It was a three-storied house in reality, though time had given it the
semblance of a fourth in the mud platform which led up to its only
entrance. For the passing feet of generations had worn down the levels
of the alley outside, and the toiling hands of generations had added
to the level of the rooms within, until those who wished to pass from
one to the other had to climb the connecting steps ere they could
reach the door.
The door itself was broad as it was high, and had a strangely deformed
look; since nearly half of its two carven stone jambs were, of
necessity, hidden behind the platform. These stone jambs, square-hewn,
roughly-carven, were the only sign of antiquity visible in the house
from the alley; the rest being the usual straight-up-and-down almost
windowless wall built of small purplish bricks set in a mortar of mud.
It stood, however, a little further back in the alley than its
neighbours, so giving room for the mud platform; but that was its only
distinction.
The alley in its turn differed in no way from the generality of such
alleys in the walled towns where the houses--like trees in a crowded
plantation--shoot up shoulder to shoulder, as if trying to escape
skywards from the yearly increasing pressure of humanity. It was,
briefly, a deep, dark, irregular drain of a place, shadowful utterly
save for the one brief half hour or so during which the sun showed in
the notched ribbon of the sky which was visible between the uneven
turretings of the roof.
Yet the very sunlessness and airlessness had its advantages. In hot
weather it brought relief from the scorching glare, and in the cold,
such air as there was remained warm even beneath a frosty sky. So that
the mud platform, with its possibilities of unhustled rest, was a
favourite gossiping place of the neighbourhood. All the more so
because, between it and the next house, diving down through the
_debris_ of countless generations and green with the slime of
countless ages, lay one of those wells to which the natives cling so
fondly in defiance of modern sanitation and water-works. But there was
a third reason why the platform was so much frequented; on the second
story of the house to which it belonged stood the oldest Hindu shrine
in the city. How it came to be there no one could say clearly. The
Brahmins who tended it from the lower story told tales of a plinthed
temple built in the heroic age of Prithi Raj; but only this much was
certain, that it was very old, and that the steep stone ladder of a
stair which led up to the arched alcoves of the ante-shrine was of
very different date to the ordinary brick one which led thence to the
third story; where, among other lodgers, Ramanund, B.A., lived with
his widowed mother.
He was a mathematical master in a mission school, and twice a day on
his way to and from the exact sciences he had to pass up and down the
brick ladder and the stone stair. And sometimes he had to stand aside
on the three-cornered landing where the brick and stone met, in order
that the women coming to worship might pass with their platters of
curds, their trays of cressets, and chaplets of flowers into the dim
ante-shrine where the light from a stone lattice glistened faintly on
the damp oil-smeared pavement. But that being necessarily when he was
on his way downstairs, and deep in preparation for the day's work, he
did not mind a minute or so of delay for further study; and he would
go on with his elementary treatise on logarithms until the tinkle of
the anklets merged into the giggle which generally followed, when in
the comparative seclusion of the ante-shrine, the veils could be
lifted for a peep at the handsome young man. But Ramanund, albeit a
lineal descendant of the original Brahmin priests of the temple, had
read Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill; so he would go on his way
careless alike of the unseen women and the unseen shrine--of the
mysteries of sex and religion as presented in his natural environment.
There are dozens of young men in India now-a-days in this position;
who stand figuratively, as he did actually, giving the go-by to
one-half of life alternately, and letting the cressets and the
chaplets and the unseen women pass unchallenged into the alcove, where
the speckled light of the lattice bejewelled their gay garments, and a
blue cloud of incense floated sideways among the dim arches.
And Ramanund was as good a specimen of this new India as could be
found, North or South. Not of robust physique--that was scarcely to be
expected after generations of in and in breeding--but of most acute
intelligence, and, by virtue of inherited spiritual distinction,
singularly free from the sensual, passive acquiescence in the
limitations of life which brings content to the most of humanity. He
was, by birth, as it were, a specialised speculative machine working
at full pressure with a pure virtue escapement. As President of a
Debating Club affiliated with the "Society for the General Improvement
of the People of India," he was perhaps needlessly lavish of vague
expressions such as the individual rights of man; but then he, in
common with his kind, have only lately become acquainted with the
ideas such phrases are supposed to express, and have not as yet learnt
their exact use--that being an art which history tells needs centuries
of national and individual struggle for its attainment.
