"I want it. Hush, don't make a fuss. You shall have it back, I promise
you. Heavens--what a child----!"
She was crying now convulsively. He put his arms round her and pressed
her closer with an impatient tenderness.
"It was all I had of you," she sobbed. "It was our luck--a sort of
link--now it's gone----"
"--into my pocket," he retorted, good-humouredly, "and in a week or two
it'll be back on your wrist. I'll put it there if I have to come all
the way to Calcutta. Hush, for God's sake; don't cry like that----"
She became suddenly very quiet. Instinctively she knew that he was
trying to listen to something beyond her sobbing, and she too listened,
intently, with the alertness of a frightened animal.
"Jim--what is it----?"
He freed himself deliberately from her arms.
"It's down at the dak-bungalow. Some one playing. It's a long way off.
The wind must be in the east----"
"The dak-bungalow? Who lives there?"
"Sigrid Fersen----"
"A woman. Jim, do you know her?"
He got up. It was as though she no longer existed for him. The D minor
valse came down to them on the breath of the night-breeze--maddening and
exhilarating--a song of life at its full tide.
"Yes--I--I know her," he said.
"Jim, where are you going?"
He turned on her, thrusting aside her clinging hands with a cold
violence.
"Stay there!" he said. "Don't let any one see you. Stay there----!"
He pushed past her and went down the verandah steps. It was as though he
had thrust a dog out of his path. She called to him, but he did not
hear her--a minute later, he had vanished into the shadow of the trees.
*CHAPTER X*
*AN ENCOUNTER*
Ayeshi, with his face buried in his arms, had neither seen nor heard,
and it was Mrs. Smithers who stepped challengingly into the man's path.
Her old heart beat terrifyingly, but she held herself with a very dour
and acrimonious determination.
"Of all the impertinence!" she hissed at him. "Go away with you, you
nasty, maraudering heathen----"
But it was then that Sigrid saw him, and the D minor valse broke off
sharply, leaving a flat and drear silence, as though some splendid,
glowing spirit had fallen lifeless. She herself had risen and stood with
one hand on the keys, the other at her side. Her mouth was still a
little open, but no longer with her wide smile of joyous living. She
looked tired, and rather wan.
"Who are you?" she asked, breathlessly. "What are you doing here?"
"I beg your pardon." Barclay bowed to her. "I assure you, I did not
mean to interrupt your playing, but this--this lady caught sight of me
and I had to present myself at once or be taken for a burglar. I hope I
am forgiven?"
She shrugged her shoulder, studying him with an impassivity before which
his suave manner faltered and became uncertain.
"I neither know you nor your business," she said. "When I have heard
your explanation, it will be time to consider whether I can accept your
apology."
"Meantime, I accept the reproof," he retorted. "But we are old
acquaintances--at least, we have met before. That is the first paragraph
of my excuse. We met at the dinner Lord Kirkdale gave in honour of your
return, and I was introduced to you. My name is Barclay--James
Barclay."
"There are many thousands of people who have been introduced to me and
whose names and faces I have forgotten," she said, simply. "That does
not warrant their walking into my drawing-room at odd hours of the
night."
His smile, uneasily ingratiating, persisted.
"Haven't I apologized, and won't you make some allowances? I had missed
you this afternoon at Colonel Boucicault's--business detained me--and
was bitterly disappointed. Passing your bungalow, I heard you
playing--I was mortally tempted--and, relying on the fact that we are in
India and not in stiff-necked England, I ventured to present myself at
once."
"You relied on the facts that I am a dancer, that you once paid half a
guinea for a stall to see me dance, that you cadged for an introduction
where introductions were valueless, and that, once a woman ventures out
into publicity, men of a certain type consider her fair game." She
spoke quietly enough, but there was a whiteness about her distended
nostrils which betrayed a rising anger. "Well, as you rightly say, we
are not in England. The half-guinea stall is of no value here. My
privacy is my right, and I beg of you to respect it."
He held his ground. His impulse had carried him into an _impasse_ from
which he could not possibly retreat with dignity.
"You are like royalty, Miss Fersen," he said fluently. "People whom you
don't know, know you. It's the penalty of greatness. You can't be hard
on us poor mortals who take the sunshine when they can get it. Besides,
I have only forestalled events. Sooner or later, I should have met
you----"
"I have lived in Gaya for two months," she interrupted, "and I have
neither met you nor heard of you, Mr. Barclay."
She closed the piano, sighing impatiently. Had she looked at him at
that moment she might have repented her only half-intended cruelty, for
his insolent ease had become a desperate and rather pitiable
humiliation. He had committed a blunder which he had neither the art
nor the social adroitness to cover over, and he looked to her to make
his escape possible--decent. And she ignored him. Whereat what little
self-possession he owned deserted him, leaving him to the mad guidance
of a raw and quivering pride.
"You know very well who and what I am, Miss Fersen," he stammered, "or
you wouldn't behave like this. If I'd been one of the others, you'd
have welcomed me. You wouldn't have dared treat the merest subaltern as
you've treated me. If Rajah Rasaldu, a full-blown native, from whom you
accept----"
She turned like a flash.
"Will you go, Mr. Barclay?" she said, scarcely above her breath.
He remained stubbornly unmoved. A minute before, he had been merely a
tragi-comic figure, a victim of a midsummer night's ambition, and his
own intoxicated senses. He might, to himself at least, have pleaded
many things in extenuation--certainly a fundamental harmlessness and
even a rather painful humility. Now he had become dangerous.
"I'll go at my own time," he said unevenly. Mrs. Smithers had once more
intervened and he pushed her back.
"I can afford a scandal--you can't----"
It was at that moment that Tristram stalked in through the open
verandah. Sigrid saw him first, and laughed.
"So it's your turn to play _deus ex machina_," she said gaily. It was
as though his advent had swept away every vestige of her annoyance. She
looked at Barclay with bright, malicious eyes. "You've just come in
time to show Mr. Barclay the way out," she said. "He was unable to find
it for himself."
The two men stared at each other. At that moment either of them could
have passed easily for the villain of the little drama, Barclay's
quivering, passion-distorted features being balanced by the Englishman's
general appearance, which was ragamuffinly, not to say ruffianly. His
white clothes had been washed since Sigrid had seen him last, but had
not been ironed, an unfortunate omission, since the result was one of
soiled inelegance. The stubble on his unusual chin had become a reddish
beard, in itself an unlovely object, and lent his countenance a look of
aggression and truculence.
Barclay laughed. He was beside himself, less with anger than with panic
before the inevitable _debacle_, and he groped round for any weapon
which might deliver him with a semblance of dignity.
"I appreciate my blunder, Miss Fersen," he jerked out. "I had no idea
that I interrupted an--an appointment. I can quite understand your
annoyance--and I apologize. I wish you both good-night."
Tristram blocked his way.
"Your name's Barclay?" he asked quietly.
"It is."
"I've heard of you."
"I daresay." The Eurasian's eyes narrowed. He looked into his
opponent's face with a sudden curiosity. "I daresay we have met before,
Major Tristram."
"I don't think so."
"Perhaps in a third person."
"I don't understand," Tristram returned simply. "But I have heard of
you. Some time I'd like to have a little talk--about various things,
which concern us both--notably about some friends of mine who have been
hard pressed.----"
"I shall be delighted to meet you any time, Major Tristram," Barclay
retorted. "I, too, may have matters of interest to discuss with you."
Tristram stood on one side.
"Shall we go together now?" he suggested. "Since we are both
intruding----"
"Not you, Major Tristram," Sigrid interposed quietly.
There was a moment's silence. The way was now open to Barclay, and the
three implacable watchers gave him no choice. He tried to insinuate
into his bearing, into his exaggerated bow, a mocking ease, a cynical
suggestiveness which might give him even a semblance of advantage. But
he failed, and knew it. He stumbled out, blind and sick with the
consciousness of defeat, of a hideous, self-inflicted humiliation.
Mrs. Smithers saw him to the verandah steps as a policeman sees a
doubtful intruder off premises specially recommended to his care. She
adjusted her neat wig with dignity and a touch of wrathful defiance.
"In a brace of shakes, I'd have boxed his ears," she muttered
ferociously. "Not but what my heart was beating about inside me like a
fly in a bottle. The impudent blackguard! Called himself an
acquaintance! What next! We shall have the sweep dropping in for tea
and the butcher leaving his card----" She caught herself up. "There, in
another minute, I'd have forgotten I was a lady and said things. Shall
I see about coffee for you, Sigrid?"
"Please, Smithy."
Sigrid Fersen stood near the middle of the room, looking out on to the
dark garden, her hand raised to her small face in the familiar attitude
of half-whimsical, half-sad reflection. Tristram glanced at her and
then hurriedly away.
"I was dancing," she said suddenly, with a catch in her breath. "I
don't think I'd ever danced like that before. And then he came. It was
as though something vital in me had been snapped--a bird brought down in
full flight----"
"Ayeshi came out and told me you were in difficulties," he said. "I was
eavesdropping. I suppose I behaved like a cad, too."
She shook her head.
"I was playing to you--and dancing. I knew you would see me dancing."
"Then you knew----?"
"Ayeshi told me you were coming. I knew if I played you would come into
the garden and listen. I wanted you to come. And you came."
He tried to laugh, and the laugh failed him.
"I am almost afraid of you," he said.
She considered him quaintly.
"Smithy would say you were quite right to be afraid. And Smithy would be
right, too. I am dangerous."
"And I am a believer in the theory which bids us 'live dangerously,'" he
retorted more lightly.
"But with you the theory would work out as self-sacrifice--with me it
would mean the sacrifice of others." She drew a lounge chair out on to
the verandah and sat down with a little sigh of relief. "How tired I
am! The D minor valse always tired me--not my body--that doesn't
matter--but the invisible spirit which makes a single step a divine
thing. Mr. Meredith would call it the soul, if he could connect his
speciality with anything so vulgar and mundane." She laughed and
snuggled herself back among the cushions. "Anyhow, my soul has danced
and my soul is tired," she announced contentedly.
Tristram remained standing. He was looking down at her profile with a
puzzled intentness.
"Yes," he admitted, "very tired."
"That means--I'm looking ugly?" she suggested.
"No," he answered, abruptly.
At that moment, seated there with her back to the light, she looked
elfish, something aerial and inhuman. Her fair hair, smoothed down with
a delicious primness on either side of her small head, made an aureole
in which her face gleamed white and transparent. Beauty and ugliness
were terms inapplicable to her. As well have measured air and fire by
the standards of a Venus de Milo. "Still, you're not well tonight,"
Tristram persisted obstinately.
"Feel that, then, Dakktar Sahib!"
He took her outstretched hand. For a second it lay in his, small, cool,
amazingly soft and supple, then clasped itself round his fingers like a
steel band made living by electric forces, and he looked up wincing and
laughing, and their eyes met. She was smiling at him with a childlike
satisfaction.
