THE POOL OF IMMORTALITY

"HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ! HÂrÎ! HÂrÂ!"

The cry was incessant now, for there was a glint of light in the east; and the hosts of pilgrims to the 'Cradle of the Gods' were cramming, almost to solidity, each street and alley in Eshwara which could be said, by however long and tortuous a detour, to give access to that small tank where, at dawn, the miraculous waters of cleansing would rise, as they always did on this, the great Day of Atonement. In the sea of slightly upturned faces, upturned in the vain hope of seeing over the heads of those in front, the most noticeable thing was the expression of mingled eagerness and patience. And this was most noticeable in those who stood nearest to the bamboo railing which had been erected (in a square some four feet from the first step downwards) as a precaution against a dangerous rush on all sides; and in consequence, a dangerous crush on those steep steps. The only entrance to them, therefore, was by a sort of double sheep-pen at the end nearest the town, by means of which, when the time came, some fifty bathers would be admitted to the railed square from the inner pen, their places in which would be taken by the fifty in the outer one; their places, in turn, being filled by fifty from the general crowd. By which double check no more than fifty could stand at one time with no barrier between their mortality and immortality! The railing itself was guarded every two yards by a yellow-legged constable, and at the sheep-pens stood the two European police-officers in whose hands the peace and order of the vast crowd lay. Their assistant stood at the exit gate at the other end, and their three white helmets showed strangely conspicuous amongst the bare or saffron-turbaned heads.

The two at the sheep-pens were talking and laughing to each other as Englishmen will before business begins; talking and laughing London talk, for one of them was fresh from home furlough, and had only been detailed for this special duty, on his way up country.

"Yes! I had a jolly day," he was saying. "The dear old Heath was looking just as it always did. It was like being born again to come back to the whole caboodle--Aunt Sallies, Tommy Dods, Welshers, and the lot--and then the enclosure--" A sudden sway in the crowd made him look round hastily at his own. It was all correct; so many yards this way, so many that, with yellow legs marking the yards, and those three white helmets marking the limits within which regeneration was legal.

The sway ceased. The moment had not yet come, though slowly, surely, the light grew, to give the great mass of bronze faces a greyish, corpse-like tint, while, half way up the sky behind them, the serrated edge of the sacred snows grew pale, and cold, and stern, like the very face of Death itself.

"HÂrÎ! HÂrÂ! HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ!"

There was a note of anxiety in the cry now; for the shadow thrown by the tall houses which hemmed in the wide courtyard was growing paler, and in another minute, at most, the twelve-foot square of cleansing water, which was all the Gods vouchsafed, must surely begin to rise and show at the bottom of those worn stone steps--worn by generations on generations of golden-shod feet seeking immortality.

"Stand back, please! Not yet!" came an English voice, inaudible for the rhythmic roar of the multitude; but the raised riding whip was sufficient. The eagerness died out for a moment from those nearest faces, lost in a cheerful obedience, a respectful salaam or two, a general acquiescence.

"I wish those devils of priests would turn on the tap," remarked the other Englishman with a yawn.

"Yes!" answered the first speaker; "if you are on duty, next year, I'd insist on the curtain being rung up at the bill time. It is rough on the audience; especially when they don't cat-call!"

He gave an imitation of a London gallery's sign of impatience, which made some of the golden-shod ones stare; for the rhythmic roar had died down in one of those sudden silences which seize upon humanity even when in masses. So that a faint "rumpa-tum-tum-rumpa-tum-tum" was distinctly audible from far. It was the tom-tom of the old Brahmin, whom Lance Carlyon had seen selling the endless circles of cut papers as a whole pantheon of Gods.

It is an eminently disturbing sound, that ceaseless, insistent throb of a tom-tom, which has no end, no beginning; which holds ever in its beat the necessity for something more; for another repetition, and yet another.

So, on its ceaselessness, broke in again that swaying, pulsing roar of many voices.

"HÂrÎ! HÂrÂ! Life-Death-Creator-Destroyer!"

