Part 5

"_Mai Kâli! Mai!_ Listen! Listen!" The clear sharp voice rang passionately now, echoing through the arches. "What have I done, Mother, to be accursed? Why didst Thou take him from me--my beautiful young husband--for they tell me he was young and beautiful. And now they say that Thou sendest the other for my lover--thy priest! But I will not, Mother, if they kill me for it. Thou wouldst not give thyself to such as he, Kâli, ugly as Thou art--and I am pretty. Far prettier than the other girls who have husbands. _Mai Kâli!_ listen this once--this once only! Kill me now when Thou art killing so many and give me a husband in the next life; or let me go--let me be free--free to choose my own way--my own lover. Mother! Mother! if Thou wouldst only wake!--if Thou wouldst only listen!--if Thou wouldst only look and see how pretty I am!----"

Her voice died away amid that mingled perfume of love and worship, of sex and religion, which seemed to lie heavy on the breath, making it come short....

Truly the gods might sleep, but man waked! There, in the shadow, a man looked and listened till pity and passion set his brain and heart on fire.

The girl had risen to her feet again in her last hopeless appeal, and now stood once more looking upwards at the silent bell, her hands, empty of their chaplets, clenched in angry despair, and a world of baffled life and youth in her childish face.

"She will not listen! She will not wake!" The whisper, with its note of fear in it, ended in a booming clang which forced a vibrating response from the dim arches as Ramanund's nervous hand smote the big bell full and fair. She turned with a low cry, then stood silent till a slow smile came to her face.

_Mai Kâli_ had wakened indeed! She had listened also, and the lover had come....

II

The moonlit nights which had so often shown two ghost-like figures amid the shadows of Kâli's shrine had given place to dark ones. And now, save for a whisper, there was no sign of life beneath the dim arches, since, as a rule, those two--Ramanund and the woman Fate had sent him--shunned the smoky flare of the lamps, and the half-seen watchfulness of that hideous figure within the closed fretwork doors. Yet sometimes little Anunda would insist on their sitting right in the very threshold of the Mother who, she said, would be angry if they distrusted Her. But at other times she would meet her lover, finger to lip, and lead him hastily to the darkest corner lest he should wake the goddess to direful anger at this desecration of Her holy place. Then again, she would laugh recklessly, hang the chaplets she had brought with her round his neck, cense him with sweet matches, and tell him, truthfully, that he was the only god she feared.

Altogether, as he sat with his arm round her, Ramanund used often to wonder helplessly if it were not all a dream. If so, it was not the calm controlled dream he had cherished as the love story suitable to a professor of mathematics. The heroine of that was to have been wise, perhaps a little sad, and Anunda was--well! it was difficult to say what she was, save absolutely entrancing in her every mood. She was like a firefly on a dark night flashing here and there brilliantly, lucidly; yet giving no clue to her own self except this--that she did not match with the exact sciences. Nor, for the matter of that, with the situation; for there were grave dangers in these nightly assignations.

In addition, their surroundings were anything but cheerful, anything but suitable to dreams. Cholera had the whole city in its grip now, and as those two had whispered of Love and Life many a soul, within earshot of a man's raised voice, had passed out of both into the grave. But Anunda never seemed to think of these things. She was the bravest and yet the timidest child alive; at least so Ramanund used to tell her fondly when she laughed at discovery, and yet trembled at the very idea of marriage.

Honestly, she would have been quite satisfied to have him as her lover only, but for the impossibility of keeping him on those terms. An impossibility because--as she told him with tears--she was only on a visit to the Brahmins downstairs and would have to return homewards when the dark month of Kâli-worship was over. And here followed one of those tales--scarcely credible to English ears--of the cold-blooded profligacy to which widows have to yield as the only means of making their lives bearable. Whereat Ramanund set his teeth and swore he would have revenge some day. Meanwhile it made him all the more determined to save her, and at the same time realise his cherished dream of defying his world by marrying a widow. Yet his boldness only had the effect of making little Anunda more timid and cautious.

