CHAPTER

I.--The Story of Kurnavati

II.--Tristram the Hermit

III.--Tristram Becomes Father-Confessor

IV.--The Interlopers

V.--A Vision of the Backwater

VI.--Broken Sanctuary

VII.--Anne Boucicault Explains

VIII.--The Two Listeners

IX.--Lalloo, the Money-Lender

X.--An Encounter

XI.--Inferno

XII.--In which Fortune Pleases to Jest

XIII.--Crossed Swords

XIV.--Tristram Chooses his Road

XV.--The Weavers

XVI.--A Meredith to the Rescue

XVII.--Mrs. Smithers Does Accounts

XVIII.--The Feast of Siva

_BOOK II_

I.--Mrs. Compton Stands Firm

II.--A Home-Coming

III.--Mrs. Boucicault Calls the Tune

IV.--Anne Makes a Discovery

V.--Crisis

VI.--"Of your Blood"

VII.--The Price Paid

VIII.--Return

IX.--For the Last Time

X.--Anne Chooses

XI.--Freedom

XII.--The Meeting of the Ways

XIII.--To Gaya!

XIV.--Resurrection

XV.--The Snake-God

XVI.--Towards Morning

*The Hermit Doctor of Gaya*

_*BOOK I*_

*CHAPTER I*

*THE STORY OF KURNAVATI*

"Thus it came about that, for her child's sake, the Rani Kurnavati saved

herself from the burning pyre and called together the flower of the

Rajputs to defend Chitore and their king from the sword of Bahadur

Shah."

The speaker's voice had not lifted from its brooding quiet. But now the

quiet had become a living thing repressed, a passion disciplined, an

echo dimmed with its passage from the by-gone years, but vibrant and

splendid still with the clash of chivalrous steel.

The village story-teller gazed into the firelight and was silent.

Swift, soft-footed shadows veiled the lower half of his face, but his

eyes smouldered and burnt up as they followed their visions among the

flames. He was young. His lithe, scantily-clad body was bent forward

and his slender arms were clasped loosely about his knees. Compared

with him, the broken circle of listeners seemed half living. They sat

quite still, their skins shining darkly like polished bronze, their eyes

blinking at the firelight. Only the headman of the village moved,

stroking his fierce grey beard with a shrivelled hand.

"Those were the great days!" he muttered. "The great days!"

The silence lingered. The Englishman, whose long, white-clad body

linked the circle, shifted his position. He lay stretched out with a

lazy, unconscious grace, his head supported on his arm, his eyes lifted

to the overhanging branches of the peepul tree, whose long, pointed

leaves fretted the outskirts of the light and sheltered the solemn,

battered effigy of the village god like the dome of a temple. A suddenly

awakened night-breeze stirred them to a mysterious murmur. They rustled

tremulously and secretly together, and the clear cold fire of a star

burnt amidst their shifting shadows. Beyond and beneath their

whispering there were other sounds. A night-owl hooted, a herd of

excited, lithe-limbed monkeys scrambled noisily in the darkness

overhead, chattered a moment, and were mischievously still. From the

distance came the long, hungry wail of a pariah dog, hunting amidst the

village garbage. These discords dropped into the night's silence,

breaking its placid surface into widening circles and died away. The

peepul leaves shivered and sank for an instant into grave meditation on

their late communings, and through the deepened quiet there poured the

distant, monotonous song of running water. It was a song based on one

deep organ note, the primaeval note of creation, and never changed. It

rose up out of the earth and filled the darkness and mingled with the

silence, so that they became one. The listeners heard it and did not

know they heard it. It was the background on which the night sounds of

living things painted themselves in vivid colours.

The Englishman turned his face to the firelight.

"Go on, Ayeshi," he said, with drowsy content. "You can't leave the

beautiful Rani in mid-air like that, you know. Go on."

"Yes, Sahib." The young man pushed back the short black curls from his

neck and resumed his old attitude of watchfulness on the flames. But

his voice sounded louder, clearer:

"Thereafter, Sahib, the need of Chitore grew desperate. In vain, the

bravest of her nobles sallied forth--the armies of Bahadur Shah swept

over them as the tempest sweeps over the ripe corn, and hour by hour the

ring about the city tightened till the very gates shivered beneath the

enemy's blows. It was then the Rani bethought her of a custom of her

people. With her own hands she made a bracelet of silver thread bound

with tinsel and gay with seven coloured tassels, and, choosing a trusty

servant, sent him forth out of Chitore to seek Humayun, the Great

Moghul, whose conquering sword even then swept Bengal like a flail. By

a miracle, the messenger escaped and came before Humayun and laid the

bracelet in his hands, saying:

"'This is the gift of Kurnavati, Rani of Chitore.'

"And Humayun looked at the messenger and asked:

"'And if Humayun accept the gift of the Rani Kurnavati, what then?'

"'Then shall Humayim be her bracelet-bound brother, and she shall be his

dear and virtuous sister.'

"And Humayun looked at the gift and asked:

"'And if I become bracelet-bound brother to the Rani Kurnavati, what

then?'

"'Then will the Rani of Chitore call upon her dear and reverend brother,

according to the bond, to succour her from the cruel vengeance of

Bahadur Shah.'

"And because the heart of Humayun loved all chivalrous and noble deeds

better than conquest and rich spoils, he took the bracelet and bound it

about his wrist, saying: 'Behold, according to the custom, Humayun

accepts the bond, and from henceforth the Rani Kurnavati is his dear and

virtuous sister, and his sword shall not rest in its scabbard till she

is free from the threat of her oppressors.' And he set forth with all

his horsemen and rode night and day till the walls of Chitore were in

sight."

"Well----?" The story-teller had ceased speaking and the Englishman

rolled over, clipping his square chin in his big hands. "Go on,

Ayeshi."

"He came too late." The metal had gone from the boy's voice, and the

firelight awoke no answering gleam in his watching eyes.

"The Rani Kurnavati and three thousand of her women had sought honour on

the funeral pyre. The grey smoke from their ashes greeted Humayun as he

passed through the battered gates. The walls of Chitore lay in ruins

and without them slept their defenders, clad in saffron bridal robes,

their faces lifted to the sun, their broken swords red with the death of

their enemies. And Humayun, seeing them, wept."

Ayeshi's voice trailed off into silence. The headman nodded to himself,

showing his white teeth.

"Those were the great days," he muttered, "when men died fighting and

the women followed their husbands to the----" He coughed and glanced at

the Englishman.

"But ours are the days of the Sahib," he added, with great piety, "full

of wisdom and peace."

"Just so." The Sahib rose to his feet, stretching himself. "And,

talking of wives, Buddhoos, if thou dost not give that luckless female

of thine the medicine I ordered, instead of offering it up to the

village devil, I will mix thee such a compound as will make thy

particular hereafter seem Paradise by comparison. Moreover, I will

complain to the Burra Sahib and thou wilt be most certainly degraded and

become the mock of Lalloo, thy dear and loving brother-in-law.

Moreover, if I again find thirty of thy needy brethren herded together

in thy cow-stall, I will assuredly dose thy whole family. Hast thou

understood?"

The headman salaamed solemnly.

"The Dakktar Sahib's wishes are law," he declared fervently.

"I should like to think so. And now, Ayeshi, it is time. We have ten

miles to go before morning. Give me my medicine-chest. I see that

Buddhoos has a longing eye on it. Come, Wickie!"

The last order was in English, and a small, curious shape uncurled

itself from the shadows at the base of the tree and trotted into the

firelight. The most that could be said of it with any truth was, that

it had been intended for a dog. Many generations back there had been an

Aberdeen in the family, and since then the peculiarities of that

particular strain had been modified to an amazing degree by a series of

_mesalliances_. In fact, all that remained of the Aberdeen were a pair

of bandy legs and a wistful, pseudo-innocent eye. Nevertheless, it was

evidently an object of veneration. The village elders made way for it,

regarding it with gloomy apprehension as it leisurely stretched itself,

yawned, and then, with the dignity which goes with conscious yet modest

superiority, proceeded to follow the massive white figure of its master

into the darkness.

The headman salaamed again deeply and possibly thankfully.

"A safe journey and return, Sahib!" he called.

The Sahib's answer came back cheerily through the stillness. He looked

back for an instant at the patch of firelight and the sharply cut

silhouettes of moving figures, and then strode on, keeping well to the

middle of the dusty roadway, his footsteps ringing out above the soft

accompaniment of Ayeshi's patter and the fussy tap-tap of Wickie's

unwieldy paws. He whistled cheerfully. So long as the sleeping,

odoriferous mud-huts of the village bound them in on either hand, he

clung tenaciously to his disjointed scrap of melody, but, as they came

out at last into the open country, he broke off, sighing, and stood

still, his arms outstretched, breathing in the freedom and untainted air

with a thirsty, passionate gratitude.

There was no moon. The luminous haze which poured out over the

limitless space before them was a mysterious thing, born of itself

without source, without body. Its pallid, greenish clarity stretched in

a ghostly sea between the earth and the black, beacon-studded sky,

distorting and magnifying, as still water distorts and magnifies the

rocks and tangled seaweed at its bed. It lapped soundlessly against the

cliff of rising jungle land to the right, and beneath its quiet surface

the shadow of the village temple floated like a sunken island, its

slender _sikhara_ alone rising up into the darkness, a finger of warning

and admonition. It was very still. The voice of the invisible,

swift-flowing river had indeed grown louder, but it was a sound outside

this world of shadows and phantoms. It beat against the protecting wall

of dreams, unheeded yet ominous and threatening in its implacable

reality.

The two men crossed the path which encircled the village and made their

way over the uneven ground towards the temple. As they drew nearer, the

light seemed to recede, leaving the great roofless _manderpam_ a

shapeless ruin, whilst the _sikhara_ faded into the black background of

the jungle. The Dakktar Sahib whistled softly; a horse whinnied in

answer, and the amazing Wickie bounded forward as though recognizing an

old acquaintance. The Sahib laughed under his breath.