"You see, I am stronger than you, Dakktar Sahib!" she said gaily.
"That wouldn't be saying much tonight," he answered.
She still held his hand, but her hold had changed its character.
"I had forgotten--Ayeshi told us--you are ill----"
"It is nothing," he muttered.
She became thoughtful in her silence. Wickie made a scrambling rush up
the verandah steps and flung himself, with an hysterical yell of
triumph, against Tristram's legs. By what cunning he had eluded Mrs.
Smithers's methodical but unpractised search cannot be told--but he was
there, a wriggling, writhing, panting mass of delirious happiness.
Tristram caught him up and hugged him.
"And how in the name of the Creator of Mongrel Puppies did you get
here?" he asked.
"I commandeered him," Sigrid Fersen answered.
"I left him with Miss Boucicault."
"And Colonel Boucicault threatened to knock his brains out, so I
commandeered him."
Tristram glanced down at her wonderingly.
"You bearded the Colonel? That was plucky of you. Anne must have been
frightened, poor little soul."
A faint, malicious smile quivered at the corner of Sigrid's lips.
"A little, I think. But she had no time to interfere. I was nearest to
the scene of action."
"I am awfully grateful. Wickie and I are old pals."
"I know. If I deserve reward, let him stay with me. What will you do
with small dogs out there?"
"I don't know--would he stay with you?"
"Try him!"
He set Wickie on his short bandy legs and she called the dog by name.
He came and sat in front of her, beating the ground with his lengthy
tail, his ears flat in an ingratiating humility. She bent and patted
him. "You see!"
Tristram nodded. His silence became tense and painful, as though he
laboured under a physical weakness, kept only at bay by a sheer effort
of will. She looked at him critically, and saw that he was trembling.
"You are ill, Major Tristram. Sit down and rest. Smithy will bring us
coffee--it will do you good to sit with me here in the darkness and
quiet."
"I ought to be on my way," he answered unevenly.
"Well, then, if not for yourself--for me. I will admit that I am ill
and that I need the Dakktar Sahib's ministrations. It comforts me to
have you here. It is your duty, therefore, to remain."
"You are stronger than I," he answered, with an unsteady laugh. But he
sat down opposite her, his body bent forward, his hands clasped between
his knees. She could see nothing of his face, but the outline of his
fine head, distorted a little by its mass of thick hair, trimmed by an
amateur hand, lent his shadow a look of way-worn distress and physical
disintegration. Yet it remained an indomitable shadow. She remembered
him as she had seen him once before. Since then the Quixote had had his
tussle with the windmill and now, bruised and broken, prepared himself
for a fresh onslaught.
"Why do you do it?" she flung at him, almost angrily.
He looked up at her, as though waking from a dream.
"Do what?" he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, I know. Ayeshi has told me. You're going into that hell
single-handed and crippled. Boucicault has refused to get you help.
Why do you let him trample on you? He is not in your service. Are you
afraid of him, too?"
He met her taunt with a grave simplicity.
"No, I am not afraid. Up till now, Colonel Boucicault has blocked my
line of communication with the authorities. That's over. There's going
to be a tussle to the death between us, and he knows it. That's why I
didn't come myself tonight."
"Then why need you go? Any one would exonerate you. Ayeshi said it
might mean----" She recoiled from her own thought. "It's almost your
duty not to go," she exclaimed.
"Do you want me to remain?" he asked.
She beat her clenched fist irritably on the arm of her chair.
"No--because it wouldn't be you then--because you are a fool, Major
Tristram--a sublime fool whom one wouldn't have changed even to save him
from destruction. Go, by all means, and sacrifice yourself to your
duty. For that you were born."
He sank back in his chair, his face lifted to where the jungle of the
neglected compound thinned before the night's luminous sapphire.
"I don't believe in duty and sacrifices," he said, "but in happiness."
"And isn't your happiness here?" she demanded, imperiously; "isn't this
happiness--the thing you dreamed of?"
She saw his hands clench themselves.
"Yes--but a dream that can't be fulfilled--a secret corner of
fancy--that isn't enough. In the end--if one lived on it, set it before
one as the end-all--one would sicken and starve. The dream itself would
die. I've figured it out--happiness is the consciousness of
purpose----"
"What purpose can any one of us have?" she retorted scornfully, "we who
are ourselves purposeless creations?"
He waited a moment. When he answered, his voice sounded clear and
steady, though his words were faltering, groping efforts of expression.
"I don't know--I mean rather that I can't explain. I'm an inarticulate
sort of fellow. It seems to me--ninety-nine days out of a hundred we
don't worry as to where we're going or why. We do what we've got to do
blindly. But the hundredth day is a day of reckoning. You were going to
say just now that I might die if I went out there. Well, that doesn't
seem to me so important. Death is the only visible goal we have. What
matters, what is vital, what is happiness is that we should reach that
goal splendidly--as splendidly as we can. Surely happiness is this,
that in our moments of reckoning, when we have to face ourselves, or
when we reach the goal, perhaps suddenly and unexpectedly, we can look
back on our course with the knowledge that, whether punishment or reward
or nothing awaits us, we ran straight according to our lights."
"And 'running straight' for you means plunging into the sickness and
suffering of others?" she asked moodily.
She saw him throw back his tired shoulders.
"What other 'running straight' is there that matters?" he returned,
ardently. "Those poor folk out in Bjura--I'm the only hope they've got.
Supposing I fail them? No one would blame me---no one would say I hadn't
run straight--but I should have broken the only law I recognize--I
should have denied the only god I know. And more than that--I'm
English. When I go out there, I carry my colours with me. It depends
on me whether those colours signify to these people suffering or
happiness, and whether, in the end, they signify happiness or suffering
to us----" He paused, and then went on quietly. "And they must be held
higher and steadier because others have forgotten."
"As Colonel Boucicault has forgotten," she put in.
"And is he happy?" he asked quickly. She was silent, and he made a
little gesture of apology. "I'm sorry--I'm like all lonely men--I've
grown preachy and prosy. I've tired you----"
But she turned to him, her head high, her eyes brilliant with a suddenly
revealed feeling.
"Why should you apologize? I also have my theories of life and death.
Yes--to die splendidly--on the mountain top, in a palace of gold and
silver, in the full tide of youth and strength, of one's own free-will,
not knowing decay or suffering--to look back on a life without ugliness,
without poverty or meanness--that is the goal--that is happiness."
"That is your vision," he said, smiling at her wistfully. "But you are
fire and air, and I am heavy earth."
She got up and went to the steps of the verandah, and stood there with
her back turned to him.
"Oh, your vision of me, Major Tristram--beware of it. Why do you make an
idol of me?"
But he did not answer.
Ayeshi came out of the shadow of the trees, leading the grotesque
Arabella and his own sturdy pony. Tristram half rose.
"No!" she said imperatively. "You have made me tired and wretched and
angry. You, a physician! You have got to cure me before you go."
"What shall I do?" he asked humbly.
She was quiet a moment, her finger to her lips. Her anger had gone, and
she was once more the being of swift and joyous fancies.
"Look--the moon is showing between the trees. It has made a white pool
at my feet, Tristram Sahib. Do you remember what you told me--how at
night-time you sat by the village fire and listened to Ayeshi's stories
of the great past? You promised that one day I should listen, too. Now
I claim fulfilment. We will sit round the moonlight and warm our hands
at it, and Ayeshi shall tell the story that his Sahib loves best. Shall
it be so?"
"Yes," he answered.
Both Mrs. Smithers and the soft-footed native servant, whom she now
marshalled in with a forbidding air of distrust, were waved imperiously
aside.
"No--coffee and Smithy are civilized--and we are miles from
civilization. We are on the borders of the jungle. If I listened, I
should hear the howl of the jackals--so I shan't listen, for I detest
jackals. There are monkeys overhead peeping at us and chattering soft
insults--and birds pluming themselves for sleep. The moonlight will be
on our faces, and it will be like the firelight. And the river shall
make the music to Ayeshi's story."
She slipped down on to the stone floor and sat there, cross-legged, her
chin cupped in her hand. The circle of pale silver reflected itself
back on to her earnest face and painted faint, mocking shadows at the
corners of her composed lips. Ayeshi crouched dreamingly on the lower
step of the verandah. On the other side of the little circle, Tristram
sat with Wickie drowsing at his feet, his hands outstretched as though,
to please her fancy, he warmed them at the firelight. Once, as Ayeshi
told his story, he looked across at her and his face was haunted with
weariness and suffering and famished desire.
Thus Ayeshi told of the Rani Kurnavati and her Bracelet Brother.
* * * * *
The moonlight faded. With Ayeshi's last words a chill darkness crept
over them, hiding them from one another and silencing them. It was as
though they had indeed warmed themselves at a fire which had gone out,
leaving them to the grey ash of their dreams.
Silently Ayeshi had risen and untethered the horses and led them towards
the gates of the compound. But Tristram lingered, standing on the steps
of the verandah, his face turned from the woman who looked down at him.
She laid her hands on his shoulders.
"And you who go out very gallantly, perhaps to meet the end which you
fear so little--have you nothing to ask first of life, nothing you
desire, no fulfilment of mad dreams dreamed by the river and by your
fireside--nothing that I might not grant?"
He made no answer. She felt him tremble under her hands. Her laugh was
subdued, pityingly triumphant.
"Oh, Tristram Sahib, do you think I don't know--do you think I haven't
read your heart?" she said.
And bent and kissed him.
*CHAPTER XI*
*INFERNO*
He pitched his tent outside the village in a paradise of brilliantly
painted flowers and high grass, whose bright emerald shone luminously
where the dying sun touched it. A pool in the shadow of the trees wore
a score of lotus-flowers on its still breast, and the ghosts of yellow
blossoms from the overhanging mango shimmered tremulously beneath among
the tangled undergrowth.
But there was no living thing. The sand at the water's edge was
unbroken by the familiar _pugs_, and the trees and the long grasses were
empty and silent. Death and over-abundant sensuous life lay side by
side. The very soil, rich and moist, gave out an aroma of sickly
sweetness tainted with corruption.
The native bearers shook their heads and crouched down near their
sleeping quarters, awaiting the loathsome, invisible thing with the
fatality of their race.
But Tristram shouldered his case of medicaments and sought the road
leading to the village.
The road was ankle deep in a fine powdery dust, which rose at each step
and hung in the dead air long after he had passed. There were
treacherous ruts which the dust covered, zig-zagging through what had
been slimy marsh-land and was now a crumbling, sun-baked bed of miasma.
Here, too, the stillness was absolute. The village roofs rose out of
the flatness like irregular ant-heaps, deserted by their once restless
workers. The night which came striding over the plain was a stifling
mantle, choking out the last breath of life under its smothering folds
of darkness. The quiet itself was eerie, unnatural, the terrible quiet
of a suffering which has passed protest.
