Читать книгу The Hermit Doctor of Gaya - I. A. R. Wylie - Страница 5

CHAPTER V

A VISION OF THE BACKWATER

The Dakktar Sahib stepped carefully over the body of Ayeshi, who lay asleep inside the doorway, and went down the centre of the street. The village was silent and seemingly deserted. Even the grain-dealer, Lalloo by name, not unknown as a money-lender with Eastern ideas on interest—had deserted his wooden booth, and the lean dogs which were wont to nose hungrily in the gutters had gone elsewhere for their hunting-ground. The gutters themselves were clean; there was no cattle to wander haplessly in and out of the open doorways; the half-naked babies were hidden and silent. And in all this silence and garnished peace there was something ominous and dreadful. A mighty scavenger had passed through the village and swept it clear of refuse and misery and sickness and life itself. Heerut lay under the burning midday sun like a body awaiting burial, wrapped in the orderliness of death, silent, colourless, for all its piteous poverty, majestic.

Tristram's footsteps rang out loudly in the stillness. He alone was alive and bore the agony and stress of life stamped on his body. He was ugly with the ugliness of a soldier returning from the battle-field. His clothes were dirty. He reeled drunkenly, his eyes were bloodshot and swollen in their deep sockets, and a month's growth of reddish beard covered his long chin. He might have passed for a spectre of Death itself, stalking through the place of its visitation.

He reached the village cross-roads. The pointed leaves of the council-tree hung limply, their soft mysterious voices hushed. Underneath, the earth was scarred and burnt by the bonfires around which the village elders clustered at nightfall, listening to the tales from the great past. There had been no bonfire for many nights, and the elders had gone their ways.

Tristram went on, out of the village, across the ancient half-obliterated path of Auspiciousness, through the coarse jungle grass to the river. It flowed broad and swift, swirling against its muddy, artificial barrier with sullen impatience, its farther bank lost in the blaze and shimmer of heat. Tristram went on, past the temple whose battered walls glowed warm and golden in the sunlight, to the clump of trees beyond. He entered their shade at a stumbling run like a man seeking refuge from pursuers, and burst through the tangled undergrowth with the whole weight of his body.

Here, beneath the branches of the stately Mohwa trees, the Ganges had built herself a backwater. Her waters, grey still with the snows of her mountain mother, had turned from their stern course and become clear as crystal and still as the surface of a mirror. They reflected softly the flaming green of the overhanging foliage and the red and gold of the strange flowers growing on their banks. A lotus-flower floated like a fairy palace in a patch of subdued sunshine, its pale petals half open and delicately tipped with pink as though the light had awakened them from their white sleep to life. Beneath, in the shining, deceptive depths was a world of mystery, forests of twining, sinuous growths, the monster blossoms swaying in the under-current.

Tristram dropped down on his knees at the water's edge and then rolled over with his face hidden on his arm. He lay so still that a golden lizard flashed out from the long grass and lingered almost at his elbow and a water-hen gliding down on to the breast of the water preened herself in complacent security.

The patch of sunlight moved on. It left the lotus-flower in an emerald shadow, and rested like a bright, watchful eye on a patch of flaming poppies on the farther bank. The silence deepened. Even the gentle parting of the undergrowth behind the spot where Tristram slept brought no sound. With a noiseless strength the lean hands of Vahana, the Sadhu, pressed back the opposing branches. He came forward so slowly, so stealthily, that the foliage seemed rather to thin imperceptibly before him like a green mist, leaving him at last unveiled on the fringe of the clearing. Even then it was as though he had been there always, not a man, not even living, but the dead twisted stump of some tempest-riven tree.

But the water-hen heard and saw him and rose with a whirr of wings. The lizard flashed back into his hiding-place.

Tristram did not stir. The emaciated, half-naked body glided towards him and bent over him. For a long minute Vahana remained thus, scrutinizing the half-hidden face of the sleeper, then he stood upright, tossing the hair from his wild eyes, his long, fleshless arms raised high above his head, with a gesture that was as a salute to some oncoming, resistless destiny. Then, in an instant, he seemed to shrivel, his arm sank, and with one swift glance about him he turned and vanished among the trees.

Tristram awoke suddenly, but not completely. He rested on his elbow, gazing at the blur of colour before him with heavy eyes, then drew himself up and, with the clumsiness of a drunken man, began to undress. Presently he slipped into the quiet water; the circles widened about him, and the lotus-flower rocked on the breast of the strange upheaval, but after that the intruder scarcely moved. He became as one of the giant weeds growing amidst the stones, upborne by the water, himself inert and quiescent. His head was thrown slightly back and his eyes had closed again.

Half an hour later, when he scrambled back on to the bank, the agony of exhaustion had been washed from him. He held himself upright to the air and sun, his body shining white and splendid against the background of foliage, the joy of life in every muscle, in every firm and graceful line. Then, with a sigh of unutterable content, he began to dress leisurely, retrieved a battered cigarette case and a box of matches and crouched down, tailor fashion, amidst the grasses. For a time he smoked peacefully, watching the light changing on the water and the swift moving life that hid in the shallows and darted out between the stones and swaying weeds. The lizard, tempted by his quiet and perhaps some luscious prospect of supper, wriggled out and took grave stock of him, and he stared back as motionless and absorbed, until the forgotten cigarette burnt him, when he swore and the lizard vanished like a tiny golden streak into its fastness. The man laughed to himself and dropped back upon his elbow. A smile still lingered about his mouth, but his eyes under the big square brows had forgotten their amusement. They were fixed dreamily ahead, and what they saw smoothed out the last lines of tension from his features, and lent them a look of youth and tenderness. And presently he dropped back, and, with his hands clasped behind his head, stared up into the shadowing green, as though whatever dream he conjured up had taken refuge there.