"We know each other, Wickie, Arabella and I," he said. "A wonderful

animal that, Ayeshi."

"Truly, a noble creature, Sahib," Ayeshi answered very gravely.

A minute later they reached the carved gateway of the temple where two

horses had been casually tethered. They stood deep in shadow, but the

strange, unreal light which covered the plain filled the _manderpam_

with its broken avenue of pillars, and threw into sharp relief the

carved gateway and the figure seated cross-legged and motionless beneath

the arch. Both men seemed to have expected the apparition. Ayeshi

knelt down before it and placed a bowl of milk, which he had been

carefully carrying, within reach of the long, lifeless-looking arms.

"For the God thou servest, O Holy One," he said, and for a moment knelt

there with his forehead pressed to the ground.

The old mendicant seemed neither to have heard nor seen. He was almost

naked. The bones started out of the shrivelled flesh, and the long,

matted grey hair hung about his shoulders and mingled with the

dishevelled beard, so that he seemed scarcely human, scarcely living.

Only for an instant his eyes, half hidden beneath the wild disorder,

flashed over the kneeling figure, and then closed, shutting the last

vestige of life behind blank lids.

The Dakktar Sahib bent down and placed a coin in the upturned palms.

"That also is for thy God, Vahana," he said, with grave respect.

Receiving no answer, he turned away and untethered his horse, a

quadruped which even the solemn shadow could not dignify. It must have

stood over seventeen hands high and its shape was comically suggestive

of a child's drawing--six none too steady lines representing legs, back,

and neck. The Dakktar Sahib whispered to it tenderly and reassuringly:

"Only ten miles, Arabella, on my word of honour, only ten miles. And

you shall have all tomorrow. I know it's rotten bad luck, but then I

have got to stick it, too--it's our confounded, glorious duty to stick

it, Arabella, and you wouldn't leave me in the lurch, would you, old

girl?" Then came the crunch of sugar and the sound of Arabella's

affectionate nozzling in the region of coat pockets. The Dakktar swung

himself on to her lengthy back. "Now, then, Ayeshi; now then, Wickie!"

The three strange companions trotted out of the shadow, threading their

way through the long, coarse grass in the direction of the river; but

once the Englishman turned in his saddle and looked back. By some

atmospheric freak, the temple seemed to have drawn all the green

phosphorescent haze into its ruined self and hung like a great, dimly

lit lamp against the wall of jungle. The Dakktar Sahib lingered a

moment.

"They must have dreamed wonderfully in those old days," he said,

wistfully. "To have built that--think of it, Ayeshi! To have given

one's soul an abiding expression to wake the souls of other men

thousands of years hence--to bring a lump into the throat of some human

being long after one's bones have crumbled to dust. Well--well----"

He broke off with a sigh. "And you believe that tonight the Snake God

will drink your milk, Ayeshi?"

"He or his many brethren, Sahib. He lies coiled about the branches of

the highest tree in the jungle and on every branch of the forest another

such as he keeps guard over his rest."

"No man has ever seen him, Ayeshi?"

"No man dares set foot within the jungle, Sahib, save Vahana, and he is

a Sadhu, a holy man. He has sat before the temple for a hundred years,

and none have seen him eat or heard him speak."

"You believe that, Ayeshi?"

The boy hesitated a moment, then answered gravely:

"Yes, Sahib. My people have believed it."

"Your people? Well--that's a good reason--one of our pet reasons for

our pet beliefs, if you did but know it, Ayeshi. There's not such a

gulf between East and West, after all." He rode on in silence, and then

turned his head a little as though trying to distinguish his companion's

features through the darkness. "Who are your people, Ayeshi--your

father, your mother, your brothers? You have never spoken of them. Are

they dead?"

"I do not know, Sahib. I have never known father or mother or

brethren."

The Dakktar Sahib nodded to himself.

"You are not like the other villagers," he said. "One feels it--one

doesn't talk in the same way to you. Tell me, Ayeshi, have you no

ambitions?"

"None but to serve you, Sahib."

The Englishman threw back his head and laughed.

"Well, that's a poor sort of ambition. Why, I might get knocked on the

head any time--typhoid, cholera, enteric--I'm cheek by jowl with the lot

of them half the days of my life. And then where would you be, Ayeshi?"

"I should follow you, Sahib."

"That sounds almost biblical. And what for, eh?"

"Because of this, Sahib----" Suddenly and passionately, he discarded

the English language which he used with ease and plunged into his own

vernacular. "Behold, Sahib, there is the snake-bite on my arm, the

wound which the Sahib cleansed with his own lips. Is that a thing to be

forgotten? A life belongs to him who saves it."

"Pooh, nonsense!" The Englishman leant over his saddle. "For the

Lord's sake, Wickie, keep away from Arabella's hoofs! Are you a dog or

an idiot? Ayeshi, you don't understand. That sort of thing's my

job--there, now, you've nearly run us into the river with your silly

chatter----"

They drew rein abruptly. It was now close on the dawn, and the darkness

had become intensified. The stars seemed colder and dimmer. Where they

stood, their horses snuffing nervously at the unknown, they could hear

the steady hurrying of the water at their feet, but they could see

nothing. The Englishman patted the neck of his steed with a comforting

hand. "In a year or two, there will be a bridge across," he said.

"Then Mother Ganges won't have such terrors for us."

"Mother Ganges demands toll of those who curb her," Ayeshi answered

solemnly.

"You mean, that no bridge could be built here?"

"I mean, Sahib, that the price will be a heavy one."

The Dakktar Sahib made no answer. Suddenly he laughed, not as though

amused, but with a vague embarrassment.

"That was a fine story you told us tonight, Ayeshi. I don't know what

there was about it--something that made one tingle from head to foot.

I've been thinking of it on and off all the time. Those were days when

men did mad, splendid things--bad too--worse than anything we do, but

also finer. Sometimes one wishes--but it's no good wishing. The Rani

Kurnavati and her bracelet are gone forever."

"Humayun also is dead," Ayeshi said, in his grave way.

"You mean----? Yes, that's true, too, I suppose. But oh Lord"--he

lifted himself in his saddle with a movement of joyous, fiery

vitality--"though I'm no Great Moghul, worse luck, still, if a woman

sent _me_ her bracelet and she were being murdered on the top of Mount

Ararat, I'd----"

"The Sahib would come in time," Ayeshi interposed gently and

significantly.

The Englishman dropped back in his saddle.

"Well, anyhow, Arabella, Wickie, and I would have a good shot at it," he

said, gaily. He turned his horse's head eastwards and touched her

gently to a trot. "But it's no good bragging. No one's going to make

either of us bracelet brother. That's not for the like of us. And

meanwhile, we've got eight miles to go and the dawn will be on us in an

hour. I wish we'd got the seven-league boots handy. But you don't know

the story of the seven-league boots, do you, Ayeshi? I'll tell it you

as we go along. A story for a story, eh?"

"Yes, Sahib."

They trotted off along the bank of the river, Arabella slightly in

advance, Wickie skirmishing skilfully on either hand, the Dakktar

Sahib's voice mingling with the song of the waters as he told the story

of the seven-league boots.

Behind them the temple had sunk into profound shadow.

Vahana, the mendicant, still sat beneath the archway. He took the bowl

of milk and drained it thirstily. The coin he spat on with a venomous

hatred and sent spinning into the darkness.

*CHAPTER II*

*TRISTRAM THE HERMIT*

"Of course, all that one can do is to hope," Mrs. Compton said, ruffling

up her dark, curly hair with a distracted hand. "I don't know who it was

talked about hope springing eternal in the something-something, but he

must have lived in Gaya. If we hadn't hope and pegs in this withered

desert----"

"My dear," her husband interposed, "in the first place, Gaya isn't a

desert. It's the Garden of India. In the second place, no lady talks

about pegs--certainly not in the tone of devout thankfulness which you

have used. Pegs is--are masculine. They uphold us in our strenuous

hours, of which you women appear to know nothing; they soothe our

overwrought nerves and prepare the way for a liverish old age in

Cheltenham. Praise be to Allah!"

Mrs. Compton sighed and surveyed the curtain which she had been

artistically draping. Her manner, like her whole wiry, restless

personality, expressed a good-tempered irascibility.

"Anyhow, they keep you human and grant us luckless females a lucid

interval in which we can call our souls our own. What you men would be

like if you didn't have your drinks and your tubs and all your other

multitudinous creature comforts--well, it doesn't stand thinking about.

Archie, do you like the curtain tied up with a bow or--oh, of course,

it's no use asking you, you materialistic lump." She turned from the

long, lean figure sprawling on the wicker chair by the verandah window

and appealed to the second member of her audience.

"Mr. Meredith, you're a clergyman, you ought to have a soul. Do you

like bows or don't you?"

Meredith looked up with a faint smile on his grave face.

"I like bows, Mrs. Compton. I hope it's a good sign of my artistic and

spiritual development?"

"Yes, it is. I like bows myself. Oh, dear----" She stopped suddenly.

"But supposing she's a horror! Supposing she paints and smothers herself

in diamonds, and gets hilarious at dinner, and has a shrill voice!

Goodness knows, I don't boast about our morals, but we're immoral in our

own conventional way, so that it becomes almost respectable, and

anything else would shock us frightfully. You know, I think we're

running an awful risk."

Captain Compton guffawed cheerfully, and the smile still lingered in

Owen Meredith's pleasant eyes.

"I shouldn't worry, my dear lady," he recommended. "After all, some of

them are the last thing in respectability. It belongs to their

profession. They're bound to be physically perfect, and physical

perfection goes with morality. Besides, I understand that there can be

genius in that sort of thing, and that she's a genius."

"Well, genius doesn't go with respectability, anyhow," Mary Compton

retorted. "A professional dancer and a guest of the Rajah's! What can

one hope for?"

Meredith compressed his lips and passed his hand over his black hair

with a movement that somehow or other revealed the Anglican. A look of

what might have been habitual anxiety settled on his square, blunt

features, and he found no answer.

Captain Compton got up, stretching himself.

