The Squaring of the Gods

by Flora Annie Steel

THE SQUARING OF
THE GODS

 

By FLORA ANNIE STEEL

 

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 multitudes 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 circling sequence of bathing-steps that swept away to both horizons.

The steps themselves, shadowy, vague, were spangled as with stars by the little trembling lamps of the myriads on myriads of pilgrims waiting for the dawn. The reflection of these lamps lay on the water beside the reflection of the stars, making it hard to tell where heaven ended, where earth began.

Behind this long length of bathing-steps—irregular in height, in slope, in everything save an inevitable crowning by 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. Shrines and holy places which are perhaps mere niches in a worn stone, or—less even than that—only the bare imprint of a bloody hand on the tall, blank walls of the crowded tenement houses which seem to narrow God's sky as they rise up toward it. Benares, where the alien master steps into the gutter to let a swinging corpse pass 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 God'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 sliding-water 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 twangling of sitaras; for, in the shelter of the grove, some of the white faces who were responsible for the dark ones were camped in a pleasure-camp, full of guests come to see the show. But a camp whither, despite the pleasure, 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 twanglings, drummings, screechings, posturings.

Such things, 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 by the waiting crowd upon them, 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 which was 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, passive.

"Aye! '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, and a voice replied—

"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 speaker's 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 his dark eyes watched a white-swathed corpse that was drifting down stream, a faint streak in the slumbering shadow.

"True!" came another passive voice; "but the time is not past. There is to-morrow yet."

The absolutely unspellable "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.

[illustration: "'For ever another body fell blocking the plinth, until he had to stand almost in the arch itself.'"]

"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 gods."

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, Baba-jee?" came a question. "I have heard that tale before—and that 'tis done in the 'Magic-house'."^[1]

The emphatic denial rose again. "Not so! These eyes saw it done—here, in this very place, forty years ago! here at Mai Kâli'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,^[2] and he tells tales of it—when he remembers!"

"Then let him tell," yawned another, "since the night is long and the dawn lingers. How was't done, Baba-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 gods.' 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. "God knows! More like his son; for the years pass—they pass, 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."

[illustration: "'Left the child in the garden for them to find.'"]

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 balls. 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 hous, 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 "Râm! Râm!" with a laugh, as he passed 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 arm 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 own tongue, 'Fear not, ayah! I'll square it, never fear.'

"And there he was beside me, the two white faces, the two 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. And so like brothers down at the water's edge, he teaching the child how to throw the bosses 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, the play 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.

"Thus it went on till one day all the sahibs and mems were at the house yonder, for God knows what amusement! and in the cool they strolled down here—the mems dressed so gay, the sahibs all black and smoking—to see how well the toddler, who could scarce speak, had learnt to throw. At least, so it seemed, for they watched and laughed; but after a time they took to throwing the flowers themselves, laughing more and jesting, until not a marigold was left. Then they began on Shiv-jee's dhatura blossoms, filling their white horns with pebbles and hurling them far, far into the stream.

"So, when paying time came, the young sahib—he had the child by the hand—flung rupees into my empty basket and said, 'Lo! Bishen'—for he was one of those who remember names—'those who seek to curry favour with the gods will have no chance to-day. We are beforehand. We have squared them.'

"At this the mem, standing close by, frowned and spoke some reproof; maybe because she was of those who drive to church often. But the boy only laughed and, catching the child up, cried 'Lo! brotherling, then are we sinners indeed; since we do it so often, you and I!'

"And with that he raced up the steps with the child, calling 'Ram, Ram!' and 'Jai Kâli Ma!' like any worshipper; so that the mem and the others strolling after could not but laugh. And some echoed the cry as they went up the steps."

The old voice paused in its even sing-song; and when it began again, there was a new note in it which seemed to bring a sense of hurry and stress even to that uttermost peace.

"But they came down again. How long after matters not. I see them so in my old eyes. Going up, laughing in the sunset, then returning. It was starlight when they came down, the mems and the sahib and the baba-logue. Starlight as it is now, brethren, but not still, like this. There were cries, and flames yonder, and folk running.

"The boats lay here below the temple. And one—a Mahometan—came with them, promising safety. So they began to get into the boats, and one moved off, the crowd looking on. Then suddenly, God knows why! it ceased looking on and began to kill. The sahib-logue were half in, half out of the boat, and some cried to stop, some to go on. But the mems made no noise; only you could see their faces white out of the shadows.

"And his, the young sahib's, was whiter than any, glittering, it seemed, with a white fire. The mem was in the boat, and Broon-sahib on the bottom step, the baby in his arms. But he, the boy, was above him facing the crowd—making time for the others.

"Then, just as the mem stretched her hands for the child, a bullet—they were firing from the top steps—hit Broon-sahib, and he fell dead half in, half out of the water, pushing the boat out in his fall. So it began to slide down stream.