He slept again, not heavily as before but on the border-land of consciousness where thoughts break from their moorings, and sail out into a magic, restless sea of change whose bed lies littered with forgotten treasures. When the thud of hoofs broke on the stillness a dream rose up and shielded him, covering the sound with a fantastic picture, so that he slept on.

The patch of sunshine travelled upwards. It had forsaken the poppies as it had left the lotus-flower, and rested on the fair head of a woman.

Though Tristram saw her he did not move.

She stood scarcely five paces from him near an opening in the trees. One hand rested on the bridle of a tired horse, the other was lifted to her face, the forefinger to her lips, half in reflection, half as though hushing her own breathing. A pith helmet and the white coat of her simple riding-habit were fastened carelessly to the pommel of her saddle.

She stood quite motionless—as still and living as a bird resting among the flowers. It was that wonderful, restrained lightness in her that made her seem smaller and more fragile than she was. Her hair, of a gold paler than the sunlight and parted primly in the middle, waved down smoothly on a forehead that was high and too domed for beauty. Her face was small, more round than oval, with small features, exquisitely imperfect, demure, and resolute. There was something Victorian about her, and something vitally modern. It was as though a Botticellian Madonna had thrown off her serene and lovely foolishness and stepped down into life with the mocking happy humour of a faun at the corners of her fine lips and the wisdom of the world in her eyes. And added to all this there was in her expression an odd touch of an impersonal, aloof pity and tenderness.

She stood there looking down at the man in the grass with her subdued smile, and he stared back at her. Then presently she spoke:

"How do you do, Major Tristram? My name is Fersen—Sigrid Fersen."

"I know," he answered. His own voice seemed to break a spell, for he shot up as though she had struck him, his hand flying to the neck of his graceless, unbuttoned collarless shirt. "I beg your pardon—I'm awfully sorry—I'd been asleep—and day-dreaming—I thought you were just—not real——"

"A sort of concrete vision?" she suggested.

"It sounds absurd, of course, but it wasn't an ordinary sleep. In fact, barring today, I don't know when I slept last. That makes a man queer——"

"Obviously." Her enigmatic kindly smile was like sunshine on her demure gravity. "For instance, you said 'I know' when I introduced myself." The blood welled up under the man's brown skin, and she went on lightly. "I saw you half an hour ago. The shade tempted me—I was hot and tired. Fortunately I came quietly. You had just come out of the water and stood there like a young Beethoven—'this kiss to the whole world——'"

"I felt like that," he stammered. "It just expresses it—only——"

"Of course I went away at once," she said. "I felt you would be disconcerted if you knew—possibly very shocked. You may be now for all I know."

He looked down at his right hand, and then, as though it annoyed him, thrust it into his pocket.

"No," he said, "I'm not."

"I didn't think you would be." She led her horse down to the water, and, with accustomed fingers, unfastened the bit. "Please sit down again, Major Tristram."

He obeyed her instantly, and with his big hands clasped about his knees watched her as she came towards him. The blood was still dark in his face.

"I'm wondering how you knew me," he said abruptly.

"Gaya described you."

He burst out into a big laugh.

"My word! Did Gaya tell you I usually went about with nothing on or in these evil-smelling rags?"

"It is enough that I recognized you," she said primly. She added, as an after-thought: "They didn't tell me you were so beautiful."

"Me—beautiful?"

"As far as your figure goes."

"And my face?"

She looked at him whimsically.

"No, not exactly." She slipped down into the long grass beside him with an effortless, unconscious grace. "We're rather like each other," she went on, "both of us—how shall I say?—plain, and both of us quite lovely in our way. A perfect body is worth more than a perfect nose."

"Yes," he agreed. His voice sounded suddenly thick and tired and he looked away from her. "You're not alone, are you?" he asked.

"I have been. I've a faithful syce waiting at the bridge-head five miles up. He wouldn't come any farther. Perhaps——" She studied his hard-set profile with amused eyes. "Perhaps you're wishing I hadn't burst in upon you, or perhaps you share Gaya's dismay."

"Was Gaya dismayed?"

"Very. One or two are still. They thought I was an adventuress, partly on account of the Rajah and partly on account of my profession. And they were quite right." The laughter died out of her. Her voice sounded grave and eager. "I am an adventuress. I can't conceive myself being anything else. To live is to explore an unknown country, with every day a step forward. Some people shrink from it and cringe at home, and when they're taken by the scruff of the neck and flung out they're frightened and helpless. I'm not like that—you're not. Even my art was an adventure—the greatest. Every bar of music, every step, every inspiration that came to me, was like a mountain peak scaled and a new vista into a new country. Do you understand?"

He turned to her, his sunken, red-rimmed eyes warm with a generous, almost passionate sympathy.

"I can understand your feeling like that—I do too, in my way, especially out here. Out here nothing lasts. Every day brings change—the very trees and flowers and fields and forests—I don't know how it is—one says good-night to them and in the morning it's as though new friends had taken their place—people whom one had to study and wonder at—and then——" He turned away from her again and stared down at his strong hands—"anything can happen—the most wonderful, impossible things——"

She did not answer him. When she spoke again it was after a long silence and more lightly.

"I don't believe you're an official at all," she said. "You don't talk like one. You haven't asked me what business I have here or tell me that I am a danger to myself and a nuisance to everyone else. Why haven't you?"

"I forgot," he answered quietly. "For one thing, I knew you were not afraid, and people who are not afraid have nothing to fear. And besides that, the infection is over in Heerut. The poor beggars are either underground or isolated miles away. I did that 'on my own,' and I expect there'll be lots of trouble about it."

"You've had a bad time."

"Yes," he said simply.

"Mrs. Compton told me. I was immensely interested, and made up my mind to call on you. The 'lone fight' has always thrilled me. I don't care whether the fighter is a murderer or a hero so long as he fights against odds."

He laughed.

"Well, I'm not a criminal or a hero," he said.

