ECHOES
If the twopenny-halfpenny tambourine--which had been bedaubed with its
white lilies and rampant butterfly by a suburban maiden lady for a
mission sale, and, remaining over from that, had been bought in at half
price by Mrs. Campbell for the adornment of her drawing-room,--had been
indeed Jean Ziska's famous drum, Eshwara could hardly have been more
restless than it was on the night after Vincent Dering had sung, "Oh!
dem golden slippers!" to its accompaniment. The tune had occurred to
him in an instant, without thought, simply as one he had sung more than
once when doing bones and tambourine in a nigger troupe at a soldiers'
sing-song. He had meant nothing by; it and yet the words,
"Golden slippers on a golden stair,
Golden slippers dat we'se got to wear,"
fitted their environment; that atmosphere of effort after something
beyond, above the real, the actual; the inevitable climbing of a golden
stair, the inevitable wearing of the golden shoes, the inevitable
search after the golden gates which, found, will open upon Paradise.
True, the Paradise differed to each pair of yearning eyes and weary
feet; but the longing for it as a personal gain, spiritual or bodily,
was identical.
For Paradise is the Desire of the World still; whether men find it in
the good they lost, or the Love which lost it for them.
And in Eshwara that night the desire rose strenuously, militantly.
Erda, packing her boxes in haste, since she and her aunt had arranged
to start with the others at dawn, felt as if she had, at last, closed
her hand firmly on the plough. There could be no looking back now. The
golden slippers were on her feet, the golden stairs before her, the
golden gates within sight. She had said good-by to Lance without a
quiver. She even smiled softly, tenderly, as she set an unopened deal
box to go with her others. It was one which the Reverend David had
brought with him from England, and which had been made over to her, not
without nods and winks, smiles and suspicions of tears, from her aunt.
For it contained the wedding dress. It was a Moravian wedding dress of
the old style, to suit Erda's fancy; and she had been quite anxious to
see the delicate white muslin robe and the quaint little cap, with its
bunch of orange blossoms, which was to mark her as both bride and
matron. But it had seemed a pity, in careful Mrs. Campbell's opinion,
to unpack it only to repack it, and run the needless risk of crushing
its daintiness. So there in its box it lay still, untouched, unseen.
There would be real orange blossoms and to spare, the girl told
herself with a smile, in the garden at Herrnhut; for so the summer
resting-place of the mission had been called in deference to the
Moravian extraction of those who had built it and started the Christian
settlement in the tiny valley in which it stood. This lay some thirty
miles up the Hara, beyond the first range of hills; and the river,
fresh from its mad rush from the snows beyond, ran through it slackly,
peacefully, before beginning its long, swift, yet smooth, slide down
the dark ravine which cleft the outer range, until it ended in the
plains at Eshwara.
It was at Herrnhut that, every year, in turns of two months during the
hot weather, the missionaries exchanged work in the bazaars for the
lighter labor of the agricultural settlement. Naturally, therefore, it
was looked on as a sort of holiday house; but this year it would be
something more. It would be the headquarters of fight, the centre of
the resistance which was to use the Commissioner's order to cease
firing as an excuse for a more determined skirmishing. For it stood
right on the pilgrims' road. Indeed, Erda and the other rebels would
have to travel a good eight-and-twenty miles along that very road
itself before coming to the slack water where they could cross the
river by a ferry, and finish their journey through the level fields on
its further side to Herrnhut, with its homelike, peaceful surroundings.
The memory of them came to Erda, making her sense of that inevitable
climbing of the golden stair after righteousness more acute; since she
had to face a good-by to them also. And sooner than she had expected,
for the breaking up of winter work a week earlier than usual, owing to
this secular interference, had made David, eager to begin anew, plead
for a speedier wedding. So there were only two or three days left, at
most.
The knowledge, however, brought her no doubt; it helped her, rather, to
a greater certainty.
She had done right. Her feet were indeed upon the golden stair!
And in the other houses of the mission, where everyone was disregarding
sleep in the striving after something that was more to them than sleep,
the atmosphere was electric also, the thoughts militant.
So they were in the streets, the alleys of the town; for on the bridge
of boats--that bridge which spanned the broad expanse of water between
the city and the great plain of India--the pilgrims were passing, now,
in an unending stream--to take up their places as near as might be to
the Pool of Immortality, where, with the dawn, the water would rise
miraculously for the cleansing of sin.
