The Hosts of the Lord Part 23

The old man looked at him sharply, almost angrily. "No one ever called me names, sir; still less a lady who was with me. But excuse me--I am pressed for time."

"Now, that's a man!" said Lance, enthusiastically, as he looked after the hurrying white figure. The comparison was too obvious.

"Father Ninian is not a missionary," she said coldly. "It is easy for him--" she paused, turned to her companion, and held out her hand.

"Good-by, and thanks; but I really can go home by myself, Mr. Carlyon."

"Good-by," he echoed; then, holding her hand still, a sudden resolve seemed to come to him. "But--I should like to tell you something first, please."--

She felt her heart beating everywhere but in its proper place.

--"Not that it matters, but I'd like you to know it. I had some news by the mail this morning--bad news."

She felt her blood everywhere but in its normal course, now, in sheer shame at her own imaginations. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

"So am I," he went on thoughtfully; "though it isn't bad in a way for me. Do you remember my telling you about my cousin? a weedy chap, six-four. Well, they sent him round the world for his health, and he died two months ago, it seems, in Australia. And the shock was too much for my uncle; he was an old man, and this was his only son. So--so I am Sir Lancelot now. It doesn't make any odds, of course, but I thought I should like you to know, first."

She looked up at him as he stood beside her, so tall, so strong, so young, so kind; and though she only said, "Thanks, Sir Lancelot, it won't make any difference to--to our friendship, I'm sure," she knew in her heart of hearts that it did. Though how, she had not yet had time to discover.

CHAPTER XIV

MIRACLE MONGERS

Roshan Khan flung his cigarette away, and walked up and down his quarters in the Fort like an Englishman; he felt rather like one, also, in his vague distaste for something which refused to fit in with his previous experiences.

"So she will see my grandmother," he said, at last. "That is a step, certainly, but--" he turned quickly to Akbar Khan, "it seems impossible!"

The quondam chief-eunuch giggled like a girl. "Nothing is impossible with women, oh, Protector of the Poor!" he said; then, with a jaunty air of self-satisfaction, went on, "and this dust-like one has experience. She will see the female relation to-night after approved custom, and, since this is after the habits of the _sahib-logue_, she would perhaps see the--the Nawab-_sahib_ tomorrow."

Roshan wheeled again in his walk at both the t.i.tle and the suggestion, half indignantly, yet with a reluctant eagerness. "See--see me! Did she say aught of it?"

"A woman's wishes for a lover go not near her tongue, _Huzoor_; they keep to her heart," replied Akbar, still with his jaunty craft; "but if this visit of the female relation be auspicious, as G.o.d send it, then there would be no hindrance to the asking; and even if she said nay--"

Something in his hearer's face warned the old sinner he had to do with some novel code of conduct, and he paused, while Roshan continued his pacing.

He was disturbed beyond bounds. The foolish dream of a foolish old woman had come to be so far a reality, that the jealousy which had blazed up instinctively at the sight of Laila in that dress--so like a woman of his race--alone with a strange man, had come to be deliberate.

More than once he had felt inclined to tell Pidar Narayan what he had seen, even to write an anonymous letter of warning. He would have done so had he seen any subsequent hint of intimacy between these two. But he saw none; on the contrary, they seemed to avoid each other in public; and though this might be a blind, on the other hand Roshan had seen too much of some English women's ways not to know how trivial an offence against the proprieties it was to sit out dances in a balcony!

Undoubtedly, however, this girl, who had taken his presents on the sly, who would receive his amba.s.sadress on the sly, was not one whom it was necessary to treat with great ceremony. She was what the English language called a flirt; his own a stronger term. Not that it mattered, since no wife of his would have a chance of amusing herself.

So, after a while, he paused to say--with a scowl for the toothless grinning survival of a past society--"I would I knew if it were wise to trust thee? Why shouldst thou take the trouble thou dost? What is the affair to thee?"

Akbar's face was a study in sheer dignity. "'Tis but my duty, Cherisher of the Poor!" he said, almost pathetically. "For what other service were such as I am created?"

The hateful tragedy of this confession of degradation pa.s.sed Roshan by; he saw nothing in it but an appeal to facts which gave him confidence.