"You can't tell. We're all potentially one or the other—or both."

He seemed on the verge of protest, but, looking at her, dropped to silence. She leant forward, her chin in the palm of her hand, and he saw that she smiled to herself, her eyes intent on the shadowy water.

"Doesn't Brahma sleep in the heart of that lotus-flower, Major Tristram?"

"He did once—so they say. And it is the lotus-flower which encloses our world. When the pink-tipped petals open then it is dawn with us." He hesitated, and then added with a shy laugh, "Shall I fetch it for you?"

"No, why spoil it? It is loveliest where it is."

"Yes, I know—but if you had wished it——" He broke off. "Somehow I'm glad you didn't," he said almost inaudibly.

The quiet rose up between them. It was like a mist, veiling them from each other with a drowsy peace. When she spoke again her voice sounded gay but subdued.

"Major Tristram, I'm disappointed—I meant to drop on like a bombshell—and here you sit next me as though it was the sort of thing you had done all your life. You don't even bother to talk to me. Do you think we were married in our last pilgrimage?"

The man turned his head away from her.

"Anything seems possible, here," he answered.

"Even hunger," she suggested gravely.

"Hunger?"

The dreamy unreality which had sunk upon them dissolved, letting through the light of every-day facts. She laughed at him.

"I'm hungry. I haven't eaten anything since dawn, and I didn't bring food because Mrs. Compton said you practically lived here. I was sure—after the first skirmish—that you'd ask me to tea."

He was on his feet now—less with eagerness than with a half-angry consternation.

"Mrs. Compton misled you——" he began hotly.

"She didn't—she didn't know I was coming. Are you going to let me starve?"

"I do live here," he went on stammeringly, "but in a native hovel like the rest of them. I can't take you there."

"Why not?" Her eyes were mocking, her lips pursed into a demure, ironic challenge. "Don't you want to?"

"It's not that——" His opposition collapsed and he faltered like a boy. "Only—well, I daresay you know what they call me—Tristram the Hermit. It's because I've had to live alone so much. No one comes out here. I've got accustomed to it. I'm like a miser with my loneliness."

"Then I had better go," she said gravely.

"No—not now. I want you to come. You'll understand better——"

He bridled her horse and brought it to her. For a moment they looked at each other with a steadiness in which there was a vague antagonism. Then the man stooped, hiding his face, and placed his hands for her to mount. She scarcely seemed to touch them. He looked up into her small face, flushed now with an eager colour. "You are lighter than the leaf on the wind," he said.

She laughed, but her laugh was more meditative than gay.

"And you, Major Tristram, are a poet in the wilderness," she answered.

CHAPTER VI

BROKEN SANCTUARY

He walked beside her, his hand light on her bridle, and silently they made their way through the long grass, along the banks of the grey, wide flowing river, past the temple, and into the empty village streets. Only once did she speak to him, bending slightly towards him in her saddle.

"I have been wondering what your name is," she said, "your other name. I've been trying to fit you with one."

"Tristram," he said.

"Tristram Tristram?"

He nodded, and she repeated the name thoughtfully under her breath.

"That's a curious repetition——"

"Yes, my mother liked it. It's the only thing we've ever quarrelled about. I tell her she suffered from lack of imagination, and that she took a mean advantage over my helplessness. What could anybody expect of a Tristram Tristram?"

"And yet it suits you somehow."

"I'm not flattered," he answered laughing.

The magic sunlight had gone and the low thatched huts were grey and sordid in the rising tide of shadow. Here and there a golden patch lingered palely, and the council-tree at the cross-roads blazed in the full flood from the west.

"This is my home," Tristram said.

The hut from the outside was not different from its fellows, save for the big windows that had been cut in the mud wall. The rough wooden doors stood open. Sigrid Fersen slipped out of her saddle and for a moment he barred her path. "You won't let me go forward to prepare the way?" he asked.

"No—I want to see what you are like, Major Tristram."

"It's as though I made you a confession," he said unevenly.

"I am woman enough to want to hear it."

He stood aside and she passed through the low doorway. At other times the contrast to the foetid street outside must have been overwhelming, but even now the dwelling's cool monastic purity arrested her on the threshold. A curtained doorway appeared to lead into a second apartment. There was scarcely any furniture—a chair, a table, a couple of Persian rugs on the uneven floor, a pile of cushions heaped into a divan against the wall. Nothing on the walls. Yet the old, exquisitely shaded rugs were probably priceless, and all the art and mysterious symbolism of India had gone into the carving of the great chair whose high back was Brahma the Creator and whose wide arms were pictured with strange fantasies of the Avatars. As her eyes grew accustomed to the twilight the woman saw beyond this dignity to details that brought a sudden laugh to her lips. A yellow ball that looked like a spotted St. Bernard pup rolled yelping off the cushions, displaying its teeth and a bandaged paw, and thereby rousing its bedfellow—a common English tabby, who stretched itself, threw an offhand curse at its disturber, then advanced arching its back and purring stormily. Sigrid bent down to stroke him, but he passed on with the crushing disdain of his race and rubbed himself against Tristram's leg.

"That's Tim," Tristram explained. "He has a wife, but she's probably out hunting. To tell the truth, she does most of the work. There were half a dozen kittens, but they died, worse luck. Couldn't stand the heat."

"Anything else?"

"Wickie isn't here. And Arabella. Laid up, both of them."

"And pray what is Wickie and what is Arabella?" she persisted.

"I call Wickie a dog and Arabella a horse," he answered solemnly, "but I'm told the matter is open to dispute. Wickie's boarding out with Miss Boucicault."

"Ah, Anne Boucicault!" She echoed the name with an amused inflection of her quiet voice. "An odd little person who detests me. And she is so touchingly conscientious about it. Not in the least spiteful, only very religious and full of doubts and scruples——" She made a little gesture which seemed to brush Anne Boucicault into nothingness. "Go on with your menagerie, Major Tristram. Introduce that terrifying little growl-box."

