The moonlit nights which had so often shown two ghost-like figures
amid the shadows of Kali's shrine had given place to dark ones. And
now, save for a whisper, there was no sign of life beneath the dim
arches, since, as a rule, those two--Ramanund and the woman Fate had
sent him--shunned the smoky flare of the lamps, and the half-seen
watchfulness of that hideous figure within the closed fretwork doors.
Yet sometimes little Anunda would insist on their sitting right in the
very threshold of the Mother who, she said, would be angry if they
distrusted Her. But at other times she would meet her lover, finger to
lip, and lead him hastily to the darkest corner lest he should wake
the goddess to direful anger at this desecration of Her holy place.
Then again, she would laugh recklessly, hang the chaplets she had
brought with her round his neck, cense him with sweet matches, and
tell him, truthfully, that he was the only god she feared.
Altogether, as he sat with his arm round her, Ramanund used often to
wonder helplessly if it were not all a dream. If so, it was not the
calm controlled dream he had cherished as the love story suitable to a
professor of mathematics. The heroine of that was to have been wise,
perhaps a little sad, and Anunda was--well! it was difficult to say
what she was, save absolutely entrancing in her every mood. She was
like a firefly on a dark night flashing here and there brilliantly,
lucidly; yet giving no clue to her own self except this--that she did
not match with the exact sciences. Nor, for the matter of that, with
the situation; for there were grave dangers in these nightly
assignations.
In addition, their surroundings were anything but cheerful, anything
but suitable to dreams. Cholera had the whole city in its grip now,
and as those two had whispered of Love and Life many a soul, within
earshot of a man's raised voice, had passed out of both into the
grave. But Anunda never seemed to think of these things. She was the
bravest and yet the timidest child alive; at least so Ramanund used to
tell her fondly when she laughed at discovery, and yet trembled at the
very idea of marriage.
Honestly, she would have been quite satisfied to have him as her lover
only, but for the impossibility of keeping him on those terms. An
impossibility because--as she told him with tears--she was only on a
visit to the Brahmins downstairs and would have to return homewards
when the dark month of Kali-worship was over. And here followed one of
those tales--scarcely credible to English ears--of the cold-blooded
profligacy to which widows have to yield as the only means of making
their lives bearable. Whereat Ramanund set his teeth and swore he
would have revenge some day. Meanwhile it made him all the more
determined to save her, and at the same time realise his cherished
dream of defying his world by marrying a widow. Yet his boldness only
had the effect of making little Anunda more timid and cautious.
"What need for names, my lord," she would say evasively when he
pressed her for particulars of her past. "Is it not enough that I am
of pure Brahmin race? Before Kali, my lord need have no fears for
that, and I have found favour in my lord's eyes. What, then, are the
others to my lord? Let the wicked ones go."
"But if people do such things they should be punished by the law,"
fumed Ramanund, who, even with her arms round him, and a chaplet of
_chumpak_ blossom encircling his neck, could not quite forget that he
was a schoolmaster. "You forget that we live in a new age, or perhaps
you do not know it. That is one of the things I must teach you,
sweetheart, when we are married."
The slender bit of a hand which lay in his gave a queer little clasp
of denial, and the close-cropped head on his shoulder stirred in a
shake of incredulity.
"We cannot marry. I am a widow. It would be better--so----" and the
"so" was made doubly eloquent by the quiver of content with which,
yielding to the pressure of his arm, she nestled closer to him.
Ramanund's brain whirled, as she had a knack of making it whirl, but
he stuck to his point manfully.
"Silly child! Of course we can marry. The law does not forbid it, and
that is all we have to think of. It is legal, and no one has a right
to interfere. Besides, as I told you, it is quite easy. To-morrow, the
darkest night of Kali's month, is our opportunity. Every one will be
wearied out by excitement"--here his face hardened and his voice rose.
"Excitement! I tell you it is disgraceful that these sacrifices should
be permitted. I admit they are nothing here to what they are down
country, but we of the Sacred Land should set an example. The law
should interfere to stop such demoralising, brutalising scenes. If we,
the educated, were only allowed a voice in such matters, if we were
not gagged and blindfolded from engaging in the amelioration of our
native land----" he paused and pulled himself up by bending down to
kiss her in Western fashion, whereat she hid her face in quick shame,
for modesty is as much a matter of custom as anything else. "But I
will teach you all this when we are married. To-morrow, then, in the
hour before dawn, when the worshippers will be drunk with wine and
blood, you will meet me on the landing--not here, child, this will be
no sight for you or me then. Ah! it is horrible even to think of it;
the blood, the needless, reckless----"
Again he pulled himself up and went on: "I shall have a hired carriage
at the end of the alley in which we will drive to the railway station;
and then, Anunda, it will only be two tickets--two railway tickets."
"Two railway tickets," echoed Anunda in muffled tones from his
shoulder; "I came up in the railway from----" She paused, then added
quickly:
"They put me in a cage, and I cried."
"You will not be put in a cage this time," replied Ramanund with a
superior smile; "you will come with me, and we will go to Benares."