It was a three-storied house in reality, though time had given it the semblance of a fourth in the mud platform which led up to its only entrance. For the passing feet of generations had worn down the levels of the alley outside, and the toiling hands of generations had added to the level of the rooms within, until those who wished to pass from one to the other had to climb the connecting steps ere they could reach the door.

The door itself was broad as it was high, and had a strangely deformed look; since nearly half of its two carven stone jambs were, of necessity, hidden behind the platform. These stone jambs, square-hewn, roughly-carven, were the only sign of antiquity visible in the house from the alley; the rest being the usual straight-up-and-down almost windowless wall built of small purplish bricks set in a mortar of mud. It stood, however, a little further back in the alley than its neighbours, so giving room for the mud platform; but that was its only distinction.

The alley in its turn differed in no way from the generality of such alleys in the walled towns where the houses--like trees in a crowded plantation--shoot up shoulder to shoulder, as if trying to escape skywards from the yearly increasing pressure of humanity. It was, briefly, a deep, dark, irregular drain of a place, shadowful utterly save for the one brief half hour or so during which the sun showed in the notched ribbon of the sky which was visible between the uneven turretings of the roof.

Yet the very sunlessness and airlessness had its advantages. In hot weather it brought relief from the scorching glare, and in the cold, such air as there was remained warm even beneath a frosty sky. So that the mud platform, with its possibilities of unhustled rest, was a favourite gossiping place of the neighbourhood. All the more so because, between it and the next house, diving down through the dÉbris of countless generations and green with the slime of countless ages, lay one of those wells to which the natives cling so fondly in defiance of modern sanitation and water-works. But there was a third reason why the platform was so much frequented; on the second story of the house to which it belonged stood the oldest Hindu shrine in the city. How it came to be there no one could say clearly. The Brahmins who tended it from the lower story told tales of a plinthed temple built in the heroic age of Prithi RÂj; but only this much was certain, that it was very old, and that the steep stone ladder of a stair which led up to the arched alcoves of the ante-shrine was of very different date to the ordinary brick one which led thence to the third story; where, among other lodgers, Ramanund, B.A., lived with his widowed mother.

He was a mathematical master in a mission school, and twice a day on his way to and from the exact sciences he had to pass up and down the brick ladder and the stone stair. And sometimes he had to stand aside on the three-cornered landing where the brick and stone met, in order that the women coming to worship might pass with their platters of curds, their trays of cressets, and chaplets of flowers into the dim ante-shrine where the light from a stone lattice glistened faintly on the damp oil-smeared pavement. But that being necessarily when he was on his way downstairs, and deep in preparation for the day's work, he did not mind a minute or so of delay for further study; and he would go on with his elementary treatise on logarithms until the tinkle of the anklets merged into the giggle which generally followed, when in the comparative seclusion of the ante-shrine, the veils could be lifted for a peep at the handsome young man. But Ramanund, albeit a lineal descendant of the original Brahmin priests of the temple, had read Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill; so he would go on his way careless alike of the unseen women and the unseen shrine--of the mysteries of sex and religion as presented in his natural environment. There are dozens of young men in India now-a-days in this position; who stand figuratively, as he did actually, giving the go-by to one-half of life alternately, and letting the cressets and the chaplets and the unseen women pass unchallenged into the alcove, where the speckled light of the lattice bejewelled their gay garments, and a blue cloud of incense floated sideways among the dim arches.

And Ramanund was as good a specimen of this new India as could be found, North or South. Not of robust physique--that was scarcely to be expected after generations of in and in breeding--but of most acute intelligence, and, by virtue of inherited spiritual distinction, singularly free from the sensual, passive acquiescence in the limitations of life which brings content to the most of humanity. He was, by birth, as it were, a specialised speculative machine working at full pressure with a pure virtue escapement. As President of a Debating Club affiliated with the "Society for the General Improvement of the People of India," he was perhaps needlessly lavish of vague expressions such as the individual rights of man; but then he, in common with his kind, have only lately become acquainted with the ideas such phrases are supposed to express, and have not as yet learnt their exact use--that being an art which history tells needs centuries of national and individual struggle for its attainment.

