Part 49 (1/2)

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 clas.h.i.+ng 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.