with its suffocating propriety, its prim order, seemed to him an
integral part of the scene's sordidness. He had only one instinct
left--the thirst for the free air and the loneliness of the life to
which he had belonged. She watched him in breathless silence, clasping
and unclasping her thin hands. She was the more resentful because he
had driven her to an outburst of which she was ashamed.
"When you found my father was going to get better, what did you expect?"
she began again. "I wonder since you had gone so far--that you didn't
finish your work."
A faint, bitter amusement touched his white lips.
"Yes, Anne, you would wonder that. But I am a doctor--not so much by
profession as by instinct. I have to save--to heal where I can. Even
then I might have failed in this instance and not found myself guilty.
But he was your father--I wanted you to be happy--I think it--it
inspired me to do more than I could otherwise have done."
"What did you expect--between us afterwards?" she persisted.
The smile lingered, but without its bitterness.
"Oh, I don't know, Anne--but something different from this. I knew that
you'd be pained, even horrified--that was only natural. But I thought
you knew me well enough to see the less ugly side. I had a foolish
fancy even--that in such a crisis we might find each other--understand
each other better. Well--I've been wrong all the way."
She was silent for a moment, gathering together the storm-scattered
principles of her life. She was trying to be just, charitable, towards
him. The tears glistened on her cheeks.
"I daresay you did mean to make me happy, Tris. But you see, you
couldn't. One can't build up happiness on sin."
"I did not feel myself guilty--not in that way," he said gently.
"But you were guilty." Her voice hardened. "It was a crime to have
struck a man down for the sake of a mongrel dog----"
He turned quickly. He felt mysteriously outraged, as though she had
struck straight and deep into something vital in him.
"It wasn't only a dog, Anne," he said. "It was the pain--all the
needless suffering----" He did not try to finish. He could not have
explained, because he knew it was not in her power to understand. For
the first time he saw all that separated them--not so much a gulf as a
world, making her day his night. They were both silent. In a few
minutes the superficial wrappings of their life had been torn off and
its nakedness held them appalled.
The door opened softly and the new nurse who had come with Dr. Martin
looked in for an instant.
"He is coming round, Major Tristram," she said.
"Very well, nurse. I'll be with you at once."
He went towards the door, but Anne forestalled him. Her face was
composed and very set, though the tears still hung on her long lashes.
"I don't want you to--I don't think you ought to----"
He looked at her grimly.
"As you wish. Dr. Martin must be outside somewhere. I'll explain. He
can take over the case."
"Explain--what do you mean?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"We've got to begin somewhere. Better now."
She stared at him blankly.
"You don't mean--you can't mean--you're not going to tell people?"
"I must. Besides, isn't it what you wish?"
She turned away and sat down, burying her face in her hands. She was
crying softly, helplessly, like a child. He came back to her and stood
over her as though his first impulse to comfort, her had been checked by
recollection.
"Anne, I am a clumsy beggar--I don't understand--I don't know what you
want----"
"You can't tell everyone," she sobbed wildly. "You can't, Tris. It
would be too cruel. Think of all the people you'd hurt--who would have
to suffer with you--all of us, even--even our child--even father. You
mustn't do it, Tris. Father may have changed--he will be so happy--I
shall beg him for his own sake as well as for mine. He'll do as I
ask--I'm sure he will. Tris--it's awful to know this awful thing
oneself--but for others to know too--and all the scandal----"
She was incoherent in her piteous despair, but now he understood her.
"You forget Ayeshi, Anne," he said, "and all I owe him."
"Ayeshi----? But people only suspect--he's in hiding because of some
money he took--what does he matter? No one could prove anything--only
father--and he can clear Ayeshi best of all. Don't you see that--or
don't you care? Do you want me to suffer?"
He winced.
"I'll do whatever you want, Anne," he said heavily. "Everything on earth
I can do. But I've got to think. I'll tell Martin I've had marching
orders, or some lie. He knows the case, and can do everything as well as
I could. I'll clear out to Heerut. I've got to see Ayeshi. In the
meantime, you'll have breathing space to think things over too--and to
decide. You can let me know." He went to the door and there hesitated
and looked back at her with pitying wistfulness. "Anne, I don't repent
much what I did to your father--I can't--but you didn't deserve to be
hurt. And I've hurt you. I can't forgive myself that--ever."
He waited an instant. She did not move and he went out closing the door
softly behind him.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*RETURN*
"When I heard folks say the place was haunted I just laughed in their
faces," Mrs. Smithers asserted moodily. "I don't hold with ghosts and
them sort, and in a general way I don't believe in them. But I believe
in this ghost all right. We've tried to scrub it out, but it won't go
and it's got the grouch on us for trying. It's just sucking the polish
out of the furniture. And it's sucking the life out of me; I know
that."
She turned to her companion lying curled up in the big basket chair and
challenged contradiction with her own appearance. Sigrid looked back at
her gravely.
"Your wig's crooked, Smithy dear. Of late its angle has been
persistently drunken."
"What's it matter!" Mrs. Smithers returned. "Who cares? We might as
well be drunk for all the notice these stuck-up nobodies take of us.
What's the use of being respectable, if there's no one to see? Might as
well fade away, comfy, that's my opinion." Whereupon, suiting her
action to her words, she snatched the offending erection from her head,
sat on it, and proceeded to rumple up the short grey hair till the last
vestige of propriety was lost in a ludicrously rakish disorder. "Well,
I've been respectable for your sake for two solid years, Sigrid, and
it's nigh done for me. Now I'm myself again, and I mean to stick to
meself or bust; so there."
Sigrid gave a laugh that ended with a sigh.
"Your nice, wicked, unprincipled self, Smithy! It reminds me of old
times."
"H'm, does it? Well, nothing reminds me of old times in this horrible
place. Nothing--not even you. You're just the outsides of what you
were, Sigrid--a sort of husk. I don't know where you are--but the real
you isn't here at all--and a good job too." She paused and then
wistfully, rather shyly: "You don't even play nowadays, my dear."
Sigrid got up slowly.
"Smithy, one couldn't play in this room. I could play in a garret or in
the streets, but not here. Fancy Beethoven and that marble atrocity!
Even Elgar! No, no, I couldn't." She went out past Mrs. Smithers on to
the verandah and there lingered for a moment. "Look at the sunshine!"
she said dreamily. "That, at least, is always the same for the just and
the unjust, the happy and the unhappy. Doesn't that console you?"
Mrs. Smithers shook her head.
"It isn't the same. It's an awful thing here. They say if it goes on
beating down like that it will mean thousands and thousands of deaths.
It's cruel. But, such as it is, it don't come inside this place,
Sigrid. It beats down on the road out there, but it don't touch us.
We're walled in--the Lord knows by what--but we're walled in."
Sigrid took her lace parasol and went down the steps to the wide avenue
which swept round in a semicircle to the road. She still moved with her
smooth, tigerish elasticity, but she herself was conscious of an
overwhelming fatigue. It was as Smithy said--the spirit of the place
had triumphed. Little by little it had overpowered the garish,
incongruous splendours with which Barclay had sought to change its
character. The life and gaiety which he had schemed for had never
crossed the threshold, and now he no longer fought, but in sullen
acquiescence watched gloom and decay rise like a sombre tide over its
old ground. The place was moribund. The people in it moved softly and
spoke instinctively in hushed voices as though somewhere in those empty
rooms some one lay dead.
Sigrid reached the compound gates. It was still early in the morning,
but the heat burnt down on the white road with the reflected fierceness
of a near and monstrous fire. The air was thick and tasted metallic. A
bullock-wagon toiled up towards Gaya, came to an exhausted halt, and
then, in response to listless imprecations, creaked heavily on its way.
The mingled sweat and dust lay in ridges on the animals' heaving flanks
and scored the dark faces which were turned for a moment in Sigrid's
direction. Man and brute were curiously allied in that blank and yet
piteous stare. It was as though both visaged suffering and visaged it
dumbly, patiently, accepting it as the decree of life.
Then all was still again.
A man on horseback turned the bend of the road and came at a lumbering
walk down-hill towards the bungalow. She stood and watched him and an
odd, unsteady smile of recognition played with the corners of her lips.
No other man in Gaya rode such a lank, spindle-legged mare, no other man
cut so quaint a figure, no other man could have worn those clothes and
borne himself so bravely. For, despite that touch of the grotesque,
there was something splendid and royal about him, something in his
bigness, in the grand lines of his body, in his freedom and
unconsciousness that made him physically kin to those giants whose
fearless, joyous living glimmers through history and legend--to the
Siegfrieds and the Beowulfs and the Parsifals, men of the forest and the
mountain, who drank deep of life at its source and died on heights which
our day has forgotten.
He carried a yellow-haired dog under one arm and an ordinary covered
wicker basket was tied to his saddle, and despite his efforts jolted
somewhat to the plaintive protests of a cat's mewing.
She would have turned and avoided him, but the bigness of him had held
her riveted too long. He drew rein and swung himself to the ground
beside her.
"I've brought you Richard," he said simply. He did not offer her his
hand or greet her, although they had not spoken to each other for many
weeks. He seemed to sweep all ceremony aside.
"I ought to have brought him before--I promised, didn't I?--but somehow
I couldn't. It was like a slight to Wickie. He's had a rotten time
though, poor chap. You'll make it up to him, I know."
She patted the mongrel's distrustful snout. The man's proximity shook
her composure so that she seized eagerly on the first thought that came
to her.
"What other passengers have you on board?" she said, with a little nod
towards the heaving and mysteriously creaking basket at his saddle.
"My tabbies," he said solemnly. "They've got rather obstreperous since
we've been civilized. My wife doesn't like them running about after me,
so they had to be shut up, poor beggars, and there's nothing like
shutting people up for bringing the devil out of them. Now I'm taking
them with me to Heerut." He smiled a little. "I'm going back to the
wilderness," he said.
He took off his helmet and ran his hand through the thick, tawny hair
with a gesture like that of a sleeper freeing himself from the clouds of
an evil dream. The light striking through the branches of the
mohwa-tree lit up his face, and, looking up at him and reading all that
the last months had wrought, she felt a pang of angry pity. If this was
Siegfried, then it was not the Siegfried of Bruennhilde's fiery
mountain, but the man of the Rhine Valley, Gudruna's man, fettered by
civilization and weakened by its trickery and dishonesty. Had he also
drunk of the cup of forgetfulness, she wondered? Had he lost his vision
of the fire-girded rocks above where he had won his manhood? A flicker
of the old mockery shone in her eyes.
"You don't look very well, Major Tristram," she said.
He shook his head.
"Oh, I'm well enough--physically at any rate." He laid his hand on his
heart with a rueful laugh. "I've got a sort of spiritual indigestion
though--it's this life--it doesn't suit me or my tabbies. It's too neat
and tidy. I'm like that what's-his-name person who had to put his hand
to his mother earth to keep strong. I need to be doing and fighting,
struggling for existence in my mother wilderness to keep decent. Well,
I shall have enough of that out there. Unless the drought breaks soon
we're going to have more trouble. The unhappy folk in the village are
beginning to die off like flies, and when the famine comes----?" He
shrugged his shoulders.
"You don't look fit for such work," she exclaimed bitterly.