"What need for names, my lord," she would say evasively when he pressed her for particulars of her past. "Is it not enough that I am of pure Brahmin race? Before Kâli, my lord need have no fears for that, and I have found favour in my lord's eyes. What, then, are the others to my lord? Let the wicked ones go."

"But if people do such things they should be punished by the law," fumed Ramanund, who, even with her arms round him, and a chaplet of _chumpak_ blossom encircling his neck, could not quite forget that he was a schoolmaster. "You forget that we live in a new age, or perhaps you do not know it. That is one of the things I must teach you, sweetheart, when we are married."

The slender bit of a hand which lay in his gave a queer little clasp of denial, and the close-cropped head on his shoulder stirred in a shake of incredulity.

"We cannot marry. I am a widow. It would be better--so----" and the "so" was made doubly eloquent by the quiver of content with which, yielding to the pressure of his arm, she nestled closer to him. Ramanund's brain whirled, as she had a knack of making it whirl, but he stuck to his point manfully.

"Silly child! Of course we can marry. The law does not forbid it, and that is all we have to think of. It is legal, and no one has a right to interfere. Besides, as I told you, it is quite easy. To-morrow, the darkest night of Kâli's month, is our opportunity. Every one will be wearied out by excitement"--here his face hardened and his voice rose. "Excitement! I tell you it is disgraceful that these sacrifices should be permitted. I admit they are nothing here to what they are down country, but we of the Sacred Land should set an example. The law should interfere to stop such demoralising, brutalising scenes. If we, the educated, were only allowed a voice in such matters, if we were not gagged and blindfolded from engaging in the amelioration of our native land----" he paused and pulled himself up by bending down to kiss her in Western fashion, whereat she hid her face in quick shame, for modesty is as much a matter of custom as anything else. "But I will teach you all this when we are married. To-morrow, then, in the hour before dawn, when the worshippers will be drunk with wine and blood, you will meet me on the landing--not here, child, this will be no sight for you or me then. Ah! it is horrible even to think of it; the blood, the needless, reckless----"

Again he pulled himself up and went on: "I shall have a hired carriage at the end of the alley in which we will drive to the railway station; and then, Anunda, it will only be two tickets--two railway tickets."

"Two railway tickets," echoed Anunda in muffled tones from his shoulder; "I came up in the railway from----" She paused, then added quickly:

"They put me in a cage, and I cried."

"You will not be put in a cage this time," replied Ramanund with a superior smile; "you will come with me, and we will go to Benares."

Her face came up to his this time anxiously. "Benares? Why Benares?"

"Because good and evil come alike from Benares," he answered exultantly. "Mayhap you have been there, Anunda, and seen the evil, the superstition. But it is in Benares also that the true faith lives still. My friend has written to his friends there, and they will receive us with open arms; virtuous women will shelter you till the marriage arrangements are complete."

She shook her head faintly. "We cannot be married--I am a widow," she repeated obstinately; "but I will go with you all the same." Then seeing a certain reproach in his face she frowned. "Dost think I am wicked, my lord? I am not wicked at all; but _Mai Kâli_ gave me a lover, not a husband." Here the frown relaxed into a brilliant smile. "My husband is dead, and I do not care for dead men. I care for you, my lord, my god."

Ramanund's brain whirled again, but he clung to the first part of her speech as a safeguard.

"You are foolish to say we cannot be married. If you read the newspapers you would see that widows--child-widows such as you are, heart's-delight--are married, regularly married by priests of our religion. Those old days of persecution are over, Anunda. The law has legalised such unions, and no one dare say a word."

A comical look came to her brilliant little face. "And my lord's mother--will she say nothing?"

The question pierced even Ramanund's coat of culture. He fully intended telling his revered parent of his approaching marriage, and the thought of doing so, even in the general way which he proposed to himself, was fraught with sheer terror. What then would it be when he had to present her with this daughter-in-law in the concrete? He took refuge from realities by giving a lecture on the individual rights of man, while Anunda played like a child with the _chumpak_ garland with which she had adorned him.