"Something must have gone wrong with the ball-cock, and as usual, the plumber will be 'in directly from another little job,'" said the man who had just come out from England, reminiscently. He had gone there to settle his wife and bairns in a jerry-built villa near London; so the memory of something beyond the iniquities of the plumber--those Borgias of modern life, dealing death unchecked, undiscovered--made his eyes pass beyond the crowd, pass the spires of the clustered temples, and settle on the still dark, western sky, over whose curved edge lay the goal of his solitary feet, the end of his pilgrimage, the cradle of his divinities.

"Stand back, please! not yet!" came his order again; and once more eagerness died down to obedience. Once more that cry on the Creator, the Destroyer, ended in that insistent, restless beat of the old god-selling Brahmin's drum.

It was a strange scene. Above, was the growing light of day; below, the square stone font of immortality, and between them a clamouring crowd, a careless few.

And between them what?

A light railing of bamboo, the dignity that doth hedge an empire. That was all.

And now, with a sudden access of light, came the quick indrawing breath of thousands to voice a sort of sharp, short sob, followed by an instant's silence.

Then, long, soft, with the hush in it of some huge wave far out at sea which swallows up a lesser one, the out-going breath of those thousands voiced a sigh.

For the pool was still empty, though the dawn had come.

Something was wrong.

Seriously wrong, to judge by one English face, as it turned to give a look round, then settled on another English face. "There's something up--God knows what--the Commissioner feared a row, you know. You'd better go to the Fort and ask Dering to send us down every man he can; men, you understand, not sabres--as yet. And tell Pidar NarÂyan, he's a host in himself with these pilgrims,--Ramanund too, you might get him,--we want anyone who can help the crowd to keep its temper, though I don't expect he'd be much good--and there's no one else. Inspector!" here the police officer turned to a silver-laced turban beside the outer pen, "leave that in charge of Govinda and Suchet--Stay! Shiv-deo will be better; he is a high-caste Brahmin. And you go and send every twice-born constable you've got, and can trust, to every alley and street that leads here; for there will be an awful crush when those in front don't move on. And--" he wrinkled his forehead in hasty thought--"have we anyone connected with the temple priests, someone they can trust? Ah! Annant, of course,--the very man! Send him to find out if there is anything really wrong; and--" he lowered his voice, "if it is anything to do with the siphon, or whatever it is, get workmen and set it straight--pour water down--anything! Only there must be a miracle. And be quick. If this crowd gets impatient--God help it!"

The last was to himself as he looked round the solid packed mass of humanity. There was no sigh of impatience in it as yet; only eagerness.

"And mind," he added, "no truncheons drawn till I myself give the order."

The word passed in a low tone round the square of authority, and that done, the head of it pulled out his cigar case. He might as well smoke while he could.

The crowd watched him, vaguely interested at his lack of interest in what was coming, until a faint forward sweep, a half-hearted shout came from behind; from those upturned faces which could not even see an Englishman lighting his cigar.

"Not yet! Stand back!" said the latter again, as the pressure on the sheep pen grew. And they stood back, all save a miserable-looking, dirt-clad, wild-eyed mendicant, who had wormed his way to the front, and now feared to lose it.

"Lo! brother," said big Govinda, a Sikh from Patiala, as he thrust him back gently, "have patience awhile. Give the Gods time. There is not water to wash a babe yet."

Shiv-deo, taller even than Govinda, a Saraswati Brahmin, if ever there was one, at the other side of the pen, twirled his mustache airily, and laughed. "Nay, Govinda," he called, "let the beggar in. He seeks but to drown vermin."

The rude jest served its turn, after the manner of policemen's jokes all over the world. The crowd close at hand tittered, caught up the cue, amused itself with additions; and those behind forgot the great question in curiosity. But not for long.

"HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ! HÂrÎ! HÂrÂ!"

The roar of relief rose up tumultuously, the mass of people swayed with that curious sidelong motion of a forward crowd, as, in the clear light, a trickle of water showed through the crevices of the paving stones at the bottom of the tank.

"Look out!" shouted the Englishman; but remonstrance in words was useless in that storm of sound. So big Govinda promptly snatched two intruders out of his pen, like puppies, by the scruff of their necks, one in each hand; and Shiv-deo, choosing out the nearest low-caste man unerringly, caught him in his arms like a baby, and literally tossed him on to the heads of the crowd, with a shout which, even in that uproar, could be heard of some in that nearest crush.