"I'm tired--that's all. I had a stiff day of it yesterday." He looked
at her with a flash of boyish enthusiasm. "Hasn't any one told you?"
"No one has told me anything," she said. "People don't rush here with
their latest gossip."
He flushed painfully.
"Oh, well, it isn't exactly gossip. It's about Boucicault."
"Boucicault?"
"Yes. You know Sir Gilbert Foster gave him up. Well, I found something
Sir Gilbert didn't--a little spot on the brain not bigger than a pin's
head. I operated yesterday, and I believe he'll get well. Isn't that a
feather in my cap?"
He looked up, smiling into the sunlight, and waited for her to speak,
until the silence became oppressive. Then he turned to her, drawn by an
instinct which the next instant he knew was justified. He caught her by
the arm, shaken from all his resolute self-possession by what her face
revealed to him.
"Sigrid--what is it--you're ill--in pain----"
But she freed herself almost violently, steadying herself, forcing the
blood back into her cheeks by a sheer effort of the will.
"It's nothing--don't fuss over me. It's the heat--nothing more----"
"Then you ought not to be out here."
She laughed defiantly.
"You're not my doctor, Major Tristram, and I won't be bullied. Besides,
you've whetted my curiosity. There now, I'm all right again. What were
you saying about Colonel Boucicault? You--you operated, and now he's
going to get well?"
"I think so." But he answered absently. He was still intent on her
face, striving to get beneath the mask. The moment's livid pallor had
gone, but she was none the less changed. Her voice, level and quiet,
had yet a new tone in it--a kind of hoarseness which he knew as a
symptom of exhaustion and pain. She turned away, trying to avoid his
eyes.
"Has he been able to speak?"
"Not yet. He is not even properly conscious. It may last some weeks."
She gave a little cynical laugh.
"I suppose some one will be glad."
"Anne--my wife."
"Ah, yes--your wife." Some new thought struck her. She turned back to
him, with a line of perplexity between her arched brows. "Aren't you
leaving him very soon?"
He hesitated, and then answered slowly:
"Dr. Martin is with him. I have to go to Heerut. It's not only my
work. I've heard that Ayeshi's somewhere in these parts, and I've got
to find him."
"What do you want with Ayeshi?" she asked, no less deliberately.
"I've got to bring him back. I only heard yesterday of the suspicion
which sent him into hiding, and, I am afraid, to the devil. The
suspicion is unwarranted. He's got to come back and be cleared."
"Poor Ayeshi!" she said under her breath.
He nodded, his eyes darkened with pain.
"He has suffered horribly and unjustly."
"Needlessly!" she corrected vehemently. "Uselessly! Who minds sacrifice
or suffering or injustice so long as the end--the purpose--is clear and
attained? It's the pitiable uselessness----" She broke off, tapping
the ground with an exasperated foot. But he had heard the tears in her
voice.
"Isn't that the horror of all suffering?" he asked, wearily--"its
apparent uselessness? We can only hope it leads somewhere."
"Oh, for pity's sake don't be platitudinous!" she burst out. "It's
almost as though I was listening to Anne talking."
"My wife!" he reminded her sharply.
"Oh, you are very loyal!" she retorted.
He was silent a moment, and then laughed, covering over his own pallor.
"It's only a sense of justice. A wife isn't responsible for the poor
qualities of her husband's brains, is she?"
"She may be responsible for his becoming a sleek prig," she said
cruelly, then, with a quick, almost girlish gesture of appeal: "Don't be
angry, Major Tristram! The heat has disagreed with me mentally and
physically. Let's talk of something else. Tell me something about your
mother."
He looked at her, puzzled, and naively pleased.
"What shall I tell you about her?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know--tell me if she is well and happy."
He bent down to stroke the dog at his feet, hiding his face.
"I believe she is. In her last letter she hoped to live to welcome us
both home----"
"Will that hope be gratified, Major Tristram?"
"I fear not," he answered unsteadily.
She was silent, looking wistfully ahead into the white sunlight.
"Ever since that day I saw her picture and heard her story I have been
interested in your mother," she said at last. "She is the sort of woman
whom one wants to be happy--whose happiness one would like to shelter to
the end."
"One can't protect another's happiness," he said. "I've learned that
much."
"I also," she said gravely.
He straightened up. His blue eyes rested on her face with a
treacherous, smouldering trouble.
"I can't help feeling that you're--you're suffering," he said. "It's
the only thing I'm quick at guessing at--if it's only physical--please
go in and--and rest----"
She shook her head. There was a tenderness in her faint smile which a
woman may feel for some big, clumsy, loving boy.
"I'm not tired. I come down here every day and watch life go past."
"Sigrid----" He faltered. "Does that mean that you are very lonely?"
"No--not very. My husband is always away now. Mrs. Boucicault and Mary
come sometimes--and even Mrs. Bosanquet. I think they all love me, but
they can't alter circumstances, and it makes them desperately unhappy.
Often I wish they wouldn't come----" She waited a moment, studying his
set features with a pitying knowledge. "I know what you're thinking,
Major Tristram. You're comparing this life with the golden palaces and
the mountain-tops, with my splendid living and splendid dying."
She burst out laughing and patted him on the arm. "Oh, my innocent
friend, don't you know us mortals better than that--don't you know how
we love to air our borrowed souls and talk largely and pompously about
the ideals we've cribbed out of a novel? There is nothing in
it--nothing. I just sold myself for an easy life in a mud hut in the
valley. Let that comfort you."
He threw back his head, looking her full in the face.
"That's a lie," he said. "You must have loved greatly."
For a full minute they remained staring at each other in defiant
silence. And under his unhappy eyes her expression changed and grew
careless and indifferent.
"Well--perhaps you're right, perhaps I did love with all my heart." She
held out her hand. "But I am very, very tired now. The heat is
appalling. I wish you God speed, Major Tristram."
He scarcely touched her. He swung himself up into the saddle with a
suddenness which startled Arabella into a youthful curvet. The tabbies
mewed protest, and Tristram laid his hand soothingly on their basket.
Then he looked down and saw Sigrid standing at his knee. The change in
her held him motionless for all that every nerve in him ached for motion
and action. Her small, pale face lifted itself to his in breathless
eagerness; her parted lips quivered, the eyes were fiery with the
glitter of sternly mastered tears.
"Tristram--tell me--are all the old dreams gone?" she asked huskily.
His mouth under the short ruddy moustache hardened.
"I am going back to find them."
"That's well--go back, Tristram. They may be all that are left any of
us at the end. Our dreams are real--reality is nothing. See--!" She
laid her hand on her breast with a curious gesture of self-accusation.
"I am all your wife would call me--just a mean, soulless fortune-hunter.
You've found me out. There is not one fine or noble or high thing in
me--and yet your vision of the woman who danced that night, who has
played to you the finest music in the world is no illusion, but the
truth. Keep it--remember it. Perhaps"--she smiled faintly--"your memory
of her may bring Undine to her soul."
He looked away from her.
"I can't help myself----" he said roughly.
"Don't try. Let us keep all the beauty that we can."
She laid her hand on Arabella's long neck and stroked it caressingly.
And now something elfish and illusive dawned under her expression of
intense earnestness. "Do you remember--you used to go down to the
temple when the moon rose and dream you saw me dance among the
ruins----"
"I was a romantic boy--half crazed with loneliness----" he broke in with
repressed vehemence.
"The moon rises tonight," she said, so gently that he scarcely heard
her. Yet something insistent, patient in her forced him to meet her
eyes. He saw that they were dry and brilliant, tragically exultant.
They betrayed her careless smile, the affectation of demure mockery with
which she once more gave him her hand. "Major Tristram, I have a
foolish presentiment that we shall meet just once again--and after that
no more. Good-bye till then."
He did not answer. She turned lightly away from him. And he rode on
down towards the valley.
*CHAPTER IX*
*FOR THE LAST TIME*
Memory has many merciless weapons, but none keener, crueller than a room
which has belonged to our dead. Who amongst us has escaped that moment
of return after what seems the culmination of all agonies when the mere
position of a chair, a glove thrown down idly and forgotten, a little
touch of familiar disorder tears open the freshly closed grave and shows
us on our way to a new, seemingly endless road of pain?
Something of that impotent grief laid hands on Tristram as he stood on
the threshold of his old home. The barely furnished room was as he had
left it that night of Meredith's visit. An instinct had forbidden his
return. Shortly afterwards he had gone to Trichinopoly to be married,
and since then the place had stood deserted.
The camp-bed had been tidied by Meredith's conscientious hand, and the
few breakfast things washed and replaced, but there was cigarette ash on
the table and the lamp stood where it had burnt between them. It had a
grey, dead look, as though it had burnt itself out. The chair where he
had sat in that final hour of reckoning expressed vividly the movement
with which he had risen. There were small, regular fragments of torn
cardboard beneath the table, and the dust lay thick and white over them
like a shroud. The dust was everywhere. It veiled the photograph of
his mother so that he could not see her face.
And the dead man whose personality the place expressed so poignantly was
himself. He felt towards it as a spirit may do, looking down on the
body which it has quitted for ever. Not years, but a deep, narrow gulf
of experience separated him from the grown boy who had lived out his
joyous, romantic creed between these wooden walls, who had striven and
dreamed in their cool solitude, and gone thence day after day to fight
the bitterest of all realities, human suffering, himself living in a
world of his own imagining.
Looking back, he saw that those had been winged days of inspiration. He
saw that in his dreams he had stood close to the inner life of men which
is greater than reality and had seen visions and been dimly, gloriously
aware of great truths. These things had gone from him. He stood with
his feet planted on firm earth and knew nothing but the dust and the
turmoil and the darkness.
But because there was stern stuff in him, he went about his work
patiently. With the help of the servant who accompanied him, he dusted
and tidied like a woman, unpacked his medicine-chest and set out his
instruments in their glass cases. The two tabbies which he had set at
liberty prowled disconsolately about their old home, seeming to miss
something. He called to them and fed them, but they did not respond,
and presently they slipped out into the street and vanished. He let
them go. He felt that they would not return. They had forgotten him
and had grown wild in their captivity.
The brief dusk which precedes the Indian night shrouded the village
street, when at last, his work done, he came out and closed the door of
the hut behind him. The street was empty. That fact did not as yet
appear strange to him, for the murderous heat of the day, far from
relaxing, seemed to have become intensified and hung thick and sullen in
the tainted air. Overhead the sky threw off its brazen robes and came
out in a luminous purple, whose darker brilliancy was no less sinister.
As yet there was no sign of the break for which the land waited in
gasping agony.
Tristram went on his way towards the cross-roads. He passed a little
group of old men returning from the river and would have spoken to them,
but they salaamed and there was something in that ceremonious greeting,
in their stony, expressionless faces which chilled the blood and forced
him to go on wordless.
It was dark by the time he reached the council-tree. As he approached he
had heard a murmur of voices, which were hushed as his shadow loomed up
over the circle of squatting figures. In the brightening starlight, he
recognized Lalloo in the place of honour at the foot of the battered
idol. Other forms he recognized, and for the first time he became aware
that he had seen only old men since his return.