And so with a grey glimmer the rapid dawn began to dispute possession of those dim arches with the smoky flare of the lamps, making those two rise reluctantly and steal with echoing footsteps past the malignant half-seen figure behind the closed fretwork doors. The blood-red glint of those outstretched arms with their suggestion of clasping and closing on all within their reach, must have roused a reminiscence of that past defiance in the young schoolmaster's brain; for he paused before the shrine, his arms still round Anunda, to say triumphantly:

"Good-bye, _Kâli mai!_ Good-bye for ever."

The girl, clinging to him fearfully, looked round into the shadows on either side. "Hush, my lord, who knows whether She really sleeps; and She is in dangerous mood. _They_ say so." Her light foot marked her meaning by a tap on the echomy floor.

"What, reckless one!" said her lover in fond jest. "Hast grown so full of courage that thou wouldst signal them to come? Art not afraid what they might do?"

The panic on her face startled him. "Ramu," she whispered, "for my sake say it once--'_Jai Kâli ma!_' Say it; it will not hurt."

"Nothing will hurt, Anunda," he answered sharply. "Nothing _can_ hurt."

"Can it not? Sometimes I have fancied, downstairs, that they suspect, Ramu!--if----"

"If they do, what then? To-morrow will see us far away. I tell you the times are changed. Why there is a police station within hail almost. Nay, sweetheart! I will not say it. Come, the dawn breaks."

"For my sake, Ramu, for my sake," she pleaded, even as he drew her with him, reluctant yet willing.

And now on the landing where the brick and the stone met, he paused again, his pulses throbbing with passion, to think that this was their last parting.

"Take heart, beloved," he whispered. "Sure I am Ram and thou art Anunda. Who can hinder God's happiness when He gives it?"[20]

[Footnote 20: Ram anund. _Ram_, God; _anund_, happiness.]

The conceit upon the meaning of their names brought a faint smile to her face, and yet once more she whispered doubtfully: "But this is happiness. Ah, Ramu! it would be better--so----"

"It will be better," he corrected. "It is quite easy, heart's beloved. A hired carriage and two railway tickets, that is all! As for _Mai Kâli_--I defy her!"

Suddenly through the darkness, which seemed to hold them closer to each other, came a sound making them start asunder. It was the clang of the bell which hung before the shrine.

"_Kâli ma! Kâli ma!_" Anunda's pitiful little sobbing cry blent with the clang as she fled downstairs, and the mingled sound sent a strange thrill of fear to Ramanund's heart. Kâli herself could not have heard; but if there had been others beside themselves amid the shadows?

He climbed to his lodging on the roof full of vague anxiety and honest relief that the strain and the stress and the passion of the last fortnight was so nearly at an end. It was lucky, he told himself, that it had happened during holiday time, or the exact sciences must have suffered--for of course the idea of Anunda's yielding to _them_ was preposterous; Anunda who had made him forget everything save that he was her lover. He fell asleep thinking of her, and slept even through the wailing which arose ere long in the next lodging. The wailing of a household over an only son reft from it by Kâli _ma_.

"The wrath of the gods is on the house," said Ramanund's widowed mother when he came down late next morning. "And I wonder not when children disobey their parents. But I will hear thy excuses no longer, Ramo. God knows but my slackness hitherto hath been the cause of that poor boy's death. The holy man downstairs holds that She is angry for our want of faith, and many folks believe him, and vow some sacrifice of purification. So shall I, Ramanund. This very day I will speak to my cousin Gungo of her daughter."

"Thou wilt do nothing of the kind, mother," replied Ramanund quietly. "I have made my own arrangements. I am going to marry a widow, a young and virtuous widow."

He felt dimly surprised at his own courage, perhaps a little elated, seeing how severe the qualms of anticipation had been; so he looked his mother in the face fairly as, startled out of all senses save sight, she stared at him as if he had been a ghost. Then suddenly she threw her arms above her head and beat her palms together fiercely.