"Yea!" he said, "I was forgetting. Such arrangings are meat and drink to thy sort. So take thy price. It shall be trebled if she bids me see her to-morrow, but--" here he laughed, half at himself,--"thou must needs work miracles for such favour to come so soon!"

Akbar, as he capered off, the rupees jingling in his pocket, to more legitimate and less lucrative pursuits, winked and leered to himself over his own surpa.s.sing wickedness and wisdom. Miracles! Ay; but it was nature worked them, not he. Given youth, proximity, a touch of surprise, a flavour of the forbidden, and the result, in his evil experience, was sure. In the meantime his part was to keep the ball from falling until the players took to playing the game for themselves; then the fun was over for the true go-between. He had to take a back seat and watch--he! he! he!--the miracle! A pretty miracle, indeed! The idea tickled him so that he could not keep it to himself, and as he pa.s.sed through the bazaar, doing his daily marketing, he used his new avocation of miracle-monger as a reason for good bargains. The shop-keepers, however, shook their heads. Miracles paid the priests, and might suit such as he, but for their part they considered that there were too many miracles in Eshwara. What was the good of the pilgrims coming at all if all their money went to the temples, and they had not a pice left for a relic, or even a toy to take home to the toddlers whose feet were not yet strong enough for pilgrimage?

Whereupon they would look discontentedly round the baskets of Brummagen bra.s.s G.o.ds, the Belgian-made rosaries, the patent Swedish self-lighting joss sticks, the machine-cut oblation cups, with which almost every other shop sought to attract custom. Baskets where a pious pilgrim could purchase a whole pantheon, and secure a modic.u.m of divine favour--all duly trade-marked by Christians--for a few farthings.

"'Tis not our fault, brother," suggested a decrepit old Brahmin, with a wrinkled forehead all seamed with white markings, who--squatted in the gutter--was extolling the virtue of the sacred _salig ramas_, made unblushingly out of the ball stoppers of soda-water bottles, which lay exposed for sale on a handkerchief in front of him; a Manchester-made handkerchief, printed in the best style with the loves of Krishna. "We get no more than in the old days; nay, less. For, see you, the third-cla.s.s ticket takes so much. And that is the _Huzoors'_ fee. They send it all over the black water to make a mountain of silver in the streets of their big city, London. Oh, pious ones! Buy! Buy a sacred sin-expeller!"

The monotonous cry was caused by the appearance of a priest-led band of pilgrims; for, as yet, the great throng was not, when the whole narrow street would be a sea of heads, when even the saffron robes would be lost to sight, and the only thing visible would be the patient, anxious faces seeking redemption. That would come on the morrow,--the great day.

Meanwhile, reverent eyes turned to the bottle-stoppers, and one or two hands wandered to the little h.o.a.rd set aside for regeneration, which was diminishing so rapidly under the claims of chaplets, lights, caste-markings, sprinkling, and miracles.

"There be too many, I say," reiterated a radical seller of drugs. "If the _Sirkar_ puts a tax on my medicine for the body, why not on thine for the soul?"

"Nay, _pinsari-jee!_" chuckled the privileged wit and gossip of the bazaar, a cobbler who sat--by reason of his low caste--at a decent distance even from the crowd of customers which was awaiting a patch on the coverings of feet already worn and weary with their search after righteousness; "'tis a miracle when folk buy of you; and that comes not too often."

Even the pilgrims laughed; for laughter at a ready gibe comes easily in India. Yet they, too, felt inclined to agree with the drug-seller. One can get _blase_ even in miracles.

Therefore, naturally enough, when there was a choice, they chose the newest ones. And the newest of all was _jogi_ Gorakh-nath's promise of defying tampions, and locks, and chains, and, as in other years, blessing the crowd of worshippers from his self-inflicted penitentiary, inside the "_Teacher of Religion_."

And what was more, he had kept his promise. That very dawn, as a kind of walk over the course, he had performed the miracle before a select band of pilgrims, mostly _jogies_ of his own sect who were now engaged in telling the tale to all and sundry in the city. What had occurred was briefly this. He had received his followers squatted on the stone steps in front of the gun, and had treated them to a dissertation on the mysteries of Yoga. Other less eminent pract.i.tioners in the art of miracles, he said, might have found it necessary to withhold the sight of the sacred person from devoted eyes. He, however, meant to show them his absolute independence of the body. He would leave it lying there, dead, while his soul went inside the gun, and blessed the pious ones.

