The Hosts of the Lord Part 28

"I have settled it. Before dawn to-morrow--not this dawn, that is too nigh on us now--but the next, thou shalt let me into the garden. Thou knowest the little balcony which was not lit up? I will stay there, waiting, till she come for an early walk among the flowers. That can be managed. Then, if the coast is clear, we can meet and talk. If not, there is no harm done, for I can slip into the stream and swim back.

That will be best, since it is not possible by day, and at night the _mems_ do not receive visitors, as we do, without reproach."

Roshan's knowledge of etiquette was sound, yet at that very moment Laila, ablaze with gold and jewels, was meeting her lover's eyes with a happy laugh.

"What's in a dress?" she paraphrased, "it is no part of me!"

Was it not? Never had Vincent seen her look like this; so absolutely desirable, so perfectly adorable.

He caught her in his arms and kissed her. The heavy scent upon her dress a.s.sailed him. She looked up into his eyes and laughed.

"_But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true_," she whispered, "_than those who have more cunning to be strange_."

"Juliet!" he whispered back, lost in his own mad pa.s.sion. "Juliet!"

Their gold-shod feet were upon the golden stairs; the gates of Paradise were before them.

CHAPTER XVII

THE POOL OF IMMORTALITY

"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"

The cry was incessant now, for there was a glint of light in the east; and the hosts of pilgrims to the 'Cradle of the G.o.ds' were cramming, almost to solidity, each street and alley in Eshwara which could be said, by however long and tortuous a detour, to give access to that small tank where, at dawn, the miraculous waters of cleansing would rise, as they always did on this, the great Day of Atonement. In the sea of slightly upturned faces, upturned in the vain hope of seeing over the heads of those in front, the most noticeable thing was the expression of mingled eagerness and patience. And this was most noticeable in those who stood nearest to the bamboo railing which had been erected (in a square some four feet from the first step downwards) as a precaution against a dangerous rush on all sides; and in consequence, a dangerous crush on those steep steps. The only entrance to them, therefore, was by a sort of double sheep-pen at the end nearest the town, by means of which, when the time came, some fifty bathers would be admitted to the railed square from the inner pen, their places in which would be taken by the fifty in the outer one; their places, in turn, being filled by fifty from the general crowd. By which double check no more than fifty could stand at one time with no barrier between their mortality and immortality! The railing itself was guarded every two yards by a yellow-legged constable, and at the sheep-pens stood the two European police-officers in whose hands the peace and order of the vast crowd lay. Their a.s.sistant stood at the exit gate at the other end, and their three white helmets showed strangely conspicuous amongst the bare or saffron-turbaned heads.

The two at the sheep-pens were talking and laughing to each other as Englishmen will before business begins; talking and laughing London talk, for one of them was fresh from home furlough, and had only been detailed for this special duty, on his way up country.

"Yes! I had a jolly day," he was saying. "The dear old Heath was looking just as it always did. It was like being born again to come back to the whole caboodle--Aunt Sallies, Tommy Dods, Welshers, and the lot--and then the enclosure--" A sudden sway in the crowd made him look round hastily at his own. It was all correct; so many yards this way, so many that, with yellow legs marking the yards, and those three white helmets marking the limits within which regeneration was legal.

The sway ceased. The moment had not yet come, though slowly, surely, the light grew, to give the great ma.s.s of bronze faces a greyish, corpse-like tint, while, half way up the sky behind them, the serrated edge of the sacred snows grew pale, and cold, and stern, like the very face of Death itself.

"_Hari! Hara! Hara! Hari!_"

There was a note of anxiety in the cry now; for the shadow thrown by the tall houses which hemmed in the wide courtyard was growing paler, and in another minute, at most, the twelve-foot square of cleansing water, which was all the G.o.ds vouchsafed, must surely begin to rise and show at the bottom of those worn stone steps--worn by generations on generations of golden-shod feet seeking immortality.

"Stand back, please! Not yet!" came an English voice, inaudible for the rhythmic roar of the mult.i.tude; but the raised riding whip was sufficient. The eagerness died out for a moment from those nearest faces, lost in a cheerful obedience, a respectful _salaam_ or two, a general acquiescence.

"I wish those devils of priests would turn on the tap," remarked the other Englishman with a yawn.

"Yes!" answered the first speaker; "if you are on duty, next year, I'd insist on the curtain being rung up at the bill time. It is rough on the audience; especially when they don't cat-call!"

He gave an imitation of a London gallery's sign of impatience, which made some of the golden-shod ones stare; for the rhythmic roar had died down in one of those sudden silences which seize upon humanity even when in ma.s.ses. So that a faint "_rumpa-tum-tum-rumpa-tum-tum_" was distinctly audible from far. It was the _tom-tom_ of the old Brahmin, whom Lance Carlyon had seen selling the endless circles of cut papers as a whole pantheon of G.o.ds.

It is an eminently disturbing sound, that ceaseless, insistent throb of a _tom-tom_, which has no end, no beginning; which holds ever in its beat the necessity for something more; for another repet.i.tion, and yet another.