Then at last there came a sound--a whimpering, inhuman cry--and the man
stood still, peering through the darkness. A form lay by the roadside
and held out thin arms of appeal towards him.
"Siva! Siva! Have mercy!"
He came nearer and knelt down. Once it had been a woman, but the
mysterious spectre which had laid hold of Bjura had laid hold of her and
twisted her out of human semblance. A child lay under her side,
round-limbed, smooth-cheeked, as sweet as the lotus-flower growing out
of the poisoned waters of the pool. The bloated, shapeless horror
slobbered and whispered over it.
"Siva--my little son--have mercy!"
Perhaps some knowledge of another, gentler faith had reached her that
she appealed for mercy to a power which knew none. Tristram bent over
her and drew the child away from her clawing, swollen hands.
"I am not Siva. I am the Dakktar Sahib come to help you. Do not be
afraid!"
"Have mercy, Sahib!" She lay on her back staring up at him through the
gathering gloom with terrible eyes. "Have mercy!"
"Give me your child. I will take care of it. It shall come to no
harm--I promise you. Trust me!"
She gaped at him with the chill non-comprehension of gathering
insensibility. Only the piteous appeal hung perpetually on her lips
like a maddening refrain. He took the child and freed it from its
filthy rags, and gave it to Ayeshi standing near him, impassive and
watchful.
"Take it back to the camp and do the best you can," he ordered.
"And you, Sahib?"
"I shall go on--presently."
He went back to the woman and knelt down beside her, taking the terrible
head upon his knee, and forcing a sedative between her lips. A
nauseating odour of disease rose up to him, but it did not nauseate him.
He knelt there and waited for the first sign of relief. And presently
the laboured, agonized breathing softened; she half turned, and her
palsied, distorted hand fumbled over his coat, groping its way down the
sleeve to his wrist. She took his hand and pressed it against her
burning cheek, against her lips. And he bore with her, holding her
closer as she neared the brink, whispering to her in her own tongue, a
medley of all the words of comfort that he knew. And all at once she
sighed deeply, and was quiet, with the quietness which was more than
sleep.
He got up and straightened out her poor body and covered her with her
rags, and went on towards the village.
It was night now. A smouldering fire from behind the first hut threw up
a sullen glow against which the low, ramshackle building stood out
spectrely. Tristram passed it, and a gust of foetid wind goaded the
flames to a sudden brilliance, so that he saw upon what it was they fed
themselves. A gaunt, naked figure crouched near the hideous embers,
and, turning as though to see whence the wind came, saw the Englishman,
and leapt up, wild-eyed, and fled, shrieking, into the black fastness of
the village.
Now the silence was gone, and in its place there were whisperings and
the pattering of naked feet. A woman's scream came from afar off.
Tristram stumbled over a body which neither moved nor cried out. He
stood still, knowing that he was no longer alone. The eye of the
electric torch which he carried flashed through the pitch darkness and
rested upon distorted faces, turned to him in an agony of dread. And
behind them, through the yellow haze, he caught a glimpse of bodies
heaped together in the gutter, of cowering figures, faces hidden against
the mud walls, of gaping doors, blacker than the pervading gloom, and
threatening a nameless horror. He himself stood out in the dim light,
tall and white and spectral. He moved, and the faces bowed before him
like the heads of corn in the wind, and a voice went up wailing,
piteous:
"Oh, Siva, it is the end--the end----"
The man whom he had seen crouching by the fire leapt suddenly out at
him, and he felt the cold breath of steel against his cheek. He warded
off the blow, and the madman came on again and again, and each time he
defended himself patiently and without aggression. The circle of faces
closed in. His light was out, but he could feel how the air about him
grew hot and stifling. They waited--stupidly, hungrily, with a frenzied
lust of death. If he fell--though they believed him God--still it would
be the end.
Even then he did not strike out. The last time, the delirious fanatic
stumbled and went crashing to the ground. Tristram bent over him,
turning his light on to the foam-flecked old face.
"He'll come round all right," he said calmly. "But we've got to get him
shut up somewhere before he does damage. Help me, some of you."
His voice sounded loud and clear amidst their low, formless whisperings,
but they did not move, and he picked the old man up as though he had
been a child. "Make way there!" he commanded.
They let him pass, but on the threshold of the hut he came to a halt,
arrested by a stench which was like a blow, staggering his senses. With
his free hand, he sent the light darting about the corners of the hut,
and then turned and came quickly out. There was nothing to be done.
Death, most hideous, had leered at him in triumph from a dozen frozen
distortions of the human body.
For one moment, as he stood there, choking down his physical sickness,
he may have known the agony of helplessness and isolation. But only for
a moment. He looked round, noting the gradual relaxation of the
fear-drawn faces about him.
"It's a pretty bad go," he said cheerfully, "and what your headman was
doing not to let us know before I can't think. However, we'll make the
best of it. Two of you go and pile up that fire I saw as I came in.
And I want at least five who aren't stiff with funk to carry these poor
devils out. There's not got to be a body left in this village by
daybreak. We'll get the rest out into the air where they can breathe,
and I'll soak you and the place in carbolic." They still hesitated, and
deliberately he turned the light on to his own face.
"Bless you, I'm not Siva. I'm the Dakktar Sahib--sent by the great
English Raj to put you all straight. But, by the Lord, if you don't do
what I tell you in a brace of shakes, Siva will be a joke by
comparison."
The panic broke. The old headman crept out and cringed before him,
offering excuses. Tristram waved him on one side.
"Get on with it!" he said, between his teeth.
He went from hut to hut, directing, ordering, disinfecting, patient and
imperturbable, infinitely gentle. And all night soft-footed processions
with their grim burdens made their way out to the monstrous funeral pyre
which grew higher and higher. All that night and all through the
burning, blinding day to another night, and beyond that again, Tristram
drove Death back step by step from his mauled and helpless victims,
bringing peace into a hell of suffering. Three nights and three days.
And on the fourth night he reeled back to the encampment beneath the
trees and dropped down with his face in the long grass, and lay there
inert as death itself.
And for three days and nights again Ayeshi sat beside him, tending him
and listening to the muttered reiteration of a woman's name.
*CHAPTER XII*
*IN WHICH FORTUNE PLEASES TO JEST*
The Rajah Rasaldu was in his element. By sheer force of merit, he
occupied the stage to the almost complete exclusion of every other
player. Gaya hung on his movements, gasped--as much as Gaya ever
gasped--over the reckless twists and turns of his wonderful ponies, and
applauded the grace and apparent ease with which he broke the defence
and sent the ball spinning between the posts. For, strange to relate,
Rasaldu could play polo. Flabby and unheroic as he was on all other
occasions, once in the saddle, he developed into an iron-wristed,
cool-headed strategist. What was more, he played for his side and not
for himself. Men who went into the game disparaging his fatuous conceit
and equally fatuous humility, loved him after the first ten minutes of
brilliant, unselfish play, and the glow of affection usually lasted for
twenty-four hours after he had won for his side. Then they tolerated
him again until the next challenge came along.
Rasaldu revelled like a child in Gaya's good graces. There was something
almost winning in his wide smile of pleasure, as after the first
_chukka_ he came over to the select group under the awning and received
feminine Gaya's congratulations. Had he not played such a daring game
he would have cut rather a comic figure. His riding-clothes, taken in
juxtaposition with his dark chubby face, were wonderfully and terribly
English, and his brown boots, very new and very brown, shone almost too
beautifully. Between him and the turbaned soldiery crowded against the
ropes there was a gulf of false Europeanism of which the latter seemed
curiously conscious. They alone had not applauded, him in his bold
assault on the enemy, and they stared at him now with an
expressionlessness which, translated, equalled distrust and contempt.
Meantime, Rasaldu chatted with the volubility of success and
self-confidence. He chose to address himself chiefly to Mary Compton,
but from time to time his moist brown eyes shot an eager glance at
Sigrid Fersen, seeking her smile, a meed of well-earned admiration. He
was a little afraid of her. She was not in the least beautiful, and she
undoubtedly owed her position in Gaya to his generous patronage, facts
which of themselves should have sustained him in her presence. But the
quiet, imperious self-belief with which she had silenced alike criticism
and opposition and compelled rigid Gaya to accept her and her standards,
shook Rasaldu's self-complacency. It was for that very reason, and also
because Gaya had mysteriously collapsed before her, that Rasaldu hovered
about her with the helpless and protesting infatuation of a moth for a
naked light.
And now today there was added to this emotion the heat and intoxication
of his own prowess, and the consciousness that, if she was not
beautiful, she possessed something much more vital than beauty--the
mysterious force of temperament which through all time has made plain
women more dangerous, more powerful in the destiny of nations than women
endowed with all physical perfection. Rasaldu had no talent for
analysing temperaments, but he could analyse certain obvious factors in
her charm--the pale gold hair, the perfect skin, unprotected by powder,
the svelte, tiger-like grace and strength of her reposing body. Above
all, he could analyse clothes. Gaya's women-folk, none too well blessed
with money, lived in London's last year's creations and the clumsy
imitations of the native tailors. But this simple white dress of some
clinging, shimmering material, unknown to Gaya, and this simple straw
hat almost unadorned, came from Paris. Rasaldu, who knew his Paris,
knew that much. And, as a man worships a token from his native soil, so
he worshipped Sigrid Fersen.
And presently he ventured to address her directly.
"Now you have seen what is best in India!" he said.
"The Rajah Rasaldu playing polo?" she asked, smilingly.
"You are unkind, Mademoiselle," he answered, with the hurt sensitiveness
of a snubbed child.
"I did not mean to be unkind. There are so many wonderful things in
India, Rajah, that I hesitated a moment to endorse your opinion.
Still--yes, it was a fine sight. You should always play polo, Rajah. It
suits you better than feting prima ballerinas in London restaurants."
He looked at her and saw that she was serious, and her seriousness
mitigated the dubiousness of her compliment. He would have preferred it
in the reversed sense, but he had to take what was offered him.
"I was not really alluding to myself at all," he said, naively, "but to
the game. The game's the thing."
"Yes--and the man who plays it," she answered. She was smiling faintly,
and he indulged in a flattered self-consciousness until he realized that
the smile was a reminiscent one, and that she was looking through him to
some invisible picture of her thoughts. Whereupon, Rasaldu hastily
reverted to Mrs. Compton, whom also he feared, but in a lesser degree.
Her tongue was sharp, but at least she did not attract him, and
consequently her powers of offence were of a less painful order.
Sigrid Fersen did not notice his dejection. She was looking at
Meredith, who at that moment had entered the awning. He still wore his
clerical clothes, having come straight from the little chapel, where
every afternoon he held his service. It was rare that more than one
person should represent the congregation. Sometimes he managed to
collect a few convert school-children, but always Anne Boucicault was
there, devout and trembling, her brown eyes following his every movement
with the reverence of a passionate believer in the initiated and
anointed priest. That hour in the day was very dear to Owen Meredith.