"The Rajah's the best guarantee we could have," he said lazily. "He's a

harmless type of the little degenerate princeling who apes the European

and lives in a holy terror of doing the wrong thing. He wouldn't set

Gaya by the ears for untold gold. I know just what's happened. He saw

Mlle. Fersen dance and he sent her a bouquet--very respectfully--and

gave a supper-party in her honour--also very respectable--and assured

her of a warm, respectable welcome in Gaya should she ever visit India.

Well, she's come--as why shouldn't she?--and he's trying to do the

handsome and the respectable at the same time. You don't suppose old

Armstrong would have written about her if everything wasn't quite all

right." He pulled out his cigarette case and looked round helplessly

for the matches. "My dear, you will find that she is not only a perfect

lady, but that our ways will shock her into fits, and that we shall have

to live up to her."

Mrs. Compton gave him the matches with the air of a nurse tending a

peculiarly incapable child.

"You disappoint me horribly," she said, and went out on the verandah. A

minute later she called the two men after her and pointed an indignant

finger in the direction of the highway. "Look at that, Archie! How do

you suppose anybody's going to respect us with that sort of thing

running about! It's positively unpatriotic. It's a blow at the very

foundations of the Empire----!"

"Why, it's the old Hermit," Compton interrupted, soothingly. "Don't

worry about him. If there were a few more hermits--Bless the man!

what's he doing? Ahoy, Tristram, ahoy there!"

In answer to the shouted welcome, the little procession which had

aroused Mrs. Compton's ire turned in at the compound gates. The Dakktar

Sahib came first. He wore a duck suit with leggings, and carried his

pith helmet in both hands as though it were a bowl full of priceless

liquid. In its place, a loud bandanna handkerchief offered a slight

protection to his head and neck. Behind him, at her untrammelled

leisure; came Arabella, her reins trailing, her nose almost on the

ground, her legs obviously wavering under the burden of her protruding

ribs. Behind her again, in a cloud of sulky dust, waddled Wickie,

forlorn and spiritless. The three halted at the steps of the verandah,

and the Dakktar Sahib sat down on the first step without ceremony.

"I'm done," he said.

Mrs. Compton almost snorted at him.

"I should think so! What on earth were you walking for, you impossible

person? What is the use of having a horse--if you call that object a

horse--if you don't ride?"

"Arabella's dead beat," he explained simply. He put his pith helmet

between his knees and stared down into its depths as though something

hidden there interested him. "I know she's no beauty," he went on

earnestly. "But she's an awful brick. Never done me or any one a bad

turn in her lire. Can't say that of myself. And just because I paid

fourteen quid for her, I don't see why I should put upon her. I suppose

we three couldn't have a drink, could we?"

Compton shook his head. He came and sat down on the step beside the

big, travel-stained figure and looked cooler and more immaculate by

contrast.

"Afraid not. If you weren't so delightfully absent-minded, Hermit, you

would know perfectly well that we're not at home. Don't you recognize

the old dak-bungalow when you see it?"

Tristram turned and looked about him rather blankly. At that moment Mrs.

Compton, who was feeling unjustifiably irritable, thought he was quite

the ugliest man she had ever set eyes on.

"No--to tell you the truth, I was too dead to notice. I just tottered

in. What's happened? The old place looks as though it had had its face

washed. Who are you expecting?"

"Ever heard of Sigrid Fersen?"

Tristram returned rather suddenly to the contemplation of the mysterious

contents of his helmet.

"Yes--on my last leave home. I saw her dance the night before I

sailed."

"Well, she's coming here--world tour or something. The Rajah invited her

to Gaya, and Armstrong gave us a hint to do the hospitable. Mary is all

on the _qui vive_, hoping she'll do the high kick at a Vice-Regal

function or something."

Tristram made no answer, and his silence was at once irritating and

final. He seemed scarcely to have heard. Mrs. Compton, watching his

profile with dark, exasperated eyes, suddenly softened.

"You _do_ look fagged!" she exclaimed impulsively. "Has it been a bad

time, Hermit?"

He looked up at her.

"Pretty bad. I haven't seen a white face for two months or slept in the

same quarters for two nights running. There's any amount of trouble

brewing out there in the villages. It's the drought--and the poor

beggars can't get the hang of our notions. Anything might develop. I'm

going back to Heerut tonight. I came along only to get fresh medical

supplies. I left Ayeshi at the last village. He's a gem."

Meredith, who had been standing by the verandah railings, drew himself

up, his swarthy face was brightened by his eyes, which were alight with

a grave, sincere fervour.

"Yes, Ayeshi's unusual," he said. "He's different from the rest. I've

often noticed him. I wish we could get hold of him, Tristram."

"Get hold of him?"

"Give him a chance. You know what I mean. It's that type of man we

want. He ought to be encouraged to go ahead."

"Ayeshi's all right," Tristram remarked slowly. "He's happy. And he's

a sort of poet, you know. I'd leave him alone, if I were you."

Meredith laughed good-temperedly.

"It's not my business to leave people alone," he said.

There was a silence which unaccountably threatened to become strained.

Mrs. Compton, wearied by her struggles with refractory curtains, drew a

chair up to the steps of the verandah and sat down, ruffling her

husband's sleek hair with an absent-minded affection. He bore the

affliction patiently, his lazy blue eyes intent on the approach of a

neat, slow-going dog-cart which had turned the bend of the high-road.

"It's the Boucicaults' turn-out," he said. "And little Anne driving

herself, too, by Jove! I wonder what she wants round here?"

"Whatever it is, she must want it pretty badly," his wife remarked.

"She hates driving--if the truth were told, I believe that pony

terrifies her out of her life. Poor little soul!"

"No nerve," Compton agreed. "Broken long ago."

Meanwhile, with a lightness and agility that was unexpected in a man of

his short, heavy build, Owen Meredith had swung himself over the

verandah rails and walked down to meet the new-comer. The trio on the

steps watched him in silence. Then Compton chuckled rather mirthlessly.

"She'd make a first-rate parson's wife," he said. "If only----" then he

broke off and became suddenly business-like and astonishingly keen.

"Tristram--stop fidgeting with that damned helmet of yours. I know

you're dog-tired, old chap, but I want you to go round to the

Boucicaults before you return to the wilds."

Tristram looked up. The tiredness had gone out of his face.

"Anything wrong--I mean, worse than usual?"

Compton threw his half-finished cigarette at Wickie.

"You don't know what it's been like these last two months. The man's

mad, Tristram, or he's possessed of the devil. The whole regiment is

suffering from c.b. and extra drill and stopped leave--for

nothing--nothing. I oughtn't to talk about it, I suppose, but

something's got to be done. The men are getting nervy and out of hand,

and no wonder. There are moments when I feel ready to lash out myself."

"Can't something be done? Can't you get rid of him?"

Compton laughed shortly.

"You know what happens to men who complain of their superior officers.

Besides, he's so devilishly efficient, and everything he does is done in

cold blood. It's drink, of course, but it doesn't make him lose his

head. It makes him deadly, hideously quiet. And it's not only the

regiment, Tristram--there's his wife. We hardly ever see her--and when

we do--well, they say----"

Mrs. Compton clenched her small brown fist and thumped her husband's

shoulder in a burst of indignation.

"They say he beats her," she said between clenched teeth.

Tristram got up as though he had been stung.

"That's--that's damnable!" he stuttered.

"That's just the word," Mrs. Compton acknowledged gratefully. She

looked up at him and admitted to herself that, after all, he pleased her

profoundly. At that moment he was not ugly in her eyes. In one way,

she recognized him to be magnificent. She knew no other man with such

shoulders or who carried his height and strength with so natural a

grace. But now even his face pleased her, red-bearded and unlovely

though it was. In her quick, Celtic way, she imagined a sculptor who,

in an inspired mood, had modelled a masterpiece, incomplete, rough-hewn,

yet vigorous with life and significance. She liked his blue eyes, which

usually looked out on the world with a whimsical simplicity and now

flared up, dangerously bright. "Positively," said Mrs. Compton, "there

are moments when I love you, Hermit."

Archibald Compton grimaced and pulled himself to his feet.

"Anyhow, after that brazen-faced declaration you might help us," he

said. "You're a doctor. It's your business to interfere. Couldn't you

drop a hint at headquarters--suggest long leave or something?

Do--there's a good fellow----"

Tristram had no opportunity to reply, for Anne Boucicault her companion

were now within earshot. Meredith walked at the wheel of her cart and

was talking gaily, his face lifted to hers, and, freed for the moment

from its habitual expression of fervid purpose, was almost boyish. She

smiled down at him, and then, glancing up at the group at the verandah,

the smile faded and she jerked the reins of her pony so that the animal

came to an abrupt stand-still.

"Major Tristram!" she exclaimed. "Why, I didn't know you were back--I

thought----" She broke off, flushing to the brows. Her incoherency and

that quick change of colour added to her rather touching sweetness. She

was not pretty. Neither the dainty white frock nor the shady hat could

help her to more than youth. But her youth was vivid and gracious.

There was something, too, in her expression, in the look of the brown

eyes, that had all the appeal, the wistfulness of an anxious, frightened

child. There was nothing mature about her save her mouth, which was

firm, even obstinate.

Major Tristram came to her and gave her his big hand.

"I'm back for only a few hours," he explained, "and then my victims have

me again. But it's good to catch a glimpse of anything so fresh as

yourself. Isn't the sun ever going to wither you like other mortals?"

The smile dawned shyly about the corners of her lips.

"I don't know. I keep out of it as much as possible. I don't like it.

I only came out this afternoon because----" She hesitated and then

added rather breathlessly: "I knew Mrs. Compton was here--and I'm

anxious about mother."

Mary Compton laid an impulsive brown hand on the white one which held

the reins in its frail, ineffectual fingers.

"Well, here we all are, anyhow," she said, "and just dying to be useful.

What's the trouble, dear?"