"_Hari! Hara! Hara! Hari!_"
The cry was almost incessant, but the eye could see little, for the
moon was young, the night dark.
"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"
Hour after hour it came, that cry on the dread Creator, the dread
Destroyer. Monotonous, patient, almost indifferent, yet absolutely
insistent.
The golden-shod feet of the pilgrims, after whose souls the
missionaries yearned, were on the golden stair also, and their golden
gates would open at the 'Cradle of the Gods'; must open, hidden though
the goal was by mist when it was day, by darkness when it was night.
What matter if it was hidden? For the gold-shod feet might falter and
fall ere that goal was reached; but the hidden spring of cleansing at
the Pool of Immortality was theirs. It would rise at dawn; rise as it
did always, every year.
"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"
What matter Birth or Death, if the finding of that lost paradise of
purity was certain.
Out on the bridge, whence the cry came oftenest, there was no doubt
regarding this certainty; but as each weary pair of feet stumbled on
the first stones of the town, it stumbled into an atmosphere in which
nothing seemed sure, save that there was change; that Eshwara was not
what it had been.
To begin with, it held soldiers. Wherefore? And why had dead women been
sent back to it by Mother Ganges to curse the men whose love had killed
them?
But what wonder, when the very logs, the fishes, were stolen from the
river nowadays; and from the people also. Then what of this strange new
light? The light which fed on men's brains!--that came and went at
pleasure--that was quite small at first, when but seven or eight men
had been sacrificed, but which, only an hour or so agone, had showed in
a huge ray, feeling here and there through the darkness for God knows
what, then settling on it, making it impossible to hide aught, prying
into the very Holiest of Holies! Had it not shot into Mother Kali's
very temple, and shown the worshippers that two of her mighty arms were
stuck on with sealing wax! What God would stand that! And how could the
very Gods themselves work miracles if everybody could see how they were
done?
They had already refused to work them for pious _jogi_ Gorakh-nath.
What wonder? The Gods did not like laughter, especially the laughter of
_M'llechas_.[10]
Therefore, who was to tell if the spring would even rise in the Pool?
So those who were wise would make certain of at least a modicum of
salvation, and go straight to the bathing-steps; since the river,
anyhow, must be there.
This suggestion of a cautious hedge was diligently spread by the
bathing-_ghat_ priests among the new arrivals; who listened patiently.
But so they did also to the other priests whose business it was to
scorn the possibility of failure, and to deny the displeasure of the
Gods. To say that _jogi_ Gorakh-nath had been found out by the
_Huzoors_ in one of his usual tricks; that was all. So that people who
wanted the genuine article, and a real, good, old crusted miracle, had
better come as usual to the Pool.
The weary-footed, anxious-eyed climbers of the golden stairs listened
patiently, silently, even when the antagonists began, in vehement
quarrel, to bandy threats, and hint at worse portents to come. To their
experience, their hope, it seemed impossible even to dream their
pilgrimage in vain. The dawn would show, anyhow. So hour by hour,
minute by minute, the tide of pilgrims set citywards till it brimmed
over with faith and hope. And these are dangerous things when charity
depends on them, and there are antagonistic claims to every alms. So
Eshwara was restless.
Over in the gaol, also, by which the golden-shod feet passed so closely
with their heart-stirring cry, it seemed as if Vincent Dering's
thrumming, following as it did on the heels of Eugene Smith's success
with the search light, had set what Dr. Dillon called his Hosts of the
Devil in commotion. Indeed, that thrumming was still going on when
George Dillon had gone raging over to conjure the experimenter, with
oaths, to turn off his confounded bull's-eye at once, or the prisoners
would go out of their judgment with thinking of the number who would
have to die that night in order to keep up the supply of brain
power!--just too, as he had been congratulating himself that the
cholera scare was over. Seventy-two hours, and not a case! It was too
bad!