Be that as it may, even in the strict atmosphere of the Mission
School, Ramanund's only fault was that he had assimilated its morality
and rejected its dogma. In the orthodox Hindu household upstairs, over
which his widowed mother ruled severely, his only crime was that he
refused to replace a wife, deceased of the measles at the age of six,
for another of the good lady's choosing. For that other matter of
slighting the shrine downstairs is too common now-a-days in India to
excite any recrimination; its only effect being to make the women
regard the rule which forbids their eating with the men folks, as a
patent of purity, instead of a sign of inferiority; since it is a
safeguard against contamination from those who, when beyond the watch
of secluded eyes, may have defiled themselves in a thousand Western
ways.
Regarding the wife, however, Ramanund was firm, despite the prayers
that his mother offered before the Goddess downstairs for his
deliverance from obstinacy. He used to accompany her sometimes on this
errand so far as the three-cornered landing, and then with a smile
proceed on his way to the exact sciences. Even the clang of the great
bell which hung in front of the idol within tip-toe touch of the
worshipper, as it used to come pealing after him down the stairs,
proclaiming that the goddess' attention had been called to a new
petitioner, did not bring a comprehension of facts to his singularly
clear brain. Those facts being, that, rightly or wrongly, the
flamboyant image of Kali _devi_[16]--which his ancestors had tended
faithfully--was being besieged by as fervent a mother-prayer as had
been laid before any divinity--or _dev_-inity as the word really
stands.
---------------------
[Footnote 16: Goddess.]
---------------------
In truth Ramanund had no special desire to marry at all; or even to
fall in love. He was too busy with the exact sciences to
experimentalise on the suspension of the critical faculty in man;
besides, he had definitely made up his mind to marry a widow when he
did marry. For he was as great on the widow question as he was on all
others which appealed to his kindly moral nature. He and his friends
of the same stamp--pleaders, clerks, and such-like living in the
alley--used to sit on the mud steps after working hours, and discuss
such topics before adjourning to the Debating Club; but they always
left one of the flights of steps free. This was for the worshippers to
pass upwards to the shrine as soon as the blare of the conches, the
beatings of drums, and the ringing of bells should announce that the
dread Goddess having been washed and put to bed like a good little
girl, her bath water was available to those who wished to drink it as
a charm against the powers of darkness.
That was with the waning light; but as it was a charm also against the
dangers of day, the dawn in its turn would be disturbed by clashings
and brayings to tell of Kali _devi's_ uprisal. Then, in the growing
light the house-mothers, fresh from their grindstones, would come
shuffling through the alleys with a pinch or two of new-ground flour,
and the neighbouring Brahmins--hurriedly devotional after the manner
of priesthoods--would speed up the stair (muttering prayers as they
sped) to join for half a minute in the sevenfold circling of the
sacred lamps; while, divided between sleep and greed, the fat traders
on their way to their shops would begin business by a bid for divine
favour, and yawn petitions as they waddled, that the supply of holy
water would hold out till they arrived at the shrine.
But at this time in the morning, Ramanund would be sleeping the sleep
of the just upstairs, after sitting up past midnight over his pupils'
exercises; for one of the first effects of civilisation is to make men
prefer a kerosene lamp to the sun.
Now, one September when the rains, coming late and ceasing early, had
turned the pestilential drain in the city into a patent germ
propagator, the worshippers at Kali _devi's_ shrine were more numerous
than ever. Indeed, one or two half-hearted free-thinker hangers-on to
the fringe of Progress and Debating Clubs began to hedge cautiously by
allowing their women folk to make offerings in their names; since when
cholera is choosing its victims haphazard up and down the alleys, it
is as well to ensure your life in every office that will accept you as
a client.
Ramanund, of course, and his immediate friends were above such mean
trucklings. _They_ exerted themselves to keep the alley clean, they
actually subscribed to pay an extra sweeper, they distributed cholera
pills and the very soundest advice to their neighbours; especially to
those who persisted in using the old well. Ramanund, indeed, went so
far as to circulate a pamphlet, imploring those who, from mistaken
religious scruples, would not drink from the hydrants to filter their
water; in support of which _thesis_ he quoted learned Sanskrit texts.
"_Jai Kali ma!_"[17] said the populace to each other, when they read
it. "Such talk is pure blasphemy. If She wishes blood shall She not
drink it? Our fathers messed not with filters. Such things bring Her
wrath on the righteous; even as now in this sickness."
---------------------
[Footnote 17: Victory to Mother Kali!]
---------------------
Yet they spoke calmly, acquiescing in the inevitable from their side
of the question, just as Ramanund and his like did from theirs; for
this passivity is characteristic of the race--which yet needs only a
casual match to make it flare into fanaticism.
