It was the night before the great Eclipse. A vast, vague expectancy brooded over the length and breadth of India. Of prophesying there had been no lack, for signs and wonders had been as blackberries in September.
So, far and near, east, west, south, and north, the people of Hindustan--many-hued, many-raced, many-faithed--were watching for they knew not what, watching with grave, silent, yet curious composure.
But there was no outward sign of this inward expectation on either side. The millions of dark faces behind which it lay were as inscrutable as the telegraph wires through which the mere fraction of white faces responsible for the safety of those millions of dark ones were flashing silent messages of warning and preparation.
And here, in the Sacred City, beside the Sacred River, in which mult.i.tudes of those millions hoped to bathe on the morrow during the fateful moments of the sun"s eclipse, the dim curves of the world had never been outlined against a calmer, more restful sky--a sky almost black in its intensity of shadow. Yet the night was clear, full of a starlight that could be seen, which showed the bend of the broad river, angled on one side by the straight lines of its curved sequence of bathing-steps that swept away to the horizon on either side.
The steps themselves, shadowy, vague, were spangled as with stars by the little trembling lamps of the myriads on myriads of pilgrims already gathered on them waiting for the dawn. The reflection of these lamps lay in the water beside the reflection of the stars, making it hard to tell where heaven ended, where earth begun.
Behind this long length of bathing-steps--irregular in height, in slope, in everything save an inevitable crowning by the tall temple spires--lay Benares. Benares, the only city in the world--since the reputation of Rome lives by works as well as faith--whose every stone tells of that search after righteousness which lies so close to the heart of humanity. Benares, with its sunless alleys, full of the perfume of dead flowers and spent incense--alleys which thread their way past shrine after shrine, holy place after holy place; mere niches in a worn stone, perhaps, or less even than that; only the bare imprint of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand on the tall, blank walls of the crowded tenement houses which seem to narrow G.o.d"s sky as they rise up toward it. Benares, where the alien master steps into the gutter to let a swinging corpse pa.s.s on its way to the Sacred River, but where the priest behind it--his dark forehead barred with white, or smeared with a bold patch of ochre--steps into the opposite gutter, and clings to the shrine-set wall like a limpet, lest he be defiled by a touch, a shadow. Benares, which is, briefly, the strangest, saddest city on G.o.d"s earth.
It lay this night, far as the eye could reach along the outward curve of the Ganges, dreamful exceedingly, dimly paler than the sky. But on the other side of the river, where the land bulged into the stream, lay a scene as, dreamful; yet dreamful in a different way; for here, almost from the water"s edge, the young green wheat stretched away into that level plain of India, the most densely populated agricultural country in the world, where myriads and myriads of men live content as the cattle with which they till the soil.
So a whole world lies between these two banks of the Ganges; between the men of whom pilgrims are made, and the pilgrims made of those men.
And spanning them, joining them, aggressively, unsympathetically, is the railway bridge built by the alien "Bridge-builders."
Seen in the starlight, with its lattice of dark girders showing against the sky, its white piers blocking the water-slide at intervals, this bridge looked quaintly like a fell and monstrous hairy caterpillar out for a night-walking, one of those caterpillars with turreted excrescences at its former and its latter end. The hinder one here was clearly outlined against a distant block of greater darkness.
This was a dense grove of mango trees; and through its far-off shadow shone twinkling coloured lights, while from it came fitfully, at the wind"s caprice, a faint sound of drumming, a tw.a.n.gling of _sitaras_; for, in the shelter of the grove, some of the white faces who were responsible for the dark ones were in camp--in a pleasure-camp full of guests come to see the show, and whither the telegrams of warning flashed and whence the answers flashed back, even while the _nautch_, bidden to amuse those guests, went on and on in tw.a.n.glings, drummings, screechings, posturings.
Such details, however, were hidden even from the nearest point of the angled curve of bathing-steps which swept right away to the starlit horizon on the opposite side of the river. The only movement visible thence by the waiting crowd, as it looked across the river, was a curious dazzling flicker, as if the bridge were shivering, which was caused by the continuous stream on its outer footway of arriving pilgrims, showing now against the dark girders, now against the paler sky.
"Mai Gunga hath her hands full!" murmured one of the group squatting immovable on these nearest steps; "they come, and come."
A face or two, patient, dark, turned to the bridge, and another voice came, calm, pa.s.sive.
"Ay! "tis easier for folk to find salvation with "rails" and bridges than, as of old, with blistered feet and boats." A dark hand nearest the water"s lip, as it lapped a lazy, silvery whisper on the worn stone steps, slid into the sacred flood with a sort of tentative caress.
"Yet they said _She_ would revenge Herself for the rending of Her bosom, for the burden of bricks laid on Her; but She hath not. She gives and takes as ever."
