I was virtuously indignant with the offender, and the next time he came to see me sent out a message that I was otherwise engaged. I felt a little remorseful at having done so, however, when, committee-day coming round, the Reformer was reported on the sick-list. And there he remained until after the first rain had fallen, bringing with it the real Indian spring--the spring full of roses and jasmines, of which the poets and the bul-buls sing. By this time the novelty had worn off philanthropy and plum-pudding, so that often we had a difficulty in getting a quorum together to resolve anything; and I, personally, had begun to weary for the dazzled eyes and the eager voice so full of sanguine hope.
Therefore it gave me a pang to learn from the Vice-President, who, being a Government official, was a model of punctuality, that in all probability I should never hear or see either one or the other again. Futteh Deen was dying of the rapid decline which comes so often to the Indian student.
A recurrence of a vague remorse made me put my pride in my pocket and go unasked to the Reformer's house, but my decision came too late. He had died the morning of my visit, and I think I was glad of it.
For the paragon of beauty and virtue, of education and refinement, was a very ordinary woman, years older than my poor Reformer, marked with the small-pox, and blind of one eye. Then I understood.
[THE SQUARING OF THE GODS]
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 curved sequence of bathing-steps that swept away to the horizon on either side.
The steps themselves, shadowy, vague, were spangled as with stars by the little trembling lamps of the myriads on myriads of pilgrims already gathered on them waiting for the dawn. The reflection of these lamps lay in the water beside the reflection of the stars, making it hard to tell where heaven ended, where earth begun.