He believed that it was a religious ecstasy which flooded him as he
listened to her low voice give the responses--or at least a pure joy in
their fellowship in the one faith. He had not realized how lifeless and
empty his own prayers could be without the inspiration of her presence.
Now a kind of fear oppressed him--a fear of himself, a doubt in his own
spiritual integrity. For this afternoon, she had failed him and he had
failed himself. He had held the service, according to the law which he
had made for himself, sparing no detail, but his heart had been dead.
Now, as he saw her, it started to life again, to the knowledge of pain.
She sat beside Colonel Boucicault, and there was that in her attitude
which reminded Meredith of a frightened animal cowering under the threat
of the lash. All the charm of youth had been twisted out of her by some
invisible, iron-handed suffering. And without that charm, she was a
drab, colourless little soul, almost ugly. But Meredith did not see
that she was ugly, only that she was ill and unhappy. He thought he
understood. As he came and sat beside her, she shot a quick, frightened
glance at him.
"Father did not wish me to come," she said, in a hurried whisper. "He
was fearfully angry about some letter----"
More she could not say. And even that much would have been dangerous,
had not the man beside her been sunk in a sullen, inattentive brooding.
She dared say nothing of the appalling scene which had followed on the
receipt of that ominous official document, and which had left them
stupefied and bruised and sick. In the final phase, Boucicault had
forbidden her chapel attendance, not because he disapproved, or cared,
but because he knew that she wanted to escape him. And all the
afternoon he kept at her side, taking an ugly delight in her wincing,
broken subservience, and in the knowledge that he held her with him in
his self-created atmosphere of fear and hatred.
But Meredith believed he knew more of her pallor than she even hinted
at.
"I met Ayeshi on the way here," he said. "He gave me the news.
Tristram is on his way back."
"Yes--?" she queried, dully.
"He has been very ill. Ayeshi has come on ahead to prepare quarters for
him."
She was looking down at her hands. He could see how she fought to
control their trembling.
"If only we could have put him up--but we can't--father wouldn't--oh, it
is terrible to be so helpless."
"I told Ayeshi to bring him to my bungalow. I will let you know how he
is--and perhaps, later on, you could help. I know what a fine little
nurse you are----"
"You are very, very good, Owen----"
"I would be glad to do anything for him," he answered, without
significance. Then chancing to look up, he found that Sigrid Fersen's
eyes were fixed on him, and guessed that she had heard, or had wanted to
hear badly. For an instant, on behalf of Anne, he hated her again, and
the next he warmed towards her. She met his half-resentful stare as
frankly.
"I am so thankful he is safe," she said.
Mrs. Compton thereupon chimed in.
"If anything happened to Major Tristram, I should die of a broken
heart," she said, "--even if Archie divorced me for it."
She paid no attention to the laugh in which even Anne joined timidly.
She was looking at Colonel Boucicault, who had shifted his position like
a sleeper unpleasantly disturbed, but the remark which seemed on the
edge of her compressed lips was not destined to be uttered.
At that moment a bell announced the next _chukka_; a stir passed round
the enclosure and Mrs. Compton, who, in spirit, played a magnificent
game for Gaya, forgot Boucicault and Tristram in her stern concentration
on the field.
Rasaldu braced himself and turned with a smile to Sigrid. He felt more
confident. In a minute she would be forced to look at him, to admire
him, to acknowledge that he also "played the game."
"Wish me luck!" he begged cheerily.
"Return victorious!" she returned, in mock heroics. "For the victors,
Mrs. Compton and I have prepared a mighty feast in the gardens of the
dak-bungalow, and the vanquished shall sit afar off and partake only of
the crumbs of our graciousness. Be not among the vanquished, O Rajah!"
"To win the place of honour, I will make a goal every five minutes, or
perish," he boasted elatedly.
He swung himself on to the back of the pony which his groom held ready
for him, and with a flourish trotted to his place on the field.
Boucicault awoke then completely from his black brooding. He bent
forward, staring straight into Sigrid Fersen's face, his clenched teeth
shown in a smile that had in its mirthless, contained fury the elements
of insanity.
"You are a very great friend of Rajah Rasaldu, Miss Fersen," he said.
She looked at him steadily, measuring the quality of the challenge which
he had thrown down.
"Does friendship follow on acquaintance?" she questioned back. "In that
case, you and I should be friends, Colonel Boucicault, for I have met
you more often than the Rajah."
"Then he has marked his joy in your acquaintanceship with remarkable
generosity," he retorted.
"Is generosity your translation for hospitality, Colonel Boucicault?"
"The Rajah's hospitality is well known. He gives liberally. He expects
a return. And he is impressionable. There is such a thing as love at
first sight, Miss Fersen."
He was watching her with a hungry anticipation, but she neither winced
nor turned from him. Her calm gaze met his, and there was no change in
its rather sleepy placidity. But the enigmatic smile which he remembered
quivered at the corners of her mouth.
"And there is also such a thing as contempt at first sight," she
remarked casually, "and that is much what I felt for you, Colonel
Boucicault."
"You are an outspoken enemy," he answered, with a quick drawing in of
his breath. She looked down for an instant and saw that his big,
brutal-looking hands shook.
"You have remarked on my outspokenness before."
"Yes, and I even admire it. But my admiration, Miss Fersen, cannot
influence my sense of duty. I am chief in command in Gaya. The social
as well as the military authority rests in me. And where I see that a
certain individual is lessening our prestige, corrupting our morals, or
even upsetting the routine of our social life, then I have the power to
expel that individual--to make Gaya and India impossible----"
"If, to speak clearly, you refer to me, Colonel Boucicault," she
interrupted, "then perhaps I shall have the pleasure of travelling in
the same boat with you to England."
His bloodshot eyes remained blank and stupid-looking for an instant,
then lit up with an insensate fury of understanding. He stumbled to his
feet.
"You--you----!" he muttered. She saw his clenched fists, and knew that,
for all his position and the crowd of witnesses, he had come within an
ace of striking her. She looked up at him over her shoulder and
laughed.
"Keep that sort of thing for your family, Colonel Boucicault," she
advised lightly.
Boucicault turned and pushed through the knot of spectators behind him.
He made his way across the paddock where the ponies were being rubbed
down, and out on to the high road. His orderly, seeing him, ran after
him, and he turned on the man with a curse.
"Take the buggy back to the stables. I shall walk."
"And the Mem-Sahib----?"
"The Mem-Sahib can walk, too," he answered, grinning.
The man saluted, his face hard-set, his eyes meeting Boucicault's with
military steadfastness. But for an instant the muscles about his mouth
had quivered, betraying that there was that beneath the surface which
even his native stoicism could not wholly master. And Boucicault saw
and understood.
He strode on down the centre of the dusty, sun-baked road. He had drunk
heavily that day, but there was more than drink fomenting in his
inflamed brain. There was that letter with its bold, humbugging
politeness--after so many years of service--an inquiry--certain
charges--what charges?--by whom brought? He muttered aloud, dwelling on
a name with a sneering hatred. Well--they should inquire--he could
answer the lot. But then there was Anne cowering before him--why had
God cursed him with a cowardly girl----? and that man---- There had
been a time when, as a mere captain, his regiment would have followed
him through the gates of hell--and now--now--if he went into action
tomorrow--what then? He saw the soldier's face again and re-read its
significance. Strong men made enemies, and he had always had enemies,
but he had also had friends in the past. They had gone. The men who
had believed in him--adored him--gone. He felt himself haunted by
spectres of what was and what had been. They came out of the black
abyss of his soul, whirled up by ugly, incoherent passions--regret and
remorse, self-loathing and self-pity twisted out of recognition and
melted down to one vast, corroding hatred. Every other emotion came too
late. Only hatred remained to him--the last link between him and his
fellow-creatures--that and the power to hurt, to inflict suffering--as
he suffered.
Thus carried forward and half-blinded by the glare which emanated more
from his brain than from the blazing roadway, he left Gaya behind him.
He came to a bend in the roadway where a thin belt of trees curved down
towards the plain, and there stood still, arrested by an unclear
recognition. At first he scarcely knew what had attracted his
attention; then little by little the red haze cleared, and something
within him started awake, some dormant desire as yet unnameable.
Wickie lay on the fringe of shadow, his black snout between his paws,
his ears pricked, his brown eyes, showing the whites, expressive of
alert curiosity. A piece of broken cord attached to his collar
testified dumbly to a determined and skilful evasion of Mrs. Smithers's
coercive methods of adoption.
For a moment or two the man and the would-be Aberdeen considered each
other. Probably in a spirit of good-natured triumph in his own prowess,
Wickie had greeted Boucicault's appearance by a tattoo executed by his
tail on the dusty road, and his eyes had twinkled an invitation to
participate in the joke. Now he lay motionless, watchful, distrustful.
Boucicault called him. He did not know why he called him nor as yet
what he wanted with the dog. The tumult within his brain had died down.
He had become calm and deliberate. The letter, the menacing future, the
jumbled vision of failure which had been vouchsafed him in Anne's
cringing body and in the eyes of his orderly, had given place to a sense
of purpose, controlled, extraordinarily calculated, but as yet veiled
even to himself. He called the dog again, and showed no signs of
impatience when Wickie remained unresponsive. Underneath his own calm
he felt the stirring of a curious pleasure, of a fierce thirsty joy
which must be gratified only with an Epicurean restraint. And for that
he held it back, curbing it, spurring it to the limit of his control,
tasting its anguished appeal for freedom with a cruel delight in his own
mortification. Then, without hurry, without show of passion, he came
forward, and, catching hold of the trailing rope, dragged Wickie to his
feet. The dog struggled and growled ominously, and Boucicault smiled,
showing his set teeth. There was a broken stick of bamboo lying at the
roadside, and he picked it up and tested its suppleness leisurely
against his boot. The animal snapped at him, recognizing the enemy, and
perhaps the impending danger; but Boucicault continued calmly resolved.
He was like a morphia-maniac who, with the passionately desired drug in
his hand, prolongs the delicious agony of desire. He tied the end of
the cord round the stem of a young palm and stood back a moment looking
down at his captive. Wickie sprang at him, and then, suddenly,
terribly, he struck with his improvised weapon, bringing it down with a
sickening thud on the animal's long back. The scream that answered him
was half human. Boucicault drew in his breath. Like lava under a thin
crust of restraining earth, his murderous hatred welled up in him,
choking him. This cringing brute, its brown eyes turned on him in dumb
horror--was Anne, Anne who always cringed, always truckled to him, whom
he had so often wanted to strike down. And then Anne vanished from the
whirling circles of his thoughts, and it was Tristram and that
pale-haired woman--these two who, in their different ways, had thwarted
and defied him, brought him face to face with himself. It was his wife,
the officers of the regiment, the men--all with that smouldering,
unspoken loathing in their eyes. And he struck like a madman, blow after
blow, slaking his thirst for vengeance, making with each stroke a fresh
breach in the wall behind which men imprison their infamous insanities.