The circle greeted him gravely. He sat down at Lalloo's side and filled
his pipe. He talked of the drought and of the coming famine and asked
after those he knew. The glowing bowl of his pipe threw a dull
reflection on his face, and he felt that their eyes were fixed on him.
They answered his questions with a measured slowness as though each word
had to be chosen and weighed, and when his questions ceased they too
became silent. One after another a shadow rose from the circle and
glided out into the darkness.
Presently only Lalloo remained.
Tristram got up.
"Tell me," he said, "what is happening here?"
Lalloo lifted himself slowly and stood deferentially bowed, his hand
caressing his beard.
"Nothing, Sahib."
Tristram smoked placidly.
"That is a lie, Lalloo. Once you were my friend."
"It is long since the Dakktar Sahib lived amongst us."
"Is friendship forgotten from one day to another?"
"There is a saying, Sahib, that it must be won every day afresh."
Tristram was silent for a moment, hiding from the other's eyes how sure
and deadly the thrust had been. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm afraid fate means to give me another chance to serve you and win
your friendship, Lalloo."
"The wheel turns but once in a life-time," was the enigmatic answer.
"That may be. Well, I don't intend to cadge for your good-will. I
shall stay here and see you through whatever is coming. In the
meantime, tell me where can I find Ayeshi?"
Lalloo gave no sign.
"Ayeshi comes no more----" he said.
"Doesn't he?" Tristram laughed grimly. "Well, the next time he doesn't
come, will you tell him that I must see him. Perhaps his friendship
will have worn better. Tell him that he may return to us in safety and
honour."
"There is no return for Ayeshi, Sahib."
"Dead----?"
Lalloo glanced up through the darkness into the Englishman's face. For
a minute his own manner changed, losing something of its impassive
reticence.
"Sahib, there are things which no man may forget and prosper. For the
sake of one memory--leave here, leave Gaya--there is an illness coming
which even the cunning hand of the Dakktar Sahib cannot stay----"
"Is that a threat, Lalloo? Do you know me so little that you think I
should turn tail----"
The old money-lender lifted his hand almost with authority.
"No man can change the course of his fate, Sahib. But I have paid my
debt."
He salaamed and slipped away into the irregular silhouette which the
tumble-down huts threw into the palely-lit street.
Tristram lingered a moment. His pipe had gone out, and he lit it again
with an affectionate care, which covered tension. An instinct, more
delicate than a seismograph, inherited from men who had learnt at bitter
cost the significance of a glance, had warned him. It fed itself on the
unbroken silence, on the fevered, palpitating heat. The bo-tree, whose
leaves quivered to the faintest breath, was still as though it, too, was
aware of an approaching change and listened for its footfall. The very
light which filtered down from the stars and poured in a pale stream
between the black banks of the street carried with it a suggestion of a
near and brooding menace.
Tristram walked slowly up towards the northern entrance of the village.
In the past he would not have walked alone. There would have been
Ayeshi on one side of him and some woe-begone villager on the other,
with Wickie scampering in and out among the shadows, pursuing, with the
uncrushable optimism of his kind, the elusive mouse. And Tristram,
listening in memory to those past sounds and voices, was overwhelmed,
not with a sense of an invisible danger, but with a bitter loneliness.
He had now only one desire, and that to get away from these silent,
watching walls, out into the open.
He walked fast, but by the time he had reached the narrow road along the
river the first bar of moonlight had struck across the valley. He stood
still again, for beneath the sullen muttering of the water he had heard
other sounds.
Two horsemen rode out of the shadow. He made way for them, and as they
came abreast the man nearest to him turned his head, so that the light
fell full on to his face.
Tristram sprang to the horse's head, forcing the startled animal to its
haunches. The rider made no sound, but his companion turned about
instantly and bore down upon Tristram as though to force him back into
the river. In that swift course of action not a word had been spoken on
either side. The Englishman held his ground. With an iron skill, he
dragged the plunging horse about so that it came between him and his
aggressor, who reined in frantically on the very verge of the steep and
muddy bank.
"Ayeshi!" Tristram exclaimed, imperatively.
The Hindu peered down into his face. The recognition for which Tristram
waited with passionate hope did not come. Ayeshi drew himself up in the
saddle.
"Let me pass, Major Tristram."
Tristram laughed between his teeth. The hope was dead in him. "No, by
the Lord, I won't. You've got to listen to me first. I don't know what
devil's game you're playing, but I know what you've done--what you've
sacrificed for me--you've got to listen--I've a right to ask this of
you----"
The second rider burst out laughing. Tristram could not see his face,
but the laugh had a familiar ring. A pale satiric smile quivered at
Ayeshi's mouth.
"I have ceased to be your servant, Major Tristram!"
"Have you ceased to be my friend as well?"
He waited. He heard a whispered appeal. Ayeshi's companion shifted his
position and Tristram, though he could see nothing, knew that he was now
covered by a revolver. He knew, too, that it was no threat but an
intention. Death tugged at the leash. He drew himself up to meet it.
Had he possessed a weapon, he would not have sought to defend himself.
An overwhelming indifference akin to relief rested on him. He released
Ayeshi's bridle and stood back a step. He was like a drowning man,
fighting off the final and fatal apathy. "Is there no memory, Ayeshi,
which gives me the right to appeal to you?" he asked.
The smile faded from the Hindu's haggard features. He threw back the
loose white sleeve from his arm and pointed to the wrist.
"There is one memory, Major Tristram, against a hundred wrongs with
which your race has afflicted me and mine. That memory has saved you.
A life for a life----"
He made a gesture of proud authority. The next instant, both men were
riding at a fast canter into the darkness.
Tristram listened absently to the water as it poured over the rhythmic
thud of hoofs, till there was no sound left but its own languid murmur.
The indifference with which he had faced the end receded from him like a
narcotic before the returning tide of pain. He saw now that in that
moment death had seemed not so much a release as a blotting out of
failure, a passing on to the hope of a new and greater achievement. For
he had failed. Upon the recognition Ayeshi had set the seal. He had
ploughed and sown and watered the acre of earth which had been given to
him in stewardship, and there was no harvest. He had poured out his
strength and faith over that beloved ground, and it lay before him in
hard unfruitfulness. The magnitude of his bankruptcy staggered and
stupefied him.
It would have been better for others had Ayeshi forgotten his
debt--better for Anne, entangled innocently in the mesh of his blunders,
for his mother who would have seen in that death only a mysterious,
tragic repetition. Both would have been spared the pitiable anti-climax
of his career, one at least the publicity of an incomprehensible
dishonour. He stood at the edge of the water, listening to its luring
whisper as it slid past in the blackness beneath him, thinking of those
two women. For in them he had worked out his creed of happiness, in
them he had failed most utterly. One other woman indeed crossed his
thought, but she stood apart, neither failure nor success, but a golden
figure of enigma, a fancy, a dream that had become a reality, and had
separated itself from him and gone into the turmoil and mystery of life,
a separate individuality lost to him forever.
The moon rose slowly and majestically above Gaya's mountain. It poured
its pale splendour over the plain and changed the black-flowing river
into a polished, glittering road of silver. The man wrestling with his
last problem stood in the midst of the light, his shadow thrown in
gigantic outline against the high-standing grasses. And little by
little the light permeated his greater darkness and reached his
knowledge. He lifted his eyes from the black temptation and despair of
the waters to the faintly shadowed disk rising in serene immortality
amidst the music of her million worshippers. And suddenly the tension
and horror passed from him. He lifted his arms above his head with a
gesture of release and greeting. His stifled lungs drew in the life
which came down to him from those vast heights of infinity.
This much remained; for the foolish and the wise, for the successful and
the failures, for Lazarus starving in the gutter and the rich man
starving at his loaded table--the earth's godliness, man's oneness with
her and with his brother, as yet but dimly felt and broken by
devastating storms of passion, yet moving on triumphantly to the divine,
far-off event of perfect unity. Thus in his isolation he was not alone,
but could reach out in fellowship to the whole earth. It did not matter
that he had failed. Others would follow stronger and wiser than
himself. They would till his barren acre--perhaps out of his very dust
would spring the harvest which had been denied him.
The moment's ecstasy passed, but behind it followed a deep and healing
serenity. He walked on slowly. "Our dreams are real--reality is
nothing," Sigrid had said, and now the words were illuminated with his
own knowledge. They gave her back to him. They lifted her figure out of
the sordid ugliness of the events which had blurred and marred his
vision of her. He had known her best when he had known her least, and
as he knew her so she would belong to him and go down with him through
all the years.
He reached the temple gateway. He did not know nor care what power had
drawn him there. He stood in the entrance looking into the moon-flooded
court, remembering those far-off nights when he had come there to
picture her as he had seen her amidst the trumperies of a stage
churchyard, transfiguring them with the energizing spirit of her genius.
His imagination had painted her amidst the grandeur of these broken
pillars. In his romantic fancy it had not seemed incongruous that she
should dance against the background of an alien thought and art.
Fearlessly he had linked beauty with beauty, perfection with perfection.
And as he stood there gazing down the softly radiant avenue of columns
towards the black entrance to the _antarila_ he saw her. He knew one
moment's agony of doubt, of fear, of mental disintegration as though the
marvel of it had torn down the walls of his mind and spirit, thrusting
him out into a bottomless void. Then, as a falling bird spreads out its
wings and swings back in safety to its old heights, his mind rose out of
the moment's chaos and went to her in passionate recognition. It did
not matter then whether she was fancy or reality, whether he was sane or
mad. The splendour and wonder of it was all.
At first she was a shadow among shadows. She seemed to hover on the
verge of the light as a thought hovers on the verge of form. Then,
without effort, seemingly without movement, so still and quiet did she
hold her whole body, she glided out of the darkness, and, with her arms
raised above her head, her face lifted to the flood of moonlight, she
stood still, _sur la pointe_, poised in attitude of joyful waiting.
She wore the low bodice and short, full skirts of the old classic
ballet. A slender wreath of laurel crowned the smooth, fair head.
Though as yet she stood afar off from him, he knew that her eyes
laughed, that her mouth was open in that wide, frank smile of happiness,
that she was breathing deep with the foretaste of ecstasy. He knew,
too, for what she waited--for the bar of music which should set her
free.
It came at last. He heard it rush down through the stillness. It
caught her up on its crest and swept her down the path of silver towards
him. He knew it and recognized it. Its delirious beauty poured through
his blood. And even if his instinct had not seized it she would have
taught him. Her movements, her hands, her feet her body sang it to him.
She danced. Even in these moments when all clear thought was suspended
he knew that this was something that his generation had never seen. It
was the final word of a great art, often debased, now lifted to the
heights where the soul pours through the body to triumphant expression.
She danced. Her shadow rose and fell upon the grey, time-defaced
columns not more silently. There was no technical feat that she did not
strike like a note of music in her passage, but the marvel of it was
lost. As the daring flight of a gull, swooping from precipice to
precipice, becomes a simple thing of ease and beauty, so her laughing,
dangerous steps over the uneven flags seemed no more than an
instinctive, effortless volition. As the brook leaps and sparkles over
its rocky bed, now in sunlight, now in shadow, now rushing forward in
headlong eagerness, now caught in a clear pool and held an instant in
quivering suspense, so joyously and fearlessly she passed from the
quick, brilliant passage of the waltz to its slower, deeper movement.
