In the morning Captain Barlow underwent a sartorial metamorphosis; he
attained to the sanctity of a Hindu pilgrim by the purchase of a
tight-ankled pair of white trousers to replace the voluminous baggy
ones of a Patan, and a blue shot-with-gold-thread Rajput turban. He
shoved the Patan turban with its conical fez in his saddle-bags, and
wound the many yards of blue material in a rakish criss-cross about his
shapely head, running a fold or two beneath his chin. The Patan
sheepskin coat was left with his horse.
When Bootea came at ten to where Barlow--who was now Jaswant
Singh--paced up and down with the swagger of a Rajput in front of the
_bunnia's_ shop, she stood for a little, her eyes searching the crowd
for her Sahib. When he laughed, and called softly, "Gulab," her eyes
almost wept for joy, for not seeing him at once, a dread that he had
gone had chilled her.
"You see how easy it is, in a good cause, to change one's caste," he
said.
"With you, Sahib, yes, because you can also change your skin."
There it was again, the indestructible barrier, the pigmented badge.
It drove the laugh from Barlow's lips.
"Why has the Afghan Musselman become a Hindu?" Bootea asked.
"I have no wish to anger these people who are on a holy pilgrimage by
going into their temples as a Moslem."
"You are going to the shrine of Omkar?" the Gulab asked aghast.
"Are you--again?" Barlow parried.
"Yes, Sahib, soon."
"I am going with you," Barlow declared.
Bootea expostulated with almost fierce eagerness; with a fervour that
increased the uneasiness in Barlow's mind. He had a premonition of
evil; dread hung on his soul--perhaps born of the dream of a tiger
devouring the girl.
"The Sahib still has the Akbar Lamp--the ruby?" the girl queried,
presently.
"I have it safe," he answered, tapping his breast.
"If the Sahib is not going to the shrine Bootea would desire that we
could go out beyond the village to a _mango tope_ where there are none
to observe, for she would like to make the final salaams in his
arms--then nothing would matter."
"Perhaps we had better go anyway," Barlow said eagerly--"though I am
going over to the shrine with you; for now, being a Hindu, I can pass
as your brother--and there there would not be opportunity."
The girl turned this over in her mind, then said: "No, we will not go
to the grove, for Bootea can say farewell to the Sahib in the cloister
where Swami Sarasvati has a cell for vigils."
Then asking Barlow to wait she went into the house and soon returned
clothed in spotless white muslin. He noticed that she had taken off
all her ornaments, her jewellery. The bangle of gold that was a
twisting snake with a ruby head, she pressed upon Barlow, saying: "When
the Sahib is married to the Englay will he give her this from me as a
safeguard against evil; and that it may cause her to worship the Sahib
as a god, even as Bootea does."
The simplicity, the genuine nobleness of this tribute of renunciation,
hazed Barlow's eyes with a mist--almost tears; she was a strange
combine of dramatic power and gentle sweetness.
"Now, come, Sahib," she said, "if you insist. It will not bring misery
to Bootea but to you."
Barlow strode along beside the girl steeped in ominous misgivings.
Perhaps his presence at the temple would avert whatever it was, that,
like evil genii seemed to poison the air.
There was a moving throng of pilgrims that poured along in a joyous
turbulent stream toward the bridge. No shadow of the dread god, Omkar,
gloomed their spirits; they chatted and laughed. Of those who would
make devotions the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs draped
in spotless white. And the women, on their way to have their sins
forgiven, were taking final license--the _purdah_ of the veil was
almost forgotten, for this was permitted in the presence of the god.
Even their beautifully formed bodies and limbs, the skin fresh
anointed, gleaming like copper in the sunlight, showed entrancingly,
voluptuously, with a new-born liberty.
Once, half way of the bridge, a man's voice rang out commandingly,
calling backward, admonishing some one to hurry, crying, "It is the
_kurban_!"
Barlow started; the _kurban_ meant a human sacrifice. He looked at
Bootea--he could have sworn her head had drooped, and that she
shivered. The girl must have sensed his thoughts, for she turned her
eyes up to his, but they held nothing of fear.
Beyond the bridge they passed across a lower level, jungle clad with
delicate bamboos and dhak, and sweet-scented shrubs, and clusters of
gorgeous oleanders. The way was thronged with white-clothed figures
that seemed like wraiths, ghosts drifting back to the cavern of the
Destroyer.
