The Hosts of the Lord Part 49

There was no mistaking the cry now. It rose exultant, yet with that wailing note in it still, which lingers always in humanity's claim to have found its lost Paradise, its lost purity.

Yet there was no trace of doubt in the almost frantic joy on every face in the dense mult.i.tude which stopped the little cavalcade, as it entered the square around the Pool of Immortality; stopped it hopelessly, as if the moving, breathing, living ma.s.s had been a dead wall.

"_Hara! Hari! Hari! Hara!_"

It was almost a yell. The patience was gone utterly, and far as the eye could reach, in all the wide square, in every street and alley converging to it, there was the restless ineffectual movement of the sea, when, on a summer's day, it beats itself calmly yet persistently--rising and falling--upon a sheer cliff, against the impossible. There was no one to check the crowd now, to prevent it from finding Death and Immortality at the same time. What matter? What were a few hundreds of crushed bodies, when the soul found what it sought?

The riders behind Roshan threw up their hands at the sight. No hope here for the littlenesses of life; for princ.i.p.alities and powers, even for political liberty.

This was the bed-rock; this, in its unalterable aspiration--not for something better, but for the best--neither culture nor conspiracy could touch; this was as much beyond the control of kith and kin as of strangers and aliens.

"Come, _Khan-sahib_!" they called to the figure with the lack-l.u.s.tre eyes which sat its horse like a statue, staring at itself, at its world, conscious only of the hideous discords which were, perforce, the music of its sphere. "Come! _Nawab-jee!_ There is still a chance with the '_Teacher of Religion_.' The _jogi_ will have held _his_ folk, for sure. They will be ready for blood, since Mai Kali"--the speaker spat his Mahomedan contempt for the idolatry ere he went on--"lets none go.

She's a true woman for that!"

So, by back alleys and crooked ways, Roshan--why he did not know, since he meant nothing by it--led the cavalcade past the palace, through the archway into the courtyard with its union-jack of raised paths.

And found it empty.

Empty of all save the _jogi_, Gorakh-nath, who was busy, resignedly, in rethreading his chaplet of skulls, ere starting to seek safety over the British border in some far recess of the holy hills, whence, when this affair had blown over, he could swoop down with added sanct.i.ty on some other religious fair.

"He and his G.o.d stole them from me not the saying of a rosary past," he said cheerfully, after he had explained the position. "They went by yonder door to the old road. So what matter! They are in it. They will come back to Her by and by. It is so always. Men follow other leads, other loves. But they do not find what they seek; so they come back to Her, to the many named Woman. _Jai! Kali Ma!_"

Those behind Roshan looked at each other.

"It is the end," they said briefly. "Come, _risaldar-jee_--" the change of t.i.tle was significant--"we shall have to ride far and fast if we are to live."

Once more, every atom of the man, soul and body, seemed to strike out furiously at the voice, at the truth and the untruth in it; at the a.s.sertion of failure, the linking of his need with theirs.

"Ride for your lives if you want them," he cried fiercely; "I seek death."

They left him, after unavailing protests, and rode helter-skelter on to the Fort, warning their comrades that the game was up, so, on towards safety. And the _jogi_, naked but not ashamed, still swinging his chaplet of skulls, followed them leisurely; for he knew himself safe in the superst.i.tion and the devotion of every woman in India. Since he, Her servant, could not fail of shelter in every Hindoo homestead, far or near, in which a woman's hand closed on a man's, holding him tight for herself alone, as the Great Mother holds all men.

Roshan, thus left alone, rode his horse on slowly to the central plinth, dismounted, and, hitching the bridle over the muzzle of the "_Teacher of Religion_" stood staring out dully at what lay before him; so quiet, so commonplace!

Nothing changed from the day, barely a month ago, when he had stood beside the old gun with Vincent Dering and Lance Carlyon, contemptuous of the ignorance of others, satisfied with himself.

And now?--what had come to him?

The madness, which his wild gallop from the gaol had calmed somewhat, returned in a fierce rush, and with it that one desire for revenge; for something by which to show the contempt, which was not now merely for the ignorant; but for those others, self-righteous, tyrannical, who had dared to touch him--dared to make him what he was--a prey both to ignorance and wisdom, savagery and culture--a laughing-stock even to himself!

And who had begun the fooling? Who had taught him as a boy?

Pidar Narayan! Who else? Who else had begun the game giving some things, withholding others? And who else was within reach? Who else could be followed up and forced to fair fight? Forced to admit that the pupil was ahead now of the master.

He laughed a laugh of absolute exultation; and a wave of purely childish satisfaction swept through the mind in which there were still so many depths of childish ignorance and misconception; unavoidable depths in the culture of a bare score of years. Leaving his horse tethered to the old gun, he ran hastily across to the palace, so, finding the door open, the whole place quiet, went on down the arched pa.s.sage. It was still dark there, but a glimmer of light showed the entrance to the chapel, and to the armoury beside it, which was his goal.

He had no other thought except for that armoury, until, with the tall tapers burning at the head and feet, he saw the dead body of the woman who had deceived him lying on the Altar steps. Then the pitifullest clashing of satisfaction and despair, of desire and disgust, came to him that ever rent a man in twain. For a moment he fought for bare reason between them, then with a savage cry, he flung himself beside the dead girl, caught her to him, covered her with frantic, cruel kisses, and, almost flinging her from him again, ran on into the armoury, the red of her dress, her bosom, in his eyes--the red of blood!