And sometimes the dog whined and sometimes, like a human being, set its
teeth in stoic fortitude, and sometimes, as the pliant stick fell across
its body, screamed uncontrollably.
It was one such scream that Tristram heard as he rode up from the plain
towards Gaya. He hung in the saddle like a man whose backbone has been
snapped, and the reins trailed from Arabella's weary neck. It was
fortunate that the road was familiar to her, for Tristram neither knew
his destination nor cared about it. Some one had helped him into the
saddle, and there he had remained instinctively; but his mind was empty
of all purpose, even of knowledge of himself. The scream roused him a
little, but only for a second. There were so many strange sounds and
scenes in his brain that he trusted none of them. It was only when
Arabella jerked to a standstill and stood trembling with pricked ears,
that he began to believe in the substantiality of what was before him.
Even then he sat hunched together in the saddle, gaping stupidly. He had
begun to realize, but there seemed to be a hiatus in his mind--a gulf
between thought and action which he could not cross. Then Wickie
screamed again, and he rolled off Arabella's back and stood there
rocking like a drunken man.
"Colonel Boucicault!" His own voice sounded like a shout in his own
ears, though in reality it was little more than a whisper, but it
reached Boucicault, who turned round. Tristram knew then that what he
saw was not a distortion of his fancy. "Colonel Boucicault!" he
repeated heavily. He found nothing more to say. His inability to think
coherently had become an acute suffering. He saw Wickie make a desperate
effort to reach him, and the sight roused him to another effort. "Let
my dog go!" he muttered.
Boucicault passed his hand over his forehead and laughed.
"You've just come back in time, Major Tristram," he said. "If you
really lay claim to this cur, you can stay here and see it thrashed
within an inch of its life. A dangerous brute----!" He kicked it,
yelping, back against the tree. He had made an excuse and was ashamed
of it. It spoilt his pleasure in his own untrammelled, inexcusable
cruelty.
Tristram reeled forward, intercepting himself between Wickie and his
assailant in time to receive a blow across the arm. The sting of it was
like a tonic, driving the blood faster to his brain.
"You've no right--let my dog go!"
"Your dog--my dear Major! Stand out of the way. I am master in Gaya.
If I may offer advice, I should suggest a bath and a change of clothes.
You look--if I may say so--not quite worthy of your position. I doubt
if even your admirers would care to recognize you."
"It would take more than a bath and a change to put me right," Tristram
managed to return, and then, with the dull obstinacy of a sick man: "Let
Wickie go!"
Boucicault's momentary self-restraint broke down. He lashed out
savagely:
"Take it yourself then, you sneaking cur----!"
Tristram flung up his arm. Instinctively, for his sight failed him, he
warded off the blows which rained about him, but no more than that. His
mind was working now, very simply, in the two fundamentals of its
make-up--two vast forces fighting for supremacy, the one long dormant,
suppressed, scarcely recognized, at the throat of his soul---his faith.
So long as the blows fell on him, the latter remained triumphant. He
shielded Wickie--that was what he had meant to do. He felt as yet no
animosity towards the man whose discoloured face seemed to fill his
vision. He felt very little pain--only a queer, alarming tightening of
his muscles. Vague fragments of memory came to him--his passionate love
of all things living--even to this man, his simple conception of
duty--of life itself. They upheld him; they kept the vital part of him
quiet and peaceful in the face of a gathering force of sheer physical
revolt. His smarting body cried out for vengeance, but it had no power
to move him. He stood there, taking the punishment patiently, almost
listlessly.
Boucicault drew back from him a moment. He was breathing noisily
between his teeth. In him the fundamentals had gone to pieces, and he
was being carried forward on a flood-tide of ungoverned, monstrous
passions. His mind, in the midst of its disruption, reasoned with the
swiftness of insanity. This hulking, stupid giant who had set out to
ruin him--who bore insult and pain with less spirit than his dog--he
could be ruined, too. An inquiry? Good--let there be one--a
court-martial--cashiered, both of them. But first this block had to be
roused.
Possibly he was mad, but he had a madman's instinct and deep knowledge
of the secret madness in others. He stepped suddenly on one side. The
end of his stick was sharp and jagged. With the steel-wristed strength
practised on many a day's pig-sticking, he lunged forward, driving the
spike straight into Wickie's body.
Tristram had seen too late. He heard the yelp, broken and ending
piteously in a child's whimper. Then it was done. Something in him
snapped. Mind and body, instinct and reason leapt together. He struck
out with all the terrible strength of his great shoulders, with all the
force of his outraged love of life, with all his pity--struck to kill.
It grew very quiet. He had been battling in the midst of a titanic
natural eruption, and now suddenly the violently aroused elements had
dropped exhausted, leaving him standing in the midst of ruin. The tide
which had flowed through his veins receded, and he became oddly tired
and weak and helpless. The old blindness was creeping over him. Yet
some things he saw in a kind of vague bigness. He did not bend down, but
the man lying stretched in the dust seemed quite near to him--an
austere, sinister shadow floating on a grey mist which rose
higher--close to his face.
A faint sound reached him--a dull, soft thudding. He found himself on
his knees, muttering incoherently.
Wickie lay full length, his short, crooked paws stretched out, seeking
relief. There was blood on his brindle side. One brown eye looked out
of its corner, half-puzzled, half-reassuring, a little glint of the old
solemn humour showing through, as though the joke at Mrs. Smithers's
expense still lingered in the fading brain. The tail beat the dust
softly, and into that feeble movement there was compressed a love and
understanding, almost a pity which defied death and rose above all
language.
Tristram took the head on his arm. He saw that his hand was wet and
knew that he was crying. Wickie turned a little, licking his hand
feebly.
"Old fellow--dear old fellow--if I hadn't cared so much--if I'd been
able to drown a kitten--it wouldn't have happened----" He bent lower,
kissing the black snout. "My best pal!"
He went on talking under his breath. He did not know that he talked.
Some one quite close whispered the words into his ear. He was not
conscious of thinking. It began to grow very dark.
Presently Wickie sighed and stretched himself wearily, contentedly, as
though it were no more than sleep that were coming--sleep by the
camp-fire after a long day's march. Then lay still.
Tristram dragged himself to his feet. Out of the deepening blackness of
things, an instinct asserted itself dimly.
"Help--we've got to get help--somehow----"
He said it aloud. It seemed to him that it had been shouted by the
invisible monitor at his side. He stumbled over the prostrate figure
lying so simple and still in the dust, reeling back from it, his face
turned from Gaya. Then he began to walk. He walked long after the
blackness had become impenetrable. He was no more than the one
instinct, tragically dominant over the body which had betrayed him. His
body was dead. He could not feel it. It was a machine that he willed
to go straight forward to some dim, vast punishment.
He walked through hours and nights of darkness. At last there were
lights in front of him--great yellow balls of haloed flame, which danced
in ecstasy to a passionate rhythm. He heard voices--a sea of
whisperings which surged towards him on a great wave, breaking over him
in one hushed sound. He tried to cling to it through his fading
consciousness. It became a face, gazing down at him, serene,
triumphant, pitying--it became a hand which touched him, held him in its
iron gentleness. He could feel it holding to him surely, as all else
broke from him, flinging him down into a bottomless silence.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*CROSSED SWORDS*
In reality, he had not gone more than half a mile. But things had
happened to him of which he had had no knowledge--twice he had retraced
his steps and once fallen to his knees and groped his way through the
dust in a blind circle. The eternities had been less than an hour, the
darkness no more than the clear nightfall, the lights a dozen lanterns
twinkling from the trees of the dak-bungalow. His consciousness had
been a dull, distorted thing, presenting the reality to him in shapeless
exaggerations. He had heard music. It had sounded to him like a huge,
throbbing symphony in which these nights and days in Bjura, the passions
which had swept him out of his path, were mercilessly reiterated
motives. In reality, it was just Carreno's unsophisticated little waltz
which Sigrid Fersen drew out lightly from a Steinway already much the
worse for its Indian sojourn. He heard voices. It was young Radcliffe
lounging in the shadow of the trees, making a gloomy assault on the
susceptibilities of the latest sweetest thing from England, the while
his real deeply embittered self was in the drawing-room scowling at
Rasaldu, who, still crowned with laurels, leant against the piano
staring at Sigrid unrestrainedly and with a very naked passion.
The last voice that Tristram heard, the first and last face that he had
seen, had been Sigrid's, but that was because she had swamped all other
realization. It was Mrs. Smithers, roaming like a dutiful policeman
through the compound, who found him lying huddled together just inside
the gates. She made no sort of outcry. Having ascertained that he was
alive, she did not even hurry herself. She went and stood primly at
Sigrid's side, her mittened hands folded in front of her, her back to
Rasaldu, whom she openly detested.
"He's there," she said, jerking her head towards the compound; "lying in
a dead faint, poor dear. I guess it's your fault--you'd better do
something, hadn't you?"
After one swift glance at the grim face, and without a word either to
Smithers or Rasaldu, Sigrid had got up and gone down the steps into the
darkness where Tristram lay. She knelt down beside him and touched him
on his dry, burning forehead, on his throat, gliding down to his
powerless hand. She spoke to him, calling him by name, and she knew
that he heard, and recognized her. For a long minute she remained thus
motionless, tasting her power to probe beneath his physical
consciousness to the self in which he kept his dreams, his quaint
beliefs, his simple, world-embracing love of things. And she knew that
if he saw her, it was because her face lived in his inner vision, and
that if he felt her hand it was because the memory of her touch was
seared into his very flesh.
She granted him and herself that moment, and then she called for help.
It came quickly, noisily. But though others intervened, she remained at
Tristram's side. Her instinct told her that he knew she was there, and
that she held him back from the abyss towards which he was drifting.
They laid him between the faintly scented sheets of her bed. It was her
order. The shaded lamp threw a subdued glow on the room's costly
loveliness, on the scattered, cunningly grouped treasures of five
continents, on fragmentary, priceless testimonies to a rare and varied
taste. They exercised a curious influence on the grieved and troubled
helpers. It was like a subtle intoxication, as though all that these
things represented crept into their blood and fought there for mastery.
And in silent, austere contrast was the man lying dimly outlined beneath
the white sheet, the rugged, unkempt head tilted slightly back against
the pillow, the thin, suffering features composed in a passing phase of
grave serenity.
They knew whence he came and what he had accomplished, and the rarefied
atmosphere of exquisite Paganism jarred on them. It was a challenge, a
kind of sneer at his whole life. They did not reason about it, they
could scarcely define it. But it made Meredith's manner cold to the
point of antagonism as he turned presently to where Sigrid stood in the
shadow, her eyes fixed on the old Italian vase which she had picked up
casually. He hated her again--she was so calm, almost indifferent. He
came and stood beside her, hushing his full voice.