"_Mai Kâli! Mai Kâli!_ justly art Thou incensed. Ai! Kirpo! Ai! Bishun! listen, hear. This is the cause. My son, the light of mine eyes, the son of my prayers, has done this thing. He is the cursed one! He would bring a widow to a Brahmin hearth. _Jai Kâli ma! Jai Kâli ma!_"

"Mother! mother! for God's sake," pleaded Ramanund, aghast at the prospect of having the secret of his heart made bazaar property. "Think; give me time."

"Time!" she echoed wildly. "What time is there when folks die every minute for thy sin? Oh, Raino, son of my prayer, repent--do atonement. Lo! come with me even now and humble thyself before Her feet. I will ask no more but that to-day--no more." She thrust her hands feverishly into his as if to drag him to the shrine. "For my sake, Ramo, for the sake of many a poor mother, remember whose son thou art, and forsake not thy fathers utterly."

"Mother!" he faltered; "mother!" And then silence fell between them. For what words could bridge the gulf which the rapid flood of another nation's learning had torn between these two? A gulf not worn away by generations of culture, but reft recklessly through solid earth. Simply there was nothing he felt to be said, as with a heart aching at the utter impossibility of their ever understanding each other, he did his best to sooth her superstitious fears.

But here he was met by a conviction, an obstinacy which surprised him; for he had been too much occupied during the last fortnight to observe the signs of the times around him, and knew nothing of the religious terror which, carefully fomented by the priests as a means of extortion, had seized upon the neighbourhood. When, however, it did dawn upon him that the general consensus of opinion lay towards a signal expression of the Goddess' anger, which needed signal propitiation by more numerous sacrifices, his indignation knew no bounds, and carried him beyond the personal question into general condemnation, so that, ere many minutes were over, she was attempting to sooth him in her turn. That God was above all was, however, their one bond of unity; in that they both agreed. The truth would be made manifest by the sickness being stayed or increased by the sacrifices. Meanwhile the very thought of these latter, while it roused his anger, horrified his refinement into a certain silence, and kept him prisoner to the roof all day for fear of meeting some struggling victim on its way upstairs to the second story. This did not matter so much, however, since all his arrangements were made, and he had even taken the precaution to secure his railway tickets through a branch of Cook's agency which had been lately opened in the city. He took them out of his pocket sometimes and looked at them, feeling a vague comfort in their smug, civilised appearance. Fate must needs be commonplace and secure, surely, with such vouchers for safe conduct as these!

So the long hot day dragged its slow length along. Every now and again the death-wail, near or distant, would rise in even, discordant rhythm on the hot air; and as the sun set it began, loudly imperative, under his very roof. The only son was being carried out to the burning _ghât_, and the cries and sobs utterly overwhelmed the shouts and shufflings of feet, the moans and murmur of voices, which all day long had come from the second story. It was a relief that it should be so; that the ear might no longer be all unwillingly on the strain to catch some sound that would tell of a death-struggle in the slaughter-house downstairs. And yet the scene being enacted, perchance, on that three-cornered landing which, for once, visualised itself to Ramanund's clear brain, was not one in which to find much consolation. The crowds of mourners edging the bier down the narrow stairs, the crowd of worshippers dragging the victims up. He wondered which stood aside to give place to the other--the Living or the Dead? The flower-decked corpse or the flower-decked victim? Flowers and blood! Blood and flowers for a Demon of Death who was satisfied with neither! Ramanund, excited, overstrained, wearied by many a sleepless night of happiness, covered his face with his hands to shut out the sight even of the book which he tried to read.

So, as the sun sunk red in the western haze leaving the roof cooler, he fell asleep and slept soundly.

When he woke it was dark, and yet, as he stood up stretching himself, a faint paling of the horizon warned him that there was light beneath it--light that was coming to the world. The moon? Confused as he was by sleep, the thought came to him, only to be set aside by memory. There was no moon; for this was the dark night of Kâli.

