Roshan gave a little hard laugh as he went in; if the old man liked to think so, let him.
But Father Ninian's face as he passed--a black shadow in the sunshine--across the level steps leading down to the river wore a wistful smile. Old and new, he thought. New and old. Senseless, useless words, fit only for humanity to juggle dreams from, since no man knew the unseen beginning, knew the unseen end; knew even his own birth and death. In the endless band of life, naught came first, naught last, and the things of to-day might be old, the things of yesterday might be new.
"Margherita!"
The name came soundless to the priest's lips, and a quick flush of youth, and hope, and joy seemed to smooth away the wrinkles of his face. A faint laugh, a happy laugh, went further towards a hearing than the name. It was sixty years ago, nearly, since he had left her. An old story indeed, and yet how new. The new wine of it ran in his old veins, thrilled to his old brain, and took him back absolutely to a palazzo on the outskirts of Rome, with the pale flood of the Tiber flowing beneath a marble loggia. He had never looked on running water since without remembrance, and now--his feet having led him unconsciously to the river's edge--he stood smiling at the pale flood of the Hari. For he knew that he had fought a good fight, that he had kept the promise he had made in order to still her soul; that he had kept her boy, Pietro Bonaventura, so far as he could, from harm, and his child, and his child's child, gathering them as lambs into the arms of Holy Church.
And then something in the last thought drove the tender human smile from his face. He murmured a "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," bent to the stream, and dipping his fingers in it, crossed himself.
"May Shiv-jee's blessing go with his holy water, Baba-jee," said a voice behind him. It was Gorakh-nâth the jogi, who, his sympathizers having departed, had come to fill his gourd.
Father Ninian turned; so for a space they stood face to face; representatives of the two great supernaturalisms of the world; the one which has held the West, the one which has held the East.
The old man's face, at first, returned to kindly human tolerance; for his fifty years of Eshwara had widened his sympathies. But, as he stood before the jogi it hardened, and the priestly arrogance of the naked ash-smeared figure, stretching a right hand in claim over the sanctifying power of the river, was reflected in Father Ninian's as he spread his left hand upwards, and turned on his heel with the words, "Vade retro Satanas!"