She danced. And it was a religion. Amongst the shades of departed
worshippers she was the living spirit. She called them back from their
dust-strewn oblivion to the rites of their mystic faith. She leapt the
barriers of time and race. The ruined Hindu temple, its towering
_sikhara_ rising up over its holy mystery to the stars, identified
itself with her; she became its priestess, it became her natural
background, the splendid shrine of her genius.
She danced. As David danced before the Lord, so she offered up the
incense of her art to whatever was divine in that crumbling monument to
man's faith in God. Greater than prayer or praise was the joy of her
body and the laughter of her face lifted to the moonlight.
She danced. She had the austerity of nature. Her appeal to the senses
was the appeal of a flower, of a butterfly's wing, of a lark singing
amidst the azure, of the forest and the mountain and the running water.
It was the appeal by which the earth calls men back to their sonship and
the knowledge of her divinity.
She danced. And to the man who watched her she was all things that he
had ever loved, ever believed in, ever hoped for.
A cloud passed over the moon and threw the temple into obscurity. She
was for the moment only the shadow of herself. It seemed to him that
the music had broken off and that she too had faltered. Then, as the
light came out from behind the drifting darkness, he saw her glide down
the avenue of columns, on tip-toe, her arms raised, her small fair head
thrown back as though she drank in the growing radiance.
But her expression had changed. Her face had a look of child-like awe,
of breathless, startled wonder.
She danced. It was the apotheosis.
She came like a leaf blown before the wind and like a leaf sank slowly
to the ground. She was so small, so frail and white, she seemed no more
than a flower lying on the great stone flags beneath the pillars.
He ran out to her. He knelt beside her and gathered her up with her
head against his knee, calling her by name. But it was only the
half-dazed dreamer who called her, for one glance at that white still
face, with the faintly shadowed lips, told him that she could not
answer. He lifted her in his arms. For all the sick horror that drove
its claws into him he was still too much the man of action to hesitate.
She was so light. It seemed to him that he carried a tired, sleeping
child--something so frail and tender that his own strength seemed
giant-like and almost brutal. He scarcely felt the burden of her, and
yet before he reached the outskirts of the village he knew himself
broken by her nearness. Her warmth enveloped him. He could feel the
faint, irregular breath against his cheek. A perfume more subtle than a
flower's reached his senses and stirred them to an exaltation that was
beyond reason, far beyond desire. Her face rested against his shoulder
and he could have bent and touched her cheek with his lips. He did not.
He carried a Holy Thing--a vessel into which the Creator had poured all
beauty--a lamp whose flame of genius flickered beneath the breath of
death, a woman whom he loved with all the force and passion of his
manhood. Beneath great banks of sullen cloud rolling up over the moon's
silvered field, the village slept or seemed to sleep. He strode through
its forbidding silence like a man possessed. He had become invulnerable,
omnipotent. There was no force on earth that he could not have met and
scorned in that hour save the invisible spectre stalking at his elbow.
He reached his hut at last and laid her on the camp-bed. He lit the lamp
and with ruthless, skilful fingers ripped open the close-fitting bodice
about her breast. He forced a stimulant between the blue lips. In
everything he was as swift and sure as though no fear knocked at his
heart, as though his own pulses beat with the smoothness of old custom.
It was done at last--all that he could do. She lay there in her deep
unconsciousness like a fair princess from a child's dream. The laurel
wreath had freed itself from the pale gold of her hair and fallen back
upon her pillow, making a dark frame for her ethereal pallor. He took
it gently and laid it on the table. Up to that moment he had held
himself in an iron calm, but the touch of that simple ornament, with its
poignant significance, struck deeper than all his memories. He turned
to her and knelt down beside her, pressing the still hand to his lips in
an agony of helpless pity.
The seconds passed. Each one, for the man kneeling there, was measured
by the sound of the quick-drawn, shallow breath. Each one, as it
passed, left behind a deepening hope. His fingers rested on her pulse,
and as though his will drew her back from the depths into which she had
been sinking, he felt it slowly steady and strengthen.
And suddenly he looked up, knowing that her eyes were open.
They were very clear--very peaceful. They looked down into his haggard
face with a wondering tenderness. Her lips moved. Twice she essayed to
speak. He drew closer to her.
"Wasn't it the end----?" she whispered. He shook his head. He could
not have answered her. "Isn't it the end, Tristram? I'm--I'm dying, am
I not? Tell me--I'm not afraid--not very--tell me----"
"No--please God----"
She smiled with a ghostly touch of her old mockery.
"You--you believe in God, Tristram. Do you care so much?"
"Yes--I care."
She lifted her little hand as though it was almost too heavy a burden
for her weakness, and laid it on his bowed head.
"It doesn't matter what we say to each other now--we don't need to
pretend. I'd hoped there would be no coming back, but now I'm glad. I
love you, Tristram."
"I love you," he answered.
And therewith there came silence and peace into his tumult. The warring
events of their lives poured into a deep and tranquil river flowing on
irresistibly seawards. They knew now with the great certainty which
comes in such moments that there was no end, no power in heaven or earth
to blot out that simple confession and all that it must mean, now and in
whatever hereafter awaited them. He could look into her face over which
death had passed its hand, without fear, almost without pain. She too
had ceased to suffer. Her hand caressed him softly.
"I knew you would come, Tristram."
"I had to--all the time I was coming to you."
"I danced for you. I've never danced like that before--it was the last
time----"
"Sigrid--if you knew--why did you do it?--why have you hurt us both?"
"Have I hurt you?" She drew herself up a little, looking down at him
with an exquisite compassion in her fading eyes. "Dear, it was to make
you happy--to give you back all you had lost--I wanted you to see me--at
the last--on the mountain-top--in my golden palace--don't you
remember----? Not in decay and ugliness--but in beauty."
"It has always been in beauty!" he cried out in passionate protest.
She shook her head. Her eyes no longer saw him. They were fixed ahead
on some brightening vision.
"Not always. You and I--we saw the same sunrise but we were afar off
from each other. We stood on different mountain-peaks--there was a
great valley between, which one of us had to cross before we could stand
together. And one night--I couldn't bear to be so far off from you and I
saw that your mountain-peak was higher than mine and nearer to the
sun--and I made up my mind. I came down from my heights and went
through the valley. It was so ugly--quagmire and darkness--and
loathsome things--sometimes I felt I could never be clean again and
sometimes that I should not have the strength to reach you--and in that
time you could not see me but in the end we stood together--we're near
each other now, Tristram----"
Her voice faded into an exhausted silence. He knew that her mind was
clouded with a rising mist of old memories, old doubts and struggles.
He could not wholly understand, and yet the recognition of an
immeasurable, fearlessly born suffering came to him with her broken,
fevered murmurs.
He bowed his face upon her hands.
"My mountain heights--oh, Sigrid, they have been low enough--if you knew
how low----"
"I know everything--everything----"
He was silent. The certainty, serene and complete, broke in a shaft of
light through his darkness. He lifted his face to hers. Her eyes were
closed. Her fair head had fallen a little on one side in an attitude of
great weariness. Slowly, in answer to his imperative appeal, her eyes
opened. They were at first dim and expressionless as though she withdrew
her sight from some inner vision.
"Everything--Sigrid?"
"Everything," she answered.
"Barclay----"
"He told me--but I knew more--I knew everything. Because I loved you I
understood."
A fine, contemptuous smile touched her suffering lips. "I knew Anne,
too. I knew how she had chosen----"
He got up, driven to his feet by an intolerable knowledge.
"Then you shielded me----"
"Do you grudge me that little comfort?" she whispered. Then as he stood
staring down at her, she made a little helpless effort to touch his
hand. "Bracelet--brother--you mustn't be too proud----"
"Oh, God----" he burst out. "It isn't that--don't you know I love you
too--and you've suffered----"
"I've lived as I wished to live," she said with a sudden thrilling
clearness, "and when I couldn't help you any more--when I saw that it
was all useless I made an end--my end. I didn't mean to tell you--I
meant to leave you a perfect memory--and to go silently. But you called
me back. You made me--if you love me--you will be glad."
She struggled up on to her elbow, gasping for breath, and he saw the
greyness creeping to her cheeks. He turned to fetch fresh stimulants,
but she clung to him with an incredible strength.
"No--stay with me, Tristram--these must be perfect minutes--we've earned
them--they're ours--there's nothing to regret--a happy death--it's what
we live for--I'm happy--madly happy. Stay with me, Tristram--don't
leave me in all this darkness----"
He dropped to his knees beside her. He slipped his arm beneath her
shoulders, holding her in an embrace of desperate tenderness. She threw
back her head, smiling.
"Kiss me, Tristram."
Their lips met. She fell back with a short sigh and lay still, her
mouth a little open as though in the midst of a laughing triumph she had
fallen asleep. But presently she stirred and drew closer to him.
"Happy, Tristram?"
"Yes," he answered.
And indeed all anguish, all fear had gone from them both. They had gone
down together into a sea in which there was no thought, no memory, no
desire. The coming night enclosed them, shielding them from the future.
"It's because I'm dying----" Then suddenly she laughed softly,
contentedly. "Those steps--in the fast movement--no one--no one has
ever dared them--no one has ever danced like that--it was a great
triumph--the greatest----"
He bent and touched her forehead with his cheek, soothing her. She
smiled a little as though in gratitude, and sighing, fell asleep.
He did not move. He knelt there listening to her breathing. It
hypnotized him, drowning his consciousness in its sweet, unbroken
rhythm. It conveyed no meaning to him. He had passed out of the
regions of hope and dread into the serenity of resignation.
Far off, in some other world, he heard the whisper of rain, the patter
of heavy drops in the dust-laden street. He heard voices--exultant,
hysterical. A pregnant coolness crept into the suffocating quiet. He
knew that the drought had broken--that the rains had come.
But it was another world. In this world there was nothing but himself
and this one woman.
He bent lower to catch a murmur from her parted lips. One small hand
still rested on his breast, clinging to him. Its hold was greater than
death--stronger than the threat of life. It drew him down with her into
her peace.
* * * * *
She awoke as the grey, rain-swept dawn crept sullenly through the open
doorway. Only little by little had she fought back the engulfing
oblivion. The shadow of the man standing beside her, watching her, had
loomed huge and unreal. But now she saw his face and knew him.
"Tristram!" she whispered.
He seemed to draw himself up to a greater height. His features were
haggard and painted with the livid pallor of the light.
"A messenger has gone to Gaya," he said. "They will send Smithy with a
litter----"
"Tristram--I'm going to live?"
"Yes," he said, "the danger is over."
They looked away from one another, finding no word of comfort. The
glamour of the night dropped from them. They had drunk of death, and of
that intoxicated hour nothing remained but the bitter aftermath of
life--an anti-climax, tragic and pitiful, half-grotesque, a little
sordid.
And as two travellers who have reached what seemed their journey's end
only to find the desert stretched before them, they faced the grey,
unending road of their future.
*CHAPTER X*
*ANNE CHOOSES*
Outwardly the scene was commonplace enough. Women, for all their
supposed emotional weakness, have for the greater part a knack of facing
the graver crises with a deliberate and almost prosaic calm. And for
one woman at least in that quiet room the moment could not have been
more bitter, more fraught with ugliness and humiliation. Yet she sat
very straight, very composed, tearing down the sanctity of her life
without a quiver.
