It was the night before the great Eclipse. A vast, vague expectancy
brooded over the length and breadth of India. Of prophesying there had
been no lack, for signs and wonders had been as blackberries in
September.
So, far and near, east, west, south, and north, the people of
Hindustan--many-hued, many-raced, many-faithed--were watching for they
knew not what, watching with grave, silent, yet curious composure.
But there was no outward sign of this inward expectation on either
side. The millions of dark faces behind which it lay were as
inscrutable as the telegraph wires through which the mere fraction of
white faces responsible for the safety of those millions of dark ones
were flashing silent messages of warning and preparation.
And here, in the Sacred City, beside the Sacred River, in which
multitudes of those millions hoped to bathe on the morrow during the
fateful moments of the sun's eclipse, the dim curves of the world had
never been outlined against a calmer, more restful sky--a sky almost
black in its intensity of shadow. Yet the night was clear, full of a
starlight that could be seen, which showed the bend of the broad
river, angled on one side by the straight lines of its curved sequence
of bathing-steps that swept away to the horizon on either side.
The steps themselves, shadowy, vague, were spangled as with stars by
the little trembling lamps of the myriads on myriads of pilgrims
already gathered on them waiting for the dawn. The reflection of these
lamps lay in the water beside the reflection of the stars, making it
hard to tell where heaven ended, where earth begun.
Behind this long length of bathing-steps--irregular in height, in
slope, in everything save an inevitable crowning by the tall temple
spires--lay Benares. Benares, the only city in the world--since the
reputation of Rome lives by works as well as faith--whose every stone
tells of that search after righteousness which lies so close to the
heart of humanity. Benares, with its sunless alleys, full of the
perfume of dead flowers and spent incense--alleys which thread their
way past shrine after shrine, holy place after holy place; mere niches
in a worn stone, perhaps, or less even than that; only the bare
imprint of a bloody hand on the tall, blank walls of the crowded
tenement houses which seem to narrow God's sky as they rise up toward
it. Benares, where the alien master steps into the gutter to let a
swinging corpse pass on its way to the Sacred River, but where the
priest behind it--his dark forehead barred with white, or smeared with
a bold patch of ochre--steps into the opposite gutter, and clings to
the shrine-set wall like a limpet, lest he be defiled by a touch, a
shadow. Benares, which is, briefly, the strangest, saddest city on
God's earth.
It lay this night, far as the eye could reach along the outward curve
of the Ganges, dreamful exceedingly, dimly paler than the sky. But on
the other side of the river, where the land bulged into the stream,
lay a scene as, dreamful; yet dreamful in a different way; for here,
almost from the water's edge, the young green wheat stretched away
into that level plain of India, the most densely populated
agricultural country in the world, where myriads and myriads of men
live content as the cattle with which they till the soil.
So a whole world lies between these two banks of the Ganges; between
the men of whom pilgrims are made, and the pilgrims made of those men.
And spanning them, joining them, aggressively, unsympathetically, is
the railway bridge built by the alien "Bridge-builders."
Seen in the starlight, with its lattice of dark girders showing
against the sky, its white piers blocking the water-slide at
intervals, this bridge looked quaintly like a fell and monstrous hairy
caterpillar out for a night-walking, one of those caterpillars with
turreted excrescences at its former and its latter end. The hinder one
here was clearly outlined against a distant block of greater darkness.
This was a dense grove of mango trees; and through its far-off shadow
shone twinkling coloured lights, while from it came fitfully, at the
wind's caprice, a faint sound of drumming, a twangling of _sitaras_;
for, in the shelter of the grove, some of the white faces who were
responsible for the dark ones were in camp--in a pleasure-camp full of
guests come to see the show, and whither the telegrams of warning
flashed and whence the answers flashed back, even while the _nautch_,
bidden to amuse those guests, went on and on in twanglings, drummings,
screechings, posturings.
Such details, however, were hidden even from the nearest point of the
angled curve of bathing-steps which swept right away to the starlit
horizon on the opposite side of the river. The only movement visible
thence by the waiting crowd, as it looked across the river, was a
curious dazzling flicker, as if the bridge were shivering, which was
caused by the continuous stream on its outer footway of arriving
pilgrims, showing now against the dark girders, now against the paler
sky.
"Mai Gunga hath her hands full!" murmured one of the group squatting
immovable on these nearest steps; "they come, and come."
A face or two, patient, dark, turned to the bridge, and another voice
came, calm, passive.