"Mother is ill," Anne Boucicault answered, with the same curious

hesitancy. "I was frightened. Major Tristram, if only you could

come----"

He did not wait for her to finish her appeal. He scrambled up on to the

seat beside her, and took the reins from her hands.

"You look after Arabella and Wickie, Compton," he said, "and hand me up

my helmet. No--not like that--for goodness' sake, be careful, man!

Thanks, that's better."

"And I hope you're going to wear it," Mrs. Compton remarked, with

asperity. "I suppose you don't want to arrive with a sunstroke or give

Mrs. Boucicault a fit with that awful handkerchief?"

Tristram shook his head.

"Sorry, can't be done. It's occupied already. A patient of mine." He

put his battered headgear between his knees and poked gingerly about the

depths, producing, finally, amidst a confusion of straw and grass, a

tiny bulbul. The little creature fluttered desperately, and then, as

though there were something miraculous in the man's hand, lay still, a

soft, bright-eyed ball of colour, and stared around it with an audacious

contentment.

"Its wing's hurt," Tristram explained. "Wickie bit it. In point of

fact, Wickie and I aren't on speaking terms as a result. It's a subject

we shall never agree upon." He soothed the little creature's ruffled

plumage with a tender forefinger, and held it out for Anne Boucicault's

inspection. She peered at it curiously and rather coldly.

"It's very sweet," she said, "but wouldn't it be kinder to put it out of

its misery?"

"Rather not. Besides"--his eyes twinkled in Meredith's direction--"it's

not my business to put people out of their misery. And I'd rather keep

this little chap alive than some men I know of. He's one of creation's

top-notes. He's a poem all to himself. He wants to live and he's a

right to live, and he's going to. His wing'll mend. I've mended dozens.

It's an instinct--mending. I've got a baby cheetah with a broken paw at

my diggins----"

Compton laughed hilariously at his wife's grim disapproval.

"I don't believe you could drown a kitten," she said.

"Why on earth should I want to drown a kitten?" He put his _protege_

tenderly back in its impromptu nest. "I brought two tabbies from

England, and there are a lot more now. The whole village looks after

them. They believe they're a specially imported sort of devil, and take

every opportunity to propitiate them with edible offerings. It's

great!"

Mrs. Compton looked helpless.

"You beware of that man, Anne," she said. "He's probably got a

dyspeptic rattlesnake in one of his pockets. As to you, Tristram

Tristram, I warn you that sooner or later you will get into serious

trouble. You're a sentimentalist. There--go along. And, meanwhile,

I'll let Arabella eat the grass tidy, and that so-called dog shall have

a bone. Good luck to you!"

"I'm awfully obliged," he said solemnly. "Not a chicken bone, please.

They stick in his throat."

"If I followed my conscience, I should give him poison," Mrs. Compton

retorted, with her brows knitted over laughing eyes.

She had, however, no opportunity to carry out her threat. As the

dog-cart turned out of the compound gates the disgruntled Wickie, who

had been lying afar off, panting and disgraced, picked himself up, and,

uttering a hoarse wail of indignation and despair, took to his bandy

legs and rolled after the disappearing vehicle in a miniature storm of

dust.

*CHAPTER III*

*TRISTRAM BECOMES FATHER-CONFESSOR*

So long as the gleaming, unsheltered roadway lasted, Tristram remained

silent. His eyes were swollen with fatigue, and the sun blinded him.

Through a silver shimmer of heat, he could see the undulating plain,

yellow with the harvest, and his knowledge saw beyond that to the river

and the rising jungle land, and the scattered hapless villages where his

enemy awaited him. Cool and beautiful, Gaya lay above them, circling

the hillside, the white walls of the bungalows sparkling amidst the dark

green of the trees like the gems of a diadem. Tristram and his

companion watched it thirstily. As they trotted at last into an avenue

of flowering Mohwa trees, he drew rein and glanced down at the girl

beside him. She was sitting very straight as though in defiance of the

heat, her hands folded in front of her, her lips sternly composed. The

youthful tears were not far off, yet, through a transient break in the

future, he saw her as she would be years hence. And somehow the vision

amused and touched him. It was as though the phenomenon reversed

itself, and a stern-featured, middle-aged woman had grown young before

his eyes.

"You mustn't worry," he said gently. "I don't suppose it's anything

serious. Tell me about it. I don't want to worry her with questions."

"It won't worry her." He saw how her hands trembled as she clasped them

and unclasped them. "She wants to talk--it's terrible--that's why I was

so anxious--I had to find some one who would listen--and--and soothe

her. I really came for Mr. Meredith. She doesn't like him, I'm afraid,

poor mother, but that's because she doesn't understand. He's so awfully

good."

"He's a fine fellow," Tristram agreed.

"And I thought he might help her," she went on, earnestly,--"might give

her strength. Trouble overwhelms her. She resents it. And she has

nothing to fall back on--nothing to console her."

Tristram did not answer immediately. They were going uphill, and he

gave the pony his head, letting him manage the ascent after his own

fashion.

"It takes a lot to console a man when his machinery's out of order," he

said at last. "And one somehow does resent it. And then, I must say,

if I had the toothache, I shouldn't want Mr. Meredith."

She gave a little nervous, unamused laugh.

"You know quite well what I mean, Major Tristram."

"Yes, I do. And I'm wondering if, after all, Meredith isn't the man you

want. He and I both concentrate on humanity, but we do it from

different points of view. I'm the man who looks after the house and sees

that it's hygienic and watertight and all that. Meredith puts in the

furniture and the electric fittings and keeps them polished."

He glanced whimsically at her puzzled face. "I mean just that the soul

isn't my business," he added.

She raised eager, trusting eyes to his.

"I think it is, Major Tristram, I'm sure it is."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I think so too. I believe that the soul

is the body and the body is the soul, and that one can't be healthy or

unhealthy without affecting the other. But that's heresy, isn't it?"

A waxen, beautiful blossom from an overhanging mango-tree fell into her

lap. Mechanically she picked it up and tore it with her restless

fingers.

"It's not what we are taught to believe," she answered.

"No. You see, I'm a Pagan, Miss Boucicault. It's hereditary. My old

mother--she's nearly eighty--she still totters up on to the mountain

tops to say her prayers. As for me--" he gave a contented chuckle--"you

hear that little chap chirping inside my helmet? Well, he's my

consolation for every ache and sorrow I ever had--he and his like, and

the trees and the stars and the flowers--even that mango blossom you're

tearing up. To me they're just so many parts of God."

"Oh!----" She looked at the tattered flower in her lap and brushed it

aside as though it suddenly frightened her. "I don't think that can be

right. I'm sure you're not a Pagan, anyhow, Major. You couldn't

be--and do the things you do."

They came out of the belt of shadow into the broad sunlight, and the

blinding change covered his silence. A company of native infantry came

up from a cross-road and swung past them amidst a cloud of slow-rising

dust. The officers saluted Tristram. For an instant they seemed to

throw off their weary dejection and to become almost gay. But the men

did not lift their eyes. Their beards were white with dust and their

faces set and sullen. They passed on, the beat of their feet sounding

muffled and heavy on the palpitating quiet.

"They look pretty bad," Tristram commented.

"I'm frightened of them," she returned quickly. "Some of them mutinied

last week, and father was nearly shot. I wake up every night and fancy I

hear them firing on us."

"They belong to a regiment that stuck to us through thick and thin in

1857," he answered. "It's not like them to turn against us."

Her lips tightened.

"You can't trust any of them," she said.

By this time they had reached the first large bungalow of the European

quarter. It was at once a sombre, pretentious building, evidently newly

done up, and as they passed, a man on horseback turned out of the

compound. Seeing Anne Boucicault, he saluted at once with a faintly

exaggerated courtesy. The exaggeration matched the ultra-smartness of

his English riding-clothes and the un-English flashiness of his good

looks. Anne Boucicault returned the salutation stiffly, not meeting his

direct glance, which passed on with an unveiled curiosity to Tristram.

The latter urged the pony to a smarter trot as though something had

irritated him.

"That's a stranger, anyhow," he said. "Two months brings changes even

to Gaya. I thought that place was deserted and haunted for all time."

"Mr. Barclay has it now," she answered. "He came six weeks ago. I

believe he trades with the native weavers or something. He's very

rich."

"He doesn't look like an Englishman."

"He's not--not really. An Eurasian. His mother was a native, and his

father----" She broke off. "He makes it a sort of half mystery. He

just hints at things--I don't believe he knows himself. Anyhow, we hate

him and try to avoid him. It's awfully awkward."

"I seemed to know his face," Tristram said, half to himself. He heard

her sigh, and the sigh roused him from his tired search after an elusive

memory. "He doesn't bother you, does he?" he asked.

She shook her head, but he saw her lips tremble with a new agitation.

"Not exactly--only it's all going to be so different. We were like a big

family, weren't we, Major Tristram--all friends, all of the same set,

and now this man has come, and then--you've heard, haven't you--about

this woman, this dancer----"

"Mlle. Fersen, you mean?"

"That's what she calls herself." There was a chilly displeasure in her

tone, which made her seem suddenly much older. "What does she want

here? Why does she come? She can't have anything in common with us.

She may even be a foreigner--vulgar and horrid----"

"I don't think she's like that," he interposed.

She flashed round on him.

"You know her, then?"

"I've seen her--just once," he answered, slowly.

"Is she----" She seemed to struggle with the question. "Is she very

beautiful, Major Tristram?"

"No--I think not--not at all."

"That's worse then." And then quickly, passionately: "Oh, I wish she

wasn't coming! I don't know why the very thought of her frightens me.

It's as though I knew she was going to bring trouble--a sort of

presentiment----"

"You're tired and anxious," he interrupted, and smiled down at her.

"Nothing will happen--or perhaps I'm sanguine because I shan't be there

to witness the upheaval."

"You're going into camp again?"

"Tonight."

"For long?"

"Until I've got things straight."

He happened to see her hands, and how they were tightly interlocked as

though she were holding herself back. But her voice was quiet enough.

"Will you go on like that always, Major Tristram?"

"Until they push me on to the rubbish heap," he answered lightly.