Eugene, whom he found on the roof of his house playing with coils,
batteries, accumulators, had suggested eagerly that if there was real
trouble, he might end it by turning his light bang on to the gaol, and
so reducing it to a paralysis of sheer terror. Dr. Dillon, however, had
sworn violently that he would not have the poor wretches frightened
unnecessarily, especially when that triumphant cry of those who were
free to defy the devil by seeking sanctification before death reminded
them that _they_ could not--that they must die defiled, helpless,
hopeless! That fear was, he said, in a way dignified, worthy of
consideration. And he did not anticipate trouble unless there was
treachery inside or out, though perhaps he might, as a precaution, ask
Dering for an extra guard. But when the latter happened to come in, as
Mrs. Smith's escort home, while the doctor was still there, Dr. Dillon
apparently changed his mind. Anyhow, he pooh-poohed Captain Dering's
offer to send one, saying, the more you could keep a gaol to yourself
the better--or for the matter of that anything else! So, with a curt
good-night to Mrs. Smith, he went back to his work, leaving Vincent to
remark, carelessly, that Dillon seemed in a bad temper. At which Muriel
smiled. There was something in the air, she said, conducive to bad
temper. She, herself, felt she must soon have quarrelled with the
doctor's assumption of knowing better than anyone else; so it was as
well he had not stopped to dinner. Her quarrelsomeness did not,
however, extend to Vincent, who did; indeed, she made herself so
tenderly charming and unconsciously friendly towards him that he began
to accuse himself of having been too irresponsive of late. The fact of
being in love did not preclude friendship for someone else, if, indeed,
he was really in love with Laila Bonaventura? In one way he knew
himself to be so; but the idea of treating this love of his on
conventional lines was still repugnant to him; the thought of her, as
his wife, barely attractive.
So, after a time spent pleasantly enough for those two, Eugene Smith
went off to his coils, and accumulators, and batteries, half-sulky,
half-bored, and wholly ill-used at having to switch off, when he had at
least half an hour's electricity all ready stored for use.
He was grumbling over this fact when Vincent called good-night to him
before starting to drive back; and he answered that but for fools, who
were afraid of going to their proper place, he might have given Dering
electric light on the road.
"No, thanks!" cried Vincent, gaily, "there's enough electricity in the
air to-night without that. I believe your machine has leaked, Smith! I
feel as if I should give out sparks if anyone touched me!"
As he drove across the bridge Eshwara looked as if it were doing that,
too. There were lights everywhere, twinkling, little, restless lights.
The very spit, usually dark with the darkness of primitive life after
sundown, was alive with them; for the pilgrims were camping there, as
elsewhere. Nor were all the fisher folk abed as usual, for that,
surely, was one of them paddling up stream on a dug-out,--just under
the last span of the bridge. He saw the man distinctly, not five yards
from him in the flash of the lamps as he drove past overhead, and
wondered what the mischief the fellow was doing at that time of night,
going up stream.
Something to be ashamed of, no doubt, else why should he have sent the
dug-out beyond the circle of light with a swift stroke?
Truly Father Ninian was right; Eshwara was not normal. Its pulse beat
irregularly, and things were going on which should not be going on--
A sudden shame made him glance at the shadowed pile of the palace
looming above the shadowed town. It was all dark, save for one row of
restless, twinkling lights. Those were the little latticed windows of
Laila's sitting-room, that was fit for any king's favourite. He had
seen it already, might see it again at twelve, if she was in one of her
reckless moods when she would risk anything for his sake.
Truly! there were things going on!--
But this was between themselves; this could hurt no one. By and by, of
course, he would insist on a commonplace engagement, and a wedding.
Yes! a commonplace wedding. He had, despite his vague repugnance to her
origin, made up his mind to that. No one but an utter cad could take
what he was taking, and then shake his bridle rein and ride away. But
for the present, it was the most absolutely perfect bit of romance in
his whole life. He could not, would not give it up. Laila was right!
This was the essence. As a rule, people mixed love, diluted it, were
vaguely ashamed of its absorbing influence. But when you came to
analyze even the diluted feeling, its virtue lay in this irrational
content, this desire for nothing better than this best of
pleasures--this paradise of a woman's or a man's love.
He laughed, suddenly, at the memory of Laila's quick grasp of his
meaning when Muriel had overheard his remark about the time. Such
quickness, in the latter, would have made him revolt from it; but with
Laila it was different. A passionate gratitude to the girl to whom
fear, remorse, the very possibility of change seemed unknown, rose up
and claimed him. Dear little girl! She was so absolutely single-minded
in her love for him. How could anyone expect him to forego the luxury
of such love yet awhile?