He picked up the yellow ball by the scruff of its neck and offered up his fist to the ineffectual first teeth as a sacrifice.

"A cheetah cub. I found him on the edge of the forest with his paw broken. He's nearly all right now, and will be able to go home."

"And start his criminal career," she suggested.

He laughed.

"Oh well, that's the risk the world runs every time a new infant is brought into it," he retorted. But he had become suddenly embarrassed, almost guilty-looking, and, after one glance at him from quizzical brows, she changed the subject.

"Am I at liberty to inspect, Major Tristram?"

"You must do whatever you wish." He stood at the entrance to the hut and watched her as she crossed straightway to the writing-table. His face, now in shadow, was set in grim resolution. There were two large photographs on the table, and one of these she picked up and held to the light.

"A fine old face—your mother, Major Tristram?"

"Yes," he assented briefly.

"She must be very beautiful."

"I think she is," he answered, with a sudden relaxing of his strained features.

"Not a bit like you."

He feigned a rueful discontent.

"Not a bit. I always tell her that she was jealous, and wouldn't spare me so much as one good feature."

"Whereat, I hope, she boxes your ears for your ingratitude, you mortal with the perfect body!" She replaced the picture regretfully. "And this——"

She broke off. It became very still in the low-roofed room. Even the cheetah had ceased its infant growlings as though it felt the tension in the quiet about him. Tristram threw back his head, his chin thrust out, and did not speak. Suddenly she turned to him. Her lips were parted, in a wide, eager smile that was like a child's. Impulsively, ingenuously, she held out her ungloved hand to him, palm downwards.

"Is that your confession, Tristram Tristram!"

For one instant he wavered, the next he was at her side, had taken her hand and bowed over it and kissed it. Then he stood back, defiant, trembling, like a man who has committed a world-staggering enormity. But to her, it seemed, nothing had happened, nothing that she had not willed and desired. Still smiling, she turned away from him and, seating herself in the high-backed chair, placed the photograph where she could see it best. Then she became intent, absorbed. The brief incident and the man who watched her waveringly seemed to have been swallowed up in something greater, some passionate feeling. Without a word he left her and she did not hear him go. It was only when he returned presently and placed a cup and saucer before her that she looked up, colouring faintly.

"A poet in the wilderness and now Worcester! Major Tristram, I begin to think you are a rather strange and wonderful doctor!"

He smiled with frank pleasure in her pleasure.

"I love beautiful things," he said. "I fancy they are to me what wine is to some men. I'm like my mother in that. She understands. She saved and saved to buy me that cup. There's a teapot—not to match—I hate sets—but equally lovely. You shall see it when the water boils."

"And the chair—and these rugs! I know a Park Lane plutocrat who would sell his greasy soul for them. Was that your mother too?"

"No, the rugs are a gift from Lalloo the money-lender. His baby son had a bout of something or other, but got over it, and Lalloo wanted to shower blessings on somebody. He knows the markets for rare things and I have a shrewd, painful suspicion that he used unholy forces of financial coercion to get hold of these. Ayeshi carved the chair for me."

"Is Ayeshi a wood-pecker, or what?" she asked gaily.

He laughed with her.

"No—my aide-de-camp, orderly, servant, friend, all in one. Rather a wonderful sort of person. Heaven alone knows where he came from. He was brought to me by the man who 'owned' him, he was suffering from snakebite, and after the cure he stuck to me. Nobody minded. The people he lived with were afraid of him."

"Why?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know—he wasn't of their caste—any one could see that. He is a Brahmin of the Brahmins, and believes in his gods. There isn't anything so disconcerting to conventional religionists as genuine belief." Tristram was on his way to the door of the inner room. He stopped a moment and looked back at her. "And he can tell the most wonderful stories," he went on slowly, as though overtaken by some memory. "One day you must listen to him as I do—by the firelight, with night overhead."

"I shall come," she answered deliberately. "And I shall see the snake-bite on his arm and think of the story of the man who saved him."

Tristram had gone. She laughed a little and then fell to her old brooding contemplation of the picture at her elbow. But when he returned with the promised teapot and a plate of sandwiches she pushed it impatiently from her.

"Tell me, Major Tristram, are you glad I've broken into your sanctuary?" she asked abruptly.

He poured her tea out for her with a hand that shook a little.

"I don't know——"

"That's ungracious, Major Tristram. But you're altogether unexpected. Even this room-it's not a man's room. Where are your guns, your skins, your trophies?"

He looked about him, flushing to the roots of his fair, untidy hair.

"I haven't got any—I never had a gun of my own. I've got an Army pistol somewhere in the kitchen, but it's got rusty and I don't know what would happen if I fired it." He put the sandwiches near to her and then stalked across to the doorway and sat down cross-legged on the rug, his irregular profile cut sharply against the light. "I can't kill things," he said doggedly.

"Go on, Major Tristram. I am getting almost excited. A man who can't kill things!"

He heard the irony in her voice and winced, but did not look at her.

"Oh—I know it's ridiculous—laughable. Compton says I'm a sentimentalist—a freak. I can't help it."

"Is it a theory—Tolstoyism, Jainism——?"

He shook his head.

"I haven't any theories—it's just instinct—perhaps a kind of revulsion. My father was the finest shot in the Indian Army. Once when I was in Scotland I killed a stag. I felt—beastly—like a sort of cowardly criminal who couldn't be punished and knew it."

"Still go on. Tell me more. I came here to get to know you, Major Tristram, and I am a spoilt woman. Yes, you are a freak. I want to know how freaks originate. Tell me—no, not about your father—I have a fancy he was not freakish—but your mother——"

He stiffened, averting his head, his brows stern.

"My mother is different——" he began proudly.