Then they commenced the ascent following the bed of a stream that had
cut a chasm through black trap-rock, leaving jagged cliffs. And the
persistent jungle, ever encroaching on space, had out-posts of champac
and wild mango, their giant roots, like the arms of an octopus, holding
anchorage in clefts of the rock. And from the limbs above floated down
the scolding voices of _lungoor_, the black-faced grey-whiskered
monkeys, who rebuked the intrusion of the earth-dwellers below. Where
the path lay over rocks it was worn smooth and slippery by naked feet,
the feet of pilgrims for a thousand years. On the right the mouth of a
deep cave had been walled up by masonry. Within, so the legend ran,
the High Priest of Mandhatta, centuries before, had imprisoned the
goddess Kali to stop a pestilence, making vow to offer to Bhairava, her
son, a yearly human sacrifice. Higher up, approaching the plateau
where were the ruins of a thousand gorgeous shrines, both sides of the
pathway were lined by mendicants who sat cross-legged, in front of them
a little mat for the receipt of alms--cowries, pice, silver; the
mendicants muttering incessantly "_Jae, Jae, Omkar_!" (Victory to
Omkar).
In front of the temple within which sat the god, was a conical black
stone daubed with red, the Linga, the generative function of Siva, and
before it, the symbol of reproduction, women made offering of
cocoanuts, and sweets, and garlands of flowers,--generally
marigolds,--and prayed for the bestowal of a son; even their postures,
carried away as they were by desire, showing a complete abandon to the
sex idea. A Brahmin priest sat cross-legged upon a stone platform
repeating in a sing-song cadence prayers, and from somewhere beyond a
deep-toned bell boomed out an admonishing call.
Holy water from the sacred Narbudda was poured into the two jugs each
pilgrim carried and sealed by the Brahmins, who received, without
thanks, stoically, as a matter of right, a tribute of silver.
Towering eighty feet above the temple spire was a cliff, and from a
ledge near its top a white flag fluttered idly in the lazy wind. It
was the death-leap, the ledge from which the one of the human sacrifice
to Omkar leapt, to crash in death beside the Linga.
Almost without words Barlow and the girl had toiled up the ascent,
scarcely noticed of the throng; and now Bootea said: "Sahib, remain
here, I go to speak to the High Priest."
Barlow saw her speak into the open portal of one of the cloister
chambers that surrounded the temple, then disappear within. After a
time she came forth, and approaching him said, "The Priest would speak
with thee, Sahib; for because of many things I have told him who thou
art, though mentioning not the nature of the mission, for that is not
permitted."
Barlow's foreboding of evil was now a certainty as he strode forward.
The priest rose at the Captain's entrance. He was a fine specimen of
the true Brahmin, the intellectual cult, that through successive
generations of mental sway and homage from the millions of untutored
ones had become conscious of its power. Tall, spare of form, with wide
high forehead and full expressive eyes, almost olive skin, Barlow felt
that the Swami was quite unlike the begging yogis and mendicants; a man
who was by the close alliance of his intellect to the essence of
created things a Sannyasi. Larger in his conceptions than the yogis
who misconstrued the Vedas and the Law of Manu as imposing an
association of filth--smeared ashes, and uncombed, uncleansed hair--as
a symbol of piety and abnegation of spirit, a visible assertion that
the body had passed from regard--that it, with its sensualities and
ungodly cravings, had become subservient to the spirit, the soul.
Swami Sarasvati was austere; Barlow felt that he dwelt on a plane where
the trivialities of life were but pestilential insects, to be endured
stoically in a physical way, with the mind freed from their irritation
grasping grander things; life was a wheel that revolved with the
certainty of celestial bodies.
It was so curious, and yet so unfailing, that Bootea, with her
hyper-intuition should have found, selected this spiritual tutor from
the horde of gurus, byragies, and yogis that were connecting links
between the tremendous pantheon of grotesque gods and the common
people. Here she had come to an intellectual, though no doubt an
ascetic; one possessed of fierce fervour in his ministry. There would
be no swaying of that will force developed to the keen flexible
unflawed temper of a Damascus blade.
Now the priest was saying in the _asl_ (pure) Hindustani of the
high-bred Brahmin: "The Sahib confers honour upon Sri Swami Sarasvati
by this visit, for the woman has related that he is of high caste
amongst the Englay and has been trusted by the Raj with a mission.