"I think we've done all we can. He's pretty bad, I'm afraid. I'll have
a wire sent to the next best station for a doctor and a nurse. Of
course, he can't stay here--we'll try and move him tomorrow."
"I prefer him to stay here," she said, without looking up.
He frowned, wishing that Rasaldu had not been one of those to help carry
Tristram and to share in the unconventional intimacy of the scene. It
revolted him that he should stand there, watching and listening. The
old ugly suspicions which he had sternly repressed in himself awoke
again. They were not justly roused--it was only that he was human and
incensed.
"I don't think Tristram would wish it," he said, and unconsciously his
voice took on its heaviest Anglicanism. "He would not wish you to be put
to any trouble. After all, he is almost a stranger to you."
"I know him very well," she returned. "I think he has known me all his
life. He would leave the decision to me."
"At least, he would not wish you to be burdened with
the--unconventionally----" He stammered, half expecting the vivid
contempt with which she turned to him, and conscious of deserving it.
"Oh, you priest! You would rather your friend died than that your
fetish of Other People's Respectability should be insulted." She waved
him aside and flashed past him to the doorway, pulling the curtains
noiselessly aside. In the second room, half-boudoir,
half-dressing-room, she found Mary Compton and Anne. The rest of the
guests had discreetly evaporated, or at most hovered afar off waiting
news of the man whom, oddly enough, they loved without intimacy. He had
lived so much his own life, they had so often laughed at his oddities,
and it was something of a revelation to them that, now the inevitable
disaster had overtaken him, they were sick and afraid and dumbly
remorse-stricken.
Captain Compton stood at the compound gates under the dying lights of
the lanterns with a couple of his brother officers, and smoked fiercely.
"Poor old Tristram--good old Hermit. It was bound to happen. No human
being could go on like that and not crock up. Damn it, we oughtn't to
have allowed it. We took him too much for granted. It's always the
way. Good Lord, why doesn't some one come? What's Rasaldu doing in that
_galere_, I should like to know? And what the devil is that tearing
down the road----?"
Rasaldu meantime, delightfully conscious of his utility, had followed
Sigrid and Meredith into the room where the two women waited. Mary
Compton had remained boldly. She sat upright in her chair under the lamp
with a rather bleak look of authority and ready-for-anything alertness,
which had made her an adored terror in the grim days at Chitral. Her
evening dress, an antiquity cunningly revised, fitted her badly, as
though it knew she hated it and meant to pay her out. She jerked her
shoulders as Sigrid entered, seemingly exasperated by the garment's
stiff, restraining influence.
"Well?" she demanded. "How is he?"
"I don't know yet," was the low answer. "But I think he is very ill. I
have only seen one person die--it was like that." She turned her fair,
smooth head towards Owen, but did not look at him. "Mr. Meredith wishes
him to be moved. He is afraid my reputation might suffer--or that there
might be a scandal in his parish."
Mrs. Compton considered the young missionary with a cold curiosity,
giving him an almost ludicrous consciousness of the oft-denied but very
profound sex solidarity of women.
"How idiotic! Men are just like babies in a crisis--always fussing
about the unessentials. Of course, Major Tristram must stay--at any
rate, until he is out of danger. And, Sigrid, as a sop to a hopeless
passion, let me help nurse him."
"We'll pull him through together," Sigrid answered.
"Mr. Meredith, don't you think with Mrs. Compton and Mrs. Smithers on
guard, the situation should pass muster?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders. He was looking at Anne--Anne whose
white, tear-stained face peered out of the shadow like a pitiful,
frightened ghost's, and somehow the sight filled him with a cold anger.
"My suggestion was well meant," he said. "I made it for Major
Tristram's sake as well as for yours. I thought he would prefer to find
himself among old friends."
"He could have come to us," Anne said, in her thin, broken voice. "I
have nursed so much--and mother understands sickness, too----"
Sigrid Fersen glanced at her.
"I suppose Colonel Boucicault is an old friend," she said. "Colonel
Boucicault, who has helped to kill him----"
There was a second of strained silence. Anne's face had changed from
white to red, and then to a deeper pallor. She dropped forward with a
little moan, her face hidden in her hands, crying helplessly. Meredith
took a step forward, as though to protect her. The veins on his low,
broad forehead were swollen.
"Surely----" he began hoarsely.
Sigrid made an imperative gesture.
"I cannot be bothered with your loves and hates," she said. "I'm going
to save Major Tristram--that's all that matters to me. You can stay
here if you want to--both of you--but on my terms."
It was like the cut of a whip across the face. Meredith found no answer
for a moment. He was sick with horror at the tide of anger which swept
over him. His primitive instinct was to strike back physically. He
knew now that all Anne's distrust was justified. The woman was
dangerous--dangerous, above all, to Anne's happiness. He had the right
now to combat her--to set himself squarely against her power in Gaya.
He wanted to assume the authority now, but it was too late. Moreover,
at the bottom, he knew he could not touch this enemy. She was of
another world, impervious to the penalties which his could inflict.
And Compton stood on the threshold--Compton, whose face was a sufficient
warning--and behind him Ayeshi. Both men had reached the verandah steps
at the run, and now Compton had pulled up, meeting his wife's stare of
reproof with a hurried apology.
"I'm sorry---I didn't mean to make a row or startle you. Ayeshi has
just come with bad news. Miss Boucicault--I think you ought to go home
at once. Your father has been badly hurt----"
"My father!" She sprang to her feet, her eyes wide with an incredulous
fear. "My father--hurt----?" she echoed.
"He was found half-an-hour ago, unconscious. Some one must have
attacked him. Of course, now Tristram's done there's no doctor. We'll
telegraph at once. Radcliffe's got his gig--I thought you might go with
him."
He was now honestly conscience-stricken. What happened was only
terrible to him because of its significance. It was like a signal of the
first break of the storm--the thing for which he had waited. That any
one should care personally for the injured man--least of all the girl
whose youth he had trodden underfoot--seemed incredible. Yet she stood
there, white and shivering with shock. He tried to apologize again, but
she did not seem to hear; only, as Meredith came to her side, she turned
to him like a panic-stricken child.
"Please take me home to him, Owen--please take me home."
Compton made way for them both. He beckoned to Rasaldu, who obeyed the
summons reluctantly.
"We'll clear out and leave you the field. Ayeshi can bring us the news
to the club. Suppose I shan't see you again for a bit, old girl."
"Not till my job's done here. Get the ayah to bring round some
reasonable clothes."
"Right-o! So long, old girl."
He came up to his wife and kissed her shyly. She patted him.
"So long. Not too many pegs."
The room emptied. Neither Meredith nor Anne had said good-bye nor
looked at Sigrid. Rasaldu bowed over her hand, but even he realized
that she was not conscious of him. As his broad, fat back vanished down
the verandah, Mrs. Compton got up, shaking herself.
"Now we can get to business. God defend me in my last hour from
sentimentalists of Anne's make. Can I borrow a dressing-gown, Sigrid?"
"Do. Smithy will give you one."
"Thanks. By the way, I expect Boucicault's not the last to go. It's
the first bubble on the water, and soon we shall all be in it, and
boiling nicely." She made her exit on this rather light-hearted
prophecy; but Sigrid, who had made a movement to follow her, lingered
for a moment. Her eyes were cast down as though in thought, but in
reality they were fixed on Ayeshi's hand. When she raised them
suddenly, she found that he too, was watching her. There was nothing
insolent, nothing inquisitive in his scrutiny. His expression was grave
and reticent. It made him seem much older. He was no longer the boy
who had cried on her doorstep. He looked at her with a man's eyes, with
a man's understanding and stern power of secrecy.
"Was it you who found the Colonel?" she asked.
"Yes, Mem-Sahib."
"He is badly hurt?"
"I think so. The blow was a terrible one. It seemed to me that he was
conscious. Once he looked at me, but he could not move or speak."
"Do you think it was one of his men, Ayeshi?"
"I do not know, Mem-Sahib."
She turned away from him.
"There is blood on your hand, Ayeshi."
He salaamed imperturbably.
"I will wash it away. It is a cut--a little thing."
He followed her into the next room with the unobtrusive decision of one
whose right to enter could never be challenged. Mrs. Smithers had moved
the lamp behind a screen, but Ayeshi, standing at the foot of the bed,
looked down through the veil of shadow as though the sleeper's face was
an open book in which he read intently. Then he looked at Sigrid. She
had taken her place close to Tristram's pillow, and one hand rested
lightly on the coverlet. There was a caress in that touch. Her fair
head was bent in grave, pitying contemplation that was yet touched with
a curious detachment, as though she looked down from a great distance.
In the half-light, she seemed unreal, fanciful, the very spirit of that
beautiful aesthetic Paganism which the room breathed.
Ayeshi shivered a little, and his slender, dark hands resting on the
carved wooden bed, tightened their grasp.
"Mem-Sahib!" he said, softly.
"Yes, Ayeshi?"
"Mem-Sahib--I have seen so many die of late. Death at its best is
sleep. The Sahib sleeps deeply. Perhaps it is the will of his God that
death should come to him now that he has given so much for those he
loves. Is there not a saying in your Book, Mem-Sahib---'Greater love
hath no man than this, that he layeth down his life for his friend'?"
Sigrid Fersen lifted her head.
"Yes," she answered steadily.
"Meredith Sahib taught it me. I have forgotten much, but not that. It
was true of him. Others--those who come here to teach us--preach to us,
but he lived. He did not believe--no, not as Sahib Meredith believed.
He believed in the flowers and the birds and the wind and the
mountains--he believed in us." He put his hands to his breast, and his
eyes glowed in the darkness. "I was his brother--his younger brother,"
he said proudly.
"And he loved you, Ayeshi."
"He loved all men--even the worst." He came a step nearer to her.
"Mem-Sahib--a woman died out in Bjura--died horribly. He stayed with
her to the end. She was hideous, and he took her head on his knee and
comforted her as though she had been his mother. There was a little
child, and he took it and promised he would care for it. She died
happy."
Her head was bent again.
"That was like him, Ayeshi."
"Mem-Sahib--if the end comes now it will trouble him that he cannot keep
his promise."
"He shall keep his promise. I will keep it for him. And you,
Ayeshi--stay with me."
But he drew back, and the light died out of his face.
"This is the end, Mem-Sahib. His and mine. I loved him--I, too, would
have given my life--remember that of me, Mem-Sahib."
She looked up at him, and the naked agony in his eyes was something that
she indeed remembered long afterwards.
"I think he knows," she said.
He salaamed deeply.
"I will go and guard the door, Mem-Sahib."
He was gone without a sound. A shadow seemed to have passed from the
room. His very voice had been so low, that now the silence flowed over
it as though it had never been. Yet what he had said lingered.