Be that as it may, even in the strict atmosphere of the Mission School, Ramanund's only fault was that he had assimilated its morality and rejected its dogma. In the orthodox Hindu household upstairs, over which his widowed mother ruled severely, his only crime was that he refused to replace a wife, deceased of the measles at the age of six, for another of the good lady's choosing. For that other matter of slighting the shrine downstairs is too common now-a-days in India to excite any recrimination; its only effect being to make the women regard the rule which forbids their eating with the men folks, as a patent of purity, instead of a sign of inferiority; since it is a safeguard against contamination from those who, when beyond the watch of secluded eyes, may have defiled themselves in a thousand Western ways.

Regarding the wife, however, Ramanund was firm, despite the prayers that his mother offered before the Goddess downstairs for his deliverance from obstinacy. He used to accompany her sometimes on this errand so far as the three-cornered landing, and then with a smile proceed on his way to the exact sciences. Even the clang of the great bell which hung in front of the idol within tip-toe touch of the worshipper, as it used to come pealing after him down the stairs, proclaiming that the goddess' attention had been called to a new petitioner, did not bring a comprehension of facts to his singularly clear brain. Those facts being, that, rightly or wrongly, the flamboyant image of KÂli devi^[16]--which his ancestors had tended faithfully--was being besieged by as fervent a mother-prayer as had been laid before any divinity--or dev-inity as the word really stands.

In truth Ramanund had no special desire to marry at all; or even to fall in love. He was too busy with the exact sciences to experimentalise on the suspension of the critical faculty in man; besides, he had definitely made up his mind to marry a widow when he did marry. For he was as great on the widow question as he was on all others which appealed to his kindly moral nature. He and his friends of the same stamp--pleaders, clerks, and such-like living in the alley--used to sit on the mud steps after working hours, and discuss such topics before adjourning to the Debating Club; but they always left one of the flights of steps free. This was for the worshippers to pass upwards to the shrine as soon as the blare of the conches, the beatings of drums, and the ringing of bells should announce that the dread Goddess having been washed and put to bed like a good little girl, her bath water was available to those who wished to drink it as a charm against the powers of darkness.

That was with the waning light; but as it was a charm also against the dangers of day, the dawn in its turn would be disturbed by clashings and brayings to tell of KÂli devi's uprisal. Then, in the growing light the house-mothers, fresh from their grindstones, would come shuffling through the alleys with a pinch or two of new-ground flour, and the neighbouring Brahmins--hurriedly devotional after the manner of priesthoods--would speed up the stair (muttering prayers as they sped) to join for half a minute in the sevenfold circling of the sacred lamps; while, divided between sleep and greed, the fat traders on their way to their shops would begin business by a bid for divine favour, and yawn petitions as they waddled, that the supply of holy water would hold out till they arrived at the shrine.

But at this time in the morning, Ramanund would be sleeping the sleep of the just upstairs, after sitting up past midnight over his pupils' exercises; for one of the first effects of civilisation is to make men prefer a kerosene lamp to the sun.

Now, one September when the rains, coming late and ceasing early, had turned the pestilential drain in the city into a patent germ propagator, the worshippers at KÂli devi's shrine were more numerous than ever. Indeed, one or two half-hearted free-thinker hangers-on to the fringe of Progress and Debating Clubs began to hedge cautiously by allowing their women folk to make offerings in their names; since when cholera is choosing its victims haphazard up and down the alleys, it is as well to ensure your life in every office that will accept you as a client.

Ramanund, of course, and his immediate friends were above such mean trucklings. They exerted themselves to keep the alley clean, they actually subscribed to pay an extra sweeper, they distributed cholera pills and the very soundest advice to their neighbours; especially to those who persisted in using the old well. Ramanund, indeed, went so far as to circulate a pamphlet, imploring those who, from mistaken religious scruples, would not drink from the hydrants to filter their water; in support of which thesis he quoted learned Sanskrit texts.

"Jai KÂli ma!"^[17] said the populace to each other, when they read it. "Such talk is pure blasphemy. If She wishes blood shall She not drink it? Our fathers messed not with filters. Such things bring Her wrath on the righteous; even as now in this sickness."

