"Warn Tristram!"
She rode on towards Heerut.
CHAPTER XII
THE MEETING OF THE WAYS
They had come from all the ends of the Province, secretly and one by one from the towns, and in whole companies from the villages. It was for them only another pilgrimage. They brought with them the same childlike faith, the same dim, passionless hopes, the same fatalism. And behind those simple things there was the same incalculable force awaiting the spark which should fire them to a ferocious heroism or headlong panic.
They came together in the broad curve of plain where the Ganges twisted in a horseshoe towards the foot of Gaya's hills. To the west, within half a mile of the encampment, the black impregnable barrier of the jungle followed the river's course past the bridge-head and the temple, forming lower down a crescent around the little plateau on which Heerut lay huddled.
There were close on two thousand of them, men of all ages, all castes. They carried weapons, but of a strange and varied nature—old army rifles, an ancient sword, the deadly kukri, sometimes no more than a rusty bayonet, stolen or bought from some drunken defaulter. They themselves were as heterogeneous. They herded together without order or discipline. The rain poured down upon them ceaselessly, saturating their scanty clothing so that it clung to their lean bodies like creased and dirty skins. Here and there the saffron robe proclaimed the Saddhu, and there were priests, haughty, arrogant-featured men, who stood aloof, as though the matter scarcely concerned them. Yet it was they who had worked secretly and cunningly in the towns and villages. It was their infallibility which had welded these strange, inco-ordinate atoms into a weapon. For, undisciplined, ill-armed, and dejected though they seemed, though they came straight from their fields and the enervating atmosphere of the bazaars, these two thousand men were still fighters. In the old days their fathers had scorned the plough and had lived and died by the sword. They had fought for the old Rajah and gone with him into exile and ended their adversity in the wildernesses. Some of that fighting blood was in the veins of these, their descendants, and some of that stern tradition lay smouldering beneath the veneer of peace which the British Raj had forced upon them.
But of all this, Barclay, riding at Ayeshi's side down the irregular front of this strange army, saw nothing. To him they were a sorry, pitiable crew, foredoomed to disaster. He knew now, if he had not always known, the futile madness of the enterprise on which they were launched, he with them. The brief illusion which he had nourished that night in the temple had gone. Though he had flung himself into this cause with all his wealth, all his power, he saw it to be lost. The shadow of the future was on these upturned stoic faces, on Ayeshi, and on himself. Yet he would not have turned back nor changed the course of events. A sombre triumph and satisfaction glowed through his foreknowledge.
He had found his people. He belonged to them. In the end that was coming he would not be alone. His blood would mingle with theirs. And with them those others would be swept away—those others who had rejected him.
He turned his haggard, moody eyes towards distant Gaya and laughed. Even now he was a little theatrical. He wore the native dress, and it was like a masquerade. All that was English in him stood out the more prominently. The very priests who had admitted him to their caste shrank from his shadow, and quick, dark glances of suspicion followed him as he rode at Ayeshi's side. Vahana, the Saddhu, clung to his stirrup-leather. He was like a mocking spirit of evil, noiseless and remorseless. Once Barclay had tried to swing him off by a quick turn of his horse, but the old withered figure had leapt with him with the agility of a tiger. Afterwards Vahana had lifted his face to Barclay, showing his teeth in a mirthless grin of understanding.