Sigrid Fersen drew her chair close up to the bedside, and sat there chin
in hand watching. The dim light of the lamp threw the shadow of
Tristram's profile on to the white-washed wall beyond. Ugly enough--the
pointed beard thrust out under the broad, unshapely nose--the big
forehead made grotesque by the outline of disordered hair. But even the
shadow gave a hint of what the face itself revealed in its
unconsciousness. The mouth, tender and strong as a woman's may be,
passionate and austere, laughter and the joy and love of life in the
corners of the closed eyes, and over all, like a veil, pain. Quixote
with a grain of English humour--Quixote at the end, vanquished and
conquering.
He stirred a little in the first uneasiness of coming delirium, and she
laid her hand on his and he grew still again.
Mary Compton came in presently. With Mrs. Smithers, she had been
preparing a special fever antidote of her own, and there was an air of
resolve about her neat, kimono-clad figure which made death seem afar
off. She came lightly up to the bedside, stirring the contents of a
malicious-looking medicine glass.
"Now, if we can only get him to take a few drops, they will help to keep
him quiet. Of course, we don't know what in the world's the matter with
him. It may be the ghastly thing they had in Bjura; but I don't think
so. He wouldn't have come back. Are you afraid?" She glanced down at
her companion, and Sigrid met her close scrutiny deliberately.
"No."
"Well, you've been crying, anyhow."
"That's possible."
"What for?"
Sigrid's lips were twisted with a wry smile.
"I don't know--I was touched about something, I suppose. I think it was
because I never thanked him for something he gave me--I never gave him
anything to take with him when he went out there--I've just remembered."
"H'm! How many times have you two met?"
"Twice--no, three times, and the first time counted most of all."
"Are you in love with him, too?"
"I've been trying to decide--yes, I think so."
Mary Compton poured out the medicine into a tea-spoon.
"Do you mean to marry him? Because, if you do, you will."
"No, I'm not going to marry him."
"Why not?"
She made a gesture, brief, impatient.
"My dear, can't you see? We live at the opposite poles of things--he,
the unbelieving Christian, I, the believing Pagan. Look at his
life--look at mine. Look at this room--these things. You have a
_flair_ for what is precious and beautiful--can't you see?"
Mary Compton continued to balance the spoon. Her bright hazel eyes were
fixed thoughtfully on the other's face.
"Yes, I see. And I love you, Sigrid, as Gaya does, without caring who
or what you are, or what you mean to do with us. But just sometimes I'm
afraid--sometimes I think it would have been more merciful to have let
us go on our own old, stodgy way."
"You mean--him? He sought me out. I believe he brought me here. There
are more things in heaven and earth, Mary, than are dreamed of in your
philosophy. And even if that weren't true--he knew as well as I did what
I was--what I wanted---adventure, knowledge of the finest and the best
in life and in men--a last splendid hour--he would not have denied it
me."
The last words had sunk below the whisper of their brief conversation,
and Mary Compton did not hear them. Very skilfully she forced the opiate
between the unconscious man's lips.
"At any rate, we're a nice couple of nurses chattering over poor
Tristram's head. Will you watch for a little? Mrs. Smithers and I will
relieve you."
"If you want him to live leave us alone. I shall not sleep tonight."
"In those clothes?"
She glanced down at her quaint, gold-brocaded dress.
"Yes. He loves beautiful things."
"He may think he is in Paradise and you an angel," rather satirically.
"Or perhaps men so near death see clearer----"
Mary Compton sighed and bent and kissed her.
"Good night, then. If there is any change, send for us. Ayeshi is at
the door."
"Goodnight."
Now the last sound was gone. Even the man's shallow, irregular
breathing became for the moment quieter, as though peace had crept into
his troubled oblivion. Sigrid sat motionless at his side. The light
touched her with a dim brilliance; it dwelt on the smooth gold hair, on
the gold of her dress, on the rich living whiteness of her arms and
shoulders. She shone subduedly like an image on an altar-shrine--an
image of life and of life's splendour faced with the shadow of death.
Presently Tristram stirred and muttered to himself. The words were at
first thick, indistinguishable, but suddenly he roused himself. She
caught sentences, rapid, fever-stricken--the incoherent risings from the
depths of the man's soul. It was his credo--a fragment of that faith of
which Ayeshi had spoken, perhaps never before formulated, now poured in
a molten stream of delirious sincerity.
"I believe in all things living--I believe in beauty--I believe in the
goodness of men and in their immortality. I believe in the immortality
of the flowers, of the trees, of the grass in the wind--I believe in God
who is all things, who is myself and her. I believe in the sacredness
of all life----" An intolerable agony crept into his voice. He
repeated the last phrase on a rising inflection. "Oh, God, I believe in
the sacredness of life----"
She bent over him. She laid her hand on his forehead and suddenly his
eyes opened. They rested full on her face, but she knew, for all their
extraordinary brilliance, that they did not see her. It was not to her
that he spoke, but to the vision of her. "You must go, you
too--everything. A man who has broken faith--there is a curse on us--an
awful curse. We kill what we love--we kill what is holy,
unfathomable--every day of our lives--for pleasure, because we must.
We're doomed to destroy. We try not to--we try to save--but the curse
is on us--the curse of Cain----" His voice had dropped; it broke now
with a groan and the brief glimpse of coherent thought was over. He
began to mutter again--isolated words, a name, constantly a name. Still
she remained bent over him. Her small face had lost colour, and
something of its aloof pity. She was breathing quickly, through parted
lips.
"Tristram!" she whispered.
He raised one burning hand and pushed her back.
"No--not now--you must go--for pity's sake. I've carried you
here--here--so long--through the burning days--since that night. You
don't know--no other woman--there had been fancies--the flowers by the
waterside--the lotus there in the shadows---the lizard in the long
grass--you were the golden corn swaying in the wind, the flowers--the
stars, the mountains, the slender trees in the storm--great ships sailed
down the river--you came in and out of their ghosts flying over the
water--I watched you till dawn--you were the dawn--dancing over the
world's grey roofs--you were nature, life, God----" He raised himself
on his elbow in a frenzied ecstasy. She put her arm round his shoulders
trying to force him back. In a minute his voice had changed--grew dry
and harsh and imperative. "Separate the living from the dead--no
flinching--it's a miracle, this life--a mystery--sacred--fan the
flames--the dead, too, are sacred--fire is pure--now it is
over--finished--I can sleep--" He sat upright, head thrown back as one
awaiting thirstily release, then lifted his arms high up in a gesture of
despair. "The colours--down--down in the dust--a blow straight in the
face of God--the goal missed--in a minute--oh! God!--if I cared
less----"
He fell back exhausted, broken, his breathing so hushed that for a
moment she believed that it had ceased for ever. She still held him, her
arm crushed under his great shoulders, and she called him by name,
recklessly. He turned over a little on his side.
"Wickie understood," he whispered. "Wickie knew I couldn't help it--but
my mother--don't let her know--not yet. She's old--so old--one long
sacrifice--and now to have failed----"
"She shan't know--I promise--I promise----"
He did not, could not have heard. His head tossed restlessly on the
pillow. The collar of his shirt was open, and she caught a glimpse of a
red swollen line across his chest. She drew her breath quickly--staring
at it.
"You must go back, Sigrid--you must. You are not a dream--not now.
Back up on to the mountain-top--to your golden palaces--where there is
no meanness--no poverty--no sin--you could not go with me where I am
going----"
She knelt beside him, holding, him with all her strength, his head
pressed against her bare shoulder.
"I am going with you, Tristram Sahib--tonight at least I'll go with you
wherever you go--tonight. I'll try your way of loving and dying--just
this one night, Tristram."
There was a blue, unfamiliar shadow about her lips. The room with its
dim treasures was no longer part of her. She had lost her serenity, her
easy detachment. Not the triumphant quality of her power. This man was
dying--not of the body, but of the soul. She could feel him sinking,
and she went down with him--down into the vortex of his unknown
struggle, fighting as she had danced and lived, with her whole will,
with all the splendid vitalness of her being.
And his eyes, glazing already, were turned to her and saw her. They
became peaceful--content. Whatever message she had willed to pierce the
dense cloud of delirium had reached him. He sighed, and lay still in
her arms.
Presently she saw that his eyes were closed. A faint moisture glistened
on his smooth forehead, and the wild muttering passed into the quiet of
an exhausted slumber.
Still she did not move.
The night sank into deeper darkness and stillness. The hours crept on
their way, monstrous, heavy-footed. She measured her breathing to his,
she held him in arms that had lost all feeling. The shadow about her
lips crept over her whole face, blotting out its youth.
The dawn came at last, creeping in between the parted curtains, mixing
pallidly with the dying lamplight. The rich embroideries and the
glittering curios faded, the high carved chair by the dressing-table
became spectral, unreal.
Ayeshi entered noiselessly, passing like a ghost to the quiet bedside.
Tristram had turned over, his face to the coming day, his head resting
in the curve of his arm. So Ayeshi had often seen him--by the
camp-fire, after the day's work.
And beneath, on the great tiger-skin, huddled and still, a golden-clad,
incongruous figure, which even in that moment retained something
imperious, conquering, exultant.
Ayeshi bent down and touched the pale, disordered hair. He leant across
and kissed the man's unconscious hand--lightly, as if it had been a
sleeping child's.
Then, noiselessly as he had come, glided across the room to the open
window and thence out into the morning.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*TRISTRAM CHOOSES HIS ROAD*
Dr. Martin from Lucknow had made his examination, and now he sat
opposite to the woman on whose husband he was about to pass sentence,
and told her the truth with all the delicacy at his command. He was a
civilian with a considerable practice among women, and a corresponding
belief in his understanding of the sex. But he did not understand Mrs.
Boucicault. Possibly the long journey, partly on horse-back, partly on
a bone-racking bullock-wagon, had upset his nerve and that nice balance
of mind which made a correct analysis possible. He had felt oddly and
ridiculously sickened by the man whose bedside he had just left. There
was something revolting in that great hulk of over-developed,
ill-conditioned strength, inert and helpless, without power of speech or
motion, with nothing living in it but the eyes. Dr. Martin had seen a
great many ugly sights in his career, but nothing uglier than those
desperately living eyes in the dead body.
Now the wife sat opposite him and smiled at him--a slow, unending smile
which might have pointed to a mind deranged by grief if she had not been
so eminently practical and calm. She was dressed girlishly in white,
with a red rose stuck gaily in her belt. The grey fluffy hair had been
carefully yet loosely dressed, and there was a faint tinge of artificial
colour on her cheeks. Her restless fingers glittered with valuable
rings. It was still early in the day, and Dr. Martin had pronounced a
sentence which was practically one of death, and he felt that the whole
situation was horrid--a kind of _danse macabre_. The only person who
gave him the remotest sensation of preserved decency was the daughter.
She sat apart from her mother with her head bowed, her hands tight
clasped in her lap, and he had seen a tear fall. He thought her rather
pretty and feminine. With the rapid, constructive reasoning of his sex,
he placed her in the catalogue of good daughters of adoring fathers and
heartless mothers.