The long, dark fingers gathered some of the fallen petals which the river was returning to those who had cast their flower-offering on its surface, and the dark eyes watched a white-swathed corpse that was drifting down stream, a faint streak in the slumbering shadow.
"True!" came another pa.s.sive voice; "but the time is not past. There is to-morrow yet."
The absolutely unrepresentable _chuck!_ made by the tongue against the roof of the mouth, which is the most emphatic denial of India, echoed suddenly, aggressively, into the peaceful air.
It came from the blackness of a low masonry abutment which, traversing the last three steps, projected a few feet into the river, like a pier. A yard maybe above the water, some three long, and perhaps a couple broad, there was just room on its outer end for a small square temple with a rude spiked spire--the plainest of temples, guiltless of ornament, looking out over the Ganges blankly. For its only aperture, a low arched doorway, faced the steps and showed now as a blot of utter darkness.
"Not She, brethren!" said a cracked voice following on the denial.
"She or Her like will never harm the _Huzoors!_ They have paid their toll, see you, they have squared the G.o.ds."
A dozen or more faces turned to the voice, the figures belonging to them remaining immovable, as if carved in stone.
"Dost think so really, Baha-_jee?_" came a question. "I have heard that tale before--and that "tis done in the "Magic-houses.""[2]
[Footnote 2: The natives call Freemasonry Lodges by this name.]
The emphatic denial rose again. "Not so! These eyes saw it done--here, in this very place, forty years ago! here, at Mai Kali"s shrine!"
In the pause that followed, a pair of claw-like hands could be seen above the bar of shadow, wavering salaams to the little temple, in the perfunctory manner of priesthood all over the world.
""Tis old Bishen, the flower-seller," said a yawning voice. "He was here in the Time of Trouble,[3] and he tells tales of it--when he remembers!"
[Footnote 3: The Mutiny.]
"Then let him tell," yawned another, "since the night is long and the dawn lingers. How was"t done, Baha-_jee?_"
There was a pause.
"Many ways, doubtless. Here and there different ways. But here, one way. Forty years ago, brothers! Yea, forty years ago, these eyes saw the "squaring of the G.o.ds." In this wise ..."
There was another dreamful pause, and then, from the shadow, came the old thin voice once more.
"Yonder, where the bridge stands now, was Broon-_sahib"s_ house--"
"Broon-_sahib?_" echoed a curious listener. "Dost mean Broon-_sahib_ who built the bridge?"
"Who built the bridge?" hesitated the tale-teller. "G.o.d knows! More like his son; for the years pa.s.s--they pa.s.s, Mai Gunga! and I grow old. Grant me this last cleansing, Mother! Wash me from sin ere I go hence ..."
"Lo! thou hast made him forget the rest," reproved another listener, "as if there were not Broon-_sahibs_ ever! Even now, here in Benares!
Yes! Baba-_jee_, of a certainty, Broon-_sahib"s_ house stood here, where the bridge stands now."
The old memory, started afresh, went on.
"It was a boy, the child. A toddler, but with the temper of tigers.
Lo! it would scream and yell in the _ayah"s_ arms, and beat her face to be let crawl down the steps to pull the spent bosses of the marigolds out of the water and fling them back like b.a.l.l.s. A mite of a boy; white as jasmine in the face, yellow as the marigolds themselves in hair. The _mem_, its mother, had the like face and hair. I used to see her in the verandah over the river, and driving above the steps.
There were many _sahibs_ came and went to the house, after their fashion, and she smiled and spoke to them all. There was one of them--so young, he might have been a son almost--who came often; and she smiled on him, too, as he played, like a boy, with the child. He was one of the _sahibs_ who have eyes; so, after a time, he would nod to me and say "_Ram! Ram!_" with a laugh as he pa.s.sed above me, sitting here in the shadow, selling my garlands.
"So, one day, as he came by, there was the baby screaming in its _ayah"s_ arms to be let crawl to the water, and she was denying it by the _mem"s_ orders. What the young _sahib_ said at first I know not; but after a bit he came running down the steps, the child in his arms, calling back to the woman, in her tongue, "Trouble not, _ayah!_ I"ll square it, never fear!"
"And there he was beside me, the two white faces, the yellow heads--for he was but a boy himself, slim, white, yellow-haired--close together, brother-like, buying a garland of the biggest marigolds I had. So down at the water"s edge, he teaching the child how to throw them in like a thrower.
""No underhand work, brotherling," he said in our tongue, for the baby, after the fashion of the _baba-logue_, knew none other. "So!
straight from the shoulder. Bravo! Thou wilt play crickets, by-and-by, like a man."
"After that once of chance, it came often of set purpose. He would come down from the house with the child, and I had to keep the biggest marigolds for the game, since, see you, they held the bits of brick better with which he weighted them.