"You have known me so long," she interrupted, "did you think I meant to joke at her? Haven't you understood better than that?"

He turned. Twilight had begun to invest them both. In the great carved chair among the shadows she looked almost luminous, a white spirit neither of heaven nor earth, aloof and radiant in fairy immortality and serene with a wisdom high above the man's painful plodding. Seeing her, he caught his breath; the anger passed from his face, leaving it with a curious look of bewilderment and pain.

"I'm sorry——" he said unevenly. "Of course I ought to have known. But I am a heavy, unpresentable fellow—rather ridiculous too—and I didn't want you to think I was like her." He turned away again, his eyes intent on the dark strong hands clasped about his knees. "As to my antecedents, there isn't much to tell. My father was a Captain in the Indian Army. He was killed out here in Gaya when I was a baby. No one ever found out how it happened. My mother was in England at the time. She had nothing but her pension. She starved herself to keep me fit and give me my chance." He broke off sharply. "I'd rather not talk about that. It means a responsibility that would be intolerable if I wasn't so proud of it—it would be awful to fail a woman who had starved for you."

"I can understand that, Major Tristram."

He seemed to listen a moment as though to an echo of her low voice.

"All my people had been in the Indian Army," he went on. "I knew I should make a dismal failure of soldiering. It seemed to me—it's my nearest approach to a theory—that it's a man's business to make life more tolerable—not to destroy it. So I compromised with the I.M.S. And here I am."

"A hermit!" She leant forward, with her chin resting in the palm of her hand. "Is that also part of your law of life, Major Tristram?"

"I have my work," he answered. "It's a huge district, and I've got to be at it all the time. It is my life. But I'm a queer cuss—I have other thoughts too—absurd daydreams. I'm alone so much that it's natural enough—and if I came much among men and women I should be afraid——"

"—that the vision might become concrete." She waited a moment—"or fail you."

He shook his head.

"No—not that. But since I have got to be alone always I mustn't want anything too badly."

She got up suddenly.

"It is getting late," she said. "I promised to be at the bridge-head by nine. Mr. Radcliffe, who is in the adventure, meets me there and escorts me back to safety. We should be home by midnight, and tomorrow Gaya will have a new scandal. Mr. Radcliffe is very young. He will be so pleased."

"I will come with you as far as the bridge-head," Tristram returned gravely.

"I had expected nothing less."

For all her change of tone the suspense which had crept in upon them with the twilight remained unbroken. It lay upon the man like a quivering hand. As he led her horse through the black streets it vibrated on the hot obscurity. They came out on to the plain and it was there also, at his throat, suffocating him.

The full moon hung low on the horizon like a silver lamp. There was nothing hid from it. It revealed and transfigured fantastically; the very blades of the high-standing grass were drawn in separate delicate lines of shadow, but they did not look like grass. The great river flooded through the darkness—an endless winding army of ghosts whose murmur was never still.

Sigrid Fersen looked down at the man beside her. As distance brings out the significance of a rough sketch, so now the grey half-light threw into relief lines and hollows of his face which she had not seen before. They were as vigorous and ugly as they had ever been, yet their silhouette under the helmet rim conveyed to her a new impression—the thought of something chivalresque and simple, mystic and single-hearted—a Pure Fool on the Threshold of his Quest. She bent towards him, stroking her horse's neck with a gentle hand.

"And I too have a theory, Tristram Tristram," she said, as though there had been no silence between them. "It is this—that there can be no going back for any of us. We climb from experience to experience, and grow or shrivel as our experience is a high or low one. There was a man sleeping by the backwater. He is gone, and in his place you walk beside me."

"Why should I not be the man by the backwater?" he asked. "He knew you also."

"Since when?"

"Since two years ago."

"Tell me how he met me—I have forgotten."

"You never knew," he answered. "It was his last night in England. He had said good-bye to all he cared for, and he felt pretty bad. He knew what lay ahead of him—lonely, hard years and perhaps no return. So he did what he had never done before, because money and pleasure had not come his way—he took himself and his pain into a theatre. And there he saw you."

"Well—and then?"

"That's all. There was wonderful music, and you explained it to him. You showed him a new beauty that he had never dreamed of, you unlocked a door, and he entered a new world. When it was over he got up and left the theatre. He behaved like a boy—he went and stood by the river until day broke."

"And the photograph."

"He bought it to take with him."

She smiled to herself, tenderly, ironically.

"It did not occur to him to ask for my autograph—to seek me out."

"No, then you would have been a reality to him—an unattainable reality. He wanted you as a dream he could live with and conjure up at will."

"As he did by the backwater."

"Yes." He pointed out towards the grey bulk of the temple lying against the forest. His voice lost its habitual unevenness, and grew full and clear. "One thing you danced—do you remember?—the ballet in Robert le Diable? The scene was a churchyard—an ugly thing of cardboard and clumsy carpentering until you came. But out there is a real temple. At night the moon plays through the great sun-window of the sikhara and fills the space between the pillars. And I have gone there at night-time and seen you dance."

"Shall you go again, Tristram Tristram?"

"I don't know—I don't know."

They went on in silence. There was no sound but the song of the water and the swish of the grass at their feet. Presently she drew rein.

"We are near the bridge; I can hear voices, and I want to say good-bye to you now. I want to thank you. I have made my experience, and climbed higher."

He looked up at her with a wistful smile.

"I don't know about that—I don't know what I have done. I do know that I have grown frightened for you. I've been thinking of infection and cheetahs on the home road and all the horrors I don't believe in. I wish I could go with you to Gaya."

"There is nothing to fear, Tristram Tristram. And you will come to Gaya tomorrow or the next day or next week and I shall play to you Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms—all the most wonderful music in the world. I shall open new doors for you and new worlds——"

He shook his head.

"There's cholera out in Bjura."

"Still you will come——" she answered.