"Ay! 'tis easier for folk to find salvation with 'rails' and bridges
than, as of old, with blistered feet and boats." A dark hand nearest
the water's lip, as it lapped a lazy, silvery whisper on the worn
stone steps, slid into the sacred flood with a sort of tentative
caress.
"Yet they said _She_ would revenge Herself for the rending of Her
bosom, for the burden of bricks laid on Her; but She hath not. She
gives and takes as ever."
The long, dark fingers gathered some of the fallen petals which the
river was returning to those who had cast their flower-offering on its
surface, and the dark eyes watched a white-swathed corpse that was
drifting down stream, a faint streak in the slumbering shadow.
"True!" came another passive voice; "but the time is not past. There
is to-morrow yet."
The absolutely unrepresentable _chuck!_ made by the tongue against the
roof of the mouth, which is the most emphatic denial of India, echoed
suddenly, aggressively, into the peaceful air.
It came from the blackness of a low masonry abutment which, traversing
the last three steps, projected a few feet into the river, like a
pier. A yard maybe above the water, some three long, and perhaps a
couple broad, there was just room on its outer end for a small square
temple with a rude spiked spire--the plainest of temples, guiltless of
ornament, looking out over the Ganges blankly. For its only aperture,
a low arched doorway, faced the steps and showed now as a blot of
utter darkness.
"Not She, brethren!" said a cracked voice following on the denial.
"She or Her like will never harm the _Huzoors!_ They have paid their
toll, see you, they have squared the gods."
A dozen or more faces turned to the voice, the figures belonging to
them remaining immovable, as if carved in stone.
"Dost think so really, Baha-_jee?_" came a question. "I have heard
that tale before--and that 'tis done in the 'Magic-houses.'"[2]
---------------------
[Footnote 2: The natives call Freemasonry Lodges by this name.]
---------------------
The emphatic denial rose again. "Not so! These eyes saw it done--here,
in this very place, forty years ago! here, at Mai Kali's shrine!"
In the pause that followed, a pair of claw-like hands could be seen
above the bar of shadow, wavering salaams to the little temple, in the
perfunctory manner of priesthood all over the world.
"'Tis old Bishen, the flower-seller," said a yawning voice. "He was
here in the Time of Trouble,[3] and he tells tales of it--when he
remembers!"
---------------------
[Footnote 3: The Mutiny.]
---------------------
"Then let him tell," yawned another, "since the night is long and the
dawn lingers. How was't done, Baha-_jee?_"
There was a pause.
"Many ways, doubtless. Here and there different ways. But here, one
way. Forty years ago, brothers! Yea, forty years ago, these eyes saw
the 'squaring of the gods.' In this wise ..."
There was another dreamful pause, and then, from the shadow, came the
old thin voice once more.
"Yonder, where the bridge stands now, was Broon-_sahib's_ house--"
"Broon-_sahib?_" echoed a curious listener. "Dost mean Broon-_sahib_
who built the bridge?"
"Who built the bridge?" hesitated the tale-teller. "God knows! More
like his son; for the years pass--they pass, Mai Gunga! and I grow
old. Grant me this last cleansing, Mother! Wash me from sin ere I go
hence ..."
"Lo! thou hast made him forget the rest," reproved another listener,
"as if there were not Broon-_sahibs_ ever! Even now, here in Benares!
Yes! Baba-_jee_, of a certainty, Broon-_sahib's_ house stood here,
where the bridge stands now."
The old memory, started afresh, went on.
"It was a boy, the child. A toddler, but with the temper of tigers.
Lo! it would scream and yell in the _ayah's_ arms, and beat her face
to be let crawl down the steps to pull the spent bosses of the
marigolds out of the water and fling them back like balls. A mite of a
boy; white as jasmine in the face, yellow as the marigolds themselves
in hair. The _mem_, its mother, had the like face and hair. I used to
see her in the verandah over the river, and driving above the steps.
There were many _sahibs_ came and went to the house, after their
fashion, and she smiled and spoke to them all. There was one of
them--so young, he might have been a son almost--who came often; and
she smiled on him, too, as he played, like a boy, with the child. He
was one of the _sahibs_ who have eyes; so, after a time, he would nod
to me and say '_Ram! Ram!_' with a laugh as he passed above me,
sitting here in the shadow, selling my garlands.
