They remained together an instant, looking down at the empty place as though it held a secret significance for them both; then Tristram turned to the door and made a little grandiloquent bow of introduction. His eyes had lost their seriousness and laughed at her. "Behold, the day awaits us!" he said.
They went out side by side into the glowing morning. The stream of pilgrims had grown denser and filled the street, beating up against the mud huts on either side and spilling over into the open doorways. And there was a thrill and fever in the air which gathered force, as at the cross-roads one stream poured into another and swirled and eddied in the effort to break a passage. Shrieks and cries, the beating of drums, the harsh calls of the mendicants, the tramping of thousands of feet, the swirl of dust which could not rise for the pressure of the struggling bodies—a mad whirl of sound and colour. Tristram turned to the woman beside him.
"Do you mind—can you face it?"
She laughed a little, with a repressed exultation.
"This is the tarantella as I danced it—the beginning before the madness comes—the rising of the tide. Can't you feel it beating in your blood?"
A fresh band, headed by a swaying banner, pushed its way through the leaderless crowd, and after that, carried on the shoulders of four sweating, staggering men, the image of the Triumvirate.
The sun poured down over the roofs and glittered fierily on the three faces of the god. They had been gilded afresh for the occasion, and the hand which had laboured at their features had not failed in its simple craftsmanship. Benevolence, cruelty, and an unutterable serenity stared over the heads of the tossing multitude. The idol swayed from side to side in its passage, and, as it caught the rays of the sun, gleamed with a living, sinister brightness. There were wreaths of faded flowers on the base of the altar, and there was white dust everywhere. The crowd surged closer, holding up its hands to it in greeting. Their lifted faces showed neither reverence, nor fear, nor hope, but a kind of frenzy seeking its outlet.
Slowly, triumphantly, the image rocked on its way towards the river, a spot of sullen fire on the breast of an ever-changing sea of colour. Like a dangerous backwash, the mob closed in, sweeping it forward and leaving behind a sudden relaxation—a breaking-up of the sea into a hundred drifting particles. It was the passing of a mad dream. The sun blazed on to the peaceful bustle. The note of frenzy died down. The old fakir had crawled on his knees into the shade and held out his wooden bowl, bleating monotonously.
"Alakh! Alakh!"
A merchant came out from his hiding-place in a cowshed and exhibited his wares. The hovel opposite revealed itself as a cook-shop, where the hungry could buy pulse-puffs and dough-cakes and sweets of a hundred kinds. A sherbet-seller pitched his tent a few doors lower down and clinked his coloured glasses alluringly. An ascetic, with the face of a mediæval saint, sold gilt-papered corks from champagne bottles as sacred charms of marvellous efficacy.