In thinking Laila single-minded, Vincent thought the truth, so far as
he was concerned. If love, passionate as Juliet's, and far more
innocent in one way, far more _ruse_ in another, ever existed, hers was
that love. Nevertheless, its very integrity made her curiously cunning
in regard to anything which threatened to disturb that idyll in the
garden. So, at that very moment, when Vincent looked up at her windows
asserting her absolute lack of pretence and single-mindedness, she was
pitting her wits against old Akbar Khan in a manner worthy of her
grandmother, Anari Begum; since Akbar, far more than her guardian, was
to be feared. The latter, honest man, went to his bed, beyond the
chapel, at ten of the clock precisely; but Akbar, who from ancient
habit was given to prowling about at night, and napping in odd corners,
had many chances of discovery. During the last few days, however, when
she, for her own purposes, had let him talk, he had become so garrulous
regarding his past that she had recognized in him an unscrupulous
confidant, with whom, in face of the possibility of requiring one, it
was wise to remain on terms.
So, as she lounged on the sofa, she listened to his endless talk with
tolerance.
"Nay!" she interrupted at last. "If, as thou sayest she will, she
brings me more dresses and jewels, she may call me Begum, and hint at
my being one, really, a thousand times over! Why not? Begum and
Princess are the same, and my great-grandmother in Italy was that.
Pidar Narayan told me so to-day."
The memory of the old man's voice, when, with new-found courage, she
had questioned him concerning those old days, made her eyes soft. Yes!
he would, he _must_ understand. So, by and by, when Vincent and she
were tired of playing Romeo and Juliet (the story of the star-crossed
lovers had been her only reading since Vincent had taken to quoting so
much from it) they would make Pidar Narayan play Friar Laurence, and
marry them on the sly. That would be so much more amusing than a
regular wedding. He could not refuse, since he had once loved as she
loved. You could hear that in his voice; after how many years?--fifty
or sixty! And the Princess had, of course, loved also in exactly the
same way. Laila felt sure of it. That curious, inexpressible feeling
had come to her also. Laila, trying to formulate that feeling, slipping
her heel idly in and out of her dainty little bronze shoe as she
lounged, suddenly remembered Vincent's song to the tambourine, and
laughed. That was it!
"Golden feet upon a golden stair."
That expressed it exactly. Two pair of feet going side by side up a
golden stair, to golden gates. So contented. Ah, God! how content!
Seeking something, claiming something, yet still content. That feeling
came, sometimes, when you were saying your prayers. A sort of yearning
_for_, a sort of satisfaction _in_, something that was not you; so,
surely if it came _then_, there could be no harm in it.
Harm! The very sisters allowed that you must love the man you were
going to marry. And she and Vincent would be married by and by and live
happily, for that was better than having a "_statue of pure gold_"
erected to you! In the meantime, secrecy, so long as Vincent wished to
play Romeo and Juliet, was her cue; therefore, the more she could blind
old Akbar, the more he could be turned on a wrong track, the better.
Especially when the turning was so delightfully ridiculous!
She managed, however, not to laugh her childish love of mischief into
Mumtaza Mahal's very face when, after much shrinking into white sheets
held up as screens, and quick cuddlings into corners at the faintest
suspicion of a possible peep, that good lady, in her very, very best
pink satin continuations, was ushered in through the dark deserted
passages of the palace, to Laila's boudoir. For, despite the amusement,
the girl's heart was beating fast with determination to climb her
golden stairs without interruption. So she allowed herself to be
_kow-towed_ to, and called Begum-_sahiba_ and she accepted the new
dress and jewels without protest. Eagerly, in fact, since they were far
more gorgeous than the first, and caught her taste better. The former,
indeed, had been Roshan Khan's own choice, dictated by his acquired
knowledge of the sort of things _mem-sahibs_ admired; these latter were
her grandmother's, purely, entirely oriental. The difference was great.
Put briefly, _this_ was the costume in which Anari Begum had flouted
the Nawab, the _other_ that in which she had caught Bun-avatar's fancy.
Laila took up one of the heavy, gorgeous, glittering garments. It smelt
strongly of musk, attar of roses, and jasmin, and she snuffed at it
with a smile. That was ever so much better than the dull lavender
water, which was the only scent her guardian said a lady could use.