That he comes in the garb of my people is consideration for it avoids
outrage to their feelings. I am glad to know that the Englay are so
considerate."
"I came, Swami, because of regard for Bootea for she is like a
princess."
The priest shot a quick, searching look into the eyes of the speaker,
then he asked, "And what service would the Sahib ask?"
The question caught Captain Barlow unaware; he had not formulated
anything--it had all been nebulous, this dread. He hesitated, fearing
to voice that which perhaps did not exist in the minds of either the
priest or Bootea.
The girl perceived the hesitancy and spoke rapidly in a low voice to
the priest.
"Captain Sahib," the Swami began, "I see that thy heart is inclined to
the woman, and it is to be admired, for she is, as thou thinkest, like
a flower of the forest. But also, Captain Sahib, thy heart is the
heart of a soldier, of a brave man, the light of valour is in thine
eyes, in thy face, and I would ask thee to be brave, and instead of
being cast in sorrow because of what I am going to tell thee, thou must
realise that it is for the good of the woman whose face is in thy
heart. To-day she insures to her soul a place in kattas, the heaven of
Siva, the abiding place of Brahm, the Creator of all that is."
Barlow felt himself reel at this sudden confirmation of his fears--the
blow. The cry "_Kurban_" that he had heard on the bridge was a
reality--a human sacrifice.
"God!" he cried in a voice of anguish, "it can't be. Young and
beautiful and good, to die--it's wrong. I forbid such a cruel, wanton
sacrifice of a sweet life."
The Swami, taking a step toward the door, swept his long thin arm with
a gesture that embraced the thousands beyond.
"Captain Sahib," he said solemnly, "if thou wert to raise thy voice in
anger against this holy, soul-redeeming observance thou wouldst be torn
to pieces; not even I could stop them if insult were offered to Omkar.
And, besides, the Englay Raj would call thee accursed for breeding hate
in the hearts of the Hindus through the sacrilege of an insult to the
High Priest of the Temple of Omkar. This is the territory of the
Mahrattas, and the English have no authority here."
Barlow knew that he was helpless. Even if there were jurisdiction of
the British, one against thousands of religious fanatics would avail
nothing.
The priest saw the torture in the man's face, and continued: "The woman
has told me much. Her heart is so with thee that it is already dead.
Thou canst not take her to thy people, for the living hell is even
worse than the hell beyond. If thou lovest the woman glory in her
release from pain of spirit, from the degradation of being
outcast--that she judges wisely, and there is not upon her soul the sin
of taking her own life, for if she went with thee, proud and high-born
as she is, it would come to that, Sahib--thou knowest it. There are
things that cannot be said by me concerning the woman; vows having been
taken in the sanctity of a temple."
A figment of the rumour Barlow had heard that Bootea was Princess
Kumari floated through his mind, but that did not matter; Bootea as
Bootea was the sweetest woman he had ever known. It must be that she
had filled his heart with love.
Again Bootea spoke in a low voice to the priest, and he said: "Sahib, I
go forth for a little, for there are matters to arrange. I see yonder
the sixteen Brahmins who, according to our rites, assemble when one is
to pass at the Shrine of Omkar to _kailas_."
His large luminous eyes rested with tolerant placidity upon the face of
this man whom he must consider, according to his tenets, as a creature
antagonistic to the true gods, and said, in his soft, modulated voice:
"Thou art young, Sahib, and full of the life force which is essential
to the things of the earth--thou art like the blossom of the _mhowa_
tree that comes forth upon bare limbs before the maturity of its
foliage, it is then, as thou art, joyous in the freshness of awaking
life. But life means eternity, the huge cycle that has been since
Indra's birth. Life here is but a step, a transition from condition to
condition, and the woman, by one act of sacrifice, attains to the
blissful peace that many livings of reincarnated body would not
achieve. It is written in the law of Brahm that if one sacrifices his
life, this phase of it, to Omkar, who is Siva, even though he had slain
a Brahmin he shall be forgiven, and sit in heaven with the _Gandharvas_
(angels). But it is also written that whosoever turns back in terror,
each step that he takes shall be equivalent to the guilt of killing a
Brahmin."
The priest's voice had risen in sonorous cadence until it was
compelling.
Bootea trembled like a wind-wavered leaf.
To Barlow it was horrible, the mad infatuation of a man prostrate
before false gods, idols, a rabid materialism. That one, to fall
crushed and bleeding from the dizzy height of the ledge of sacrifice
upon a red-daubed stone representation of the repulsive emblem, could
thus wipe out the deadly sin of murder, was, even spiritually,
impossible.