The armoury! Where he had had his first lesson in the foils! There they were, harmless in their b.u.t.tons, crossed on the wall, and above them something more murderous; the dangerous delicate rapiers to which those others were but the prelude. No! one was gone! One Father Ninian had used against the _jogi!_ One he must have with him. So much the better!

He tore down its fellow, and pa.s.sing the dead girl without a look, dashed out into the courtyard again, his last trace of sanity gone.

The next instant his horse's feet were echoing madly along the pilgrims' road. His enemy must have a quarter of an hour's lead, but that was nothing; he could overtake him, anyhow, at the first station in the pilgrimage,--a temple under a vast _banyan_ tree at the foot of the first rise, where the pious must pause to make offerings.

The road was almost empty at first; for the news that the miracle had only been deferred had spread instantly through the unrestful town, so to a s.p.a.ce beyond it, making those who heard the tale turn back to see for themselves. But after a few minutes' wild gallop, he came up with those who had been beyond recall, who had gone on content with that strange lead of a strange G.o.d; of a saint, a sinner. Yet, after a time, forgetful of that leadership utterly. For they needed it no more. The danger of novelty had pa.s.sed with their first step along the beaten track which their fathers had followed. Father Ninian, wise with the wisdom of long years, of secret sympathy, had known this; had counted on it in his forlorn hope of leading them into familiar bondage. He had told himself that he need only go as far as that first station; that then, during the pause for offerings, he might return, as it were, to realities, to something more consistent with the nineteenth century!

But to him, also, as he led the way, chanting his offices for the day, had come a strange peace, a strange desire to go on to the end of the pilgrimage; a strange desire to leave those realities behind him in a world from which he was taking nothing, not even his love.

Surely it was time. Surely he was old enough to claim rest. No! not rest. It was something more than that. Surely, now that he had left every atom of earth behind him lying with a dead woman on the Altar steps, he also was free to find the "Cradle of the G.o.ds"!

"_My soul fleeth unto the Lord! before the morning watch I say, before the morning watch_," he chanted; he had gone on blindly from psalm to psalm intent on the desire to lead those voices behind.

"Have a care, _baba-jee!_ thou and thy G.o.d!" said a half-tender, half-jesting one as he stumbled among the stones, and a dark hand stretched itself out to steady the old priest, and a dark face turned to nod approval at other saffron robes; since here was a true pilgrim, a true madman, forgetful of this world, to judge by the face lifted towards those distant hills.

Yet the desire in him to reach them seemed to the wise old heart something that must be set aside. He must return. Yes! he must return.

To do what? What could an old man do who had left life, a useless life, behind him? He crushed down that thought also, and stumbled on.

"_Man is like a thing of nought, his time pa.s.seth away like a shadow!_"

His voice spent itself tremulously on that one certainty, and those behind him joined their testimony to his all unwittingly, as they called on Hara or Hari; on the Creator, the Destroyer, as One and Indivisible.

And in the rear again, Roshan in his search for Death, for annihilation, bore witness also, as he came, cursing those who stood in his way, his horse slithering among the stones in its effort to obey whip and spur, and sending a dry clangour of hoof-beats through the little stony valley to startle the sleepy snakes coiled on the distant rocks, and drive them back to their crannies with a hiss.

So, every instant, the distance lessened between the old man and the young one, both weary of life. It was broad daylight now, though the sun was still low on the horizon. The mystery of dawn had left the world, the very pilgrims, between their recurring cries, were chattering, laughing, over the every-day details of life which would make to-day as trivial as yesterday, to-morrow as trivial as to-day.

There had been a "Breathing" in the night, they told each other. Some shadow had fallen. Some G.o.d or Devil had had power. But the shackles of custom, of familiarity, were back again, the despotism of detail.

Only in those two strangely different minds in the van, in the rear, the mystery still clouded the reality.

And the distance between them lessened as Roshan drove his way through the saffron robes recklessly.

Yet, fast as he went, when he reached the end of the dry watercourse up which the last part of the rough track had wound, and stood in the hollow, backed by a further rise of the hill, where the quaint, dumpy, black temple hid itself under the huge blotch of the _banyan_ tree--the only green thing visible, far or near--the figure he sought was not to be seen among the crowd.

Akbar Khan, indeed, he saw, utilizing one of the tall tapers as a pipe-light before casting himself on the ground to suck contentedly at the screwed _banyan_ leaf full of tobacco which he had gathered by claiming a pinch in return for the loan of that same light to others.

But with a curious shame Roshan avoided him, and pa.s.sed on in his search among the jostling crowd, the continuous babel of trivial talk; for this was resting-time, when men and women could be men and women, and forget that they were on a pilgrimage; when they could even dream themselves back in the village under the familiar shelter of some village tree, asking no more than the familiar round of life.

But above the babel came every now and again the insistent clang of a bell, telling that some new pet.i.tioner was seeking a favour of the G.o.ds, and making a golden oriole, which sat in the green leaf.a.ge, flit to another bower with a sudden fluting note, full, joyful, mellow.

"What dost seek, _Musulman?_" cavilled a saint, drawing back from Roshan's shadow, as he gabbled invocations, all he knew, on a rosary, ere solacing himself with the pipe which his disciple had prepared. "If 'tis the madman and his G.o.d--he hath gone yonder."

He pointed to a side track, which was a short cut to the road above.

Roshan flung himself from his horse without a word, and followed.

The distance lessened at every step now, for the old priest's breath failed him at the steepness of the rise.

Still, it would not delay him long, he told himself, to take that one look at the soft, white cloud which generally hid the goal of pilgrimage, before he turned back over the hill, as best he could, to find what task remained for him in the world.

He might have that one look, surely!