The Charmed Life/Chapter VII

The Miracle
Evil is impossible because it is always rising up into Good. —Saint Augustine

So likewise is Evil the revelation of Good. —Cardinal Newman

I LOOKED about me. It was a peaceful, summer night, with the low hum of a sleeping world, and a froth of yellow stars flung over the crest of the heavens. Over to my right, where the lights of Howrah Station were flickering through the river-mist like dirty candle-dips, lay the great cosmopolitan hotels—the Semiramis, the Great Eastern, the Tai Mahal; there crouched the faint outlines of the Presbyterian church, of the Bengal Club, of Government House—peace and civilization and all the rest of the white man’s world. I imagined I could hear them snore across the distance—the commissioners and deputy commissioners, the colonels and adjutants, the big Anglo-Indian merchants, and the American travelers—snoring, peacefully snoring! And I—I was here in the Colootallah, and, yes, I went straight back to my girl.

Did I think much? But what should I have thought about, old man? The only responsibility I had was the girl—since I loved her. My own life?

My own fate? Oh, I guess everybody is the weaver of his own life; and if he wants to entangle the woof and warp of it, it’s up to him, and to him alone, isn’t it? And that isn’t Indian philosophy, either. It’s plain Yankee, out of Boston; if it wasn’t there wouldn’t have been any Mayflower in the first place. Would there?

So back to the girl I went the same old way; through the door in back of the pillar, down the staircase and the narrow landing, straight up to the cobra’s den. Again I opened the door without much effort; but again, though I tried to keep it open, it slammed shut, and I found it impossible to open it from the inside. There was a bit of hidden machinery there which I could not find, nor had I time to look.

Carefully groping my way, I found the curved handle in the low ceiling. I jerked it, and the ceiling slid to one side, sending down a flood of light from the temple. The Brahman priest was still where I had dumped him, and—would you believe me?—he was peacefully asleep, sawing wood through his nostrils. Speak about Oriental philosophy and submission to fate! Why, that portly, thrice-born Brahman had an overdose of it.

Compared to his plethora of calm, my own quiet Yankee soul seemed to be shrill, noisy, exaggerated.

The cobra? Yes, she, too, was asleep, curled up in the corner like a huge, coiled thing of watered silk.

I swung myself up into the temple, shutting the door behind me, and rushed over to the statue of Shiva Natarajah. The little girl—”the Lady Padmavati” as the Hindus had called her—was still lost to the world; the blow against her temple must have been a terrific one, but her breath came evenly.

Some of the rugs on which she lay had slipped to one side, and I was just about to bend down to fix her up more comfortably, when— But wait! Let me get this right.

Stephen Denton gave a fleeting, apologetic smile.

You see, it’s rather difficult to describe a moment which blends the physical with the psychical.

Well, I had already bent down. Yes, I remember now! My hand was on her soft, narrow shoulder, and, oh, my love seemed to surge upwards with a rush of sweet splendor. That little space in the pedestal seemed charged to the brim with some overpowering loveliness of wild and simple things, like the beauty of stars, and wind, and flowers, with something which all my life, subconsciously, my heart seemed to have craved in vain, beside which my life of yesterday seemed a gray, wretched dream. You know how these thoughts rush through one—suddenly, overwhelmingly—and at the same time music seemed to chime in my ears, rhythmic, glorious music, the music of my heart, of my soul, I thought, and I wasn’t ashamed of the winged, poetical flight.

And then, all at once, I realized that the music was not the music of my heart. I realized that it had a much more matter-of-fact origin; that in steadily swelling tone waves it came drifting in from the outside. I straightened up. I listened intently. Then I knew: the music came beating and sobbing down the long, magnificent corridor on toward the temple.

Presently I could make out the different instruments—the clash of the cymbals, the rubbing of tom-toms, the hollow thumping of a drum, the plaintive twanging of native sitars; voices, too, chiming in with a deep, melodious swing, and footsteps, echoing down the length of the corridor—nearer, ever nearer!

Sort of breathless, that night, wasn’t it?

Never knew what was going to happen next. In again, out again, just like immortal Irishman, and in again it was into the pedestal of Shiva, by the side of the girl, or rather crouching over her.