"So, one day, as he came by, there was the baby screaming in its
_ayah's_ arms to be let crawl to the water, and she was denying it by
the _mem's_ orders. What the young _sahib_ said at first I know not;
but after a bit he came running down the steps, the child in his arms,
calling back to the woman, in her tongue, 'Trouble not, _ayah!_ I'll
square it, never fear!'
"And there he was beside me, the two white faces, the yellow
heads--for he was but a boy himself, slim, white, yellow-haired--close
together, brother-like, buying a garland of the biggest marigolds I
had. So down at the water's edge, he teaching the child how to throw
them in like a thrower.
"'No underhand work, brotherling,' he said in our tongue, for the
baby, after the fashion of the _baba-logue_, knew none other. 'So!
straight from the shoulder. Bravo! Thou wilt play crickets, by-and-by,
like a man.'
"After that once of chance, it came often of set purpose. He would
come down from the house with the child, and I had to keep the biggest
marigolds for the game, since, see you, they held the bits of brick
better with which he weighted them.
"Thus it went on till one day all the _sahibs_ and _mems_ were at the
house yonder, for God knows what amusement! and in the cool they
strolled down here--the _mems_ dressed so gay, the _sahibs_ all black
and smoking--to see how well the toddler, who could scarce speak, had
learnt to throw. At least, so it seemed, for they watched and laughed;
but after a time they took to throwing the flowers themselves,
laughing more and jesting, until not a marigold was left. Then they
began on Shivjee's _dhatura_ blossoms, filling their white horns with
pebbles, and hurling them far, far into the stream.
"So, when paying time came, the young _sahib_--he had the child by the
hand--flung rupees into my empty basket, and said, 'Lo! Bishen'--for
he was one of those who remember names--'those who seek to curry
favour with the gods will have no chance to-day. We are beforehand. We
have squared them.'
"At this the _mem_, standing close by, frowned and spoke some reproof;
maybe because she was of those who drive to church often. But the boy
only laughed, and, catching the child up, cried, 'Lo! brotherling,
then are we sinners indeed; since we do it so often, you and I!'
"And with that he raced up the steps with the child, calling '_Ram,
Ram!_' and '_Jai Kali Ma!_' like any worshipper; so that the _mem_ and
the others strolling after could not but laugh. And some echoed the
cry as they went up the steps."
The old voice paused in its even sing-song; and when it began again,
there was a new note in it which seemed to bring a sense of hurry and
stress even to that uttermost peace.
"But they came down again. How long after matters not. I see them so
in my old eyes. Going up, laughing in the sunset, then returning. It
was starlight when they came down, the _mems_ and the _sahibs_ and the
_baba-logue_. Starlight as it was now, brethren, but not still, like
this. There were cries, and flames yonder, and folk running.
"The boats lay here below the temple. And one--a Mahomedan--came with
them, promising safety. So they begun to get into the boats, and one
moved off, the crowd looking on. Then suddenly, God knows why! it
ceased looking on, and began to kill. They were half in, half out of
the boat; the _sahib-logue_ and some cried to stop, some to go on. But
the _mems_ made no noise; only you could see their faces white out of
the shadows.
"And his, the young _sahib's_, was whiter than any, glittering,
it seemed, with a white fire. The _mem_ was in the boat, and
Broon-_sahib_ on the bottom step, the baby in his arms. But he, the
boy, was above him facing the crowd--making time.
"Then, just as the mem stretched her hands for the child, a
bullet--they were firing from the top steps--hit Broon-_sahib_, and he
fell half in, half out of the water, pushing the boat out in his fall.
So it began to slide down stream.
"Some in it would have stopped it, but the _mem_ gave a look at those
other _mems_, those other babies, and laid her hand on one that would
have gone back.
"'No!'
"That was the cry she gave--a great cry; but a greater one rang out
through the shadows and the lights, from the boy who had caught up the
child as it fell upon the steps.
"I know not what it was, but it was great, and it echoed out as the
boat slipped fast to safety. And he held the child to his breast and
waved his sword, so that the _mem's_ white face rose from her hands,
where she had hidden it, and she looked back. That was the last thing
I saw out of the shadows as the boat slipped to safety; but it held
me, so that when I looked round, the boy was no longer on the steps.
"He had leaped to the plinth of the temple, and his arms were empty of
his burden. Only he stood in front of the doorway with his glittering
white face--his glittering white face, his glittering white sword!
"' Come on, you devils!' he shouted in our tongue. 'Come on! Mai Kali
shall have blood to-night if she wants it.'"
"And she had, brothers!