"Some in it would have stopped it, for the child's sake; but the mem gave a look at those other mems, those other babies, and laid her hand swiftly on one that would have gone back.

"No!"

"That was the cry she gave—a great cry for a woman—for a mother! And so a greater one rang out through the shadows and the lights, from the boy who had caught up the child as it fell upon the steps.

"I know not what the cry was, but it was great, and it echoed out as the boat slipped fast to safety. And he held the child to his breast and waved his sword, until the mem's white face rose from her hands where she had hidden it, and she looked back. That was the last thing I saw out of the shadows as the boat slipped to safety; but it held me. so that when I looked round, the boy was no longer on the steps.

"He had leaped to the plinth of the temple, and his arms were empty of his burden as he stood in front of the doorway with his glittering white face, his glittering white sword.

"'Come on, you devils!' he shouted in our tongue. 'Come on! Mai Kâli shall have blood to-night if she wants it.'

"And she had, brothers!

"It ran from the plinth and trickled to the river; for none could touch him from behind, and his sword was in front.

"There was a method in its hackings and hewings. At least, so it seemed to me, watching, helpless for good or evil, from my place in the shadow. For ever, as its keenest stroke fell, another body fell blocking the plinth, until he had to stand, almost in the arch itself.

"Then a burly Mahometan trooper challenged him, and I knew not which way the fight was going, till, with a shout that was almost a laugh, the white face and the white sword showed, lunging back at the big body as they broke past it. And it fell sidelong, blocking the doorway.

"But none thought of it! None thought of anything save the glittering face and the glittering sword that had burst through the circling crowd, and now, facing it again, was backing up the steps, fighting grimly as it backed.

"Up and up, step by step, and we—even I, brothers, watching helpless—drawn after it, perforce, to see … to know … the end … the certain end.

"So the steps were left silent in the starlight.

"I did not see that end, brothers. It was beyond my sight. They told me afterwards it was in the bazaar, with half the town to see; but I had crept away, a great shivering on me, for I had remembered the flowers and the young sahib's words about the gods.

"And I remembered the child. What had become of the child?

"Then suddenly I understood. Then I knew what the method of the sword had been—how it had hidden, how it had lured as the bird lures the snake from its nest.

"It was nigh dawn when I remembered, dawn as it is now. Look! The iron of night's scabbard grows into the steel of day's sword upon the water; and hark! that is the cry of the mallards. The world is waking. So it was when I crept down to Kâli's shrine.

"The blood was still dripping into the water, and when I drew the dead mass of flesh from blocking the doorway, the red of it lay in a pool up to Her feet. But the child had crawled on Her knees, brothers, and had cried itself to sleep there.

"Yet when it wakened at my touch, it did not cry, for, see you, it knew me; and so, when it saw the milk, set in a bowl before Her as offering, it stretched out its hands for it.

"Thus it was made clear. So I gave it Mai Kali's milk, knowing it was true what he had said, 'that they had squared the gods.'"

The voice paused, and another asked, "And then?" before it went on dreamily.

"Yea! it was true indeed, for, ere the day ended, they were back with guns and soldiers. So, since silence is better than speech when naught is sure, I crept in the night to a Colonel's house and left the child in the garden for them to find.

"Forty years ago, brothers! Forty years is it since the boats slipped down to safety with the Huzoors, and now. …"

There was a sudden stir in the waiting crowd.

A boat had slipped up the river shadows from the bridge, and was making for the steps.

"That's your station, Brown," said an English voice; "the water is a bit deep about the shrine, remember, and the old women are devilish hard to keep back. All right!" it continued, as a man stepped out; "go on to the next. We are a bit early on the field; but it is as well to be beforehand, and square things."

As the boat paddled on, another English voice in the stern said in a low tone, "Why did you put Brown there? Just where his father was killed, don't you remember?"

"Just why I did! He won't stand any nonsense, and it is a troublesome job. Besides, he wasn't killed, and there's luck in it. That was a queer story. Someone saved him, of course, but why? and how? Now, Smith! there you are. And as I said to Brown, for Heaven's sake look after the old dodderers, male and female. When they've nothing left to live for …"

The rest was lost as the boat went on to a yet further station.

So as the sun rose, it rose on that great angled sweep, not of steps, hut of humanity; full, pressed down, running over into the spired town behind—on a million and more of dark faces, and a dozen white ones dotted here and there at the most dangerous points.

And Broon-sahib, bearded, a bit burly with his forty and odd years, sat on the plinth, and thought, no doubt, of that past at first, then took out his pipe, and with it some scraps of smoked glass, since the coming eclipse must not be lost, even though one was on duty.

The sun climbed up, brilliantly unconscious, or at least regardless, of its coming fate. And after a time boats began to slide up and down, and a big barge came punting up stream sedately. It was full of English women and children; and under its wide awning a table was laid with flowers and sparkling silver against the champagne breakfast which was to follow on a successful performance of duty. For not even here was there hint or sign of that expectancy of evil to come.