"You must think it very strange of me to come to you like this," she
said, "but I had the feeling that, whatever else you would do, you would
be frank with me. And I must know the truth. I must know where I
stand. I must know what you are to my husband, Mrs. Barclay."
She looked straight at her companion as she spoke. She was not
conscious of her own insolence. Her words had been forged in a
fortnight's agony and had cost too much in their utterance to allow
consciousness of any hurt but her own. Moreover, to her the pale,
delicate-faced woman opposite her had no claim to her consideration.
She was "one of those others" whom the remnant of man's prime favourite,
the Victorian female, passes with gathered skirts. For in Anne's
catalogue of humanity there were as yet only two varieties of her sex,
the sexually virtuous and the sexually immoral. They were accordingly
good women or bad women, no matter what other failings or qualities they
might possess. Or, in a word, a woman's loyalty to her husband,
prospective or actual, was all that mattered in Anne's eyes.
Mrs. Barclay, she knew, was a bad woman.
Sigrid regarded her thoughtfully from beneath the shadow of her hand.
"You are insulting me, Mrs. Tristram," she said, "but I do not think you
mean it. I think you are unhappy, and that is excuse enough. Won't you
explain exactly what you mean?"
"I'm sure you know," Anne answered unsparingly. "You were always--I
don't know how to express it--but it seemed to me--to a great many
people--that you tried to entangle my husband--before our marriage----.
I could have borne that. I knew my husband so well. In many ways he is
careless and unconventional. He doesn't recognize evil easily. But
now--now it's different." She halted, fighting the tremor in her voice.
It was the first trace of emotion that she had shown, and, in spite of
her prim brutality, it was curiously pathetic. "Since the--the scandal
in the temple--I've felt I couldn't bear it any longer. People have
talked--they think--oh, I know--though they hide it from me--and I can't
do anything. I can't because I don't know----"
"You don't know what?"
"Whether it's true."
"Wouldn't it be best--fairer--to ask your husband?"
There was a moment's silence. The splash of the rain on the trees of
the compound sounded dismally in the room's stillness. Sigrid shifted
her position. She leant forward a little as though to look closer into
her visitor's face. The small white hand on her knee clenched itself.
But Anne turned her face away from the intent, weary eyes. She bit her
lips desperately.
"I can't----" she said. "I can't--that's just it----"
A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away flurriedly, but the
knowledge of her weakness broke down the wall of pride and anger which
she had built up in her loneliness. "I can't because I sent him away.
We'd quarrelled--no, it wasn't a quarrel--it was something worse than
that--and--and he let me choose--and I told him to go. I was very
wicked--very unjust. A wife's business is to forgive everything. I see
that. But it's too late. He's gone, and now--now I've no one----"
It was not what she had meant to say. She had meant to be grave and
dignified and judicial, and instead she was crying quietly. But now
that the dam was broken her pent-up unhappiness flooded over her
irresistibly. She had been intensely lonely. She had no great friend
to turn to, and her instincts tended to a stern reserve where marital
relations were concerned. She had hidden her growing fears and remorse
under a cloak of indifference. Then had come the wild story of the
temple, of Sigrid Barclay's night spent in Tristram's hut, of her
supposed dangerous illness, of her apparently swift recovery. Then Gaya
had begun to whisper, and those whisperings had been more than she could
bear. She had meant only to seek the truth--instead she had poured out
her overladen heart to the woman she most hated.
Sigrid got up slowly and went to the verandah. She stood for a minute
with her raised hand resting on the lintel, gazing out into the
rain-soaked gardens. The moist air was full of fragrance and reviving
life. When she turned at last there was a splash of colour in her pale
cheeks.
"Mrs. Tristram, send for your husband--go to him. He is the sort of man
who doesn't need to forgive."
"I can't."
"You love him----"
"I couldn't go to him until I knew----"
"--that you had nothing to forgive?"
Anne's silence answered. Sigrid studied her with no shadow of change on
her own palely composed features.
"We're two women, Mrs. Tristram," she said, "and that makes many
impossible things possible--it makes it possible, for instance, though
we dislike one another, for us to be honest--even about the man we both
love."
Anne lifted her wet, piteously twisted face.
"Then it's true?"
"It's true that I love him." She played absently with one of the little
silver ornaments on the table beside her, and then added: "It is true
also that I offered myself to him, though I never meant to marry
him--threw myself at his head. And that he refused me----"
"He didn't care----?"
Sigrid, glancing up, caught that look of mingled disgust and hope and
fear, but it was the hope and fear alone that had significance.
"He had asked you to marry him. He told me that there could only be one
woman in his life--and that woman his wife."
"That is true?"
"I give you my word of honour."
Anne sat very still. The tears were dry on her cheeks. She held herself
rather as she had done at the beginning.
"And then--that night--a fortnight ago----"
"Ah, the temple?" She smiled faintly. "You won't understand that so
well. You see, I am a mixture of a great artist and a bad woman. And
artistically I have always realized how beautiful I should be against
such a background. It was an artistic freak--though I daresay the woman
in me had a spiteful hope that Major Tristram might chance that way and
realize all he had lost. Anyhow, my heart failed me. Your husband acted
the good Samaritan; and that is the whole story."
"If that is true I have done my husband a great wrong."
"I think you have."
Anne rose with a vague little gesture. It seemed to indicate barriers
over which no reproof could pass. She was quite composed now. The
strain and insolence had gone out of her manner, which was faintly
patronizing.
"I have to thank you for your frankness. I--I shan't ever feel quite
the same to you as I have done. Indeed--I hardly understand. You say
you dislike me--and yet you've told me all this----"
"That's because most unscrupulous people are good-natured," Sigrid
answered with careless amusement. She helped herself to a cigarette,
aware that by so doing she was living up to Anne's conception of her.
"You see, it doesn't cost me anything. This particular incident is
closed as far as I am concerned, and you might as well enjoy the benefit
of the truth. I am conscious that I tried to hurt you, and I'm sorry."
Anne nodded.
"I'm sorry, too," she said primly. She went towards the door and there
hesitated nervously. "You're--you're leaving Gaya, are you not?"
"Yes, soon. My husband's business here is finished. It is very
fortunate."
"Yes--very fortunate."
She lifted her eyes to Sigrid, realizing for an instant why Gaya had
called her beautiful. An incredible impulse seized her, but she thrust
it down in scorn and self-disgust. She made a little tentative movement
as though to hold out her hand, and then turned and went out without a
word. After all, it was the only thing to do. Now that her worst fears
were over she saw that the scene had been preposterous, but she was a
little thrilled by her own action as conventional people are when they
have ventured out of their rut. She had met sin on her own ground and
worsted her. In some dim way she believed that she had fought for
Tristram and his happiness. Her anger against him had died--had been
transmuted into pity. She saw that behind his bigness he was weak and
easily led. Well, it was her task to lead him, to protect him. She was
his wife.
She drove homewards through the steady downpour with an exalted
consciousness of a duty done and of a clear road before her. She knew
now what she had to do. It meant sacrifice because she no longer loved,
but sacrifice was a glorious prerogative. In it one found peace and
happiness. She was happier already. As she passed the little tin
chapel her happiness clamoured for expression, for thanksgiving. She
ordered the syce to wait for her, and a moment later she was kneeling in
her old place, to the right of the pathetic altar, thanking God for the
light that had been granted her.
At first she did not see Meredith. There were only two side-windows
through which the grey light filtered, sinking drearily on to the
place's bleak unloveliness, and the figure bowed down before the altar
was in shadow and motionless in its utter, almost passionate
prostration. But presently he rose slowly to his feet and turned. The
lower part of his body was still in darkness, but his face was in the
light, lifted to it. And to Anne, who now saw him, its hideousness was
sublime. She saw in it the seal of God set on His martyr. Her
intuition flashed down into the depths of the man's patient soul, more
seared and scarred even than those dreadful features, and the compassion
which she poured out to him was other than her pity for her husband. It
was understanding. In truth it was not pity, but she gave that name to
it.
He saw her. Even though the twilight separated them she knew he
faltered. She knew the memories that had driven the dark blood into
those scars. And she too remembered--all her girlhood and all her
girlhood's prayers and fancies which had been born in this poor room.
She was a woman now. The fancies had been foolish and childish. She
had flung away reality for them. Well, she would take up her cross.
Meredith came towards her and took her outstretched hand.
"When I saw you it was as though all the old times had come back again,"
he said with a grave smile.
"I came in for quiet," she answered. "I wanted to--to thank God for
something. And now I've found you--may I speak with you?"
He nodded silently and led her into the tiny side-room, where he changed
his vestments and gave lessons to a few Pariah children who accepted his
doctrine in exchange for a certain social status. He offered her the
one chair, but she remained standing.
"I have just seen Mrs. Barclay, Owen," she said. "I went to see her.
It may seem a dreadful thing to have done--and it was dreadful--but I
know that I did right. She confessed to me."
He looked at her and then down at the papers littered on the table.
"What did she confess?"
"That some of the wretched scandal which has associated her with
Tristram was true. She did try to drag my husband into a horrible
intrigue. But she failed. She swore to me, and I believe it was the
truth."
"I think Mrs. Barclay would speak the truth," he said meditatively.
"She is shameless," Anne retorted with a flash of scorn; "but, at least,
now I know that Tristram is innocent where she is concerned. It is for
that I am so thankful."
Owen Meredith drew himself up from his bowed attitude. There was
something weary and apathetic in his bearing which was new to her. She
felt, with a stab of pain, that he was very ill.
"Anne--don't you love your husband?" he asked.
The feverish blush in her cheeks deepened. But his eyes were grave,
even to severity, and admitted no offence.
"Why, I must love him--he is my husband."
His twisted mouth was bitter.
"The one thing doesn't always imply the other, Anne. Men and women are
frail. They can't always keep the terrible oaths God makes them swear."
"They can do their duty," she interrupted, "as I shall do mine."
"Duty isn't love," he said.
She lifted her head proudly.
"It is the best one can give after love has been killed."
"Has Tristram killed your love, Anne?"
She met his stern gaze unflinchingly.
"He has done something I can't forget. I have forgiven it, but I know
now how wide the gulf is between us and now I can't ever forget it.
That's all I can tell you."
"Anne--Anne--we must judge gently----"
"I don't judge any one but myself," she answered. "I see that I have
been most to blame. I made a great mistake and I accept the
consequences. I am going back to my husband."
"Going back to him?" he echoed heavily.
She nodded.
"I can do nothing here. My father's condition is unchanged. Dr. Martin
is staying on, but he believes that the operation has failed. At any
rate, I shall be within reach and my place is at my husband's side. I
see that in many ways I could have done more to help him. Now I mean to
share his life--to stand by him. I am going to Heerut."
"There's no place for a woman," Owen exclaimed.
"I think there is. I am a good nurse. I could help him. And out there
I should see all that is good in him--oh, Owen, I must love and respect
him if I can."
She lifted her eyes to his and for the moment in which their gaze met
they acknowledged to each other the naked, hopeless truth. He turned at
last with a broken laugh.