So time passed until one day, the moon being at the full, and the
alley lying mysterious utterly by reason of the white shining of its
turreted roofs set, as it were, upon the solid darkness of the narrow
lane below, a new voice broke in on the reading of a paper regarding
the "Sanitation of the Vedic Ages," which Ramanund was declaiming to
some chosen friends.
"_Jai Kali ma!_" said this voice also, but the tone was different, and
the words rang fiercely. "Is Her arm shortened that it cannot save? Is
it straightened that it cannot slay? Wait, ye fools, till the dark
moon brings Her night and ye shall see."
It came from a man with an evil hemp-sodden face, and a body naked
save for a saffron-coloured rag, who, smeared from head to foot with
cowdung ashes, was squatting on the threshold, daubing it with cowdung
and water; for the evening worshippers had passed, and he was at work
betimes purifying the sacred spot against the morrow's festival.
The listeners turned with a start, to look at the strange yet familiar
figure, and Ramanund, cut short in his eloquence, frowned; but he
resumed his paper, which was in English, without a pause, being quick
to do battle in words after the manner of New India.
"These men, base pretenders to the holiness of the _sunnyasi_, are the
curse of the country! Mean tricksters and rogues wandering like
locusts through the land to prey on the timid fears of our modest
countrywomen. Men who outrage the common sense in a thousand methods;
who----"
The man behind him laughed shortly, "Curse on, master _jee!_" he
said--"for curses they are by the sound, though I know not the tongue
for sure. Yea! curse if thou likest, and praise the new wisdom; yet
thou--Ramanund, Brahmin, son of those who tend Her--hast not forgotten
the old. Forget it! How can a man forget what he learnt in his
mother's womb, what he hath learnt in his second birth?"
Long years after prayer has passed from a man's life, the sound of the
"Our Father" may bring him back in thought to his mother's knee. So it
was with Ramanund, as in the silence which followed, he watched (by
the flickering light of the cresset set on the ground between them)
his adversary's lips moving in the secret verse which none but the
twice-born may repeat. It brought back to him, as if it had been
yesterday, the time when, half-frightened, half-important, he had
heard it whispered in his ear for the first time. When for the first
time also he had felt the encircling thread of the twice-born castes
on his soft young body. That thread which girdled him from the common
herd, which happed and wrapped him round with a righteousness not his
own, but imputed to him by divine law. Despite logarithms, despite
pure morality, something thrilled in him half in exultation,
half in fear. It was unforgetable, and yet, in a way, he had
forgotten!--forgotten what? The question was troublesome, so he gave
it the go-by quickly.
"I have not forgotten the old wisdom _jogi jee_," he said. "I hold
more of it than thou, with all thy trickery. But remember this. We of
the Sacred Land[18] will not stand down-country cheating, and if thou
art caught at it here, 'tis the lock-up."
---------------------
[Footnote 18: The first Aryan settlements were in the Punjab.]
---------------------
"If I am caught," echoed the man as he drew a small earthen pot closer
to him and began to stir its contents with his hand, every now and
again testing their consistency by letting a few drops fall from his
lifted fingers back into the pot. They were thick and red, showing in
the dim light like blood. "It is not we, servants of dread Kali, who
are caught, 'tis ye faithless ones who have wandered from Her. Ye who
pretend to know----"
"A scoundrel when we see one," broke in the schoolmaster, his high
thin tones rising. "And I do know _one_ at least. What is more, I will
have thee watched by the police."
"Don't," put in one of the others in English. "What use to rouse anger
needlessly. Such men are dangerous."
"Dangerous!" echoed Ramanund. "Their day is past----"
"The people believe in them still," persisted another, looking
uneasily at the _jogi's_ scowl, which, in truth, was not pleasant.
"And such language is, in my poor opinion, descriptive of that
calculated to cause a breach of peace," remarked a rotund little
pleader, "thus contrary to _mores public_. In moderation lies safety."
"And cowardice," retorted Ramanund, returning purposely to Hindustani
and keeping his eager face full on the _jogi_. "It is because the
people, illiterate and ignorant, believe in them, that I advocate
resistance. Let us purge the old, pure faith of our fathers from the
defilements which have crept in! Let us, by the light of new wisdom
revealing the old, sweep from our land the nameless horrors which
deface it. Let us teach our illiterate brothers and sisters to treat
these priests of Kali as they deserve, and to cease worshipping that
outrage on the very name of womanhood upstairs--that devil drunk with
blood, unsexed, obscene----"
He was proceeding after his wont, stringing adjectives on a single
thread of meaning, when a triumphant yell startled him into a pause.
