Nor good either. For the first words of that appeal of culture to ignorance were drowned in a fiendish laugh, a frenzied rattling of the dread chaplet, a loud defiance.
"Hold thy peace, Baboo-jee! What is blood to thee, who hath no God to whom thou canst give it? But we have, brethren. These be Her drinking-cups, the skulls of men like ourselves. Let us give Her pleasure, brothers, and have blessing from Her hands; not cursing, as thou hast had, Ramanund, whose head should still be shaven, whose touch unclean from the loss of a woman."
The allusion to the death of Ramanund's wife roused an instant murmur of assent from those who were of the city, and they passing the tale on to others, the murmur swelled to a roar which effectively drowned the rest of Ramanund's advice.
But Father Ninian, still at the door, still uncertain, could hear a man who had been buckling on his pilgrim's sandals as if for a start, say, as he stood up and thrust them back to his waistcloth:--
"Well! I, for one, go no further without remission, or the blood which brings it. As jogi-jee saith, no man should risk the woman's cursing. No man can hold his own against that."
"He hath a young wife in his house, see you, and all know what that means," sniggered a neighbour.
But a third voice broke in gravely, "Young or old, what matter? Women sit ever on the knees of the Gods, as we men have sat on theirs, seeing they are the mothers of us all. So, mother or wife, we cannot escape them."
"Baba-jee speaks truth," assented another bystander, "and jogi-jee also. If She needs blood, She must have it, seeing She is Woman. As for him? Let him be silent. He hath no God. No blood sacrifice, no remission of sins. Let him speak who hath them."
There was a faint sound as of the closing of a door, and beyond it, in the darkness of the arched passage, an old voice said, with a curious note of gladness in it, "Follow me, quick, Akbar; there is not a moment to be lost. The dawn has come!"
It seemed to have come to Pidar Narâyan's face as he knelt hurriedly once more beside the body of the dead girl, to fold her dead hands decently as if in prayer, to cover the dead feet with the crimson draperies, the dead face with the flimsy, glittering veil--the veil which hid nothing of its beauty--which struck the keynote of the whole.