Part 32 (1/2)

It drove the laugh from Barlow's lips.

”Why has the Afghan Musselman become a Hindu?” Bootea asked.

”I have no wish to anger these people who are on a holy pilgrimage by going into their temples as a Moslem.”

”You are going to the shrine of Omkar?” the Gulab asked aghast.

”Are you--again?” Barlow parried.

”Yes, Sahib, soon.”

”I am going with you,” Barlow declared.

Bootea expostulated with almost fierce eagerness; with a fervour that increased the uneasiness in Barlow's mind. He had a premonition of evil; dread hung on his soul--perhaps born of the dream of a tiger devouring the girl.

”The Sahib still has the Akbar Lamp--the ruby?” the girl queried, presently.

”I have it safe,” he answered, tapping his breast.

”If the Sahib is not going to the shrine Bootea would desire that we could go out beyond the village to a _mango tope_ where there are none to observe, for she would like to make the final salaams in his arms--then nothing would matter.”

”Perhaps we had better go anyway,” Barlow said eagerly--”though I am going over to the shrine with you; for now, being a Hindu, I can pa.s.s as your brother--and there there would not be opportunity.”

The girl turned this over in her mind, then said: ”No, we will not go to the grove, for Bootea can say farewell to the Sahib in the cloister where Swami Sarasvati has a cell for vigils.”

Then asking Barlow to wait she went into the house and soon returned clothed in spotless white muslin. He noticed that she had taken off all her ornaments, her jewellery. The bangle of gold that was a twisting snake with a ruby head, she pressed upon Barlow, saying: ”When the Sahib is married to the Englay will he give her this from me as a safeguard against evil; and that it may cause her to wors.h.i.+p the Sahib as a G.o.d, even as Bootea does.”

The simplicity, the genuine n.o.bleness of this tribute of renunciation, hazed Barlow's eyes with a mist--almost tears; she was a strange combine of dramatic power and gentle sweetness.

”Now, come, Sahib,” she said, ”if you insist. It will not bring misery to Bootea but to you.”

Barlow strode along beside the girl steeped in ominous misgivings.

Perhaps his presence at the temple would avert whatever it was, that, like evil genii seemed to poison the air.

There was a moving throng of pilgrims that poured along in a joyous turbulent stream toward the bridge. No shadow of the dread G.o.d, Omkar, gloomed their spirits; they chatted and laughed. Of those who would make devotions the men were stripped to the waist, their limbs draped in spotless white. And the women, on their way to have their sins forgiven, were taking final license--the _purdah_ of the veil was almost forgotten, for this was permitted in the presence of the G.o.d.

Even their beautifully formed bodies and limbs, the skin fresh anointed, gleaming like copper in the sunlight, showed entrancingly, voluptuously, with a new-born liberty.

Once, half way of the bridge, a man's voice rang out commandingly, calling backward, admonis.h.i.+ng some one to hurry, crying, ”It is the _kurban_!”

Barlow started; the _kurban_ meant a human sacrifice. He looked at Bootea--he could have sworn her head had drooped, and that she s.h.i.+vered. The girl must have sensed his thoughts, for she turned her eyes up to his, but they held nothing of fear.

Beyond the bridge they pa.s.sed across a lower level, jungle clad with delicate bamboos and dhak, and sweet-scented shrubs, and cl.u.s.ters of gorgeous oleanders. The way was thronged with white-clothed figures that seemed like wraiths, ghosts drifting back to the cavern of the Destroyer.

Then they commenced the ascent following the bed of a stream that had cut a chasm through black trap-rock, leaving jagged cliffs. And the persistent jungle, ever encroaching on s.p.a.ce, had out-posts of champac and wild mango, their giant roots, like the arms of an octopus, holding anchorage in clefts of the rock. And from the limbs above floated down the scolding voices of _lungoor_, the black-faced grey-whiskered monkeys, who rebuked the intrusion of the earth-dwellers below. Where the path lay over rocks it was worn smooth and slippery by naked feet, the feet of pilgrims for a thousand years. On the right the mouth of a deep cave had been walled up by masonry. Within, so the legend ran, the High Priest of Mandhatta, centuries before, had imprisoned the G.o.ddess Kali to stop a pestilence, making vow to offer to Bhairava, her son, a yearly human sacrifice. Higher up, approaching the plateau where were the ruins of a thousand gorgeous shrines, both sides of the pathway were lined by mendicants who sat cross-legged, in front of them a little mat for the receipt of alms--cowries, pice, silver; the mendicants muttering incessantly ”_Jae, Jae, Omkar_!” (Victory to Omkar).

In front of the temple within which sat the G.o.d, was a conical black stone daubed with red, the Linga, the generative function of Siva, and before it, the symbol of reproduction, women made offering of cocoanuts, and sweets, and garlands of flowers,--generally marigolds,--and prayed for the bestowal of a son; even their postures, carried away as they were by desire, showing a complete abandon to the s.e.x idea. A Brahmin priest sat cross-legged upon a stone platform repeating in a sing-song cadence prayers, and from somewhere beyond a deep-toned bell boomed out an admonis.h.i.+ng call.

Holy water from the sacred Narbudda was poured into the two jugs each pilgrim carried and sealed by the Brahmins, who received, without thanks, stoically, as a matter of right, a tribute of silver.

Towering eighty feet above the temple spire was a cliff, and from a ledge near its top a white flag fluttered idly in the lazy wind. It was the death-leap, the ledge from which the one of the human sacrifice to Omkar leapt, to crash in death beside the Linga.