Believe me, it was a very uncomfortable position.

My heart was plumping heavily, like the heart of a babe in the dark. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I had a shrewd suspicion that Fate was about to fulminate a whole lot of rusty thunder in my direction.

Twang-zumm-bang, droned the music; and then I guessed what was coming—some sort of worshiping procession. You see, I had been in a Hindu temple or two and was more or less familiar with their noisy theological exercises.

Nor was I mistaken. For a moment later the door was flung open and I saw—How did I see? Oh, in the part of the pedestal which was straight across from the door were two peep-holes, very much like those in a stage drop, and I had quite a good view.

Came a procession of Hindus, singing, playing on instruments; some carrying swinging lamps, others wreaths of flowers and bowls filled with milk and fruit and sweetmeats. The first halfdozen or so were nice enough looking chaps— bearded, dignified, clean—doubtless gentlemen in their own country. But the rest of them! Of all the wholesale, bunched, culminating, shameless wickedness! Why, man, in Sing Sing they would have electrocuted them on sight! And I thought of what Roos-Keppel had told me about the close, sinister, underground connection between the Hindu secret political societies and the criminal castes—thieves, assassins, and thugs; high-castes and low-castes—praying to the same, bloodgorged god.

It was the dawning ceremony of the Shiva worship, the ceremony which celebrates the victory of day over night.

At the end of the procession stalked a tall, magnificent specimen of Oriental humanity, swinging a flat incense-burner on silver chains.

Around and around he swung it, and there rose long, slow streams of perfumed, many-colored smoke—wavering and glimmering like molten gold, blazing with all the deep, transparent yellows of amber and topaz, flaming through a stark, crimson incandescence into a great, metallic blue, then trembling into jasper and opal flames— like a gigantic rainbow forged in the heat of a wondrous furnace. Up swirled the streams of smoke, tearing themselves into floating tatters of half-transparent veil, pouring through the temple and clinging to the corners, the ceiling, with ever new shapes and colors, as endless and as strange and as mad as my life had been—since I had swung over the wall at the end of Ibrahim Khan’s Gully, a little over an hour ago.

Straight up to the idol moved the procession, and Heavens, man, I felt qualmy. You see—there I was—I, a doubting Thomas of a Yankee, inside of their favorite deity, and together with Lady Padmavati! A bit indiscreet, wasn’t it? But they didn’t know it, thank God! They came right up, bowing with outstretched hands, and depositing flowers and fruit and sweetmeats in front of the pedestal—rather an agony, that last one, since I was getting hungry—and chanting their lowpitched litanies. You know India. You can imagine what those chants were like.

First a wail of minor cadences, more fleeting than the shadow of an echo, strangely reminiscent of some ventriloquist’s stunt; then a gathering, bloating volume of voices, gradually shaping the words until the full melody, the full meaning beat up like an ocean of eternity, and the whole punctuated by the hollow staccato of the drums:

. . . nor this the weapons pierce; nor this does fire burn; nor ihis does water wet; nor the wind dry up! This is called unpierceable, unburnable, unwetable, and undriable, O harasser of thy foes eternal; all-pervading, constant thou; changeless, yet ever changing; unmanifest, unrecognizable thou, and unvarying.

Didn’t mean anything to me in those days— all this long-winded chanting about Veda-born action and the exhaustless spirit and the certainty of cause and effect. I was getting frankly bored, and I was glad when the congregation varied the monotony of their chant by a few, choice, bloodcurdling prayers—loud and throaty and decidedly materialistic.

By this time they were getting excited, frenzied. You know how an overdose of religion grips these Hindus, how it affects them, much like strong wine; goes to their heads, to their feet, too.

Yes, they danced, and, believe me, there isn’t a single musical comedy star on Broadway who wouldn’t have given her little-all to learn some of the steps I saw that night. Tango? Maxixe? Foxtrot? Why, they weren’t in it with that Hindu religious dance!

Interesting, doubtless, but I was getting tired of it; tired, too, of my crouching position, with every bone and nerve and muscle strained to the utmost so as not to crush the little girl and—Well, remember those levers and handles I told you about? There was one handy to my right arm, and just for luck I gave it a good, hard pull.