"It ran from the plinth and trickled to the river; for none could
touch him from behind, and his sword was in front.
"There was a method in its hackings and hewings. At least so it seemed
to me, watching helpless for good or evil, from my place in the
shadow. For ever, as its keenest stroke fell, so another body fell
blocking the plinth, until he had to stand almost in the arch itself.
"Then a burly Mahomedan trooper challenged him, and I knew not which
way the fight was going, till, with a shout that was almost a laugh,
the white face and the white sword showed, lunging back at the big
body as they broke past. And it fell sidelong, blocking the doorway
quite.
"But none thought of that, of it. None thought of anything save the
glittering face and the glittering sword that had burst through the
circling crowd, and now, facing it again, was backing up the steps,
fighting grimly as it backed.
"Up and up, step by step, and we--even I, brothers, watching
helpless--drawn after it perforce, to see--to know ...
"So the steps were left silent in the starlight. I did not see the
end, brothers. It was beyond my sight. They told me afterwards it was
in the bazaar, with half the town to see; but I had crept away, a
great shivering on me, for I had remembered the flowers and the young
_sahib's_ words about the gods.
"And I remembered the child. What had become of the child?
"Then suddenly I understood. Then I knew what the method of the sword
had been--how it had hidden, had lured!
"It was nigh dawn when I remembered; dawn as it is now. Look! The iron
of night's scabbard grows into the steel of day's sword upon the
water; and hark! that is the cry of the mallards. The world is waking.
So it was when I crept down to Kali's shrine.
"The blood was still dripping into the water, and when I drew the dead
mass of flesh from blocking the doorway, the red of it lay in a pool
up to Her feet. But the child had crawled on Her knees, brothers, and
had cried itself to sleep there.
"Yet when it wakened at my touch it did not cry, for, see you, it knew
me; and so, when it saw the milk, set in a bowl before Her as
offering, it stretched its hands for it.
"Thus it was made clear. So I gave it Mai Kali's milk, knowing it was
true what he had said, 'that they had squared the gods.'"
The voice paused, and another asked, "And then?" before it went on
dreamily.
"Yea! it was true indeed, for ere the day ended they were back with
guns and soldiers. So, since silence is better than speech when nought
is sure, I crept in the night to a Colonel's house and left the child
in the garden for them to find.
"Forty years ago, brothers! Forty years is it since the boats slipped
down to safety with the _Huzoors_, and now ..."
There was a sudden stir in the waiting crowd.
A boat had slipped up the river shadows from the bridge and was making
for the steps.
"That's your station, Brown," said an English voice; "the water is a
bit deep about the shrine, remember, and the old women are devilish
hard to keep back. All right!" it continued, as a man stepped out. "Go
on to the next. We are a bit early on the field; but it is as well to
be beforehand, and square things."
As the boat paddled on, another English voice in the stern said in a
low tone, "Why did you put Brown there? Just where his father was
killed, don't you remember?"
"Just why I did! He won't stand any nonsense, and it is a troublesome
job. Besides, he wasn't killed, and there's luck in it. That was a
queer story. Some one saved him, of course, but why? and how? Now,
Smith! there you are. And, as I said to Brown, for Heaven's sake look
after the old dodderers, male and female. When they've nothing left to
live for ..."
The rest was lost as the boat went on to a yet farther station.
So, as the sun rose, it rose on that great angled sweep, not of steps,
but of humanity; full, pressed down, running over into the spired town
behind--on a million and more of dark faces, and a dozen white ones
dotted here and there at the most dangerous points.
And Broon-_sahib_, bearded, a bit burly with his forty and odd years,
sat on the plinth, and thought, no doubt, of that past at first, then
took out his pipe, and with it some scraps of smoked glass, since the
coming eclipse must not be lost, even though one _was_ on duty.
The sun climbed up, brilliantly unconscious, or at least regardless,
of its coming fate. And after a time boats began to slide up and down,
and a big barge came punting up stream sedately. It was full of
English women and children; and under its wide awning a table was laid
with flowers and sparkling silver against the champagne breakfast
which was to follow on a successful performance of duty.
For not even here could there be allowed hint or sign of that
expectancy of possible evil. A little girl holding her mother's hand
nodded her yellow curls delightedly, as the barge went past, to Dada
sitting swinging his legs just where the blood had dripped into the
stream forty years ago; but something in the woman's face made a call
echo over the water.
"It's all right. Show going A 1!"
