MIRACLE MONGERS
Roshan Khan flung his cigarette away, and walked up and down his
quarters in the Fort like an Englishman; he felt rather like one, also,
in his vague distaste for something which refused to fit in with his
previous experiences.
"So she will see my grandmother," he said, at last. "That is a step,
certainly, but--" he turned quickly to Akbar Khan, "it seems
impossible!"
The quondam chief-eunuch giggled like a girl. "Nothing is impossible
with women, oh, Protector of the Poor!" he said; then, with a jaunty
air of self-satisfaction, went on, "and this dust-like one has
experience. She will see the female relation to-night after approved
custom, and, since this is after the habits of the _sahib-logue_, she
would perhaps see the--the Nawab-_sahib_ tomorrow."
Roshan wheeled again in his walk at both the title and the suggestion,
half indignantly, yet with a reluctant eagerness. "See--see me! Did she
say aught of it?"
"A woman's wishes for a lover go not near her tongue, _Huzoor_; they
keep to her heart," replied Akbar, still with his jaunty craft; "but if
this visit of the female relation be auspicious, as God send it, then
there would be no hindrance to the asking; and even if she said nay--"
Something in his hearer's face warned the old sinner he had to do with
some novel code of conduct, and he paused, while Roshan continued his
pacing.
He was disturbed beyond bounds. The foolish dream of a foolish old
woman had come to be so far a reality, that the jealousy which had
blazed up instinctively at the sight of Laila in that dress--so like a
woman of his race--alone with a strange man, had come to be deliberate.
More than once he had felt inclined to tell Pidar Narayan what he had
seen, even to write an anonymous letter of warning. He would have done
so had he seen any subsequent hint of intimacy between these two. But
he saw none; on the contrary, they seemed to avoid each other in
public; and though this might be a blind, on the other hand Roshan had
seen too much of some English women's ways not to know how trivial an
offence against the proprieties it was to sit out dances in a balcony!
Undoubtedly, however, this girl, who had taken his presents on the sly,
who would receive his ambassadress on the sly, was not one whom it was
necessary to treat with great ceremony. She was what the English
language called a flirt; his own a stronger term. Not that it mattered,
since no wife of his would have a chance of amusing herself.
So, after a while, he paused to say--with a scowl for the toothless
grinning survival of a past society--"I would I knew if it were wise to
trust thee? Why shouldst thou take the trouble thou dost? What is the
affair to thee?"
Akbar's face was a study in sheer dignity. "'Tis but my duty, Cherisher
of the Poor!" he said, almost pathetically. "For what other service
were such as I am created?"
The hateful tragedy of this confession of degradation passed Roshan by;
he saw nothing in it but an appeal to facts which gave him confidence.
"Yea!" he said, "I was forgetting. Such arrangings are meat and drink
to thy sort. So take thy price. It shall be trebled if she bids me see
her to-morrow, but--" here he laughed, half at himself,--"thou must
needs work miracles for such favour to come so soon!"
Akbar, as he capered off, the rupees jingling in his pocket, to more
legitimate and less lucrative pursuits, winked and leered to himself
over his own surpassing wickedness and wisdom. Miracles! Ay; but it was
nature worked them, not he. Given youth, proximity, a touch of
surprise, a flavour of the forbidden, and the result, in his evil
experience, was sure. In the meantime his part was to keep the ball
from falling until the players took to playing the game for themselves;
then the fun was over for the true go-between. He had to take a back
seat and watch--he! he! he!--the miracle! A pretty miracle, indeed! The
idea tickled him so that he could not keep it to himself, and as he
passed through the bazaar, doing his daily marketing, he used his new
avocation of miracle-monger as a reason for good bargains. The
shop-keepers, however, shook their heads. Miracles paid the priests,
and might suit such as he, but for their part they considered that
there were too many miracles in Eshwara. What was the good of the
pilgrims coming at all if all their money went to the temples, and they
had not a pice left for a relic, or even a toy to take home to the
toddlers whose feet were not yet strong enough for pilgrimage?
Whereupon they would look discontentedly round the baskets of Brummagen
brass gods, the Belgian-made rosaries, the patent Swedish self-lighting
joss sticks, the machine-cut oblation cups, with which almost every
other shop sought to attract custom. Baskets where a pious pilgrim
could purchase a whole pantheon, and secure a modicum of divine
favour--all duly trade-marked by Christians--for a few farthings.
