There was a sound now--the sound of his own contemptuous laugh as he remembered his defiance of such divinities--the sound of his own steps as he pa.s.sed suddenly, impulsively, into the ante-shrine, feeling it was time for such as he to worship while She slept, helpless as humanity itself.
It was almost dark in the low-arched corridors with their ma.s.sive pillars surrounding the central chamber on all sides. But there, in the Holy of Holies, two smoking swinging lamps threw a yellow glare on the carved stone canopy which reached up into the shadows of the vaulted roof. And by their light the hideous figure of the idol could be half-seen, half-imagined, through the fretted panels of the iron doors fast-locked on Her sleep; fretted panels giving glimpses, no more, of flamboyant arms crimson as blood, and hung with faded flowers. Blood and flowers, blood and flowers, blending strangely with that lingering perfume of Womanhood and Worship with which the air was heavy.
Hark! what was that? A step? Impossible, surely, at that hour of the night when even G.o.ds sleep! And yet he drew back hastily into the further shadows, forgetful of everything save sheer annoyance at the chance of being discovered in Kali"s shrine. He of all men in the city!
Yes! it was a step in the ante-shrine. A light step; and there emerging from the darkness of the corridors was a figure. A woman"s figure--or was it a child"s?--draped from head to foot in white.
Ramanund felt a throb of philanthropic pity thrill through heart and brain even in his relief; for this was some poor widow, no doubt, come on the sly to offer her ill-omened[19] prayers, and though he might rely on her rapt devotion allowing him to steal round the corridors un.o.bserved, the thought of the reason why she had come alone filled him with compa.s.sion. Partly because he was in truth a kindly soul, partly because he was, as it were, pledged to such compa.s.sion.
[Footnote 19: A widow brings ill-luck with her.]
A widow certainly; and yet surely little more than a child! So slender, so small was she that even on tiptoe her outstretched hand could not reach the clapper of the big bell which hung above her head.
Once, twice, thrice, she tried; standing full in the flare of the lamp, her veil falling back from the dark head, close-cropped like a boy"s, and roughened almost into curls. Something in the sight made Ramanund hold his breath again as he watched the disappointment grow to the small pa.s.sionate face.
"She will not listen--She will not hear! No one ever listens--no one ..."
It was not a cry; it was only a girl"s whisper with a note of girlish fear rising above its pain, but it echoed like a _reveille_ to something which had till then been asleep in Ramanund. Not listen! Was he not there in the dark listening? Was he not ready to help?--G.o.d!
how young and slender she was down there on her knees thrusting the chaplets she had brought through the fretwork fiercely ...
"_Mai Kali! Mai!_ Listen! Listen!" The clear sharp voice rang pa.s.sionately 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, Kali, ugly as Thou art--and I am pretty. Far prettier than the other girls who have husbands. _Mai Kali!_ 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 s.e.x and religion, which seemed to lie heavy on the breath, making it come short....
Truly the G.o.ds might sleep, but man waked! There, in the shadow, a man looked and listened till pity and pa.s.sion 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 Kali_ 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 Kali"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 G.o.ddess 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.signations.
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 pa.s.sed 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 Kali-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 Kali, 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 Kali"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 m.u.f.fled 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 superst.i.tion. 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 Kali_ 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 G.o.d."
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, _Kali 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 Kali 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----"