"_Jai Kali ma! Jai Kali ma!_"
It seemed to fill the alley with harsh echoes blending into a guttural
cruel laugh. "So be it, brother! Let it be Kali, the Eternal Woman,
against thee, Ramanund the Scholar! I tell thee She will stretch out
Her left hand so----" here his own left hand, reddened with the
pigment he had been preparing for the purpose, printed itself upon one
lintel of the door, "and Her right hand so----" here his right did the
same for the other lintel, and he paused, obviously to give effect to
the situation. Indeed his manner throughout had been intensely
theatrical, and this deft blending of the ordinary process of marking
the threshold, with a mysterious threat suitable to the occasion,
betrayed the habitual trafficker in superstitious fear.
"And then, _Jogi jee_," sneered Ramanund imperturbably.
"And then, _master jee?_" cried his adversary, his anger growing at
his own impotence to impress, as he clenched his reddened hands and
stooped forward to bring his scowl closer to the calm contempt, "Why
then She will draw fools to Her bosom, bloody though they deem it."
"And if they will not be drawn?"
The words scarcely disturbed the stillness of the alley, which was
deserted save for that strange group, outlined by the flicker of the
cresset. On the one side, backed by the cavernous darkness of the low,
wide door, was the naked savage-looking figure, with its hands
dripping still in heavy red drops, stretched out in menace over the
lamp. On the other was Ramanund, backed by his friends, decent,
civilised, in their western-cut white clothing.
"Damn you--you--you brute!"
The schoolmaster seldom swore; when he did he used English oaths.
Possibly because they seemed more alien to his own virtue. On this
occasion several came fluently as he fumbled for his pocket
handkerchief; for the _jogi_ in answer to his taunt had reached out
one of his red hands and drawn three curving fingers down the centre
of Ramanund's immaculate forehead. The emblem of his discarded faith,
the bloody trident of Siva, showed there distinctly ere the modern
hemstitched handkerchief wiped it away petulantly. It was gone in a
second, yet Ramanund even as he assured himself of the fact by
persistent rubbing felt that it had somehow sunk more than skin deep.
The knowledge made him swear the harder, and struggle vehemently
against his comrade's restraining hands.
"It is a case for police and binding over to keep peace," protested
the pleader soothingly. "I will conduct same even on appeals to
highest court without further charge."
"In addition, it is _infra dig_ to disciples of the law and order thus
to behave as the illiterate," put in another, while a third, with less
theory and more practice, remarked that to use violence to a priest of
Kali on the threshold of Her temple during Her sacred month was as
much as their lives were worth; since God only knew how many a silent
believer within earshot needed but one cry to come to the rescue of
Her servant, especially now when the sickness was making men sensitive
to Her honour.
So, in the end, outraged civilisation contented itself by laying a
formal charge of assault in the neighbouring police station against a
certain religious mendicant, name unknown, supposed to have come from
Benares, who in the public thoroughfare had infringed the liberty of
one of Her Imperial Majesty's liege subjects by imprinting the symbol
of a decadent faith on his forehead. And thereinafter it repaired to
the Debating Club, where Ramanund recovered his self-respect in a more
than usually per-fervid outburst of eloquence. So fervid, indeed, that
one of the most forward lights in the province, who happened to look
in, swore eternal friendship on the spot. The result being that the
two young men discussed every burning question under the sun, as, with
arms interclasped, Ramanund saw his new acquaintance home to his
lodgings.
Thus it was past midnight ere he returned to his own, and then he was
so excited, so intoxicated, as it were, by his own strong words, that
he strode down the narrow alley as if he were marching to victory. And
yet the alley itself was peace personified. It was dark no longer, for
the great silver shield of the moon hung on the notched ribbon of pale
sky between the roofs, and its light--with the nameless message of
peace which seems inherent in it--lay thick and white down to the very
pavement. There was scarcely a shadow anywhere save the odd
foreshortened image of himself which kept pace behind Ramanund's swift
steps like a demon driving him to his doom.
The low, wide door, however, showed like a cavern, and the narrow
stone stair struck chill after the heat outside. Perhaps that was why
the young man shivered as he groped his way upwards amid the lingering
scent of past incense, the perfume of fallen flowers, and the faint
odour suggestive of the gay garments which had fluttered past not so
long before. Or, perhaps, the twin passions of Love and Worship, which
even Logarithms cannot destroy, were roused in him by the memory of
these things. Whatever it was, something made him pause to hold his
breath and listen on that three-cornered landing where the brick and
the stone met. A speckled bar of moonlight glistened on the damp floor
of the ante-shrine and showed a dim arch or two--then darkness. And
all around him was that penetrating odour telling of things unseen,
almost unknown, and yet strangely familiar to his inherited body and
soul.