"It must be very, very lonely."

He plunged his hand into his side-pocket and drew out a big bundle of

letters. His blue eyes twinkled.

"You'd better not waste sympathy on me, Miss Boucicault. Look at these.

I picked them up at the station--two by every mail. What do you think

of that? And all from one woman!"

"A woman?" she echoed, stupidly.

"My old mother." He laughed with a boyish satisfaction. "We're the

greatest pals on earth, she and I. A man couldn't be lonely with her in

the background. We've got each other to live for."

"But she's in England. How she must miss you!"

He put the letters slowly back in his pocket.

"Yes. It's like a chronic pain. It hurts, but it weaves itself into

the pattern of one's life. My mother's like that. My father was out

here too, and they were often separated. She accepts it as inevitable."

"But you--your loneliness must be worse, out there in the wilderness."

"It's not a wilderness, it's peopled with all kinds of things--all kinds

of"---- He caught himself up. "And I have friends in all the villages,

and my animals and my work."

"I know your work is wonderful--the noblest work in the world." She

spoke with a grave, youthful wisdom. "But the loneliness must remain

all the same, Major Tristram."

He was silent for a moment, and then shook himself as though freeing

himself from a burden.

"It can't be helped," he said. "No one can share it with me."

"Many people would be proud and glad to share it," she answered. She

held her head high, and there was a fervent simplicity in her low voice

which raised the impulsive words above suspicion. He turned to her with

warm eyes.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't think it's true, and I shan't ever put

it to the test--but it's good hearing."

He turned the pony neatly into the gates of the Boucicaults' bungalow

and drove up the shady avenue to the porch. A syce ran out to meet them

and caught the reins, and a minute later Anne Boucicault had been lifted

gently to the ground. "And we've chattered so much," Tristram remarked

shamefacedly, "that I don't even know your mother's symptoms."

She made no answer, indeed did not seem to have heard him. She had lost

all her vigour, all her faintly self-opinionated eagerness. As they

stood together in the entrance hall she seemed just cowed and broken, a

white, frightened little ghost.

"My mother's in here," she said, scarcely above a whisper. She held the

door open for him, and he went past her into a room so carefully

darkened that for a moment he hesitated blindly on the threshold. Then

a sound guided him. It was the sound of some one crying. Not

passionately, not desperately, but with a terrible monotony. Then one

salient feature detached itself from the shadows--a wicker chair drawn

up by the curtained window, and beside it, huddled together, with her

face buried in her arms, the figure of a woman. She wore some loose,

dark-coloured garment, and was so small and still that she would have

seemed scarcely living, but for the jerking sobs. Tristram checked the

girl's anxious movement and went forward alone. He knelt down by the

piteous heap and put his hand on her arm, and remained thus for a full

minute. He did not speak to her, and she seemed unconscious of his

presence. The sobbing went on unbrokenly. Then he picked her up

quietly and effortlessly, and placed her in the chair, dexterously

slipping a silk cushion behind her head.

"Mrs. Boucicault!" She did not answer. Her eyes were closed. Her

small, white face under the mop of fair hair, fast turning grey, was

puckered like a child's. Her little hands gripped the arms of her

chair. From her place near the door, Anne watched with a frightened

wonder. "Mrs. Boucicault!" Tristram repeated quietly. Her eyes opened

then. They were tearless and very bright. She stared straight ahead,

her under-lip between her white teeth, and began to rock herself

backwards and forwards. She was still sobbing. Tristram knelt again and

took one of her hands and held it between his own. She looked down

then--first at her hand, as though it puzzled her, and then at him.

Suddenly, violently, she freed herself and tore open the heavily

embroidered kimono. Her shoulders were bare. On the right shoulder was

a black swollen stain bigger than a man's hand.

"Look!" she said.

Anne Boucicault caught her breath with a vague, vicarious shame. She

saw that Tristram had moved very slightly. His square jaws looked ugly

against the dim light of the window.

"Get hot water and bandages," he commanded. "Linen will do--and

ointment--anything greasy." As she slipped from the room he drew the

kimono gently over the poor lacerated shoulder. "You've had a nasty

accident, Mrs. Boucicault," he said, levelly.

"It was no accident." Her sobs had stopped. Her voice sounded like the

rasp of steel against steel. "_He_ did it--my husband. It's not the

first time, Major Tristram. It won't be the last. He'll kill me--and

he'll kill her." She nodded towards the door. The words poured from

her as though released from a long restraint, but she was coldly,

violently coherent. "Yes--he'll kill her--slowly, by inches. He'll

break her. She'll go under fast. She's not like me--I'm wiry--she's

hard, but she'll snap. For all her prayers and her church and her God,

she'll go under." Something contemptuous and angry crept into her face.

"Anne's cowed already. And it's not only us. His men--they tried to

shoot him. Did you hear?"

He nodded.

"Yes."

Her eyes blazed.

"Oh, I wish to God they'd done it!" she burst out, from between clenched

teeth. "Oh, why didn't they? He's goaded them enough. One of these

days they'll murder us all for his sake. He's a devil. He's made life

a hell. He likes to make suffering. He likes to see us wince. Oh, if

he were only dead!" Suddenly the tense mask of hatred broke up into

piteous lines of helpless misery. Two great tears rolled unheeded down

her white cheeks. "Anne talked about bearing our cross, and prayer, and

God's will," she went on chokingly. "But I want to be happy, Major

Tristram, I want to be happy."

"You have an absolute right to happiness," he answered. "You've got to

be happy, Mrs. Boucicault. I'm going to see to it."

She dropped back wearily among her cushions. Her grey eyes, now pale

and faded-looking, rested on his face with a childish questioning.

"You talk as though--as though you could."

"Well, I can do something--I promise you. Close your eyes."

She closed them at once, and he took his handkerchief and brushed the

tears from her cheeks. Then he resumed his kneeling position, her hand

in his, soothing it much as he had soothed the frightened, broken-winged

bird. Once she sighed deeply, as if released from some stifling weight,

and thereafter her breathing sounded quiet and regular. By the time Anne

Boucicault returned, her mother had dropped into a heavy sleep.

Major Tristram got up noiselessly, and motioned the girl to follow him.

His movements were curiously light and noiseless, and brought no shadow

of change on the sleeper's face.

"It's better that she should sleep," he said quietly. "I shall come in

again tonight before I leave. I doubt if she wakes before then."

They went out together. On the mat the ubiquitous Wickie lay extended

in a state of dusty misery. He rolled over as Tristram appeared,

displaying much humility and a blood-stained paw. Tristram picked him

up and hugged him. "You're not a dog--you're an ass, Wickie," he

declared. "And I'll wager you consider yourself a martyr into the

bargain, you assassin of innocent bulbuls. What do you suppose I'm

going to do with you--carry you, I suppose?" He turned a wry, laughing

face to his companion.

"Well, I'll be off now, anyhow," he said. "You'll see me tonight.

Good-bye till then--and don't worry her or yourself."

She took his extended hand.

"Thank you. I thought it would be so terrible--for any one to know how

things are with us. I haven't minded you a bit."

"I'm awfully glad."

He took up his impromptu bird's-nest from its place of safety in an

empty fern-pot. The contents chirped defiance and terror, and Tristram

looked up smiling. He saw then that Anne Boucicault's eyes were fixed

on something beyond him, and that they were wide and stupid-looking with

dread. He turned. A man stood in the sunlit verandah. Against the

golden background he bulked huge and threatening, his features and

whatever expression they bore blotted out by shadow. The switch which

he carried beat an irritable tattoo against his riding-boots.

Tristram nodded a greeting.

"Good evening, Colonel."

"Good evening, Major." He bowed satirically and crossed the threshold.

"This is a pleasant surprise. I understood you were out camping."

"I have been for the last two months. I am off again tonight."

"Then my daughter and I are indeed fortunate to catch this glimpse of

you." He came farther into the shade, half turning to fling his helmet

and whip on to a table. The light fell on his profile, revealing the

livid skin, the brutal line of the jaw. "To what are we indebted,

Major?"

"I came professionally," Tristram answered.

"On Anne's behalf, I suppose?"

"No, for Mrs. Boucicault." He scrutinized the elder man deliberately.

"Perhaps I could do something for you, Colonel. You're not looking

well. You ought to take a year's leave."

Colonel Boucicault allowed a moment to elapse before he answered. He

had the tensely vicious look of a hard drinker who is never drunk, and

whose jangling nerves are always writhing under restraint. Finally, he

seemed to take a stronger hold over himself. He laughed out, shortly.

"Thanks, I'm very well. I'll last the regiment another year or two--to

its infinite satisfaction, no doubt. As to Mrs. Boucicault, your visit

was kind but unnecessary. There's nothing wrong in that quarter but

feminine hysteria."

"I don't think so," Tristram returned. He had coloured slowly to the

roots of his ruddy hair, but his voice was even quieter. "I take a

serious view of the case. I have ordered Mrs. Boucicault an immediate

return to England."

There was another break. The two men eyed each other squarely.

"That is an absurd proposition which I cannot sanction," Boucicault said

in the same tone of violent self-restraint.

"I'm afraid you'll have to, Colonel."

The antagonism, whose note had sounded even in their greeting of each

other, now rang out clearly. Boucicault's big hands twitched at his

sides.

"Surely, Major, that is scarcely fitting language----" he began.

"I don't care a damn for what's fitting," Tristram broke in. "Mrs.

Boucicault's going to England with Anne. If she doesn't, I'll have you

hounded out of the army even if I get hounded out myself in the doing of

it. That's my bargain."

"By God, Major----" Boucicault took a step nearer.

By reason of his heavy build, he seemed to tower over the younger man.

His eyes were bloodshot in their inflamed rims; his whole body quivered.

"You'd better get out of here," he stammered thickly. "And take my

advice--keep clear of this place--keep out of my way."

"Thanks." Tristram tucked Wickie more securely under one arm. "I'll be

round this evening," he added.