"And so," said Mrs. Boucicault, summing up, "you don't think that there
is much hope. He may live a long time of course--but like that--quite
conscious, but helpless. On the other hand, the end might come
suddenly. Isn't that what you mean?"
Dr. Martin fidgeted. He felt tact was wasted on her.
"Those are the two extremes of the case," he admitted. "But there are
intermediary possibilities. He might get back a certain amount of
activity--speech, for instance. It all depends on the treatment. All
that I can advise for the present is that he should not be worried or
alarmed. Get him a long leave--don't talk of retirement--keep him here,
at any rate, for the present. That's the best you can do."
"It is what I intended," Mrs. Boucicault returned deliberately.
Again the little doctor felt himself vaguely upset. It was as though
just as he was bowling smoothly along a familiar road, some one came and
madly jolted him into an uncomfortable rut. He clung obstinately to his
course.
"I can't say how I sympathize with you," he said. "No one can
appreciate more than I do the courage of our women here in India.
Literally we all go more or less with our lives in our hands. Of
course, the vast majority of the natives are loyal, but in so many
millions there are bound to be one or two degenerate fanatics with a
grievance. I understand there has been some question of sedition in the
native regiment--at least, a good deal of discontent. We had rumours of
it even in Lucknow."
Anne Boucicault looked up. She had certainly been crying, but now her
brown eyes were bright, and her lips straight and firm.
"It wasn't any of father's men," she said on a low note of defiance.
"I'm sure it wasn't. Father is a fine soldier. When he was captain they
used to call him the Bagh Sahib because of his fearlessness. They
worshipped him. One of the older men told me--I know they wouldn't have
touched him."
Dr. Martin smiled. He felt relieved and pleasantly moved by the quick
and passionate championship of the hulk he had just condemned. He had,
moreover, heard something of Colonel Boucicault's past and something of
his present. For the latter he was prepared to find some explanation in
the grey-haired, bedizened figure of indifference opposite him.
"One would be glad to believe that you are right, Miss Boucicault," he
said courteously. "If only the dastardly coward could be got hold
of----"
"I believe I know who he is," she interrupted in a hard quick way, which
was new to her. "Ayeshi, Major Tristram's servant, has disappeared. He
had some money which the Rajah gave him for his education, and he has
stolen it and gone. I saw him that night when he came and told us that
father had been found. I saw blood on his hand."
Dr. Martin hesitated an instant, as though in two minds as to his
answer. Finally he looked up with a professional twinkle.
"Feminine intuition again! Well, since you've got so far on your own,
Miss Boucicault, I might as well tell you that your surmise is shared by
others. I met Captain Compton at the dak-bungalow, and he told me
there's a hue and cry after this said Ayeshi. Only it's to be kept
quiet. I understand the boy was a sort of protege of Major Tristram's,
and there's a general opinion that, unless it's necessary, the latter is
not to be told. He's pretty weak still, and it's something of a shock
to get one of your pet theories bowled over in that way."
Anne's eyes sank to her clasped hands.
"Is Major Tristram better?" she asked.
"Fine. Well round the corner. But I fancy it must have been touch and
go with him. That fair-haired woman--Miss Fersen, isn't that the
name?--seems to have fought every inch of the ground." He reflected
pleasurably for a minute. "Well, that's the sort of nurse a man wants
on his death-bed--a real fighter and worth looking at to boot--something
to make life worth struggling for. Great dancer, isn't she? Well, I'm
a sort of back-number that never catches up, and there's always a
different star on the horizon when I get home on leave, and even then I
only get a glimpse. My people hang out in a God-forsaken spot in
Yorkshire." He rambled on for a time with a man's affable, crushing
indifference as to whether his listeners are bored or otherwise, but
finally, chilled by Mrs. Boucicault's enigmatic smile and Anne's white
silence, he got up.
"Well, I'll be getting along to the club----"
Mrs. Boucicault remained seated.
"Would you spare me a minute, Dr. Martin? A little trouble of my own--a
bruise, a mere nothing, still perhaps you would look at it. Anne, run
away, would you?"
Dr. Martin, a little irritated by this fresh and probably petty call on
his services, wondered at the girl's dignity. It must be galling at her
age to be told to "run away." He scented tragedy, and sized it up and
turned to its creator with professionalism and small sympathy.
"Now, Mrs. Boucicault, if you could just tell me----"
Anne heard the last words and smiled bitterly to herself. She went out
on to the verandah and stood there looking down into the sunlit garden
with eyes that were blind with misery and anger and contempt. In that
quiet room, listening to the doctor's pleasantly modulated voice, she
had been through purgatory. She knew that the ways of God were
inscrutable--it was the all-covering explanation of her creed--but they
were sometimes hard to tread. Why had He given a bad woman the power to
save the life of a good man? Why had He allowed Evil to creep in and
take possession of peaceful Gaya? Was it perhaps a trial, a test of
their strength? That seemed possible. At least she did not doubt the
working of God's hand. She had seen it strike--strike terribly. In a
few hours it had brought a miracle of change in her little cosmos. The
figure of terror had gone down like some monstrous clay-footed idol, and
become pitiful and pitiable. She no longer feared it--no longer hated.
She yearned towards it as towards a sinner whose punishment has been
meted out with an implacable justice. He was a symbol of Divine wrath,
an awful admonition, but beyond man's hate or censure. He had become
almost sacred to her. But her mother had drifted from her, had wilfully
stood apart in that solemn moment, with that hateful smile on her lips
had seemed to deny the very existence of God Himself. Anne shuddered.
It was as though a mask had fallen from the grey-tinted, childish,
wrinkled face, and that Anne saw her as she was, petty, cruel,
mean-souled--a hard, unlovable woman who had perhaps driven her father
to his destruction. Her father had been a great man--a fine soldier,
brave, daring, much beloved. She thought of him with a dim, uncertain
pride which grew stronger and clearer. But her mother sank into a
shadow. She was little and selfish. In this awful hour when Death hung
over them, she thought of her own petty ailments--of a trivial bruise,
keeping Dr. Martin back to discuss herself with a nauseating self-pity.
In that moment Anne's heart turned towards her father with an
overpowering tenderness, a kind of comradeship of understanding.
How long they were! Presently she heard her mother's voice,
high-pitched and steady. Mrs. Boucicault led the way out on to the
balcony. She was toying with the red rose, smelling it with a
deliberate epicureanism.
"I am so glad you are able to stay on a few days, Dr. Martin. I am
giving a dinner and a little dance to the Station next week, and of
course Miss Fersen will be of the party. She is rather a friend of
mine. You will meet her then. Good-bye for the present, and ever so
many thanks."
Dr. Martin muttered something. Even then Anne wondered at him. He took
no notice of her, and went stumbling awkwardly down the steps like a man
shaken out of his composure. His face was white and rather sickly
looking.
The two women stood side by side, and watched him clamber up into the
dog-cart and drive off. Even after he had disappeared they remained
motionless as though both feared the first move, the first break in the
long silence between them. Or perhaps it was only Anne who was afraid,
for when she turned suddenly she found her mother's gaze fixed absently
on the distance, her smile lingering at the corners of her mouth like
the forgotten grimace of an actor who has suddenly ceased to act.
"Mother--you didn't mean it--it was a mistake--I didn't understand you,
of course--it isn't true about the dinner----"
"Why not?" Mrs. Boucicault turned her faded blue eyes to her daughter's
face. "Yes, it's perfectly true," she said.
Anne was shivering with an almost physical sickness.
"It isn't possible," she said breathlessly. "You can't realize--with
father so ill--so terribly ill. How can you think of such a thing?
It's wicked--cruel! What will people think?"
"I don't really know. But they'll come. Sigrid Fersen will come, I
know. I wish she would dance--just once. I have never seen her."
"That woman! You mean to have her--now?"
"I thought you'd be glad. She seems to have saved Major Tristram's
life."
"The Rajah's mistress!"
Mrs. Boucicault laughed lightly.
"My dear little daughter, how grown-up of you! Is that the sort of
thing your religion teaches you?"
Anne made no answer. She was ashamed and sorry, but also full of a
bitter resentment, as good people are when they have been goaded into an
unjustifiable aggression, an ugly, unchristian outbreak. Yet she
recognized her share of the fault with contrition, and in penance sought
to retrace her steps, to bridge the widening gulf between her and the
woman who one short week ago had been her companion, her half-protected,
half-protecting comrade. She came and laid her hand gently on her
mother's.
"It was horrid of me to say that--it was uncharitable. But I am so
unhappy----"
"Unhappy--are you?" Mrs. Boucicault smiled vaguely down at the
caressing hand as though it amused her.
"Why?"
"Mother--isn't it obvious?--Isn't it the most terrible thing that could
have happened?"
"It doesn't seem to me terrible at all."
Anne held her ground. She was trembling with a kind of painful
excitement. In her own mind there was a picture of herself fighting to
bring this shallow little soul up to the heights of realization, to some
dim perception of the real tragedy.
"It is terrible," she affirmed patiently. "Even if you don't love
father any more you must see how awful it is to be struck down like that
in a minute, without time to make his peace with any of us--and now to
lie there dumb and helpless, never able to tell us things--never able to
make up for anything. Isn't that pitiable? It's the very coldest way
one can look at it. But you must feel more than that. After all, you
did love him once. Of course he was different then, but you must try
and remember him as he was in those days----"
Mrs. Boucicault patted the hand on her arm.
"That sounds quite pretty and nice, Anne. But I haven't time for
remembering."
"Not time? You've got all your life. You must try and make a new
picture of him. I shall. I shall think of him as the handsome, brave
Tiger Sahib and learn to love him. We've got to hold together, mother,
and make this awful trial bearable for him. After all, we can't
tell--it may be a kind of test of us all--it may be the saving of
him--of us----"
Mrs. Boucicault shook her head like a playful, obstinate child.
"I don't look at it like that at all. I'm free. I'm going to have a
rattling good time."
"Mother!" She still retained her affectionate attitude, but it had
become official, perfunctory. All the warmth in her died out, leaving a
chill horror. "Mother--you can't mean what you say! If you do you must
be mad or very wicked."
"I daresay both, my dear. I really don't care. I'm free--that's how I
feel about it. I'm going to make up for lost time----"
Anne shrank away from her.
"It's awful--horrible----"
Mrs. Boucicault threw her rose petulantly into the garden. She had only
worn it a short time, and it had already withered.
"I guessed you would feel like that. If you don't like it you could go
down to Trichy and stay with the Osbornes. They are your father's
relations, and they always hated me, so you'll get on. Of course I
don't want to persuade you. I'm very fond of you, Anne. I should like
you to stay."
"And watch you make a mock of my father's misery?"
"No, Anne--only having a good time."
"It would make me sick to see you."
"Well, then--of course you must go."