Yet they spoke calmly, acquiescing in the inevitable from their side of the question, just as Ramanund and his like did from theirs; for this passivity is characteristic of the race--which yet needs only a casual match to make it flare into fanaticism.

So time passed until one day, the moon being at the full, and the alley lying mysterious utterly by reason of the white shining of its turreted roofs set, as it were, upon the solid darkness of the narrow lane below, a new voice broke in on the reading of a paper regarding the "Sanitation of the Vedic Ages," which Ramanund was declaiming to some chosen friends.

"Jai KÂli ma!" said this voice also, but the tone was different, and the words rang fiercely. "Is Her arm shortened that it cannot save? Is it straightened that it cannot slay? Wait, ye fools, till the dark moon brings Her night and ye shall see."

It came from a man with an evil hemp-sodden face, and a body naked save for a saffron-coloured rag, who, smeared from head to foot with cowdung ashes, was squatting on the threshold, daubing it with cowdung and water; for the evening worshippers had passed, and he was at work betimes purifying the sacred spot against the morrow's festival.

The listeners turned with a start, to look at the strange yet familiar figure, and Ramanund, cut short in his eloquence, frowned; but he resumed his paper, which was in English, without a pause, being quick to do battle in words after the manner of New India.

"These men, base pretenders to the holiness of the sunnyÂsi, are the curse of the country! Mean tricksters and rogues wandering like locusts through the land to prey on the timid fears of our modest countrywomen. Men who outrage the common sense in a thousand methods; who----"

The man behind him laughed shortly, "Curse on, master jee!" he said--"for curses they are by the sound, though I know not the tongue for sure. Yea! curse if thou likest, and praise the new wisdom; yet thou--Ramanund, Brahmin, son of those who tend Her--hast not forgotten the old. Forget it! How can a man forget what he learnt in his mother's womb, what he hath learnt in his second birth?"

Long years after prayer has passed from a man's life, the sound of the "Our Father" may bring him back in thought to his mother's knee. So it was with Ramanund, as in the silence which followed, he watched (by the flickering light of the cresset set on the ground between them) his adversary's lips moving in the secret verse which none but the twice-born may repeat. It brought back to him, as if it had been yesterday, the time when, half-frightened, half-important, he had heard it whispered in his ear for the first time. When for the first time also he had felt the encircling thread of the twice-born castes on his soft young body. That thread which girdled him from the common herd, which happed and wrapped him round with a righteousness not his own, but imputed to him by divine law. Despite logarithms, despite pure morality, something thrilled in him half in exultation, half in fear. It was unforgetable, and yet, in a way, he had forgotten!--forgotten what? The question was troublesome, so he gave it the go-by quickly.

"I have not forgotten the old wisdom jÔgi jee," he said. "I hold more of it than thou, with all thy trickery. But remember this. We of the Sacred Land^[18] will not stand down-country cheating, and if thou art caught at it here, 'tis the lock-up."

"If I am caught," echoed the man as he drew a small earthen pot closer to him and began to stir its contents with his hand, every now and again testing their consistency by letting a few drops fall from his lifted fingers back into the pot. They were thick and red, showing in the dim light like blood. "It is not we, servants of dread KÂli, who are caught, 'tis ye faithless ones who have wandered from Her. Ye who pretend to know----"

"A scoundrel when we see one," broke in the schoolmaster, his high thin tones rising. "And I do know one at least. What is more, I will have thee watched by the police."

"Don't," put in one of the others in English. "What use to rouse anger needlessly. Such men are dangerous."

"Dangerous!" echoed Ramanund. "Their day is past----"

"The people believe in them still," persisted another, looking uneasily at the jÔgi's scowl, which, in truth, was not pleasant.

"And such language is, in my poor opinion, descriptive of that calculated to cause a breach of peace," remarked a rotund little pleader, "thus contrary to mores public. In moderation lies safety."