"'Tis not our fault, brother," suggested a decrepit old Brahmin, with a
wrinkled forehead all seamed with white markings, who--squatted in the
gutter--was extolling the virtue of the sacred _salig ramas_, made
unblushingly out of the ball stoppers of soda-water bottles, which lay
exposed for sale on a handkerchief in front of him; a Manchester-made
handkerchief, printed in the best style with the loves of Krishna. "We
get no more than in the old days; nay, less. For, see you, the
third-class ticket takes so much. And that is the _Huzoors'_ fee. They
send it all over the black water to make a mountain of silver in the
streets of their big city, London. Oh, pious ones! Buy! Buy a sacred
sin-expeller!"
The monotonous cry was caused by the appearance of a priest-led band of
pilgrims; for, as yet, the great throng was not, when the whole narrow
street would be a sea of heads, when even the saffron robes would be
lost to sight, and the only thing visible would be the patient, anxious
faces seeking redemption. That would come on the morrow,--the great
day.
Meanwhile, reverent eyes turned to the bottle-stoppers, and one or two
hands wandered to the little hoard set aside for regeneration, which
was diminishing so rapidly under the claims of chaplets, lights,
caste-markings, sprinkling, and miracles.
"There be too many, I say," reiterated a radical seller of drugs. "If
the _Sirkar_ puts a tax on my medicine for the body, why not on thine
for the soul?"
"Nay, _pinsari-jee!_" chuckled the privileged wit and gossip of the
bazaar, a cobbler who sat--by reason of his low caste--at a decent
distance even from the crowd of customers which was awaiting a patch on
the coverings of feet already worn and weary with their search after
righteousness; "'tis a miracle when folk buy of you; and that comes not
too often."
Even the pilgrims laughed; for laughter at a ready gibe comes easily in
India. Yet they, too, felt inclined to agree with the drug-seller. One
can get _blase_ even in miracles.
Therefore, naturally enough, when there was a choice, they chose the
newest ones. And the newest of all was _jogi_ Gorakh-nath's promise of
defying tampions, and locks, and chains, and, as in other years,
blessing the crowd of worshippers from his self-inflicted penitentiary,
inside the "_Teacher of Religion_."
And what was more, he had kept his promise. That very dawn, as a kind
of walk over the course, he had performed the miracle before a select
band of pilgrims, mostly _jogies_ of his own sect who were now engaged
in telling the tale to all and sundry in the city. What had occurred
was briefly this. He had received his followers squatted on the stone
steps in front of the gun, and had treated them to a dissertation on
the mysteries of Yoga. Other less eminent practitioners in the art of
miracles, he said, might have found it necessary to withhold the sight
of the sacred person from devoted eyes. He, however, meant to show them
his absolute independence of the body. He would leave it lying there,
dead, while his soul went inside the gun, and blessed the pious ones.
Accordingly his jaw had dropped; he had become rigid, callous
apparently to the prickings of pins with which his assistants strove to
make him wince, and, just as one of them withdrew a dagger, covered, of
course, with gore from his very heart, a muffled voice of blessing had
come from the very bowels of the gun.
If that was not a miracle, what was?
Anyhow, it caught on, so that as the day grew, the growing tide of
pilgrims passed by the side-shows run in connection with the Pool of
Immortality by its priests, and drifted off to the opposition show,
leaving the _impresarios_ behind them in a state of rage and despair.
Rage, for if this sort of thing continued on the morrow they would lose
their year's harvest, since the Host of God-seekers were ever the
natural prey of priests; despair, because exposure of what experience
told them _must_ be a fraud, would only result in counter exposure.
There must be honour among thieves to make the profession a lucrative
one.
So they met in conclave, each with his miserable earnings in his hand,
to point the dire urgency of action, and agreed on the wisdom of
finding a cat's-paw to filch their chestnuts from the fire.