Accordingly his jaw had dropped; he had become rigid, callous apparently to the p.r.i.c.kings of pins with which his a.s.sistants strove to make him wince, and, just as one of them withdrew a dagger, covered, of course, with gore from his very heart, a m.u.f.fled voice of blessing had come from the very bowels of the gun.

If that was not a miracle, what was?

Anyhow, it caught on, so that as the day grew, the growing tide of pilgrims pa.s.sed by the side-shows run in connection with the Pool of Immortality by its priests, and drifted off to the opposition show, leaving the _impresarios_ behind them in a state of rage and despair.

Rage, for if this sort of thing continued on the morrow they would lose their year's harvest, since the Host of G.o.d-seekers were ever the natural prey of priests; despair, because exposure of what experience told them _must_ be a fraud, would only result in counter exposure.

There must be honour among thieves to make the profession a lucrative one.

So they met in conclave, each with his miserable earnings in his hand, to point the dire urgency of action, and agreed on the wisdom of finding a cat's-paw to filch their chestnuts from the fire.

Thus it happened that Vincent Dering came over to Lance Carlyon's quarters half an hour before the time they had settled to start for the mission house, and asked him to look sharp, and send round to Roshan Khan to come along also, as he had private information--here, with a laugh, he threw a letter on the table--that miracles were being illegally performed in cantonments, and he expected some fun. Lance laughed also as he read the following:--

"To the Major General commanding. This is to give notice to all concerned that illegible miracles is now being performed by bare men in belly of great gun, contrary to astringent orders issued by my lord G.o.d. Therefore your pet.i.tioners pray for correct diagnosis of same, and removal from Cantonment boundaries with exhibitions not to miracle any more."

"By Jove!" he said, "our pet.i.tioner is a medical man--hospital dresser, I expect. Not to miracle any more!--h'm." His tone changed, his honest blue eyes clouded, for, ever since Erda Shepherd had told him what her future life was to be, the young fellow had been painfully aware that Eshwara had wrought a miracle on him; that he was no longer content to take life as he found it; that already he had begun to look forward and think of what life would be by and by. "I expect that would be a difficulty in Eshwara," he went on; "it's an awful place for upsetting the proper odds. Seems to me impossible to--to make a safe book on anything."

Vincent Dering shrugged his shoulders. He had been in the highest spirits for the last few days. "A safe book! The dullest thing in creation. That's why I like Eshwara. As I remember telling you, one can't count upon anything in the topsy-turvy place--not even one's self. They talk of the mystery of the East! By George! one is in grips with it here; so come along, Lance! and remove miracles from Cantonment boundaries at any rate!"

They found the union-jack of paths obliterated by an orderly crowd; for every hour, almost every minute, of the day had brought fresh units to that weary-footed, eager-eyed host of pilgrims. Here and there amongst them was to be seen the high-twined, badge-set turban of a policeman, ready, truncheon in hand, to a.s.sert the rights of law, but not many; since the rush of bathers had not yet come, and there was small danger to be feared from anything save that keen desire to be cleansed, which showed on almost every face. As the two Englishmen entered, however, followed by Roshan Khan, on whose features that fierce intolerance of his race for idolaters was written clearly, a murmur of tense antic.i.p.ation ran through the packed courtyard. The miracle turn was evidently on.

It was. _Jogi_ Gorakh-nath lay as if dead on the raised stone platform in front of the gun, and two a.s.sistants were prodding him with pins.

"I've seen that in London," said Vincent, forcing his way rapidly through the yielding crowd, "so I can hardly object to it here; but if there is hanky-panky with my gun--"

At that instant, a b.l.o.o.d.y dagger, fresh apparently from the _jogi's_ heart, was held up, and a curious hush fell on the courtyard. It was broken by a m.u.f.fled voice, unmistakably from within the gun, and that was lost in a great roar of applause.

"A miracle! a miracle of the G.o.ds!"

Captain Dering, who with the others had now reached the centre, waited for the roar to subside a little, and then his voice rose and seemed to crush it.