He ignored the threatening gesture, and went leisurely down the steps

and along the drive. At the gates he stopped, drawing his breath with a

quick, deep relief.

Across the roadway, the stems of the trees stood out black and straight

as the pillars of a great temple, whose red-gold lamp had been lowered

from the dome and now sank swiftly into an extinguishing pool of shadow.

A breeze rustled coolly overhead, brushing away the sweet, heavy incense

of many flowers and bringing the first warning of nightfall. A belated

finch fluttered amidst the dense foliage, and then all was still again.

Tristram remained motionless, apparently plunged in his own thoughts,

for he started when a hand touched his arm and turned almost angrily.

Anne Boucicault stood beside him. She was breathless, her lips were

parted, and the wind had blown the dark, curly hair from her white

forehead, adding impulse and eagerness to her staid girlishness.

"I had to come," she panted, "to--to thank you. And then--you mustn't

keep your promise. You mustn't come--it isn't safe----"

He shook his head. His eyes, after the first glance, had gone back to

the fading light.

"I shouldn't hurt your father," he said, gravely.

"But you----!" she exclaimed. "No one knows what he might do to you."

"I don't think that matters," he returned, still in the same rather

absent tone. "Anyway, if he's mad, he's not a fool. You mustn't

worry."

She lingered. Her hand rested tremblingly on his arm.

"And I want to thank you, Major Tristram. You've helped poor

mother--and I was so proud. No one's ever faced him like that. I

wish----" She faltered. "If we could only do something for you----"

He was silent for a moment, then, as though her words only reached him

gradually, he turned with a quick smile.

"You can. Take Wickie in as a boarder, will you? He's lame, and my

hands are full already. I couldn't take him with me. Ayeshi could

fetch him in a week or two. Would you mind?"

"I'd love to have him." She took the unwieldy, protesting mongrel, and

held him rather clumsily in her arms. "And your little bird?" she asked.

"No, he'll want special medical treatment. Thanks awfully, all the

same." He bent and patted Wickie's black snout with an apologetic

gentleness. "Don't fret your heart out, old chap. It's your own

fault--and Ayeshi shall come for you, upon my honour he shall."

"I'll take care of him," Anne said.

"I know you will."

"Good-bye, Major Tristram." The sunlight was in her eyes, and they were

very bright. The colour in her cheeks deepened. "And God bless you,"

she added, timidly but very seriously.

He smiled down at her.

"And you and Wickie and everybody," he said. "I'm sure He does."

He strode off, and at the bend of the road turned and waved.

But long after he had disappeared, she stood there gazing into the dusk,

the unhappy Wickie pressed tightly against her breast.

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE INTERLOPERS*

Rajah Rasaldu was wonderfully, if not impressively, European. He wore a

frock-coat and grey trousers, English in intention, French in execution.

They were almost too perfect. The native, brightly hued turban, an

unwilling concession, as he admitted, to local prejudice, came as a

rather startling finale, though it suited him better than his

Europeanism. He was a short, unmuscular little man, built in circles

rather than in straight lines, and a determined course of Parisian

good-living had added seriously to a natural tendency to embonpoint.

His manner, even in sitting still, was restless and fussy. He had, in

fact, neither the inscrutable dignity of the native nor the self-assured

ease of the race he aped.

"When I look at you, Mademoiselle," he was saying, earnestly, "I forget

that I am in this dreadful country, and I imagine myself back to London.

I see myself in the darkened box, and you in all the brightness. I hear

the music and the roar of applause. I feel at home--almost happy." He

stared down at his round, soft hands as though he were rather pleased

with their severe lack of adornment, and sighed. The woman he addressed

did not look at him. She was watching the little groups of white-clad

figures dotted about the garden, with her head turned slightly away from

him. Next her, Mary Compton and the Judge's wife were talking with the

lazy earnestness engendered by tea and the cool shade of a flowering

mango.

"But this is your country," Sigrid Fersen said. "You are surely

happiest here."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I was born here. The Government has put me in a position of trust, and

it is my duty to be at my post from time to time. But my heart is with

you--with the West and Western civilization. And of all that,

Mademoiselle, you are the personification."

She laughed a little, as though secretly amused.

"Tell me your impressions of Paris, Rajah," she said.

He told her. From time to time his brown, dissipated eyes shot

irritable glances at the figure seated immediately behind his hostess.

It was perhaps a somewhat startling figure, and though Gaya approved of

companions and chaperons, and had indeed heaved a sigh of relief over

Mrs. Smithers's existence, it had none the less been considerably

startled by her personality. She was well past middle age, and, in

spite of the considerable heat, was dressed severely in black grenadine,

and wore a mob-cap on a remarkably fine head of white hair, which she

occasionally patted with a nervous hand. If it is true all human beings

bear a resemblance to some animal, then Mrs. Smithers might easily have

been associated with a bull-dog of exceedingly determined character.

Her face was settled in wrinkles of challenging tenacity, but she never

moved and never changed her expression. She sat there, bolt upright,

and only her roving eyes betrayed the fact that she was alive. They

expressed also the bitterest and most annihilating disapproval of

everything existent.

Mrs. Compton accepted her third cup of tea from an engagingly youthful

subaltern and went on talking.

"Of course he's mad," she was saying. "He hates Tristram worse than any

one living, which is saying a lot. They had an awful row over Mrs.

Boucicault just before Tristram went away, and now Boucicault is taking

his turn. He refuses to forward Tristram's appeal for help--says the

whole thing's a scare, and that Tristram is simply fussing for his own

glorification. But it isn't true. Ayeshi came to my husband last night

and told him. It's cholera--oh, my dear Susan, don't jump like that!

Heerut's fifteen miles away, and we've the river between us, and Gaya's

healthy when everything else is riddled. Besides, Tristram has got the

thing in hand. He hasn't slept for four days. Ayeshi said he didn't

look human. Some of the natives went crazy with fright and got out of

hand. But Tristram managed them--single-handed, my dear, and with not

so much as a revolver. Ayeshi talked about him as though he were the

tenth Avatar, or whatever they call it. Of course, he'll do that sort

of thing once too often. _C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la

guerre_. But I love that man. I tell Archie once a day at least, and

he's getting quite tired about it----"

"Of whom are you talking, Mrs. Compton?"

Mrs. Compton started, and the Rajah, who had been expatiating on French

genius as revealed in the _Bal du Moulin Rouge_, went on for a minute,

carried forward by his own momentum. Then he stopped and dropped into a

silence, which would have been sulky in any one less anxious to appear

civilized. As for Mrs. Compton, the question had come with such

self-assured, if quiet authority, that she felt certain that, as a woman

on her own ground, she ought to take offence. In fact, all Gaya, as

represented in the old dak-bungalow's garden, was in much the same

position. Without performing the high kick at the club dinner or

otherwise living up to the conventional reputation of her class, the

newcomer had sailed serenely across all their unwritten laws, and not

only had Gaya not been outraged, but it had been secretly delighted.

And it was ashamed of itself for being delighted. Mrs. Compton was

ashamed of herself--ashamed that she, the untamable spirit of the

station who had insulted Colonel Boucicault to his face should sit there

and meet this woman with a smile of propitiating amiability.

"Major Tristram," she said. "He belongs to the Medical Service. You

haven't met him yet, and I don't suppose any of us will see him for some

time. He's fighting the cholera in one of the native villages."

Sigrid Fersen nodded thoughtfully. Then she got up.

"I heard you say just now that you were interested in old china," she

said, abruptly. "I have a piece in the drawing-room which I should like

you to see. Will you come?"

"I should be delighted----"

"Your guests, Mademoiselle," Rasaldu murmured. But his protest passed

unheeded, and Mrs. Compton got up and left the Judge's wife without a

word of apology. Mrs. Smithers had risen with equal promptitude and

brought up the rear.

They crossed the garden to the bungalow, and the little parties grouped

lazily in the vicinity of the tea-tables became silent, and remained

silent until Sigrid Fersen had disappeared. Then they went on talking.

Very few of them realized that they had ever stopped, much less that

they had been staring with the naive directness of children. They

certainly made no comment. Only Jim Radcliffe, the newly joined

subaltern, who had the inexhaustible restlessness of a fox-terrier

puppy, became quiet to the point of thoughtfulness.

"By Jove, did you see her walk?" he said to Mrs. Brabazone. But the

latter made no reply, being in a state of dudgeon and not inclined to

appreciation.

Meantime, Mary Compton had become aware of a profound and very

mysterious change in her own psychology. As she crossed the threshold of

the darkened drawing-room she perceived that every earnest, painstaking

effort of hers to make the place habitable and presentable had suffered

a ruthless upheaval. The hours of patient questioning which she had

spent on the to-be or not-to-be of the curtain bows had been so many

hours wasted. Yet her fiery Celtic susceptibilities remained unruffled.

She admitted at once that the changes were improvements,--small but

effective strokes of genius. Moreover, various new items had been

introduced--a piano procured from heaven alone knew where, a few rich

embroideries, a vase or two, and a pale-tinted Persian rug. She was

busy cataloguing these items, when her quick eyes encountered Mrs.

Smithers. Mrs. Smithers had seated herself promptly on the chair nearest

the door, and assumed her former attitude of unbending severity and

disapproval. Her appearance somehow made a further reduction in Mrs.

Compton's forces of self-assurance, and when her hostess, who had been

busy with the contents of a carved chest, came back to her, she was

overpowered by an unusual sense of almost fatuous helplessness.

Whatever this small woman meant to do, she would do. And therewith the

fate of Gaya seemed sealed.

"There--you recognize it, of course."

Mrs. Compton forgot Gaya and her own lost prestige. In the ten years of

her married life, there was one passion for which she and the

easy-going, hard-working Archie had scraped and saved. It was a passion

which was one day to find a fitting background in some English home, a

place created almost daily afresh in their minds but always with the

abiding features of spacious lawns and an orchard and stables, and

within doors oak cupboards guarding the treasures of the hard years.

But with all their savings and searchings, they had never possessed

anything like this.

"It's Sevres--of course--how beautiful! I'm almost afraid to touch it."