"Brahmins first, washerman! Thy sort can bathe in the suds of our clothes!"

And those who heard, ducked, and when the victim--who was not a washerman--fell amongst them, hustled and silenced him, and nodded to the big man whose claim to dignity was writ so plain upon his face.

But despite ready wit and sheer strength, one determined fellow would have made good his entrance, and so served as a bell-wether to that overwhelming flock, if a white hand and arm with silver buttons on the cuff--holding a silver-mounted hunting-crop, clubbed savagely short--had not come down-glinting in the first sunray like a sword--clear on the bare head as it ducked under the barrier.

The intruder, a big burly devotee, dropped on his face like a stone; then, to the striker's relief, sat up, and apparently howled; apparently, because that rhythmic roar smothered all individual sound.

"HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ! HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ!"

Suddenly, as it had begun, it stopped; for that faint inrush of water had stopped also; stopped, hesitated, then sunk out of sight again with a sort of drowning gurgle that came as an accompaniment to the only other sound; the insistent throbbing of the old God-maker's drum in the distance.

"Not enough pressure!" murmured the police officer to himself, judging that an attempt had been made to fill the tank in some new way. Then he frowned. There would be pressure enough and to spare among the crowd soon, most likely. What could be done to prevent it?

"Halt! by your right--single file!"

The order came, far back, from the widest street, and it was full ten minutes ere Lance Carlyon, with a following of Sikh pioneers, armed with spades and picks, could edge through the crowd, though it still yielded room to authority without a murmur. He had been on his way with a fatigue party to finish clearing the camp, when the assistant superintendent of police had met him, in the bazaar, and told him he was wanted.

"Send four of your men to clear the mud from the crevices of the stones," said the police officer, seizing on a possible diversion gladly, "it will serve to keep the crowd amused till Dering brings his men down."

As the four stalwart pioneers stepped to their work of making miracles, a stir of expectation ran through those first rows who could see. "Surely," they said to each other, "if the Masters took the job in hand, the Gods must needs send the water."

"Of a surety!" said Shiv-deo, catching the comment. "Do not the Gods always befriend the bold? Do not we, of Harriana, find the sacred river which the devils hid, though we have to dig three-hundred-feet wells to find it?"

This allusion to the extraordinarily deep wells dug by the peasantry in the almost rainless tract beneath which, so the legend goes, the river Saraswati still runs, passed from mouth to mouth consolingly.

Yea, if devils hid water, men found it.

Why not these men? since nothing was impossible to a miracle.

The sun was shining broadly now, as if it had been up for hours, and showed, far as the eye could reach down every lane and street and alley, nothing but that sea of upturned faces converging to one centre; wonderfully still, wonderfully patient.

"I wish someone would stop that cursed drum," said Lance, suddenly, "it's enough to give anyone the fidgets. I feel myself--" he broke off, and his memory going back to his jesting remark to Erda, his young face clouded. Was it possible he should never see her again? Was it possible that the Reverend David was to claim his paradise? He felt savage at the very thought, impatient, full of an almost righteous anger at everything, especially the drum-banger for making such an infernal noise.

And now, far back as before, an English voice could be heard giving an order. It was to loosen scabbards this time, and the police officer looked up hastily. It meant that, for the first time, the crowd must be hesitating in its quick obedience to command; perhaps because most of the troopers were Mahomedans.

"I hope they'll get through without using them," said the man responsible for peace and order, "but, steady! please, in case of a rush. Remember that if we yield more foot-room, someone must fall; then there will be the devil to pay. At present they are so tight packed they can't."

That, indeed, was the position. So long as authority could prevent those few yards of clear space about the pool being encroached upon, there was safety. So the barrier of men waited anxiously.

But no rush came; the reason of this being made clear when the file of troopers appeared, led by old Pidar NarÂyan, who had joined the party at the crucial moment, and piloted them through the crowd, which gave way to his well-known figure with absolute alacrity. He turned at the entrance, to hold up his hand in priestly fashion.

"Patience, my children!" he said sternly. "Tarry ye the Lord's leisure! Let Him do what seemeth Him good!"