Her hand touched his. Then she was gone—a speck of moving light—into the darkness.

CHAPTER VII

ANNE BOUCICAULT EXPLAINS

It was Anne Boucicault's birthday—her twenty-second—and Owen Meredith had proposed her health in lemonade—a beverage which he was assured had no unlucky superstition attached to it. The rest responded in champagne. It was not Colonel Boucicault's champagne, though it was on his verandah that Gaya had gathered to celebrate. Jim Radcliffe, who, since his midnight ride with Sigrid and the consequent hubbub, had developed into a very debonair and self-confident young man, had produced a case-full with the satisfaction and mystery of a popular conjurer, and Mrs. Boucicault showed neither offence nor appreciation at this addition to her hospitality. She sat in the shade near the doorway and scarcely spoke. From time to time her hand rose involuntarily to the high collar which had been added to her elaborate gown, and rested there as though it hid something painful. When a remark reached her a fitful smile quivered about her lips steadied to artificial gaiety. But her pale eyes were wide and unsmiling, their sight turned inwards on to some ugly vision, and never lifted from their unseeing watch on the avenue leading to the high-road. Anne sat on the arm of her chair and held her hand. She looked very young, and, whilst Meredith spoke, almost radiant. He had seen the colour creep back into her pale cheeks, and had become gay and eloquent and a little reckless. For all the lemonade, and the little chilly mannerisms of his calling, he was a passionate young man, and the sight of her fragile pleasure roused in him a fierce pity and tenderness. He betrayed himself, and did not know it. Afterwards, when he came and touched her long-stemmed glass with his tumbler, he lingered, looking down at her, his hazel eyes bright with a new purpose and an old hope suddenly and daringly set free.

"Anne—dear—before I go tonight I have something I want to say to you. Give me a chance, will you?"

She met his eager gaze for an instant, and then her own eyes faltered and dropped. She looked startled, a little frightened, like a child that has been taken unawares, but her colour remained unchanged.

"Of course—we shall be going into the garden. Come with me. I will show you our new rose-trees."

"Thank you," he answered. He stood back, others crowded to take his place, and she received their good wishes much as she had received him, with a shy graciousness that made her appealingly attractive. Only when Sigrid Fersen held out her glass she stiffened, and grew suddenly much older. It was as though for an instant they had changed places, and the girl had become the woman defending herself coldly and bitterly against the threat of youth.

"And I can wish you nothing better than that you should always have some one like Mr. Meredith to wish you so much good, with so much fervour," Sigrid said lightly. She turned her head towards the man standing behind Anne Boucicault's chair, and her eyes in the shade of the big garden hat sparkled with subdued merriment and kindly mockery. "Tell me, is Mr. Meredith so eloquent in the pulpit?" she asked.

"You should hear him for yourself," Anne replied staidly.

"But then, I never go to church."

"That is a pity." She flushed a little, her mouth small and tight-looking. "It is especially a pity out here—because of the natives. But then, of course, you haven't our responsibility."

Meredith frowned slightly, not at Anne's words, but at the expression which he saw pass over the small face opposite him. It was still kindly, but the merriment had become ironic. Up to that moment he had felt nothing very definite towards her, recognizing, with an unclerical modesty, that he did not understand her. Now he thrilled with an odd dislike.

"I'm afraid my eloquence won't cure Miss Fersen's backsliding," he said, hurriedly good-humoured. "And, in the meantime, behold a new arrival, breathless with congratulations."

The new arrival proved to be Wickie, escaped from the compound, who bounced up the verandah steps and advanced among the scattered tables practising the ingratiating squirm with which the Aberdeen masks his real impertinence. He was received with acclamation, partly for his master's sake, partly as a tribute to his own irresistible ugliness. Anne whistled timidly to him, but he ignored her and sniffed at Sigrid's outstretched hand.

"It's almost as though he knew you," Anne said sharply.

"Well, we know of each other at any rate, don't we, Wickie?"

"How?" The question was rude in its abruptness and Anne's manners were always very gentle. Sigrid Fersen did not look at her. She bent down and balanced a generous portion of cake on Wickie's hopeful snout.

"Major Tristram told me about him," she said.

"But Major Tristram has not been in Gaya since you arrived."

"Nevertheless, we have met." She glanced across at Radcliffe who chuckled with boyish self-consciousness. "I paid Major Tristram a visit," she added.

"At Heerut?"

"Well, we had tea there—but we met by the river. Major Tristram had been bathing."

Anne Boucicault sat very straight and still and hard-eyed. Meredith saw that her hands were clenched so that they were white at the knuckles, and again he felt the passing of a sudden emotion which was this time a mingling of inexplicable pain and dread.

"That must have been an unusual—dangerous adventure," Anne uttered from between stiff lips.

"I had hoped that it might be—it proved to be nothing but a very agreeable afternoon," was the answer.

The dialogue passed unnoticed. Mrs. Brabazone was telling one of her only three stories, and trying to sort out the point. Gaya listened and waited reverently, and Mrs. Brabazone, being possessed of a fine sense of her own total lack of humour, finished with a round fat laugh which added a perfecting touch to her rotund figure and creaseless, elderly face.

"Anyhow, I do amuse you," she said triumphantly. "Nobody amuses you like I do. I don't believe you could get on without me. One of these days I shall have that story right, and then you'll see that it was worth waiting for it. You know, I always mix it up with the one about the Lancashire woman who——" She stopped, her mouth agape. "What on earth was that?" she demanded sharply.

"Firing," Mary Compton answered. She raised herself from her comfortable lounging attitude on the long chair, and leant forward with a curious expression on her alert face. "What was it, Mr. Radcliffe?"

The boy got up hurriedly, ostensibly to refill his neighbour's empty glass. His fresh-coloured face, not yet burnt with the Indian sun, had turned a dull red.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Some silly ass over in the barracks. A rifle gone off by mistake. Or a sentry. The sentries have taken to firing at their own shadows."