"And cowardice," retorted Ramanund, returning purposely to Hindustani and keeping his eager face full on the jÔgi. "It is because the people, illiterate and ignorant, believe in them, that I advocate resistance. Let us purge the old, pure faith of our fathers from the defilements which have crept in! Let us, by the light of new wisdom revealing the old, sweep from our land the nameless horrors which deface it. Let us teach our illiterate brothers and sisters to treat these priests of KÂli as they deserve, and to cease worshipping that outrage on the very name of womanhood upstairs--that devil drunk with blood, unsexed, obscene----"

He was proceeding after his wont, stringing adjectives on a single thread of meaning, when a triumphant yell startled him into a pause.

"Jai KÂli ma! Jai KÂli ma!"

It seemed to fill the alley with harsh echoes blending into a guttural cruel laugh. "So be it, brother! Let it be KÂli, the Eternal Woman, against thee, Ramanund the Scholar! I tell thee She will stretch out Her left hand so----" here his own left hand, reddened with the pigment he had been preparing for the purpose, printed itself upon one lintel of the door, "and Her right hand so----" here his right did the same for the other lintel, and he paused, obviously to give effect to the situation. Indeed his manner throughout had been intensely theatrical, and this deft blending of the ordinary process of marking the threshold, with a mysterious threat suitable to the occasion, betrayed the habitual trafficker in superstitious fear.

"And then, JÔgi jee," sneered Ramanund imperturbably.

"And then, master jee?" cried his adversary, his anger growing at his own impotence to impress, as he clenched his reddened hands and stooped forward to bring his scowl closer to the calm contempt, "Why then She will draw fools to Her bosom, bloody though they deem it."

"And if they will not be drawn?"

The words scarcely disturbed the stillness of the alley, which was deserted save for that strange group, outlined by the flicker of the cresset. On the one side, backed by the cavernous darkness of the low, wide door, was the naked savage-looking figure, with its hands dripping still in heavy red drops, stretched out in menace over the lamp. On the other was Ramanund, backed by his friends, decent, civilised, in their western-cut white clothing.

"Damn you--you--you brute!"

The schoolmaster seldom swore; when he did he used English oaths. Possibly because they seemed more alien to his own virtue. On this occasion several came fluently as he fumbled for his pocket handkerchief; for the jÔgi in answer to his taunt had reached out one of his red hands and drawn three curving fingers down the centre of Ramanund's immaculate forehead. The emblem of his discarded faith, the bloody trident of Siva, showed there distinctly ere the modern hemstitched handkerchief wiped it away petulantly. It was gone in a second, yet Ramanund even as he assured himself of the fact by persistent rubbing felt that it had somehow sunk more than skin deep. The knowledge made him swear the harder, and struggle vehemently against his comrade's restraining hands.

"It is a case for police and binding over to keep peace," protested the pleader soothingly. "I will conduct same even on appeals to highest court without further charge."

"In addition, it is infra dig to disciples of the law and order thus to behave as the illiterate," put in another, while a third, with less theory and more practice, remarked that to use violence to a priest of KÂli on the threshold of Her temple during Her sacred month was as much as their lives were worth; since God only knew how many a silent believer within earshot needed but one cry to come to the rescue of Her servant, especially now when the sickness was making men sensitive to Her honour.

So, in the end, outraged civilisation contented itself by laying a formal charge of assault in the neighbouring police station against a certain religious mendicant, name unknown, supposed to have come from Benares, who in the public thoroughfare had infringed the liberty of one of Her Imperial Majesty's liege subjects by imprinting the symbol of a decadent faith on his forehead. And thereinafter it repaired to the Debating Club, where Ramanund recovered his self-respect in a more than usually per-fervid outburst of eloquence. So fervid, indeed, that one of the most forward lights in the province, who happened to look in, swore eternal friendship on the spot. The result being that the two young men discussed every burning question under the sun, as, with arms interclasped, Ramanund saw his new acquaintance home to his lodgings.

Thus it was past midnight ere he returned to his own, and then he was so excited, so intoxicated, as it were, by his own strong words, that he strode down the narrow alley as if he were marching to victory. And yet the alley itself was peace personified. It was dark no longer, for the great silver shield of the moon hung on the notched ribbon of pale sky between the roofs, and its light--with the nameless message of peace which seems inherent in it--lay thick and white down to the very pavement. There was scarcely a shadow anywhere save the odd foreshortened image of himself which kept pace behind Ramanund's swift steps like a demon driving him to his doom.