There was not a sound. That was as it should be when gods slept like
men.
When gods slept...!
There was a sound now--the sound of his own contemptuous laugh as he
remembered his defiance of such divinities--the sound of his own steps
as he passed suddenly, impulsively, into the ante-shrine, feeling it
was time for such as he to worship while She slept, helpless as
humanity itself.
It was almost dark in the low-arched corridors with their massive
pillars surrounding the central chamber on all sides. But there, in
the Holy of Holies, two smoking swinging lamps threw a yellow glare on
the carved stone canopy which reached up into the shadows of the
vaulted roof. And by their light the hideous figure of the idol could
be half-seen, half-imagined, through the fretted panels of the iron
doors fast-locked on Her sleep; fretted panels giving glimpses, no
more, of flamboyant arms crimson as blood, and hung with faded
flowers. Blood and flowers, blood and flowers, blending strangely with
that lingering perfume of Womanhood and Worship with which the air was
heavy.
Hark! what was that? A step? Impossible, surely, at that hour of the
night when even gods sleep! And yet he drew back hastily into the
further shadows, forgetful of everything save sheer annoyance at the
chance of being discovered in Kali's shrine. He of all men in the
city!
Yes! it was a step in the ante-shrine. A light step; and there
emerging from the darkness of the corridors was a figure. A woman's
figure--or was it a child's?--draped from head to foot in white.
Ramanund felt a throb of philanthropic pity thrill through heart and
brain even in his relief; for this was some poor widow, no doubt, come
on the sly to offer her ill-omened[19] prayers, and though he might
rely on her rapt devotion allowing him to steal round the corridors
unobserved, the thought of the reason why she had come alone filled
him with compassion. Partly because he was in truth a kindly soul,
partly because he was, as it were, pledged to such compassion.
---------------------
[Footnote 19: A widow brings ill-luck with her.]
---------------------
A widow certainly; and yet surely little more than a child! So
slender, so small was she that even on tiptoe her outstretched hand
could not reach the clapper of the big bell which hung above her head.
Once, twice, thrice, she tried; standing full in the flare of the
lamp, her veil falling back from the dark head, close-cropped like a
boy's, and roughened almost into curls. Something in the sight made
Ramanund hold his breath again as he watched the disappointment grow
to the small passionate face.
"She will not listen--She will not hear! No one ever listens--no
one ..."
It was not a cry; it was only a girl's whisper with a note of girlish
fear rising above its pain, but it echoed like a _reveille_ to
something which had till then been asleep in Ramanund. Not listen! Was
he not there in the dark listening? Was he not ready to help?--God!
how young and slender she was down there on her knees thrusting the
chaplets she had brought through the fretwork fiercely ...
"_Mai Kali! Mai!_ Listen! Listen!" The clear sharp voice rang
passionately now, echoing through the arches. "What have I done,
Mother, to be accursed? Why didst Thou take him from me--my beautiful
young husband--for they tell me he was young and beautiful. And now
they say that Thou sendest the other for my lover--thy priest! But I
will not, Mother, if they kill me for it. Thou wouldst not give
thyself to such as he, Kali, ugly as Thou art--and I am pretty. Far
prettier than the other girls who have husbands. _Mai Kali!_ listen
this once--this once only! Kill me now when Thou art killing so many
and give me a husband in the next life; or let me go--let me be
free--free to choose my own way--my own lover. Mother! Mother! if Thou
wouldst only wake!--if Thou wouldst only listen!--if Thou wouldst only
look and see how pretty I am!----"
Her voice died away amid that mingled perfume of love and worship, of
sex and religion, which seemed to lie heavy on the breath, making it
come short....
Truly the gods might sleep, but man waked! There, in the shadow, a man
looked and listened till pity and passion set his brain and heart on
fire.
The girl had risen to her feet again in her last hopeless appeal, and
now stood once more looking upwards at the silent bell, her hands,
empty of their chaplets, clenched in angry despair, and a world of
baffled life and youth in her childish face.
"She will not listen! She will not wake!" The whisper, with its note
of fear in it, ended in a booming clang which forced a vibrating
response from the dim arches as Ramanund's nervous hand smote the big
bell full and fair. She turned with a low cry, then stood silent till
a slow smile came to her face.
_Mai Kali_ had wakened indeed! She had listened also, and the lover
had come....