"Don't be. It's yours."

"Mine!" Mary Compton gasped--whether audibly or not, she did not know.

She felt that there was fresh cause for offence coming and that she had

no adequate forces with which to meet it. "But, of course not----"

"I bought it for you."

Mrs. Compton nearly regained her usual briskness.

"That's nonsense. We haven't known each other a week. And you must

have bought that in Europe."

"Yes--I did, years ago. But I bought it for you, all the same. I

bought it for some one who would look at it and touch it as you did.

And besides, I want you to have something of mine--I am selfish enough

to wish to be remembered by those who have been kind to me--as you have

been. It was the Rajah's invitation which brought me to Gaya, but only

a woman could have welcomed me. Any one in my position makes enemies

automatically, and without you I should have had to face a whole army of

prejudices. But you paved the way--you made it possible to invite all

these people without offending them--and this in spite of the fact that

you thought you were probably introducing a firebrand." She laughed in

her curious, reflective way. "And then it was your hands prepared this

beautiful home for me," she added.

Mrs. Compton crimsoned and swallowed the delicate morsel of brazen

flattery with a ridiculous pleasure. She made a last effort, however,

to retire to her first position of friendly reserve.

"Of course, we did what we could," she said. "Gaya is rather proud of

its hospitality. We wanted you to take back a good impression,

Mademoiselle----"

A quick gesture interrupted her.

"I'm not 'mademoiselle.' I'm English. My mother was a Swede, and I

took her maiden name because--there never has been a great English

dancer, and in England what hasn't been can't be. It's just one of the

Rajah's foibles to give everything a Gallic touch. But I'm just Miss

Fersen--or Sigrid if you like."

The Celtic temperament works both ways. The only certain feature is its

uncertainty. Mrs. Compton abandoned her offensive-defensive and with

great dexterity managed to cling to the Sevres vase and kiss the giver

on both cheeks without disaster.

"I'd like it to be Sigrid," she said warmly. "And my name's Mary--and

I'm going to take the Sevres because I want it badly, and because I like

you and I shan't mind feeling horribly grateful. And I hope you'll make

me your master of ceremonies, and our bungalow your headquarters. You

will, won't you?"

She thrilled under the touch of the cool, small hand on hers.

"Yes, I promise you. It's what I wanted. I shall need a friend. A

great many people will hate me--men and women. I have seen it in the

eyes of one woman already. And, besides that I want to get to know real

human beings. All my life I have lived for and in the one thing.

People have been shadows to me. Now I need them. But they must be

real--good, honest flesh and blood. Not puppets." She sat down on the

big divan drawn up against the wall and patted the seat beside her.

"Tell me about this Major Tristram," she said.

And Mrs. Compton, whose rules of etiquette were Gaya's social law, sat

down and for half an hour talked about Major Tristram, whilst Sigrid

Fersen's guests wandered unshepherded about her garden.

At the end of the half-hour Mrs. Compton found her husband near the

gates, disconsolate and alone, guarding the rather shabby little

turn-out which they called a dog-cart. He was in uniform, and had

evidently been at some pains to escape notice.

"You said six o'clock and it's half-past," he commented, gloomily. "I

shall be confoundedly late. What on earth have you been doing? And

what's that you've got under your arm?"

She chuckled to herself.

"Can't you recognize Sevres when you see it?"

"By George--what a piece!" His eyes opened with a hungry appreciation.

Then he shook his head at her. "My dear girl, put it back! I knew we

should come to this sooner or later--all collectors do. Put it back

before it's missed. Think of the scandal. And a newcomer, too!"

She broke into a half-pleased, half-ashamed laugh and wrapped the

precious trophy in the protecting folds of a rug.

"She gave it me--yes, she did. And she calls me Mary, and I call her

Sigrid, and we've kissed each other, and I've given her the run of our

bungalow." She climbed up into the driver's seat and took the reins.

"You know how I _hate_ those sort of sudden familiarities, Archie. But

I've no explanation. Have you?"

"Not one."

"She isn't beautiful. I'm better-looking myself."

"A dozen times, old girl."

She smiled down upon him with a rather absent-minded graciousness.

"I believe she's got electric wires instead of nerves and sinews," she

said reflectively. "I felt them in her hand. It was like putting one's

fingers into a steel glove covered with velvet. What bosh I'm talking.

I believe I'm hypnotized. I shall go round and look up poor Anne and

restore my self-respect. Mr. Meredith told me she looked as though she

was breaking her heart over something. Of course, it's that brute! Why

aren't you men plucky enough to shoot him----?"

"My dear girl----"

His wife cut short his protest by turning her pony out of the gates and

up the broad avenue which led from the outlying dak-bungalow to Gaya

proper. The steep hill, her new possession, and various rather confused

speculations accounted for the fact that her pony promptly dropped to a

walk and was allowed to proceed in a leisurely fashion, which culminated

in an abrupt halt. Mrs. Compton awoke then. She felt vaguely annoyed

with herself, and her annoyance changed to something like consternation

when she perceived that the stoppage was not attributable either to the

pony's disinclination or her own day-dreaming. A man stood at the

animal's head and now came up to the step, his long, brown hand lifted

to his topee in greeting.

"I called to you, Mrs. Compton," he said, "but you didn't hear me, and I

took the liberty of stopping you. I hope I'm forgiven."

She stared down at him. Her confusion of warm disjointed musings

chilled instantly to her usual trenchant matter-of-factness.

"If you wanted to speak to me, Mr. Barclay----" she began.

"I know--I might have called formally. But I ran the risk either of

being refused or landing into a crowd of people. I wanted to see you

alone." He waited a moment. His hand rested firmly on the side of the

cart, and she could not have driven on without going over him. She saw

also the dogged set of his dark face and waited with an angry

resignation. "You've just come from Mademoiselle Fersen's At Home,

haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I used to know her," he said, "that is to say, I was introduced at some

big reception in England. She wouldn't remember me. That was in my

undergrad days. I was at Balliol, you know."

Mrs. Compton's fine lips twitched satirically. She was not feeling

charitable, and this man was offering her his credentials in a way that

incited derision. He must have seen her expression, for his brown eyes,

with their blue-tinted whites, never left her face. "I want you to do

me a favour," he burst out. "I want you to introduce me again, Mrs.

Compton."

Her smile faded. She was thoroughly angry, but some other less

definable emotion confused her indignation to the point of

ineffectuality.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Barclay, but I really haven't the right or the power to

introduce any one to Miss Fersen without her permission."

"I know that--at least, your friends and acquaintances would be

introduced naturally----" He broke off. The nostrils of his fine,

aquiline nose distended, his whole face, handsome in line and profoundly

brooding in its fundamental expression, was tense and strained-looking.

He seemed like a man doggedly setting himself to a hated task. "May I be

straightforward with you, Mrs. Compton?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"I know you are anxious to drive on--over me even," he said, with a

flash from a smothered bitterness. "But you are the only person I feel

I can speak to, and I mayn't get you alone again. Look here, Mrs.

Compton, I'm an Englishman. My father was English--I was educated at an

English University--I hold an English degree. I've got any amount of

money. It seems to me I've got the right to demand--well, decent

civility. So far--I've been here two months--I've been out of things.

Of course, I don't belong to the military lot, and I haven't a

government appointment--but it seems to me-out here in an alien

country--we English ought to hold together----" He was choking and

breaking over his words like a man breathless with running, the fatal

mincing accent betraying itself in his gathering excitement, and

instinctively Mrs. Compton looked away from him. He was trembling, and

somehow the sight filled her with an odd pity almost stronger than her

repugnance.

"What do you want me to do, Mr. Barclay?" she asked.

"After all--it's not much. If your husband would put me up for the Polo

Club--I'm a good player, and I've got some of the finest ponies in

India. Gaya could beat any team you like with my ponies. Your

husband's popular--he could easily do it--if he wanted to----"

"I couldn't ask him," she interrupted hurriedly. "It's not my business.

I hate backstair influence with husbands." She took refuge in a

cowardly compromise. "You ought to speak to Captain Compton yourself."

He laughed shortly.

"That means you won't," he broke out suddenly and violently. "It's the

touch of the tar brush that's worrying you, isn't it? Yet you don't

mind kowtowing to a full-blooded native. You'll have that dissipated

degenerate Rasaldu at all your feasts, though he's not even accepted by

his own people. His grandfather was a village cow-herd, and the

Government set his people up in the place of the hereditary heirs

because they were likely to be more tractable. You know all that, and

yet you'd lick his boots, whilst I, with your own blood in my veins----"

He caught himself up, smoothing his working features with a desperate

effort. "Look here, Mrs. Compton, I want to do the right thing. I want

to serve my country loyally. But I've got to have a country--I've got to

belong somewhere. Otherwise----"

She tightened the reins, moving her pony's head round so that she could

go forward without driving over him.

"I'm sorry," she said, coldly. "I have no prejudices myself, but I also

have no right to interfere with the prejudices of other people. You

must make your own way. Please let me pass----"

The pony started under the cut of her whip, and Barclay instantly jumped

out of danger. He stood then in the middle of the dusty road, his hands

clenched at his side, his cheeks wet. He was crying with the helpless

passion of a child. Meanwhile, the swift Indian nightfall had risen up

out of the plain to Gaya's hilltops pouring its shadow army into the

dak-bungalow's neglected garden, veiling its rambling decay with an

unfathomable, shapeless beauty.

The Rajah had been the last to leave, lingering clumsily and

obsequiously to the limits of the law, but now even he had gone, and in

the place of the voices and subdued laughter there was nothing but a

flutter of a night-bird among the trees, the hushed, mysterious

rustlings and whisperings of darkness.

Sigrid Fersen had drawn her chair near to the verandah. A lamp burnt

behind her, and she was reading intently in some old vellum-bound book.

Mrs. Smithers sat opposite her, knitting a sock, which even now that the

day's heat was over had a curiously smothering and woolly appearance.