The dark night! Then that must be the dawn when he had promised to meet Anunda on the threshold! Was it possible that he had slept so long? Yet not too long, since the dawn had not yet come, and he was ready. Hurriedly feeling for the safety of those precious tickets, and taking up a Gladstone bag which he had already packed, he stole down from the roof cautiously; and from thence to the landing. There was a new odour now blending with the perfumes of the flowers, and the incense, and the women: an odour which sickened him as he stood waiting and watching in the now deserted threshold. It was the odour of the shambles; an odour which seemed also to lie heavy on the breath and shorten it.

So by quick strides the grey glimmer through the stone lattice grew and grew to whiteness. Yet no one came, and there was no light step on the staircase below to tell of a late-comer.

"Anunda! Anunda!" he whispered more than once, even his low tones seeming to stir the heavy atmosphere into waves of sweet sickening perfume. Was it possible that she was waiting for him within--in the old place?

That must be it, surely, or else something had happened. What?

With a beating heart he moved on into the ante-shrine picking his steps in an almost morbid terror of what he might be treading upon.

"Anunda! Anunda!"

There was no answer save, heavier than before, that sort of scented, wave coming back from his own words.

She was not there, and something must have happened.... Not there! Impossible, with those tickets in his pocket, that hired carriage waiting at the end of the alley, that police station round the corner!...

He strode forward with renewed courage, heedless of the damp clamminess at his feet; strode recklessly right into the yellow flare of the lamps. Save for that ghastly crimson upon the floor, the walls, the canopy, the place lay unchanged, and quiet as the grave. No! there was a change; the iron doors were open, and there, upon the low stone-slab before those clutching arms, lay something....

God in Heaven! what was it?

A head--a small dark----

Ramanund's scream caught in the big bell which hung above him, and the last thing he heard, as he fell forward on that crimson floor, was its faint booming echo of his own cry.

* * * * *

When he came to himself again, six weeks had passed by. The heat was over, the cholera had gone, and he lay in one of the new wards of a new hospital whither his anxious friends had had him conveyed when they found how ill he was. The very strangeness of his environment held him silent for the first few moments of consciousness; then with a rush it all came back upon him and, weak as he was, he sat up in bed wildly.

"Anunda! Anunda! My God! the shrine!--the blood!"

"It is a bad sign," remarked the doctor to one of his friends significantly when they had persuaded him to lie down again quietly, more from inability to sit up, than from obedience. "It is a bad sign when the delusions remain after the fever has left the brain. However, it is early days yet, and we must hope for the best."

"You should rid your mind of such things," said the pleader a week or two afterwards when, despite Ramanund's growing strength of body, he still reverted again and again to that terrible dark night of Kâli, imploring them to search out the criminals and have them brought to justice. "There is, pardon me, not a tittle of evidence for truth of your story; but circumstantial proof to contrary as I will state categorically. _First_, known dislike to and hatred for Kâli and such like, leading to language in my hearing calculated to break the peace. _Second_, known excitement consequent perhaps on general sickness, stress of examinations before holiday times, and such like, leading to general look of fatigue and absent-mindedness noticeable to friends as myself. _Third_, known physical horror of blood leading to much recrimination of sacrifices, and such like; even to extent of shutting yourself up all day, as per mother's evidence, from fear of disagreeables. _Finally_, profound feverish sleep watched by same mother with dubiosity several times, ending in sleep-walk to the reeking shrine where you are found by Brahmins after dawn unconscious. What can be closer chain of convincing proof?"

"We have made every inquiry," said his other friends soothingly, "short of informing the police; and we can find no trace of what you assert. Human sacrifices in times of great sickness may sometimes, doubtless, be on the _tapis_, but this one we believe is but figment of a still clouded brain. You must have patience. All will come clear in time."

And when he asked for his new friend, the friend in whom he had partly confided his love story, they shook their heads sadly. "He was almost last victim to cholera," they said, "the cause has lost a shining light. All the more need, Ramanund, why thou shouldst shake off these idle fancies, and be our leader to perfect freedom of thought and action."