Immediately there was silence. I wondered which one of Shiva’s limbs I had caused to move, and the next moment I knew; for there came a ringing, triumphant shout from one of the worshipers:

“Shiva! Shiva Natarajah! See, brothers, he moves his right arm, as in blessing!” “In blessing—in blessing!” the crowd took up the refrain, and they thanked Shiva for the sign he had given them, sealing and emphasizing their thanks with another long-winded hymn:

. . . from food come creatures; food comes from rain, rain comes from sacrifice, sacrifice is born of action, and action of thy great miracle, O harasser of thy foes.

A good enough light was trembling through the peep-holes and a couple of age-worn cracks into the interior of the pedestal, and I looked carefully to discover with which parts of Shiva’s sacred anatomy the different levers and handles were connected. You see, I wanted to scare the congregation out of the temple through a real, simon-pure, overwhelming miracle. Presently I located most of the connections and, pushing a lever here and pulling a handle there, I caused the idol to lift his legs and wag his ugly old head in turns, and then to jerk his four arms in one generous, embracing altogether gesture. It was a success. There was no doubt of it. For the Hindus yelled and shrieked and moaned. But they didn’t run away. I guess the Brahman had worked that same miracle before, and so they weren’t scared of it any more—familiarity breeds contempt, you know, even in orthodox Hindu theological circles.

“Try, try, try again!” I told myself, and a moment later I thought of the intricate apparatus, the combination of wheels and gliding planes, which made the whole statue, including the pedestal, move forward across the floor. There was one master-handle within easy reach, but I was afraid of using it. For, remember, I told you that that particular machinery hadn’t been used for a long time, that it was rusty and hard to move.

The fool thing needed a generous dose of Threein- One oil; and I said to myself that some of those Hindus might smell a rat if they heard the squeaking and grating of the rusty old wheels.

What then?

Finally I thought of a way. You see, at college I held the absolute hors-de-concours record in yelling. I was the pride, in that respect at least, of my fraternity. I used to be proud of the accomplishment myself at the time being, but I would never have guessed that it would ever be of any practical value in life.

But here was a chance to try and find out. And so, at the moment of jerking down the master-handle, I let out a wild yell. I guess it must have sounded rather startling—sort of ghastly— coming, as it did, from that hollow statue; and the more I jerked at the handle, the louder I yelled.

Presently the idol moved, I could feel it trembling beneath me. I continued yelling, and the effect was spontaneous. It was immense. It brought down the house!

The whole congregation gave one long, lone, soul-appalling outcry, and then they ran, pushing, kicking, pulling, biting each other in their mad haste to get to the door. Doubtless they imagined that they had offended Shiva, that their last hour had struck. At the door the whole lot of them bunched into one tremendous fighting knot—they fell over each other—and for a moment I was silent, to catch breath, and just then, at that very same moment, the bronze-tongued bell from the Presbyterian Church in Old Court House Street struck the half-hour—half after one—and, believe me, it was dramatic, that sudden tolling!

Just imagine the smoke, the many-colored light, the lesser miracle of Shiva’s moving feet and arms, then the great miracle, my mad yelling, and suddenly that deep-toned bell!

Why, man, that fighting, struggling knot on the threshold dissolved itself into its human components inside of half a second, and a moment later the temple was empty. They didn’t stop to shut the door nor to pick flowers on the way. I saw them rushing down the corridor—high-castes and low-castes, thrice-borns and thugs—running as fast as they could, with their legs and arms jerking and shooting out fantastically to right and to left, so that they looked like so many gigantic Indian scorpions scurrying for cover and yelling their lungs out as they ran. Gosh, it was comical!

And the funniest part of all was the sight of the very last of the lot. He had had his swathing robe torn off him in the frantic struggle, and there he ran, as naked as on the day he was born, except for the huge turban on his head, his white robe on the threshold, like a splotch of light!