The low, wide door, however, showed like a cavern, and the narrow stone stair struck chill after the heat outside. Perhaps that was why the young man shivered as he groped his way upwards amid the lingering scent of past incense, the perfume of fallen flowers, and the faint odour suggestive of the gay garments which had fluttered past not so long before. Or, perhaps, the twin passions of Love and Worship, which even Logarithms cannot destroy, were roused in him by the memory of these things. Whatever it was, something made him pause to hold his breath and listen on that three-cornered landing where the brick and the stone met. A speckled bar of moonlight glistened on the damp floor of the ante-shrine and showed a dim arch or two--then darkness. And all around him was that penetrating odour telling of things unseen, almost unknown, and yet strangely familiar to his inherited body and soul.

There was not a sound. That was as it should be when gods slept like men.

When gods slept...!

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 passed 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 massive 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 gods sleep! And yet he drew back hastily into the further shadows, forgetful of everything save sheer annoyance at the chance of being discovered in KÂli'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 unobserved, the thought of the reason why she had come alone filled him with compassion. Partly because he was in truth a kindly soul, partly because he was, as it were, pledged to such compassion.

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 passionate 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 reveillÉ 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?--God! how young and slender she was down there on her knees thrusting the chaplets she had brought through the fretwork fiercely ...

"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]

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."

Perfect freedom of thought and action! Ramanund as he lay slowly recovering of his brain fever wondered if he would ever have the heart to believe in such a thing again. Wondered if he would ever again dare to call himself a representative of India--that India which had killed Anunda. For that the horrible sight he had seen on the slab of stone beneath KÂli's clutching arms was no dream or delusion, but a reality, he never for an instant doubted. Why they had done her to death, was the only uncertainty which tortured him as he lay hopelessly silent; silent because there was no use in words when none believed them. Had it been simply a religious sacrifice to stay the plague--a sacrifice known to thousands who would guard the secret as a divine obligation? The choice falling, naturally enough, on one who was a stranger, and utterly helpless in the hands of her priestly relations? Or was it merely the jÔgi's revenge for his challenge. Or was it jealousy. Had they discovered the intrigue, and was the man who had drawn the trident of Siva on his forehead also the man of whom poor little Anunda had spoken with such terror? Yet what did it matter, since she was dead? What did anything matter beside the memory of that piteous whisper, "Oh Ramu! it would be better--so----"

Ah! why had he tried to interfere with the old ways?--why had he sought for more--why had he not let her be happy while she could, in her own way?

When he left the hospital he found his mother installed in a new lodging. It would not be good for him, his friends had said, to return to the old environment while his mind was still clouded by delusions, so she had performed the utmost act of self-denial of which an Hindu woman is capable, and removed herself and her belongings from the house where she had lived her life. But she would have done anything for Ramanund at any time; how much more so now, when the Goddess had shown that She still held him as her faithful servant by signs and wonders. Had She not drawn him in his sleep to Her very feet, on Her dark night?--he who would never cross Her threshold! And had he not been found there prostrate amid the blood of sacrifices, with one of Her garlands round his neck?--he who would never wear a flower!

"A garland," faltered Ramanund when she told him this exultantly. Ay! a garland which she would cherish as her dearest possession since the Goddess Herself must have thrown it around him--a garland which she should show him--if--if he ever again talked foolishness as he had talked that day when he had frightened her so, not knowing that he was already in a fever.

"Show it me now, mother," he said quietly.

So she showed it to him. The chumpak blossoms were but yellow shreds upon a string, scentless, unrecognisable; here and there clogged black with the blood of sacrifice which had stained them as he fell.

"Take it away!" he cried fiercely, thrusting it from him. "Take it away! Oh! curses on the cruelty--curses on the----"

"Jai KÂli ma!" interrupted his mother as she laid the relic back in the little casket whence she had taken it. "Jai KÂli ma! for She stayed the sickness."

Ramanund looked at her in dull dazed wonder. But it was true what she said. The cholera had slackened from that very time when he had been found lying at the Goddess' feet.