"I think hell itself must be paved with useless sacrifice," he said.
"Oh, Owen, don't talk like that--it's terrible. I can't bear it. Help
me!"
"How can I help you?" he asked almost impatiently.
"Ride with me to Heerut this afternoon--take me back to Tristram."
She did not realize what she asked. She did not see his face. She was
possessed with a restless feverish desire for action--to start out on
the road she had chosen.
"Dear, it's not possible. The weather and the roads are too bad.
You're not strong enough. A man told me this morning that the river is
terribly swollen--dangerous even----"
"I am not afraid," she said proudly. "Owen, won't you help me this last
time?"
"This last time?"
She faltered.
"Oh, I didn't mean that--it was just a phrase----"
"God knows, it may be the truth--of late I have felt----"
He broke off and added quickly: "Yes, of course I will take you if it
can be done."
"Thank you, Owen. I knew you would always help me if you could."
"Always."
Their hands met. The tears shone in her eyes, and they were not far
from his. He bent and kissed her solemnly between the wet curls on her
forehead.
"My little sister in God!" he whispered.
"Dear Owen!"
And neither of them was conscious of a lie. Their hypocrisy was
pathetic in its stern sincerity.
That same day Owen Meredith rode with Anne to Heerut. The pitiless rain,
the roads, so deep in mud that their horses had to pick their way at a
walk, prolonged the fifteen-mile journey into the late afternoon. They
scarcely spoke. The strain and physical discomfort kept them silent, and
on Meredith's part there was an abstraction, a curious detachment which
made speech difficult. It was as though somewhere, somehow, a vital
link between himself and life had been cut. Something was finished--a
book had been closed. He knew no more than that, but the vague
knowledge numbed even his suffering. From time to time he glanced at
his companion, questioning her power to bear so much; but her upright
figure, the brilliant flush on her cheek, reassured him. He knew that
she was setting out on a road of abnegation. He saw how wonderful she
was.
They reached the new bridge and drew rein for a moment to watch the
angry river rush past between the arches. The soffits were already
awash. The monstrous flood of roaring water deafened them, and the
voice of the engineer who had crawled out of his shanty to watch the
progress of events came to them only in gusts.
"Damnable--you never know where you are--these accursed rains--nothing
in moderation--my life's work--the lady'd better go back--it's no time
to cross----"
"I am going to join my husband," Anne said slowly.
The man grunted.
"Better if he joined you," he grumbled.
They reached Heerut at last and urged their weary horses to a canter
down the deserted, evil-smelling street. Tristram's hut was empty, but
there were signs of a recent habitation--a pipe on the table, some
instruments washing in a basin of carbolic, an open book. The dank
nakedness of the place drove Meredith out of his stupor.
"Anne, is it wise--hadn't you better come back--you're not strong enough
to bear all this privation----"
She shook her head with a faint smile.
"I'm not strong enough to ride back. Besides, I wouldn't. I've set out,
and I'm going on."
He placed her saddle-bags out of reach of the rain which oozed in
through the open doorway. He knew now that he had acquiesced in a
reckless, ill-judged adventure, but a spirit of weary fatalism silenced
him. Perhaps good would come of it--a real and lasting reconciliation.
He thought of that night in this very place when he had intervened and
his whole being winced under the lash of his self-contempt. He would
not intervene again.
"So it's good-bye, Anne."
"Good-bye, Owen--and thank you."
Their hands met. He did not kiss her. Though he did not own to it, the
presence of Tristram was strong in that drear place, and his own passion
more vivid, less subdued by resignation than he had believed.
"God bless you, Anne--I--I--shall pray for you always."
"And I for you."
Such was their leave-taking. There was in it an element of finality
which neither analysed nor understood. When the door had closed on him
an instant's pang of fear and yearning forced his name from her lips,
but he did not hear and she did not call again. She sat down, looking
about her. Now that she was alone she knew that she was very tired--so
tired that even rest offered no relief. At other times, after a long
day in the saddle, the thought of sleep had been like a draught of fresh
water to a thirsty man, but now it seemed hideously afar off--almost
unthinkable. Instead her weariness goaded her to movement, whilst her
brain was numb. It was as though something mysterious was working up
inside her physical being, gathering together for some unknown crisis.
She tried to think--to visualize things. She tried to picture
Tristram's entry and the scene between them. She had gone over it so
many times, and now it eluded her. She tried to remember what her
husband was like, but could not. A little prayer for strength and
guidance came into her mind, but after the first words she forgot that
she was praying. In despair she drove herself to think of Sigrid in
this place, of Sigrid in her husband's arms; but the picture left her
numb and indifferent. Her mind rode helpless on a great shoreless sea
of exhaustion. Nothing mattered but her body, and its rising suffering.
Her hands and face burnt. The room was stifling. She got up
uncertainly to open the door, but on the way remembered her wet things
and began to unpack the saddle-bags. In the midst of it she fancied she
heard Tristram's step and a new desire obtruded itself on her masterless
thoughts. She had meant to get a meal ready for him--to make the place
homely--to welcome him as his wife, his comrade. She swayed as she drew
herself up. She began aimlessly to clear the table----
Half an hour later, when Tristram returned, he found his supper waiting
for him and his wife unconscious on the ground.
The shock, coming as a climax to a fruitless day of labour among men and
women who had once loved him and now shrank from his very shadow, did
not hinder prompt action. He gathered her up tenderly and laid her on
his bed. Her clothes were wringing wet, but the fever of her body burnt
through them, and, knowing what Meredith did not know, he cursed with an
anger inspired by pity. He forced a little brandy between her lips, and
he was beginning to remove her soaking riding-skirt when her eyes
opened.
"Tris--what's happened? Did I faint?--oh, how stupid of me--don't
bother--I can manage--I shall be all right in a minute----"
"You must lie still," he said impatiently. "Why did you come? It was
madness. If you had wanted me you could have sent for me. You've made
yourself ill."
"I don't know--I wanted----" She tried desperately to think, to recall
all her plans and motives. They slipped through her fingers. And
meanwhile he was tending her skilfully, tenderly. He scarcely heeded
her broken muttering. Suddenly she stretched out her hand and drew him
to her.
"Tris, I know what it was--I wanted to come to you--and tell you
that--that--I--I--forgive--I was harsh--and cruel--I--misjudged. Mrs.
Barclay told me--how loyal you had been. I'll stand by you--I'm your
wife--it's my duty--I want to do what's right--I'll help
you--here--I----" Then her body overwhelmed her. It threw her soul to
the earth, whining and whimpering. "Oh, Tris, Tris, I'm in such awful
pain--such awful pain."
"I know," he answered hoarsely, "my poor little Anne----"
Her eyes turned to his. They cleared for an instant.
"Tris--you don't think----"
"Dear, I'm afraid so. We've got to do the best we can. You mustn't be
frightened----"
She began to cry helplessly. Then the pain dried even her tears. She
clung to him in a frenzy of agony.
"Oh, Tris--Tris--help me----"
She passed at last into a merciful unconsciousness. Not once during
that night did she regain knowledge of his presence and yet he knew that
even in that mental darkness she suffered as only women are doomed to
suffer. Watching her, alleviating where he could, he gave no thought to
the past or future, no thought to the other woman who had lain in the
selfsame place, battling with the selfsame enemy. He did not ask
himself whether, had this piteous offer of forgiveness been made in the
crisis of their lives, it would have stemmed the torrent of events,
whether indeed there is any power which can check the course of
character and the heart's will. Nothing of all that mattered. Nothing
but this pitiful suffering. He saw Anne only in her girlish youth and
innocence and ignorance. He saw her as a child ground between life and
her own child's beliefs and ideals. She claimed him by the great right
of pain.
Her poor fevered little hand rested in his. Even in her unconsciousness
she clung to him as though his touch soothed her. But in her delirium
she called on Owen--called on him incessantly----
And in the early hours of the morning her hope was taken from her.
* * * * *
Owen Meredith reached the river shortly before nightfall. The muffled
roar of the water sounded louder and nearer than before. As he crossed
the bridge he could feel the steel girders quivering under the strain;
he could see the yellowish-greyish mass racing from under his feet into
the gloom of the coming night. It conveyed nothing to him. He was
thinking of Anne--praying for her with a dull, stupid persistence.
The engineer, encased in waterproof, met him with a torrent of grim
abuse.
"What we poor devils have to put up with! If this blessed thing doesn't
hold--I'm dished. Bah--India! What the dickens are we doing in this
_galere_? The very elements are against us." He shook himself like a
wet dog. "Well, you'd better hurry. You'll catch up that fat monkey of
a Rajah. He's in a towering rage about something--somebody been rude to
his Allmightiness. You'd better soothe him down. There's trouble enough
going----"
Meredith rode on. He did not want to catch up with Rasaldu. He was
still thinking of Anne when the Rajah, wet through and mounted on a
limping English thoroughbred, loomed up like a ghost in the rain-soaked
twilight. He greeted Meredith much as the engineer had done.
"This rotten climate! Look what a mess I'm in. I've just come from
Heerut--incog. you know. Wanted to do the poor beggars a good turn and
they threw stones at me--they--they insulted me. It's that damned
blackguard Barclay. He ought to have been shot. You English are
getting too devilish delicate. One's got to hit, and hit hard." He
rambled on furiously. Meredith understood that Rasaldu, without escort,
after the fashion of English royalties on their own domains, had sought
to act the part of benefactor in Heerut and had been repulsed. At
another time the incident might have caused Meredith a faint amusement,
but now he could feel nothing. The desolation of rain and grey,
lightless sky pressed down upon him like a stupefying burden. He went
on thinking of Anne, wondering dully how it was he knew so well that he
would never see her again. He thought of Tristram and pitied him. In
that hour he forgot creed and principle. He saw, perhaps for the first
time, humanity as one in suffering.
Two beggars slunk through the mud towards him. They were almost naked.
The water ran in streams off their glistening brown skins and matted
their beards into black masks. They came up, one to Meredith, one to
the Rajah, whining for alms. Meredith threw his man a coin. He did it
mechanically. The Rajah burst into a fresh stream of curses. He was
very wet--very angry. He had been called "swineherd" by his own people
and the name rankled like a poisoned dart in his quivering flesh. He
spurred his horse at the whimpering mendicant.
"Get out of my way, you vermin----"
Something happened. Meredith, still weighed down by his own thoughts,
was only conscious of a coming change. He half turned to his companion,
and as he did so one of the natives sprang past him. It was the leap of
a tiger, straight at Rasaldu's throat. A gleam of white light streaked
through the greyness--a muffled scream ended suddenly by a choking,
sickening groan.
Rasaldu pitched headlong from the saddle. His foot caught in the
stirrup. The startled animal swung round and bolted, dragging its rider
face-downwards through the mud--a mere inanimate, shapeless bundle.
So much Meredith saw. He tried to think--to act. But he was like a
sleeper waking slowly--too slowly--from a narcotic. Instinctively he
turned to meet his own danger. He never saw it. It came noiselessly
and quite painlessly. It was like a stupendous stroke of lightning
severing the earth under his feet. It sent him spinning through aeons
of memory and feeling into nothing.