You know, he interrupted his tale, I felt really proud of myself. Here was I—plain Yankee out of Boston, still redolent of pies and Thoreau and the Back Bay—and I had worked a thumping, all-to-the-good miracle which these Hindus would doubtless tell to their children’s children. In the course of time it would go down into legend and tradition, as the thing which the Hindu theologians call Jataka, and I felt a sort of kinship, of comradeship, with that many-armed, grinning old idol of Shiva Natarajah. Snobbish of me, wasn’t it, to be so proud of my own particular little miracle. But then—oh—it was a miracle, and snobbishness is after all only a simplified form of the desire to be mystic, to drown one’s own puny personality in a greater self—as I had drowned myself in that of Shiva, had given him my voice in fact—my good old college yells.

I thought of that even as, with the last shrieking straggler scooting out of sight down the corridor, I came out of the pedestal, closed the temple door, and then—well, I was torn between two emotions. You see, I didn’t want the Hindus to come back, and I could arrange for that, at least, temporarily, by setting the machinery into motion again and backing the heavy statue up against the door. On the other hand, I would bar my own exit by the same process.

Finally, I decided to risk it. First I picked up the robe which the last of the fleeing Hindus had dropped and put it on my own back; then I got back into the pedestal and pushed the masterhandle until Shiva was plumb up against the door, straddling on both sides of it like a great metallic spider and making it impossible to open it.

That road was barred to the Hindus, and to me! There remained thus only one way of escape: back over the roof-top. Back somehow, though I didn’t know how, for there was the long drop into the blue slime of Ibrahim Khan’s Gully, and how could I do it with the unconscious girl in my arms?

I said to myself that I would have to try it, and I was about to pick up the little girl when another thought assailed me. For, remember, that both times I had passed through the cobra den— the only communication between the temple and the stairs leading to the roof-top—I had found it impossible to open the connecting door from the inside. It was easy enough to get into the cobra den from the stairs, but to get out—why, there seemed to be some intricate, hidden bit of machinery which I did not know.

I would have to ask. Whom? Why, his nibs, of course; the old Brahman priest down in the cobra den. Whom else could I have asked?

So I pushed open the stone slab, shook my priest awake, took the gag from his mouth, and talked to him like a Dutch uncle.

But it wasn’t a go. Not a bit of it. That thriceborn mountain of portliness only laughed at me.

Yes, by the many hecks, he laughed at me, and then, when I asked him to elucidate, he spoke, very gently, with a sort of regretful sob in his voice—the old hypocrite: “Ah, sahib,” he sighed, “it is, alas! impossible to open the door from the inside—as impossible as wings upon a cat, as flowers of air, as rabbits’ horns, as ropes made of tortoise hair! Only from the outside can the door be opened!”

I threatened him with voice and with hand and, you know, I have a large, man-size, persuasive sort of hand. But it didn’t do a bit of good. “Impossible, sahib!” he repeated, “impossible by the five sacred Pandavas!” and there was that in his voice which convinced me that Old Pomposity, perhaps for the first time in his life, was speaking the truth.

“Look here,” I said after a pause, “there’s another way out of the temple, isn’t there?” “ Assuredly,” he replied. “You can pass through the temple, sahib, out of the door, along the corridor—”

“Cut it out! Can it, you old humbug!” I interrupted him. “I know that way—I took it half an hour ago, and I had a devil of a time getting back here. Now, look here. I have an idea that there’s yet a third way out of here, and that you know it. Come through at once, or—well, I’ll give you a good sound spanking!” And I made a significant gesture.

But that didn’t faze him in the least. He stared at me out of his round, onyx eyes, folded his hands over his stomach and said resignedly, “Beat me then, sahib, for—ah—a beating from a master and a step into the mud are not things one should consider.” Cute little metaphor, wasn’t it?

And perhaps not exactly as flattering as it sounded first shot out of the box. “Sahib,” he went right on with his eternal Oriental proverbs, “if the man be ugly, what can the mirror do? Can you plaster over the rays of the sun? No? Then why beat me? It would not help you out of the temple, would it?”

I lost my temper then. “Look here,” I said, “if you don’t get me out of here—me and the girl— I’ll kill you: and by ginger I mean it!”

But he continued staring at me without as much as a blink.