The idea, familiar to the least of them, brought instant assent and a sort of relieved sigh from those who heard it. Here was something they could understand. A man, set apart from others by his dress, his life, his invariable assumption of authority, his unquestioned claim to be mediator between the dim, inaccessible Creator and his creatures, to be interpreter of the hidden Mind.

But the police officer heaved his sigh of relief over the appearance of more matter. His barrier could now be one of men, standing shoulder to shoulder.

And such a barrier would soon be needed, since this latest contingent brought discouraging news. The priests were helpless. The secret supply had somehow been tampered with, but where, not even they could tell without help. And though they had sent, long before dawn, to both Am-ma and Gu-gu--the only two men likely to know anything or be able to do anything--neither could be found.

"And won't be," interrupted Vincent, suddenly remembering, as he listened, what he had seen the night before. "They are most likely in the plot; one of them, at any rate, was going up the HÂri in a dug-out late last night."

"Not Am-ma," put in Lance. "He started before that to go up the HÂra and pilot down a raft for the forest officer. I met him as I came back to dinner."

"Well, he is not get-at-able anyhow, and that's all we have to consider," said the police officer. "Briefly, the miracle is off the bill. Now, how the deuce are we to get the audience to go away peacefully?"

"Perhaps if I, as a fellow-countryman, and a Brahmin, were to address them--" began Ramanund, who had come down with Pidar NarÂyan, feeling important at being summoned.

The latter turned to the man, whom he knew had long since rejected the faith of his fathers, and, so to speak, thrown the Almighty overboard to lighten his ship.

"You cannot argue with that, my son!" he said gently, pointing to the sea of patient, yet eager, faces. "No one of your sort ever has, in all the history of the world. That does not reason. It feels. Show it another miracle, and it will worship. Give it a cause, and it will espouse it. Give it a lead, and it will follow; but words--never!"

"Well, I hope to God no one will supply it with the wrong lead!" put in the police officer. "For the rest, we must hold the fort, I suppose. Inspector! when is the show--the miracle, I mean,--supposed to end?"

"Not till sunset, sir," said the man, salaaming.

"And it's now about six, I suppose. Eleven hours!" He took out his cigar-case and counted. "Yes! I'll last through. Inspector! Close your men in, and let them stand at ease. Captain Dering, if you can spare yours till then, I shall be obliged."

"Certainly. I left a troop with Roshan KhÂn, and orders to send word of any disturbance; and I wired to Dillon in case--"

Father Ninian shook his head. "There is no fear till this is settled." He pointed to the Pool.

And he was right. All through the long hot hours the crowd waited. Sometimes the cry, "HÂrÂ! HÂrÎ!" burst out, to be followed by a faint rush. Sometimes the great mass stood silent, listening to the insistent throbbing of the old God-maker's drum in the distance, but through it all the note was patience. And it was patience, also, in the square enclosure of authority. Sometimes a would-be intruder would be lifted like a puppy, and chucked back to his fellows. Once or twice an English arm would go up, and come down on some more wilful head; but that was all.

And far away at the Fort the gong chimed the hours regularly up to twelve, and begun at one again.

But there was no fuss, no noise. The crowd stood their ground, giving no inch, and authority stood its ground and yielded none, since in that lay safety for all.

So, with a horrible slowness, the day dragged on, until at last the red sun sank behind the levels beyond the gaol; and the strain was over!

"I'll take a biscuit in my pocket next time," said the police officer, cheerfully, as, bit by bit, the stones of the courtyard began to show between the golden-shod feet. "Inspector! send your men to quarters, and let them eat their food." Then he walked over and looked down into the deep empty tank.

"It might have been full up," he said. "We couldn't have stopped them for a moment if they had had any sort of a lead over. And from what you told the Commissioner, sir,"--he turned to Father Ninian--"I was afraid of one."

The old priest stood watching the crowd disperse for a moment in silence.

"So was I," he said, "but I was mistaken, so far. Still, there is danger in the air. I feel it. I hear it."

And as he spoke, above the hum of the crowd, silent no longer, rose that insistent throbbing of the old God-maker's drum.