*CHAPTER XI*
*FREEDOM*
A covered bullock-wagon which for the last two hours had been struggling
with the morass leading up from the valley came to a standstill outside
the gates of the Barclays' compound. The driver lifted a flap of the
canvas covering, and a woman crawled out and clambered stiffly to the
ground. She stood for a moment in the steam of the panting and sweating
bullocks counting money into the brown calloused palm extended to her in
greedy persistence.
"No, I shan't want you going back," she said, in answer to his half
diffident, half insolent question. "I've come to stop." She gave a
little, high-pitched laugh, and, gathering up her untidy skirts, went
through the open gates.
A syce, holding a lady's saddle-horse, waited at the bottom of the
verandah steps. He stared stolidly at the intruder. He did not know
her, and he knew everyone in Gaya. He had also the unerring instinct of
his race and class which discounted the superficial Europeanism of her
dress and its common gaudiness. He knew her for what she was, and made
a gesture of detention as she passed.
"What you want, missy?" he asked in English, and with a mocking flash of
his white teeth. "Missy not go in there."
She turned her head. The expression on her dark, mobile features was
composite of dignity and nervousness.
"I want Barclay Sahib," she said. "Is he here?"
"Meester Barclay gone away," the man retorted, using the English prefix
deliberately. "Meester Barclay gone away many weeks."
"Where has he gone?"
"Not know, missy."
She stood irresolute, looking at the saddled horse. At first it seemed
to convey no significance to her. Then suddenly she flushed up.
"I must see some one who does know," she explained. "Who lives here?"
"The Mem-Sahib, missy."
"Who is the Mem-Sahib?"
The syce made no answer. He stroked the velvet nose of his charge and
the stranger became aware from his attitude that they were no longer
alone. She turned sharply, and the woman standing at the head of the
steps immediately behind her returned her stare with a faint smile.
"Do you want Mr. Barclay?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I do." The Eurasian hesitated. The fair-haired fragile-looking
woman in the dark riding-habit seemed to frighten her.
"I've come all the way from Calcutta," she stammered.
"That's a long way. I'm sorry--Mr. Barclay is away--has been away for
many weeks. I don't even know where he is. If you would tell me your
name----"
The woman caught her breath audibly. Her dark, uneasy eyes had a
smouldering look in them--a look that was somehow primitive in its
sombre, gathering suspicion.
"My name's Barclay--Marie Barclay," she flashed out.
"Ah, Mr. Barclay's sister?"
"No, his wife." She flung the words down with the defiance of an animal
that is afraid of its own temerity. Her head, with its over-adorned hat,
was thrown back truculently, but her lips quivered. "I'm his wife," she
repeated.
Sigrid had been pale when she came out. Now a faint delicate colour
tinged her cheeks, bringing life and energy to her listless
transparency. She put her ungloved hand to her face with a little
familiar gesture of surprise and thought--but to Marie Barclay it
expressed mockery.
"It's true," she burst out. "I can prove it----"
"I'm sure you can--only not here. It's so wet. Purga, you can walk
Astora for a little. Won't you come in--Mrs. Barclay?"
She gave her visitor no opportunity to answer, but led the way to the
library where Mrs. Smithers, with ruffled grey hair and a face of care
and perpetual perplexity, sat beneath the marble Venus knitting a pair
of mittens which no human being was ever likely to wear.
"Smithy, this lady has come all the way from Calcutta. She's Mrs.
Barclay--Jim's wife."
Mrs. Smithers let the mittens drop into her lap, but she gave no other
sign of consternation. She was in the state of a person who has been
subjected to a vigorous course of electric treatment and has become
impervious to shocks.
"Lawks a-mercy!" she exclaimed wearily. "Well, and I'm not surprised.
It's not the last thing I expected to hear. I warrant there's a good
few of 'em about the country if we only knew."
"But this is true, Smithy--I'm sure it is, isn't it?" She turned, with
a quick gracious movement, to the woman at her side, but for a moment
the latter did not answer. Her full, rather pretty, mouth was
desperately closed to hide its trembling. Her hands were interlocked in
front of her. A strand of straight black hair straggled untidily across
her face, and she tried to toss it back with an upward jerk of her head.
It was as though she dared not unclasp her hands.
"Yes, it's true," she said at last. "I can prove it. We were
married--years ago--in Calcutta. He's kept it quiet--I know--he was
ashamed. He thought I'd pull him back. He wanted to get on so
badly--and I put up with it. I'd--I'd have put up with anything. He
said he'd send for me--afterwards--but he never did. I hadn't heard
from him for weeks. He didn't send any money--there was hardly any
left--just enough to bring me here----" she looked from one woman to
another, and there was a tortured, hunted look in her eyes that made her
violent defiance pitiable. "I didn't mean to tell--he made me
promise--but I've been so unhappy--so desperate--when I found he'd
gone--and--and you here, I lost my head--I couldn't bear it any
longer--I couldn't----"
She dropped down into the chair nearest her, her face buried in her
hands, crying wildly.
"Scoundrel!" Mrs. Smithers ejaculated on the same note of confirmed
conviction.
Sigrid stood looking down at the bowed, shaking shoulders. Her eyes were
pitying, but her mouth was a little wry, almost whimsical.
"You were quite right to tell us," she said. "It's made a great many
things clear. You needn't be frightened. I have an idea your husband
meant you to come and that he will be glad. I daresay that was why he
didn't write----"
Mrs. Barclay lifted her head, brushing the tears from her wet cheeks.
Her hat had slipped a little to one side, giving her a look of grotesque
and distraught violence.
"What are you doing here?" she asked insolently. "Who are you?"
"Nobody in particular--an interloper--it seems."
"Oh, I know better than that!" The dark face quivered into a sneer. "I
know who you are. You're the white woman he was after. I guessed right
enough. He wanted an Englishwoman." She sprang suddenly to her feet
with an almost threatening gesture. "But it was me he loved--me he
married. He didn't care for you--don't you flatter yourself--he wanted
you--just to get even--just to hurt as he'd been hurt. You're nothing
but a----"
She broke off. Sigrid had not moved or spoken, but there was that in
the still white face which checked the torrent of savage insult. Mrs.
Smithers got up. She rolled the mittens into a neat ball.
"I'm an old woman," she said, "and I hate violence. But just you mind
what you're saying, Mrs. Barclay----"
Sigrid checked her with a gesture.
"Mrs. Barclay is quite right," she said calmly. "I think she
understands her husband very well. She is only mistaken in supposing I
did not understand too. I did not know that he was married, but that is
neither here nor there. I did know that I was merely a means to an
end--as he was to me. Now that's all finished and done with." She
laughed a little. "Do you know, Mrs. Barclay, you are the second woman
in twenty-four hours who has accused me of trying to steal her husband,
and, heaven knows, in this instance, it isn't true."
Marie Barclay stared at her in sullen silence. Her passion had gone
down under fatigue and a natural racial apathy. She had struck with all
the strength she possessed, and now came the reaction of helpless tears.
"I don't know what to do," she said brokenly. "I've nowhere to go--no
one to help me."
"We're going to help you," Sigrid answered. She came and laid a gentle,
controlling hand on the other's arm. "You mustn't break down. There's
nothing to be afraid of. You don't know it, but you've done me a great
service. And now it's my turn. You'll stay here. It's your
home--everything in it is yours. There's money enough to keep you going
till he comes back. And he will come back. He'll be glad to find you
here--we were nothing to one another. Doesn't that make you happy?"
Her tone was so gay, so assured that the brimming eyes lifted to hers
lost their suspicion and hatred.
"I don't know--I don't understand--and you----"
"I shall clear out. I've no right here. We'll be your guests for
tonight and we can talk things over. Meantime, Mrs. Smithers will give
you tea, and I'll go for a last ride on your horse. I want fresh air
and a little quiet. You don't mind?"
The full lips quivered resentfully.
"You're making fun of me----"
"No--I'm in dead earnest. I've been an intruder and an unwilling thief,
and now I return my ill-gotten gains. Smithy, take care of her till I
come back. And no violence!"
Mrs. Smithers paid no heed to the injunction. She was trembling in
every limb as she followed the quickly moving figure to the verandah
steps. She clutched Sigrid's hands. Her dim old eyes were full of a
great dread.
"Sigrid--my dearest--what are you going to do?"
"Do? Nothing rash, Smithy. Did you think I might----? Don't you see
how good it is? I'm free. I'm Sigrid Fersen--I haven't got to fight
daily, hourly, for my integrity--I'm free." She drew in a deep joyous
breath of the fresh, rain-soaked air. Her eyes shone under the fine,
untroubled brows. "I'm going home with you to England, Smithy. I'm
going to live in the little suburban house and give dancing lessons to
the large suburban feet. And in my free moments I shall play Beethoven
and Wagner and Chopin on an extravagantly fine Bechstein. For I've
learnt that one can play noble music anywhere. That's a great lesson,
Smithy." She smiled tenderly. "And I shall live on your savings,
Smithy. That'll make you happy, won't it?"
"Oh, my dear----"
"I know. Such queer things make women happy." She grew grave for an
instant. "And perhaps I shall live to be very old, as Tristram said I
might. I may grow so much stronger--I shall outlive you, Smithy, and
every one who ever cared for me. But I'm not going to funk it now. I
shall play my music to the very end."
Mrs. Smithers made no answer. She could not have answered, for the
dimness had crept into her throat and choked her. She lifted the little
hand clasped in hers and kissed it.
Thus Sigrid Fersen rode down the steep, mud-choked road towards the
valley. She told herself that it was for the last time. And because
each "last time" in life is a bridge-crossing into a new and trackless
country she looked back along the old road, and her thoughts lingered by
the high landmarks by which she would never pass again. High up against
the horizon a mountain-peak glowed in the warm splendour of this
farewell. On its topmost crag she had dwelt a little and alone. She
saw the rough and ruthless descent into the world of men the winding
road over strange countries, the always-seeking of those two years, and
there on the verge of an abyss the revelation of something as lofty, as
splendid as all that she had left behind her. At first she had drawn
back. She had even smiled a little at the thought that her feet should
tread so desperate a path. But in the end she had gone on--down into
the depths and through a suffocating evil darkness and up again at last
to the farther summit. And had it been worth it--worth the effort, the
sheer, physical effort, the pitiless drain upon soul and body, the
inevitable loneliness? She knew her answer. She saw before her the
country to which her stern enterprise had led her. She saw it flat and
barren and wind-swept, its sparse trees bowed before the solitary
storms. She saw that it had its own grandeur. There was a sweet taste
in the wind; and the rough earth carried many flowers on its bosom, and
they had a fragrance more delicate than all the rich exotic blossoms
which had once been dear to her. She welcomed the sweet winds and the
great limitless horizons. She stretched out her arms to the blustering
storm. She was free. Her freedom was not of the mountain crags, but of
the great undulating plains where men pass their daily life. And she had
ceased to be alone. Somewhere on that vast expanse a fellow-traveller
pressed on his way, often erring, often misled, but still with head
erect, eyes fixed on the down-going sun which was their common goal.
She saw him big and careless and unkempt with strays and vagabonds
crowded at his heels. She saw the light on his face, and knew that he
too was conscious of their comradeship. It did not matter that in that
country over which they travelled they would not meet again. They had
met once. God Himself, if He existed apart from His creation, could not
blot out that knowledge or His own decree by which the separate paths of
men meet at the end.
