In The Permanent Way Part 6

[Footnote 16: G.o.ddess.]

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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.ddess 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 pet.i.tions 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 pa.s.sivity is characteristic of the race--which yet needs only a casual match to make it flare into fanaticism.

So time pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sed 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, uns.e.xed, 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 superst.i.tious 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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

"d.a.m.n 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 b.l.o.o.d.y trident of Siva, showed there distinctly ere the modern hemst.i.tched handkerchief wiped it away petulantly. It was gone in a second, yet Ramanund even as he a.s.sured 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sault 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.ds slept like men.

When G.o.ds slept...!