So, on its ceaselessness, broke in again that swaying, pulsing roar of many voices.

"_Hari! Hara!_ Life-Death-Creator-Destroyer!"

"Something must have gone wrong with the ball-c.o.c.k, and as usual, the plumber will be '_in directly from another little job_,'" said the man who had just come out from England, reminiscently. He had gone there to settle his wife and bairns in a jerry-built villa near London; so the memory of something beyond the iniquities of the plumber--those Borgias of modern life, dealing death unchecked, undiscovered--made his eyes pa.s.s beyond the crowd, pa.s.s the spires of the cl.u.s.tered temples, and settle on the still dark, western sky, over whose curved edge lay the goal of _his_ solitary feet, the end of _his_ pilgrimage, the cradle of _his_ divinities.

"Stand back, please! not yet!" came his order again; and once more eagerness died down to obedience. Once more that cry on the Creator, the Destroyer, ended in that insistent, restless beat of the old G.o.d-selling Brahmin's drum.

It was a strange scene. Above, was the growing light of day; below, the square stone font of immortality, and between them a clamouring crowd, a careless few.

And between _them_ what?

A light railing of bamboo, the dignity that doth hedge an empire. That was all.

And now, with a sudden access of light, came the quick indrawing breath of thousands to voice a sort of sharp, short sob, followed by an instant's silence.

Then, long, soft, with the hush in it of some huge wave far out at sea which swallows up a lesser one, the out-going breath of those thousands voiced a sigh.

For the pool was still empty, though the dawn had come.

Something was wrong.

Seriously wrong, to judge by one English face, as it turned to give a look round, then settled on another English face. "There's something up--G.o.d knows what--the Commissioner feared a row, you know. You'd better go to the Fort and ask Dering to send us down every man he can; men, you understand, not sabres--as yet. And tell Pidar Narayan, he's a host in himself with these pilgrims,--Ramanund too, you might get him,--we want anyone who can help the crowd to keep its temper, though I don't expect he'd be much good--and there's no one else. Inspector!"

here the police officer turned to a silver-laced turban beside the outer pen, "leave that in charge of Govinda and Suchet--Stay! Shiv-deo will be better; he is a high-caste Brahmin. And you go and send every twice-born constable you've got, _and can trust_, to every alley and street that leads here; for there will be an awful crush when those in front don't move on. And--" he wrinkled his forehead in hasty thought--"have we anyone connected with the temple priests, someone they can trust? Ah! Annant, of course,--the very man! Send him to find out if there is anything really wrong; and--" he lowered his voice, "if it is anything to do with the siphon, or whatever it is, get workmen and set it straight--pour water down--anything! Only there _must be a miracle_. And be quick. If this crowd gets impatient--G.o.d help it!"

The last was to himself as he looked round the solid packed ma.s.s of humanity. There was no sigh of impatience in it as yet; only eagerness.

"And mind," he added, "no truncheons drawn till I myself give the order."

The word pa.s.sed in a low tone round the square of authority, and that done, the head of it pulled out his cigar case. He might as well smoke while he could.

The crowd watched him, vaguely interested at his lack of interest in what was coming, until a faint forward sweep, a half-hearted shout came from behind; from those upturned faces which could not even see an Englishman lighting his cigar.

"Not yet! Stand back!" said the latter again, as the pressure on the sheep pen grew. And they stood back, all save a miserable-looking, dirt-clad, wild-eyed mendicant, who had wormed his way to the front, and now feared to lose it.

"Lo! brother," said big Govinda, a Sikh from Patiala, as he thrust him back gently, "have patience awhile. Give the G.o.ds time. There is not water to wash a babe yet."

Shiv-deo, taller even than Govinda, a Saraswati Brahmin, if ever there was one, at the other side of the pen, twirled his mustache airily, and laughed. "Nay, Govinda," he called, "let the beggar in. He seeks but to drown vermin."

The rude jest served its turn, after the manner of policemen's jokes all over the world. The crowd close at hand t.i.ttered, caught up the cue, amused itself with additions; and those behind forgot the great question in curiosity. But not for long.

"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"

The roar of relief rose up tumultuously, the ma.s.s of people swayed with that curious sidelong motion of a forward crowd, as, in the clear light, a trickle of water showed through the crevices of the paving stones at the bottom of the tank.

"Look out!" shouted the Englishman; but remonstrance in words was useless in that storm of sound. So big Govinda promptly s.n.a.t.c.hed two intruders out of his pen, like puppies, by the scruff of their necks, one in each hand; and Shiv-deo, choosing out the nearest low-caste man unerringly, caught him in his arms like a baby, and literally tossed him on to the heads of the crowd, with a shout which, even in that uproar, could be heard of some in that nearest crush.

"Brahmins first, washerman! Thy sort can bathe in the suds of our clothes!"

And those who heard, ducked, and when the victim--who was _not_ a washerman--fell amongst them, hustled and silenced him, and nodded to the big man whose claim to dignity was writ so plain upon his face.