Thus Sigrid Fersen rode out of Gaya. Her horse slipped and fretted over
the treacherous descent, but her hand was as strong and steady as her
thought. She had the quality common to all vitally living things--the
love of physical, friendly warfare with the elements. She lifted her
glowing face to the warm rain. She felt at peace and happy. She could
look with clear eyes into the future. Tristram had said that with care
she might live to be very old. The thought had no terrors for her now.
Between dreams and realities she left Gaya floating in the grey mists
behind her. The solitude and wide stretch of the plain soothed her and
gave her a sense of release from a cramping prison. She began to deal
practically with the coming years--even, with a faint smile at the
corners of her mouth, to furnish the little suburban house, to arrange
her days.
And then, in the midst of her planning, her horse jerked to a quivering
standstill. She leant forward in her saddle, frowning through the veil
of rain, and saw that something lay across her road--something black and
huddled and shapeless. She tried to urge the frightened animal forward;
then something definite checked her--held her in sick, motionless
horror. It was a white patch--the shape of a man's hand, the fingers
clawed into the mud.
A minute later she had managed to dismount. She knelt down by the
crumpled body, and, exerting all her strength, lifted it. It was so
caked and stiffened with mire and blood that it remained upright,
kneeling grotesquely, leaning against her. The disfigured features,
made more hideous by their mud-smeared agony, were close to her own.
She believed him dead. The horror of him, kneeling there, leering at
her, overcame her. She let him sink back--and then only saw that he
still lived. His eyes were open. They were already glazed and could not
have seen her, but an instinct, kindling for the last time, recognized
her presence.
"Tristram--Heerut--warn Tristram--warn----"
His mouth fell open. His gaze became fixed under the half-sunk lids.
It was finished.
Sigrid Fersen rose to her feet. She was not conscious now of fear or
hesitation; she walked forward a few paces, tracing the smeared track of
Meredith's body back to a confusion of hoof-prints in the thick mud.
There had been a struggle, and Meredith had had strength enough to crawl
a few feet--she did not know that each foot had represented hours and
the triumph of the man's will over agony and unconsciousness, but she
knew what he had tried to do.
"Warn Tristram!"
It was a call to her old, unbroken fearlessness, to the eager,
adventuring blood and the new faith. Gaya and prudence and safety lay
behind her; but what was Gaya to her, what had prudence or safety ever
mattered to her? Before her lay the swollen river and sinister,
uncomprehended danger.
She was going forward.
She caught her horse by the bridle. It was no easy task to mount from
that slippery road, but she had in that hour an unconquerable energy and
resolve. It was done at last. She settled herself firmly in the
saddle, her hands on the reins were flexible and strong as steel.
Through the splashing mire and rain she rode towards Heerut.
She reached the river-bank. The door of the engineer's shanty stood
open and one glance showed her that the place was deserted. She rode
over the bridge. The water slid across the roadway with an ugly,
slopping gurgle; its deeper voice thundered beneath among the shaken
arches.
On the farther bank she drew rein for an instant. Amidst the rush of
the river it seemed to her that another sound had reached her. It was
vague and indefinite, and yet unmistakably separate from all else. It
was as though close to her, and yet hidden beneath the water, something
monstrous and living groaned in the agony of dismemberment.
"Warn Tristram!"
She rode on towards Heerut.
*CHAPTER XII*
*THE MEETING OF THE WAYS*
They had come from all the ends of the Province, secretly and one by one
from the towns, and in whole companies from the villages. It was for
them only another pilgrimage. They brought with them the same childlike
faith, the same dim, passionless hopes, the same fatalism. And behind
those simple things there was the same incalculable force awaiting the
spark which should fire them to a ferocious heroism or headlong panic.
They came together in the broad curve of plain where the Ganges twisted
in a horseshoe towards the foot of Gaya's hills. To the west, within
half a mile of the encampment, the black impregnable barrier of the
jungle followed the river's course past the bridge-head and the temple,
forming lower down a crescent around the little plateau on which Heerut
lay huddled.
There were close on two thousand of them, men of all ages, all castes.
They carried weapons, but of a strange and varied nature--old army
rifles, an ancient sword, the deadly kukri, sometimes no more than a
rusty bayonet, stolen or bought from some drunken defaulter. They
themselves were as heterogeneous. They herded together without order or
discipline. The rain poured down upon them ceaselessly, saturating
their scanty clothing so that it clung to their lean bodies like creased
and dirty skins. Here and there the saffron robe proclaimed the Saddhu,
and there were priests, haughty, arrogant-featured men, who stood aloof,
as though the matter scarcely concerned them. Yet it was they who had
worked secretly and cunningly in the towns and villages. It was their
infallibility which had welded these strange, inco-ordinate atoms into a
weapon. For, undisciplined, ill-armed, and dejected though they seemed,
though they came straight from their fields and the enervating
atmosphere of the bazaars, these two thousand men were still fighters.
In the old days their fathers had scorned the plough and had lived and
died by the sword. They had fought for the old Rajah and gone with him
into exile and ended their adversity in the wildernesses. Some of that
fighting blood was in the veins of these, their descendants, and some of
that stern tradition lay smouldering beneath the veneer of peace which
the British Raj had forced upon them.
But of all this, Barclay, riding at Ayeshi's side down the irregular
front of this strange army, saw nothing. To him they were a sorry,
pitiable crew, foredoomed to disaster. He knew now, if he had not
always known, the futile madness of the enterprise on which they were
launched, he with them. The brief illusion which he had nourished that
night in the temple had gone. Though he had flung himself into this
cause with all his wealth, all his power, he saw it to be lost. The
shadow of the future was on these upturned stoic faces, on Ayeshi, and
on himself. Yet he would not have turned back nor changed the course of
events. A sombre triumph and satisfaction glowed through his
foreknowledge.
He had found his people. He belonged to them. In the end that was
coming he would not be alone. His blood would mingle with theirs. And
with them those others would be swept away--those others who had
rejected him.
He turned his haggard, moody eyes towards distant Gaya and laughed.
Even now he was a little theatrical. He wore the native dress, and it
was like a masquerade. All that was English in him stood out the more
prominently. The very priests who had admitted him to their caste shrank
from his shadow, and quick, dark glances of suspicion followed him as he
rode at Ayeshi's side. Vahana, the Saddhu, clung to his
stirrup-leather. He was like a mocking spirit of evil, noiseless and
remorseless. Once Barclay had tried to swing him off by a quick turn of
his horse, but the old withered figure had leapt with him with the
agility of a tiger. Afterwards Vahana had lifted his face to Barclay,
showing his teeth in a mirthless grin of understanding.
Thereafter Barclay made no effort to free himself. But he had become
afraid--afraid of something other than the end.
Ayeshi rode to the farther end of the roughly formed square. Beyond the
jewelled turban and the ancient sword at his waist, he wore no insignia
of his rank, and even his knightly seat on the thoroughbred Arab could
not wholly atone to his followers for this lack of outward splendour.
They had expected something other--something resplendent, a gorgeous
representative of the millennium that was coming,--a god, an avatar.
And he was only a boy, with wasted features and restless, unhappy eyes.
Yet they greeted him as their lord. Perhaps even in their minds was the
knowledge that their lives were bound up with his, that there was no
turning back either for him or them. A Brahmin and a native
under-officer, still in uniform though without his badges, came out of
the ranks to meet him, and for a few minutes they spoke together in an
undertone. Barclay scarcely listened. He was watching with cynical
intentness the play of the priest's astute features, the deferential,
courtly movements, the keen flashes of the cruel eyes. In contrast, the
soldier seemed brutal and aggressive. His face was pockmarked and
sodden with vice, but he was a strong man--more vital in that moment
even than Ayeshi.
Between Barclay and these two men Ayeshi was the shuttlecock--the toy
and instrument with which each sought to attain his own petty ends of
vengeance and power. For a moment Barclay could have pitied him as he
sat there, reining in his restive Arab with a master's hand, so
passionately in earnest, so deeply shaken by premonition.
"They will fight, Pugra?" he asked repeatedly. "They will keep faith
with us?"
The soldier grinned significantly.
"They have sworn it, lord. There is no cause for them to break their
oath. It is a simple matter. In an hour it will be finished. Heera
Singh leads them. He is a good soldier. His brother was shot a year
ago. He will not fail."
"And afterwards----?"
"We shall join forces with them."
"And after that----?"
The soldier and the priest exchanged a quick glance of interrogation.
But the question had rung with an urgent appeal not to be denied. The
Brahmin drew a step nearer, taking the answer upon himself.
"After that the great cities will follow. In Calcutta and Bombay they
do but await the signal. Is it not so?"
"That is what they told me." Ayeshi passed his hand nervously over his
forehead. "They swore to me that they were ready. I was to be the
torch which should light India----"
"Surely, then, it will be so, lord."
Ayeshi made no answer. He seemed to sink into a fit of brooding, his
eyes fixed in the direction of Gaya. Barclay, who had not ceased to
watch him, urged his horse nearer.
"Of what are you afraid, Rajah?" he asked softly in English, adding with
a flash of malice: "Isn't death the worst that can happen to us?"
The echo of the grandiloquent phrase stung Ayeshi to a haughty gesture.
"I do not fear death."
"Whom then? Rasaldu? Rasaldu is dead. In a few hours there will be no
white men left in your kingdom----"
"I know. It is not that. It is for these men--my people. They trust
me. They hope great things. If I should fail----"
"You will not fail, Rajah. You have the right to call upon them. You
are their lord."
Ayeshi glanced up swiftly.
"And if I were not--if it proved a mistake--sometimes I am afraid----"
Barclay shrugged his shoulders. He was growing impatient. The
merciless rain began to chill his blood. The roar of the river beat like
the incessant thud of a hammer on his ears.
"What does it all matter?" he muttered. "If only this infernal rain
would stop! It's dangerous. If the water overflows on the high ground
up by Bjura we shall have to swim for it. That's what matters."
But suddenly Ayeshi bent down from his saddle and laid his hand on
Vahana's shoulder.
"You promised!" he said, in a tense undertone. "You promised that today
you would speak--that you would give me proofs to show my people. Now
keep your promise to me. Vahana--justify me."
The fakir lifted his eyes to Ayeshi. His lips moved, but no sound came
from them. He shrank back against Barclay's knee, cowering as from a
blow. But his expression was triumphantly evil.
And Barclay, looking into Ayeshi's stricken face, came to a bitter
understanding. Not only this boy, but all of them, were so many
instruments in a master-hand. Their hates and ambitions had been woven
skilfully into the greater pattern of a patient, insatiable vengeance.
They were pawns in Vahana's game. _They_ would be swept from the board.
Vahana would go on to his own end.
Before this selfsame knowledge Ayeshi had faltered. Now he drew himself
up in the saddle.
"Rasaldu is dead," he said quietly, yet with despair, "and Sahib
Meredith and others--others. Justify me!"
And to that final, irrepressible cry of anguish Vahana answered. His
unaccustomed tongue wrestled with the words, and formed them slowly and
thickly. They fell like blows.
"The--Rajah--had--no--son," he said.