As a show there could be no doubt of that. There was a breathlessness
in it, a mighty surge of emotion from one end of that bank of humanity
to the other, a curious wail in the ceaseless roar of voices, that
struck through eyes and ears to the heart.
And now, what was that?
Broad daylight still; not a shadow had shifted, and yet a sense as if
a candle had gone out somewhere.
Broon-_sahib_ put his pipe in his pocket, looked through a glass
darkly, stood up, raised his helmet, wiped his forehead, and put it on
again.
The time had come--there was a nibble of shadow on the ball of
light!--the monster had begun his meal!
As he looked round, unarmed, defenceless, on the hundreds of thousands
of dark heads which held this thought, he smiled and nodded with the
words.
"Have patience, brethren; there is time!" Doubtless, but not much time
to think of other things beyond the mere keeping of that forward crush
of bathers, that backward crush of those that had bathed, from
inextricable confusion.
So much the better, perhaps. Less time, at any rate, for expectation
of the new King who was to fall from the sun and sweep away existing
kingdoms. Less time to notice the white horse led out ostentatiously
by the Brahmins at the biggest temple, sign that such talk was true,
that one aeon had passed away, and another--in which Vishnu should
appear in his final incarnation--had begun.
"Have patience! Have patience!"
That was the burden of the cry from the few white faces dotted among
the dark ones, and it was caught up and echoed by the connecting links
of yellow-legged policemen stationed every ten yards along the lowest
step.
"Have patience! Have patience!"
A hard saying indeed.
Broon-_sahib_ slipped down from the plinth and collared an old
pantaloon just as he fell, hefted him up like a baby, and set him
squatting in safety above. Then an old woman, gasping, gurgling from
the first mouthful of the water into which, regardless of depth, she
had literally been propelled.
"Have patience, brethren! Have patience!"
A harder saying, now that all things had grown grey; though
still--weird, uncanny, beyond belief--not a shadow had shifted.
Hopelessly grey, and hopelessly cold--so cold. So curiously quiet,
too; for the great roar of voices seemed to have severed itself from
things earthly, and was like a mighty wind from heaven.
"Have patience, brethren! Have patience! There is time!"
A harder saying still, when in the greyness, the coldness, a flock of
scared pigeons overhead sent a weird flight of faint grey shadows down
that long length of angled curve, packed by expectant humanity.
Was He coming indeed?--that new ruler? Were these the heralds?
There was quite a little row, now, of rescued old dodderers on Mai
Kali's plinth, whence the blood had dropped forty years ago.
What was that? Had some one withdrawn a veil? Had some one said, "Let
there be light"?
The greyness, the coldness, lost their character in an instant. There
was promise in them now--promise of light to come! The sun was
reasserting its sway, and--not half of humanity had bathed!
"Have patience, brethren! Have patience!" shouted Broon-_sahib_, and
there was a certain fierce determination in his tone.
Hardest saying of all, when the precious moments were going--going so
fast!
"_Huzoor!_" came a piteous, confused voice behind him from the
plinth, "it is my last chance. I am old--I forget. I have forgotten so
much--only this remains. For pity's sake--for the sake of forty years
ago--let old Bishen, the flower-seller, find salvation!"
Even in his hurry, in his breathless recognition that here
was the crucial instant--that a single mistake might bring
disaster--Broon-_sahib_ flung a quick look behind him.
He saw a pathetic old face, humble even in its grief.
"It's all right, _Baba_; there's plenty of time!" he said swiftly.
"Here! look through this bit of glass--you'll see for yourself."
It only took a moment, those quick words; he was back, ready with hand
and voice of command, almost without a break; but they did more for
peace and order than a regiment of soldiers. For old Bishen, after one
look through the smoked glass, rose to his feet and salaamed again and
again, set, as he was, on high, in sight of all.
"Yea! it is true," he cried, in his thin old voice. "There _is_ time.
Let us wait, brethren; for they know--the gods have told them."
Half-an-hour afterwards, with its table laid with flowers and silver,
the sliding barge held Englishmen as well as Englishwomen; and one of
them was drinking deep draughts of iced beer, while a little girl with
yellow hair watched him admiringly, and a woman, still rather pale of
face, stood looking at him with evident relief.
"I told you it would be all right, my dear," he said, smiling. "There
never was any rush to speak of but once; and then I gave a bit of
smoked glass to an old chap, and he saw through a glass darkly what
was up, and told the others. So we squared 'em--gods and Brahmins and
all-as I told you we should, in spite of all the talk and the
telegrams."