The priest, his soul submerged by the sophistry of his faith, passed
from the gloomed cloister to the open sunlight.
And Barlow, conscious of his helplessness unless Bootea would now yield
to his entreaties and forswear the horrible sacrifice, turned to the
girl, his face drawn and haggard, and his voice, when he spoke,
vibrating tremulously from the pressure of his despair. He held out
his arms, and Bootea threw herself against his breast and sobbed.
"Come back to Chunda with me, Gulab," Barlow pleaded.
"No, Sahib," she panted, "it cannot be."
"But I love you, Bootea," he whispered.
"And Bootea loves the Sahib," and her eyes, as she lifted her face,
were wonderful. "There," she continued, "the Sahib could not make the
_nika_ (marriage) with Bootea, both our souls would be lost. But it is
not forbidden,--even if it were and was a sin, all sins will be
forgiven Bootea before the sun sets,--and if the Sahib permits it
Bootea will wed herself now to the one she loves. Hold me in your
arms--tight, lest I die before it is time."
And as Barlow pressed the girl to him, fiercely, crushing her almost,
she raised her lips to his, and they both drank the long deep draught
of love.
Then the Gulab drew from his arms and her face was radiant, a soft
exultation illumined her eyes.
"That is all, Sahib," she said. "Bootea passes now, goes out to
_kailas_ in a happy dream. Go, Sahib, and do not remain below for this
is so beautiful. You must ride forth in content."
She took him by the arm and gently led him to the door.
And from without he could hear a chorus of a thousand voices, its
burden being, "The _Kurban_!"
Barlow turned, one foot in the sunshine and one in the cloister's
gloom, and kissed Bootea; and she could feel his hot tears upon her
cheek.
Once more he pleaded, "Renounce this dreadful sacrifice."
But the girl smiled up into his face, saying, "I die happily, husband.
Perhaps Indra will permit Bootea to come back in spirit to the Sahib."
The High Priest strode to the entrance of the cloister, his eyes
holding the abstraction of one moving in another world; he seemed
oblivious of the Englishman's presence as he said:
"Come forth, ye who seek _kailas_ through Omkar."
As Barlow staggered, almost blind, over the stony path from the
cloister, he saw the group of sixteen Brahmins, their foreheads and
arms carrying the white bars of Siva.
Then Bootea was led by the priest down to the cold merciless stone
Linga, where she, at a word from the priest, knelt in obeisance, a
barbaric outburst of music from horn and drum clamouring a salute.
When Bootea arose to her feet the priest tendered her some _mhowa_
spirit in a cocoanut shell, but the girl, disdaining its stimulation,
poured it in a libation upon the Linga.
From the amphitheatre of the enclosing hills thirty thousand voices
rose in one thundering chorus of "Jae, jae, Omkar!" and, "To Omkar the
_Kurban_!"
Many pressed forward, mad fanaticism in their eyes, and held out at
arm's length toward the girl bracelets and ornaments to be touched by
her fingers as a beneficence.
But Swami Sarasvati waved them back, and turning to Bootea tendered
her, with bowed head, the _pan supari_ (betel nut in a leaf) as an
admonition that the ceremony had ceased, and there was nothing left but
the sacrifice.
As the girl with firm step turned to the path that led up through shrub
and jungle growth to the ledge where fluttered the white flag, a tumult
of approbation went up from the multitude at her brave devotion. Then
a solemn hush enwrapped the bowl of the hills, and the eyes of the
thousands were fixed upon the jutting shelf of rock.
A dirge-like cadence, a mighty gasp of, "Ah, Kuda!" sounded as a slim
figure, white robed, like a wraith, appeared on the ledge, and from her
hand whirled down to the rocks below a cocoanut, cast in sacrifice;
next a hand-mirror, its glass shimmering flickers of gold from the
sunlight.
For five seconds the white-clothed figure disappeared in the shrouding
bushes; men held their breath, and women gasped and clutched at their
throats as if they choked.
Then they saw her again, arms high held as though she reached for God.
And as the white-draped, slender form came hurtling through the air
women swooned and men closed their eyes and shuddered.
An Englishman, clothed as a Hindu, lay prone on his face on the
hillside sobbing, the dry leaves drinking in his tears, cursing himself
for a sin that was not his.
THE END