Thus it happened that Vincent Dering came over to Lance Carlyon's
quarters half an hour before the time they had settled to start for the
mission house, and asked him to look sharp, and send round to Roshan
Khan to come along also, as he had private information--here, with a
laugh, he threw a letter on the table--that miracles were being
illegally performed in cantonments, and he expected some fun. Lance
laughed also as he read the following:--
"To the Major General commanding. This is to give notice to all
concerned that illegible miracles is now being performed by bare men in
belly of great gun, contrary to astringent orders issued by my lord
god. Therefore your petitioners pray for correct diagnosis of same, and
removal from Cantonment boundaries with exhibitions not to miracle any
more."
"By Jove!" he said, "our petitioner is a medical man--hospital dresser,
I expect. Not to miracle any more!--h'm." His tone changed, his honest
blue eyes clouded, for, ever since Erda Shepherd had told him what her
future life was to be, the young fellow had been painfully aware that
Eshwara had wrought a miracle on him; that he was no longer content to
take life as he found it; that already he had begun to look forward and
think of what life would be by and by. "I expect that would be a
difficulty in Eshwara," he went on; "it's an awful place for upsetting
the proper odds. Seems to me impossible to--to make a safe book on
anything."
Vincent Dering shrugged his shoulders. He had been in the highest
spirits for the last few days. "A safe book! The dullest thing in
creation. That's why I like Eshwara. As I remember telling you, one
can't count upon anything in the topsy-turvy place--not even one's
self. They talk of the mystery of the East! By George! one is in grips
with it here; so come along, Lance! and remove miracles from Cantonment
boundaries at any rate!"
They found the union-jack of paths obliterated by an orderly crowd; for
every hour, almost every minute, of the day had brought fresh units to
that weary-footed, eager-eyed host of pilgrims. Here and there amongst
them was to be seen the high-twined, badge-set turban of a policeman,
ready, truncheon in hand, to assert the rights of law, but not many;
since the rush of bathers had not yet come, and there was small danger
to be feared from anything save that keen desire to be cleansed, which
showed on almost every face. As the two Englishmen entered, however,
followed by Roshan Khan, on whose features that fierce intolerance of
his race for idolaters was written clearly, a murmur of tense
anticipation ran through the packed courtyard. The miracle turn was
evidently on.
It was. _Jogi_ Gorakh-nath lay as if dead on the raised stone platform
in front of the gun, and two assistants were prodding him with pins.
"I've seen that in London," said Vincent, forcing his way rapidly
through the yielding crowd, "so I can hardly object to it here; but if
there is hanky-panky with my gun--"
At that instant, a bloody dagger, fresh apparently from the _jogi's_
heart, was held up, and a curious hush fell on the courtyard. It was
broken by a muffled voice, unmistakably from within the gun, and that
was lost in a great roar of applause.
"A miracle! a miracle of the gods!"
Captain Dering, who with the others had now reached the centre, waited
for the roar to subside a little, and then his voice rose and seemed to
crush it.
"_Risaldar-sahib_ You have the key of the padlock. Take out the
tampion, and see who is inside."
As he spoke, his eyes were on the assistants, and something in their
defiant assurance warned him that he was on the wrong tack, and made
him cover possible discomfiture with the words,--"If there is no one,
then someone here has the art of throwing his voice where he will."
As if in assent, the muffled blessing came, louder, this time, from the
now un-tampioned gun, so that Roshan's face showed somewhat scared, as,
with a salute, he announced as the result of his inspection, "There is
no one, sir, I can see clear down the metal, but--but the voice is
there."
A sound of such fierce approval ran through the crowd who were within
hearing, that Captain Dering saw instantly that it would not be wise to
court another failure.
"Close up the gun again," he said loudly. "So long as my orders are not
disobeyed, and people keep their bodies out of my gun, their voices are
welcome to it! Come along, Carlyon," he added, in English, "it's
ventriloquism, of course, and I'd dearly like to catch the beast who
does it, but we had better leave it alone for the present."
Lance, who, in sudden remembrance of the sound he had heard as he
drifted past the bathing-steps in his canoe on the night of the dance,
had been vainly overhauling the padlock and chain for signs of their
having been tampered with, nodded his head, and let the chain swing
back on its staple. The sudden jerk threw a new light on the matter.
For the staple came out, disclosing the fact that it had been neatly
filed through at the shank, and then replaced by means of a drilled
hole and a pin.
The proof of tampering was clear, but nothing else.