“Sahib,” he said calmly, “you are a white man, a Christian, afraid of death, of—ah—final destiny. But I, sahib,” he purred, “I am a Brahman, a thrice-born indifferent to life and to death—for death is only a passing breath, only a forgotten wind sweeping over the grassy hills of eternity; indifferent to Satva, and Rajas, and Tamas—to pleasure, and pain, and darkness. You believe that man’s life is a bundle of qualities which die with death; and I—I know that man’s life is a thing without bondage or limit, perpetually active! I, sahib,” he shot out with sudden ringing sincerity, “I am not afraid of death!”

Right then an idea came to me—a mingling of what I had read and of what Roos-Keppel had told me about caste and loss of caste. Roughly, I forced the Brahman to swing himself out of the den and into the temple. I followed.

“Look!” I said, pointing at the idol of Shiva Natarajah, straddling the door; and the Brahman turned as pale as a sheet. “You are not afraid of death,” I went on, “and that’s the truth. But you are afraid of losing caste; you are afraid of losing your priestly influence, aren’t you?” He did not reply, just stood there, staring dumbly, despairingly at the statue, and I continued: “You see, I discovered how you work your little miracles, and I worked them myself—every last one of them. I even made your fool idol talk; and the people saw and heard and ran away. Now, either you get me out of this mess, out of this confounded rabbit-warren, or I give myself up to your countrymen, and I tell ‘em how you’ve fooled them in the past. I’ll tell ‘em how the miracles are accomplished, and then you, I guess, would—”

“Yes, yes,” he mumbled, “ I would lose caste! For many lives to come would I be born in the form of insects, of—”

“Well,” I interrupted harshly, “what’s the answer? Come through! Are you going to lead me out of this building or not?

“Sahib,” he said, “you win. But I can not lead you out of the temple!”

“Stop your hedging,” I cried. “ How the deuce do I win if you can’t lead me out of the temple?”

“Forgive your servant, sahib,” stammered the priest, “and have patience until I have explained. For I have given a vow never too leave this building, never even to come within sight of the outer walls of it, a sacred vow to Ganesha, the Elephant-Tusked Lord of Incepts! And should I break this vow I would lose caste as assuredly as if you—ah—would give to the people the tale of the miracles.”

“Well, what then?” I demanded impatiently.

“Just this, sahib. I can lead you from here to another room and thence, by yourself easily, assuredly, will you be able to find escape in a short time. Listen! Listen to me, sahib,” he continued hurriedly, excitedly, “listen to my solemn oath, and he gave the one solemn vow which—I remembered what Roos-Keppel had told me—no Brahman will ever break: “I swear by Shiva the Great Yogi, by Parvati, and the Sacred Bull Nandi—by Ganesha and Karttikeya! I swear by all the Devas who dwell in Svarga! I swear by the heavenly Apsaras, the Gandharvas, and Kinnaras! I swear by Vishnu’s Garuda, by Parvati’s Tiger, by Ganesha’s Rat, and by Indra’s Elephant! I swear that I shall lead the sahib into a room whence he shall find a quick and certain way out of danger, a way to eternal peace and release from worry; nor shall he be molested by man or beast! Ay! peace and rest and safety shall be his! I swear it to thee, O Brahm, Supreme Spirit, O Son of Pritha!”

Then he turned to me, speaking with his ordinary voice: “You believe me, sahib?”

“Sure!” I did believe him. He spoke the truth, and there was no doubt of it. “All right,” I said, walking over to the pedestal and picking up the little girl. Her head dropped on my shoulder like a precious waxen flower. “Lead on MacDuff!”

“Good, sahib, good!” breathed the priest, turning directly to the wall to the left of the door, and then he continued. speaking over his shoulder, “you are not afraid of trees?”

“You bet I am not,” I laughed. “Trees are what I want—trees, and sunlight, and the open—” “Good, good, good!” the priest replied.

“Trees shall be your fate—trees and peace and safety forever!” And for a few minutes he groped over the wall panels, seemed to find what he was looking for, gave a violent little jerk, and part of the wall flung open with a great rush of cool air.

“Come, sahib,” he said, and I followed him, the girl in my arms, through the opening and down a winding staircase into pitchy darkness.

But I wasn’t afraid—not the least bit. I knew that the Brahman would not break his solemn vow.