing from the jungle, the god's mysterious gift. Now he was lying there dead, his broken limbs twisted under him, the dead white eyes bulging, the tongue hanging out from the open mouth. She shuddered as she remembered the scene, shuddered as she recalled the thud of the stones and the blows.
She was found by Silindu next morning, still sitting naked by the body of the deer, her hair wet with the dew, and her limbs stiff with the chill of the jungle at night. He tried in vain to rouse her. She recognised him. 'Let me be, Appochchi,' she kept repeating. 'Let me die here, for he is dead. Let me die here, Appochchi.'
Then Silindu wrapped her cloth about her, and carried her in his arms to the house. She cried a little when she felt his tears fall upon her, but after that she showed no more signs of grief. She lay in the house, silent, and resigned to die. She had even ceased to think or feel now. Life had no more a hold upon her, and in the hour before dawn in deep sleep she allowed it to slip gently from her.