"It may have been at the barracks," Mrs. Compton pursued, "but that wasn't a rifle, Jim Radcliffe. It was a squad firing, and you know it."

"And how do you know?" Mrs. Brabazone broke in. "Sometimes, Mary, I feel that you can't be really nice. You do know such dreadfully unwomanly things."

"I was shut up in Chitral with Archie when the regiment mutinied," Mrs. Compton retorted coolly. "I learnt to know the meaning of every sound—even to the snapping of a twig under a naked foot."

Mrs. Brabazone shook herself like a dog throwing off a douche of cold water.

"My dear, don't! You're trying to insinuate that we are on the verge of being murdered in our beds, and I know it perfectly well. I tell the Judge so every night, and he says he's sure I shall die of a broken heart if I have to go off peacefully. But then——"

Her voice trailed off. For once her headlong garrulity failed to evoke a response, and the little group of men and women sat silent, avoiding each other's eyes. It was very still again. A drowsy late afternoon peace hung over the shady garden at their feet. Yet the sound which had fallen lingered among them like a long-drawn-out echo.

They lived lightly and gaily, these people of Gaya, most blessed of Indian stations. Polo and tennis, a drag-hunt here and there, a constant happy-go-lucky exchange of hospitality, a close fraternity which allowed for scandal and malice and all uncharitableness, and never failed at a pinch. And then for an instant a rift—a glimpse down into the thinly crusted abyss on which they danced—a tightening of the lips, a laugh, a call for a new tune, a fine carrying-on of their life with the secret knowledge that their pleasure and their brotherhood was other and greater than they had thought.

Mary Compton broke the silence. Her voice sounded light and careless.

"I don't think we're going to die just yet, anyhow," she said; "there's Colonel Boucicault. Perhaps he will condescend to tell us what Mr. Radcliffe won't." She gave the latter one of those penetrating glances which made her a rather dreaded little personality, and immediately afterwards, catching sight of Mrs. Boucicault's face she flushed crimson. It was, as she afterwards expressed it, as though she had been caught eavesdropping or prying into a confession not meant for her reading. For Mrs. Boucicault had sunk together like a faded flower whose stem had been snapped. The elaborate lace dress and the jewelled hands in her lap added painfully to her look of broken helplessness. But it was in her eyes that Mary Compton had seen her self-betrayal. They were half-closed, and from under the heavy lids they kept watch as a dog watches who has been beaten past protest, even past subjection into a terrible patient waiting. She pushed her daughter's hand aside, and Anne smiled down at her with an attempt at careless ease which had its own piteousness.

Colonel Boucicault came up the verandah steps, his hand to his helmet with that exaggerated formality which made the greeting a veiled gibe.

"I trust I don't interrupt," he said. "Anne is celebrating, isn't she? I heard whispers of something of the sort, but I was not invited. In fact, I suspect that the entertainment was fixed for the afternoon in the hopes that my duties might keep me elsewhere."

He accepted the chair which his subaltern had vacated for him. "Thanks, Radcliffe, always the soul of correctness, and ever to be found where there is nothing more arduous going than champagne. Well, what are you all silent for? Mrs. Brabazone, you are positively pale. Has anything happened?"

Mrs. Brabazone waved one of her podgy hands with a gesture that was probably an expression of an otherwise inarticulate rage. Boucicault laughed at her. Whether he had been drinking or not could not be said for certain. He never betrayed himself. His hands and his voice were equally steady. His complexion, sallow and unhealthy, added to the unnatural brightness of his pale eyes, which, like the mouth under the heavy moustache, expressed a deliberate, insane cruelty.

Anne Boucicault met his roving stare and tried to smile.

"We heard firing," she stammered. "We didn't know what it was. We were rather frightened."

"Frightened? Of course you were. You're given that way, aren't you, Anne?" He held out an irritable hand for the glass which Meredith had filled for him. "Well, you weren't the only one. Five more terrified wretches I never saw—why, I can't think. A transmigration at this time of the year must be rather agreeable."

Mary Compton turned her head sharply.

"The five men who mutinied," she exclaimed, "they were shot—-just now?"

Though the sunlight was still strong the garden seemed to have suddenly passed into a chilling shadow.

Colonel Boucicault nodded.

"Yes, before the whole regiment with the exception of this gentleman who had—what was it—the toothache?" He lifted his glass towards Radcliffe, whose boyish face had whitened under the taunt. "Allow me to congratulate you on your taste in champagne, sir. You should be invaluable on the mess committee at any rate."

Radcliffe's lips twitched but he made no answer, and it was Sigrid Fersen who spoke. She bent down, stroking Wickie's pointed ears with a deliberate hand.

"Wasn't the execution a trifle ostentatious, Colonel Boucicault?" she asked.

He stared back at her, an ugly smile at the corner of his lips.

"It was meant to be ostentatious. I'm afraid I cannot always consider the delicate female nerves."

"My nerves weren't upset," she returned levelly. "I'm not afraid of anything."

"Indeed?" He seemed to meditate a moment, as though something either in her voice or appearance struck him, then jerked his head in Anne's direction. "My orderly told me there was a messenger for me. Bring him here."

"Here, father?"

"That was what I said."

Anne slipped from her place, and, motioning Meredith aside, hurried into the house like some frightened little animal. As she disappeared Mary Compton started a conversation which was taken up eagerly but without more than a faltering success. It failed altogether as Anne returned.

"That's Ayeshi," Radcliffe whispered in Sigrid's ear.

She looked up. The young Hindu had salaamed gravely, partly to Boucicault, partly to the assembled company and now stood upright and silent. He was barefooted, and the white loose clothes were grey with dust. Yet there was that in the carriage of his slender body and in the dark, delicate featured face which was arresting in its dignity. To Boucicault, possibly, the boy's untroubled ease appeared as insolence. He frowned at him moodily.