From time to time her faded, truculent blue eyes glanced across to the

figure beneath the light, and their habitual expression of grim

disapproval yielded to a wistful anxiety.

For half an hour there had been no sound but the turning over of the

thick leaves and the click of the knitting-needles. Now Sigrid Fersen

touched the soft-voiced silver bell beside her. The curtains at the far

end of the room parted almost immediately in answer.

"Tell the syce to have the best horse in the stable saddled by

daybreak," she said. "I am riding to Heerut. I shall need a guide."

There was a moment's perceptible hesitation. The ayah's roe-eyes were

large with trouble.

"Mem-Sahib, there is much sickness in Heerut."

"I know."

"It may be, Mem-Sahib, that no guide will dare----"

"He need not accompany me farther than the river. See to it."

"It shall be done, Mem-Sahib."

The curtains fell noiselessly in their place. Mrs. Smithers dropped her

knitting-needles.

"Oh, lawks a-mercy!" she said. "Lawks a-mercy!"

It was as though some solemn old Egyptian sphinx had broken into broad

Cockney, and, having given vent to its feelings, relapsed into the

historic pose of unfathomable and supercilious meditation. Sigrid

Fersen closed her book. She rested her head on its smooth yellow surface

with a curious tenderness.

"You mustn't be unhappy, Smithy, and you mustn't try to prevent me. One

way or the other, my days are numbered, and each one of them has to be

an episode, something definite and new, something to take with me or to

look back on. Afterwards----" Her voice lifted from its veiled

softness and rang clearer. "We have travelled a long, long way, Smithy,

and now we are almost at the end. You have seen it all with your wise

old eyes, perhaps better than I have, and you know what life is. What

shall it be, Smithy?"

The old woman clasped her knotted hands together and rocked herself

slowly backwards and forwards.

"I don't know--I don't know. It's just a nightmare. I wake up sometimes

o' nights and ask myself if I've gone clean mad, or what we're doing

here in this awful heathen country--you, the greatest of 'em all,

hobnobbing with ninnies wot don't know Taglioni from Queen Elizabeth,

and me trying to be a lady by dint of keeping my mouth shut like a

mouse-trap--me, that stood and waited for you night after night and

'dressed' you quicker than the smartest of them--lawks a-mercy, wot am I

doing here?"

Sigrid Fersen got up slowly, putting her book on the table, and came and

stood at her companion's side. She caressed the grenadine-clad shoulder

lightly, affectionately. "You're here because I am, and because you've

stuck to me through everything. You can't help sticking to me any more

than I can help wanting you somewhere in the background. And I'm here

because of this"--she laid her hand on her left side--"and this----"

She opened a drawer in the table, and, taking out a little shiny-backed

note-book, dropped it into the old woman's lap. "Open it. Now take the

bottom figure on the right-hand column from the bottom figure on the

left. What does it leave?"

Mrs. Smithers coughed apologetically.

"I never was a hand at figures, Sigrid."

"Never mind. Take your time."

"I don't know rightly--it looks to me like a thousand."

"That must be about right. Well, that's what we've got. No more. What

would you have me do--teach dancing to loutish girls in some stuffy

English suburb? No, Smithy. You wouldn't. In my art there is no one

greater than I--there never has been--and though I want to live I

mustn't burn out like some poor candle. I must be a splendid rocket,

lighting up all the country, and most splendid of all at the last. Then

darkness."

The old woman put up her hand blindly.

"Oh, my dear, my dear----"

Sigrid Fersen seemed to have forgotten her.

"'To die in beauty.' That's Ibsen. It's the most wonderful thought in

the world. It's the only prayer I know. Not squalidly, not in misery

and decay and ugliness, but in beauty. That is the goal of life."

"I don't understand, Sigrid. And I can't believe it all. I can't.

Never to wait for you in the wings--never to hear men shout for you--and

see the women crying for love of you. Never to hear you silence them

all so that they don't even seem to breathe. Lawks a-mercy, when I

think of that there waltz--Chopin, wasn't it--the tune runs in my head

now--I can see the faces in the front row, white as death, Sigrid, as

though they had seen----"

Her voice cracked. Sigrid Fersen turned away from her.

"No--never again--or perhaps once more--just once----"

She went out on to the verandah and stood there motionless, her face

lifted to the darkness.

*CHAPTER V*

*A VISION OF THE BACKWATER*

The Dakktar Sahib stepped carefully over the body of Ayeshi, who lay

asleep inside the doorway, and went down the centre of the street. The

village was silent and seemingly deserted. Even the grain-dealer,

Lalloo by name, not unknown as a money-lender with Eastern ideas on

interest--had deserted his wooden booth, and the lean dogs which were

wont to nose hungrily in the gutters had gone elsewhere for their

hunting-ground. The gutters themselves were clean; there was no cattle

to wander haplessly in and out of the open doorways; the half-naked

babies were hidden and silent. And in all this silence and garnished

peace there was something ominous and dreadful. A mighty scavenger had

passed through the village and swept it clear of refuse and misery and

sickness and life itself. Heerut lay under the burning midday sun like

a body awaiting burial, wrapped in the orderliness of death, silent,

colourless, for all its piteous poverty, majestic.

Tristram's footsteps rang out loudly in the stillness. He alone was

alive and bore the agony and stress of life stamped on his body. He was

ugly with the ugliness of a soldier returning from the battle-field.

His clothes were dirty. He reeled drunkenly, his eyes were bloodshot

and swollen in their deep sockets, and a month's growth of reddish beard

covered his long chin. He might have passed for a spectre of Death

itself, stalking through the place of its visitation.

He reached the village cross-roads. The pointed leaves of the

council-tree hung limply, their soft mysterious voices hushed.

Underneath, the earth was scarred and burnt by the bonfires around which

the village elders clustered at nightfall, listening to the tales from

the great past. There had been no bonfire for many nights, and the

elders had gone their ways.

Tristram went on, out of the village, across the ancient

half-obliterated path of Auspiciousness, through the coarse jungle grass

to the river. It flowed broad and swift, swirling against its muddy,

artificial barrier with sullen impatience, its farther bank lost in the

blaze and shimmer of heat. Tristram went on, past the temple whose

battered walls glowed warm and golden in the sunlight, to the clump of

trees beyond. He entered their shade at a stumbling run like a man

seeking refuge from pursuers, and burst through the tangled undergrowth

with the whole weight of his body.

Here, beneath the branches of the stately Mohwa trees, the Ganges had

built herself a backwater. Her waters, grey still with the snows of her

mountain mother, had turned from their stern course and become clear as

crystal and still as the surface of a mirror. They reflected softly the

flaming green of the overhanging foliage and the red and gold of the

strange flowers growing on their banks. A lotus-flower floated like a

fairy palace in a patch of subdued sunshine, its pale petals half open

and delicately tipped with pink as though the light had awakened them

from their white sleep to life. Beneath, in the shining, deceptive

depths was a world of mystery, forests of twining, sinuous growths, the

monster blossoms swaying in the under-current.

Tristram dropped down on his knees at the water's edge and then rolled

over with his face hidden on his arm. He lay so still that a golden

lizard flashed out from the long grass and lingered almost at his elbow

and a water-hen gliding down on to the breast of the water preened

herself in complacent security.

The patch of sunlight moved on. It left the lotus-flower in an emerald

shadow, and rested like a bright, watchful eye on a patch of flaming

poppies on the farther bank. The silence deepened. Even the gentle

parting of the undergrowth behind the spot where Tristram slept brought

no sound. With a noiseless strength the lean hands of Vahana, the

Sadhu, pressed back the opposing branches. He came forward so slowly,

so stealthily, that the foliage seemed rather to thin imperceptibly

before him like a green mist, leaving him at last unveiled on the fringe

of the clearing. Even then it was as though he had been there always,

not a man, not even living, but the dead twisted stump of some

tempest-riven tree.

But the water-hen heard and saw him and rose with a whirr of wings. The

lizard flashed back into his hiding-place.

Tristram did not stir. The emaciated, half-naked body glided towards

him and bent over him. For a long minute Vahana remained thus,

scrutinizing the half-hidden face of the sleeper, then he stood upright,

tossing the hair from his wild eyes, his long, fleshless arms raised

high above his head, with a gesture that was as a salute to some

oncoming, resistless destiny. Then, in an instant, he seemed to

shrivel, his arm sank, and with one swift glance about him he turned and

vanished among the trees.

Tristram awoke suddenly, but not completely. He rested on his elbow,

gazing at the blur of colour before him with heavy eyes, then drew

himself up and, with the clumsiness of a drunken man, began to undress.

Presently he slipped into the quiet water; the circles widened about

him, and the lotus-flower rocked on the breast of the strange upheaval,

but after that the intruder scarcely moved. He became as one of the

giant weeds growing amidst the stones, upborne by the water, himself

inert and quiescent. His head was thrown slightly back and his eyes had

closed again.

Half an hour later, when he scrambled back on to the bank, the agony of

exhaustion had been washed from him. He held himself upright to the air

and sun, his body shining white and splendid against the background of

foliage, the joy of life in every muscle, in every firm and graceful

line. Then, with a sigh of unutterable content, he began to dress

leisurely, retrieved a battered cigarette case and a box of matches and

crouched down, tailor fashion, amidst the grasses. For a time he smoked

peacefully, watching the light changing on the water and the swift

moving life that hid in the shallows and darted out between the stones

and swaying weeds. The lizard, tempted by his quiet and perhaps some

luscious prospect of supper, wriggled out and took grave stock of him,

and he stared back as motionless and absorbed, until the forgotten

cigarette burnt him, when he swore and the lizard vanished like a tiny

golden streak into its fastness. The man laughed to himself and dropped

back upon his elbow. A smile still lingered about his mouth, but his

eyes under the big square brows had forgotten their amusement. They

were fixed dreamily ahead, and what they saw smoothed out the last lines

of tension from his features, and lent them a look of youth and

tenderness. And presently he dropped back, and, with his hands clasped

behind his head, stared up into the shadowing green, as though whatever

dream he conjured up had taken refuge there.