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?"