A little girl holding her mother's hand nodded her yellow curls delightedly, as the barge went past, to Dada sitting swinging his legs just where the blood had dripped into the stream forty years ago; but something in the woman's face made a call echo over the water—

"It's all right. Show going A 1!"

As a show there could be no doubt of that. There was a breathlessness in it, a mighty surge of emotion from one end of that bank of humanity to the other, a curious wail in the ceaseless roar of voices, that struck through eyes and ears to the heart.

And now, what was that?

Broad daylight still; not a shadow had shifted, and yet there was a sense as if a candle had gone out somewhere.

Broon-sahib put his pipe in his pocket, looked through a glass darkly, stood up, raised his helmet, wiped his forehead and put it on again.

The time had come! There was a nibble of shadow on the ball of light! The monster had begun his meal!

As he looked round, unarmed, defenceless, on the hundreds of thousands of dark heads which held this thought, he smiled and nodded, with the words, "Have patience, brethren; there is time!"

Doubtless, but not much time to think of other things beyond the mere keeping that forward crush of bathers, that backward crush of those that had bathed, from inextricable confusion.

So much the better, perhaps. It gave less time, at any rate, for expectation of the new King who was to fall from the sun and sweep away existing kingdoms. Less time for the crowd to notice the white horse led out ostentatiously by the Brahmins at the biggest temple, as a sign that such talk was true, that one æon had passed away, and another—in which Vishnu should appear in his final incarnation—had begun.

"Have patience! Have patience!"

That was the burden of the cry from the few white faces dotted among the dark ones, and it was caught up and echoed by the connecting links of yellow-legged policemen stationed every ten yards along the lowest step.

"Have patience! Have patience!"

A hard saying, indeed, to a crowd bent on purification!

Broon-sahib slipped down from the plinth and collared an old pantaloon just as he fell, hefted him up like a baby, and set him squatting in safety above; then followed suit with an old woman, gasping, gurgling from the first mouthful of the water into which, regardless of depth, she had literally been propelled.

"Have patience, brethren! Have patience!"

It was a harder saying than ever now that all things had grown grey; though still—weird, uncanny beyond belief!—not a shadow had shifted.

Hopelessly grey, and hopelessly cold—so cold! So curiously quiet, too; for the great roar of voices seemed to have severed itself from things earthly, and was like a mighty wind from heaven.

"Have patience, brethren! Have patience! There is time!"

A harder saying still when in the greyness, the coldness, a flock of scared pigeons overhead sent a weird flight of faint grey shadows down that long length of angled curve, packed by expectant humanity.

Was He coming indeed?—that new ruler? Were these the heralds?

So the crowd questioned in the greyness, the coldness.

There was by this time quite a little row of rescued old dodderers on Mai Kâli's plinth, whence the blood had dropped forty years ago.

What was that? Had someone withdrawn a veil? Had someone said, "Let there be light"?

The greyness, the coldness, lost their character in an instant. There was a promise in them now—a promise of light to come! The sun was reasserting its sway, the time of purification was ebbing fast, and—and—— Not half of humanity had bathed!

"Have patience, brethren! Have patience!" shouted Broon-sahib.

Hardest saying of all when the precious moments were going—going so swiftly!

"Huzoor!" came a piteous, confused voice from the plinth, "it is my last chance. I am old—I forget—I have forgotten so much—only this remains.—For pity's sake—for the sake of forty years ago—let old Bishen, the flower-seller, find salvation!"

Even in his hurry, in his breathless recognition that here was the crucial instant—that a single mistake might bring disaster—Broon-sahib flung a quick look behind him at the voice.

He saw a pathetic old face, humble even in its grief.

"It's all right, Baba-jee; there's plenty of time!" he said. "Here! look through this bit of glass—you'll see for yourself."

It only took a moment, those quick words—he was back, ready with hand and voice of command, almost without a break—but they did more towards preserving peace and order than a regiment of soldiers. For old Bishen, set, as he was, on high in sight of all, after one look through the smoked glass, rose to his feet and salaamed again and again.

"Yea! it is true," he cried, in his thin, old voice. "There is time. Let us wait, brethren; for they know—the gods have told them."

******

Half an hour afterwards, with its table laid with flowers and silver, the sliding barge on the Ganges held Englishmen as well as Englishwomen; and one of them was drinking deep draughts of iced beer, while a little girl with yellow hair watched him admiringly, and a woman, still rather pale of face, stood looking at him with evident relief.

"I told you it would be all right, my dear," he said smiling. "There never was any rush to speak of but once; and then I gave a bit of smoked glass to an old chap, and he saw through a glass darkly what was up, and told the others. So we squared 'em—gods and Brahmins and all—as I told you we should, in spite of all the talk and the telegrams."

1. The natives call Freemasonry Lodges by this name.
2. The Mutiny.

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Copyright, 1901, by Flora Annie Steel, in the United States of America.