Vincent would like that; he, like she did, loved strong scents. If only
the stupid old frumpish thing would go away in time, she would put on
that dress at once, and so give him pleasure. That was all her thought.
As she sat, with a happy smile, her face half-buried in a tiny,
three-cornered corselet of scarlet net embroidered in seed pearls,
Mumtaza and Akbar Khan winked at each other; and Laila's sharp eyes,
catching this, brimmed over with laughter. She felt glad the rest of
her face was hidden, until she was grave enough to reply graciously to
the hints, the suggestions; for Mumtaza had been bound over by oaths
not to go too fast, and she obeyed her instructions.
Even so, Akbar Khan, listening with folded hands in a mantis-like
attitude, his angles all crushed together into humility, wondered if he
was standing on his head or his heels, as he heard Laila admit,
gravely, that she was certainly, in a way, the head of the family, in
that she possessed its land; but that, of course, Roshan was really the
heir. That it had given her great gratification to see how thoroughly
he had adopted English ways. That, of course, it would be impossible
for him to marry an uneducated cow of a girl. Here, for a moment, she
had relapsed to sincerity in order to remark that it must be impossible
to love a person you had not seen, and that for her part, she knew in
an instant if she was going to like or dislike people. If the latter,
she tried never to see them, really, again. Then, remembering her part,
she had resumed it hastily by saying that no doubt she would see more
of her cousin,--who, by the way, was very nice-looking,--in the future,
as he was quite in society.
Old Mumtaza had hard work at this juncture to prevent herself from
cracking all her finger-joints over the girl's head for luck, and
wishing her a numerous offspring; while Akbar gave a gasp that was not
all pleasure. He felt that he was being rushed, that the crisis might
come before he was ready for it. At this rate, Pidar Narayan would have
no chance of dying. At this rate, Roshan Khan's castle in the air must
topple over from sheer lack of foundation to such a lofty structure.
As he trotted back beside Mumtaza's curtained _dhooli_ to that little
parasite of a house against the palace wall, where he knew Roshan was
waiting for the upshot of the interview, his one consolation was that
bow-strings were out of fashion!
In truth, there was no more restless man in Eshwara that night than
Roshan Khan. The desire for this paradise had grown overwhelming, and
as he listened to his grandmother, while Akbar pointed each triumphant
appeal of the old lady's with a helpless "_Gereeb-pun-was_," his face
grew pale with emotion; until, at the mention of his good looks and
Laila's desire to see him, he turned fiercely to the go-between, and
bade him fix a time; the sooner the better!
Akbar felt inclined to tell the truth then. To admit that he had never
breathed a word of Roshan's pretensions to the Miss-_sahiba_ and that,
so far, the negotiations only existed in his own imaginings. But the
look on Roshan's face--he had seen it often in his youth in connection
with women, and sacks, and bow-strings--reduced him to protestations.
He would do his best, he said, but with Pidar Narayan it would be
difficult to manage.
Roshan strode about the little courtyard like a wild beast in a
cage, biting his mustache, and thinking. Then he turned to the old
phrase-monger.
"I have settled it. Before dawn to-morrow--not this dawn, that is too
nigh on us now--but the next, thou shalt let me into the garden. Thou
knowest the little balcony which was not lit up? I will stay there,
waiting, till she come for an early walk among the flowers. That can be
managed. Then, if the coast is clear, we can meet and talk. If not,
there is no harm done, for I can slip into the stream and swim back.
That will be best, since it is not possible by day, and at night the
_mems_ do not receive visitors, as we do, without reproach."
Roshan's knowledge of etiquette was sound, yet at that very moment
Laila, ablaze with gold and jewels, was meeting her lover's eyes with a
happy laugh.
"What's in a dress?" she paraphrased, "it is no part of me!"
Was it not? Never had Vincent seen her look like this; so absolutely
desirable, so perfectly adorable.
He caught her in his arms and kissed her. The heavy scent upon her
dress assailed him. She looked up into his eyes and laughed.
"_But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true_," she whispered,
"_than those who have more cunning to be strange_."
"Juliet!" he whispered back, lost in his own mad passion. "Juliet!"
Their gold-shod feet were upon the golden stairs; the gates of Paradise
were before them.