"I have it," said Lance suddenly coming up with a red but triumphant
face from a prolonged inspection down the huge muzzle, "they've shoved
in a false end, and there's someone behind. Roshan! go back and fetch
me my long gaff, and Roshan--my cleaning rod."
"And tell the guard to come out at once," added Captain Dering, heedful
of the rising note of movement amongst the crowd, sign that it was
growing restless.
"Stay! I've got a ripping idea!" cried Lance again, his face all abeam
with delight--delight so catching that the crowd stilled as he turned
to it. "Look here," he said confidentially, in Hindustani, "there's a
boy in this gun. It must be a boy, and rather a small one, for there
isn't room for anything big. Now isn't there a boy anywhere about the
same size who'd like to come and draw him? He will be heads this way,
and you will be able to get a good grip of his hair, and he will get a
grip of your's, and--and it will be--be jolly!" The untranslatable word
needed no translation. That something in the perfection of careless
youth which touches the hearts of all mankind, put Lance and his
audience in touch instantly.
A group of tall, grave-eyed Sikhs laughed uproariously, and nudged a
lad beside them. "Go on, brotherling," they said, "thou art the best
wrestler of the school. Go! show the _Huzoor_ how thou canst hold thine
own."
It needed no more. "Yea! try thy luck, brotherling," said a dozen
voices, "and if thou canst not we will find a champion!"
That settled it. Five minutes afterwards Lance Carlyon found himself
arranging the conditions of the draw, surrounded by half a dozen lads,
each backed by eager supporters. By this time Roshan had returned, and
with the aid of the gaff and one of the smallest of the guard, Lance's
guess had been proved to be true. A neatly fitting disc of metal,
cup-shaped to increase the resemblance to the end of the barrel had
been withdrawn, leaving a head visible.
"It is beautifully tousled, and you'll get a good grip," said Lance,
regretfully, as he helped the Sikh champion into the gun, "but it is
bigger than I thought for, and you'll have your work cut out for you."
Then ensued the quaintest scene imaginable. The whole crowd, but five
minutes before ready, almost, to fight for the truth of their miracle,
were swaying breathless, excited, in sheer childish delight over the
tussle to expose it.
"Lo! he comes--I see his toes--bravo, Gurdit! Nay, the other hath
strength left! Sho! sonling, let not go for thy life! That is well
done--Bravo! Bravo!"
So backwards and forwards, like a terrier and a badger, the draw
wavered, Lance, watch in hand, calling time.
"Half a minute more! Go it, Gurdit!" he shouted. The encouragement had
its effect. Gurdit's toes, his ankles, his calves showed beyond the
gun; only his knees remained, giving him grip still.
"Wait for his knees. Wait till he loses grip!" shouted Lance--"twenty
seconds more--fifteen, ten--f--there you are! that's it, fair!!"
Fair it was; the knees, pressing outwards steadily, every bronze muscle
of them showing the strength of the drag, lost grip, and with a great
yell of delight, half-a-dozen bearded Sikhs had hold of Gurdit's feet
with such a vigorous pull, that Lance had to shove his knee forward, in
a hurry, to prevent the boy from falling on his face; since both his
hands were locked desperately in the tangled hair of a disciple so big
that he came out of the gun with a cloop like a cork!
"It was the most sporting draw I've seen for years," said Lance
enthusiastically, when, after much laughter and congratulation, the
crowd parted with smiles to let the Englishmen pass, "and I'm glad you
let the beggar off, Dering. It wasn't his fault, and he must have been
beastly uncomfortable. Now, if you could have quodded the _jogi_--"
"I hope to do that by and by," replied Vincent significantly, "but it
was just as well the crowd should laugh to-day. These religious
gatherings are always a bit risky--and, as you know, Dillon is having
trouble over at the gaol. 'Pon my soul, I don't know which is worst to
manage--fifteen hundred scoundrels, or a hundred and fifty thousand
saints."
"A hundred and fifty!" echoed Lance, "will there be as many as that?"
"Quite. So it is as well they should laugh; for even with the extra
contingent of police we should find it a bit hard to manage them if
they didn't."
True; but unfortunately the laughter of the many involves the
discomfiture of the few; and in this case, these were the most
unscrupulous men in Eshwara.