"You are Major Tristram's servant," he asked in English.

"Yes, Sahib."

"Well, he has not taught you manners. But that was hardly to be expected. You have brought a message?"

"Yes, Sahib."

"Deliver it."

"It is by word of mouth, Sahib."

"Well, then, deliver it, in Heaven's name."

Ayeshi put his hand to his neck, pushing back the short black curls which escaped from under his turban. He seemed to become suddenly conscious of the attention centred on him, and his eyes, moving over the watching faces, encountered Sigrid Fersen. He looked at her intently and then at the dog at her feet, and she saw that his lips quivered though not with fear.

"It is that there is cholera at Bjura," he said. "The Dakktar Sahib is hard pressed, and begs for help."

"He is always doing that. Tell him I have no one to send. Captain Treves is on furlough, and I should not dream of recalling him. The Dakktar Sahib must manage as best he can."

Ayeshi held his ground. His mouth had hardened.

"The Dakktar Sahib is ill," he said.

"Well, let the physician heal himself," Boucicault laughed.

"Colonel Sahib—it is urgent——"

Boucicault rose to his feet.

"You can go," he said. Then, as Ayeshi lingered, with a suddenness that was awful in its expression of released passions, Boucicault lifted his hand and struck the native full on the mouth. "Now will you go?" he said softly.

Mrs. Brabazone screamed, but her voice was drowned wholly by a more full-throated sound. Wickie, barking furiously and bristling with all the fighting fury of his Scottish forbears, broke from a long restraint and flung himself at the aggressor. Even his teeth, however, could not prevail against the leather riding-boots, and Boucicault kicked himself free. His passion had died down or had become something worse, a cold still fury.

"What brute is this?" he asked. He looked at Anne, and she tried to meet his eyes and flinched.

"It's Major Tristram's dog—he gave it to me to take care of—it had a broken paw—it was shut up in the compound—I hoped you wouldn't mind, father."

Boucicault made no answer. He took the riding-crop which he had carried. There was a tight line about his jaw which betrayed the grinding teeth. He was very deliberate, almost ostentatious in his purpose. Anne watched him. She held out a hand of protest—then let it drop. Her pallor had become pitiful. Sigrid Fersen got up. She was so swift and light in her movement that no one realised what she was doing till it was done. She crossed the verandah and picked up Wickie in her arms, narrowly escaping the murderous descent of the riding-crop. Then she rose and faced him.

"I like Wickie," she said. "From henceforward, Colonel Boucicault, he is under my protection."

Boucicault drew back. His face was grey looking.

"You have some courage, Mademoiselle," he said almost inaudibly.

She smiled composedly.

"I am not 'Mademoiselle,' and you know it, Colonel Boucicault. Also, as I said before, I am not afraid. I killed a mad dog once, and since than I have been afraid of nothing." She turned carelessly. Ayeshi stood behind her. There was blood on his mouth and on the hand which he had raised in self-defence. His eyes were full of a sick suffering which was terrible because it was not of the body. She laid her free hand on his arm. "You are hurt," she said; "please go to my bungalow. Mrs. Smithers will look after you—tell her I sent you. You mustn't mind what has happened——" She looked back mockingly over her shoulder. "Colonel Boucicault is a little out of temper. He would hit me if he dared."

There was a silence of sheer stupefaction. Mrs. Compton's temperament, usually leashed by her passionate care for her husband's career, bolted with her, and she laughed outright, and Mrs. Brabazone settled herself back in her chair with a subdued complacency of one who has seen herself fitly avenged. But Anne Boucicault had risen to her feet. There was a look on her face more painful than her fear, and almost reckless in its self-betrayal. For an instant she stood looking at the woman who faced her father, and then without a word she turned and slipped into the room behind her. Meredith followed. He did not speak to her. He knew where she was going, and the knowledge gave him an odd comfort, as though in her need she had remembered him and turned to him. Like a shadow she glided along the dim passages. The verandah overlooking the rose-garden was deserted and the garden itself already full of a cool twilight which added to its sad air of neglect and death. Roses grew well in Gaya, but they did not grow well in Anne's garden. She loved them but not successfully. Meredith stood beside her as she lay huddled together on the old bench and waited. Though she was so still he felt that she was crying and the knowledge stirred him to a compassion that was not one of understanding. In truth he understood as yet very little—the mere surface of her grief. Presently he sat down beside her and drew her hand gently and resolutely from her face. It was wet with tears.

"Anne!" he said unsteadily. "Little Anne!" Loyally unselfish and modest though he was, yet at that moment he accused himself of a tender insincerity as though his grief and pity were masks covering his own happiness. The thing for which he had longed and prayed had come to pass, so swiftly and splendidly that in his warm faith he seemed to recognize the hand of the God he prayed to. "You mustn't grieve so," he whispered. "People understand—and we are all your friends. We know too what this country can do with a man's character—we can make allowances. And then, dear, no harm was done. Miss Fersen saved the situation for us all."

She withdrew her hand slowly and looked at him then, in spite of her girl's tears and the veiling twilight, he wondered at the unyouthfulness of her expression.

"Yes, I suppose she did. She saved Wickie. She was very brave."

"I thought so too."

"And yet I hate her." She made a quick gesture, silencing his involuntary protest. "I hate her—not wickedly. There is a hatred which isn't wicked—the kind of thing we feel for what is harmful and evil. I've tested myself over and over again. I know—I feel that she isn't a good woman—she has no faith, no ideals. She has done harm in Gaya already—she sticks at nothing—and because of that she wins, and people yield to her and let her poison them. That is why I hate her."

The man beside her was silent for a moment. He had no answer ready. He had felt nothing for Sigrid Fersen save a masculine admiration for her cool courage. Anne's passionate dislike, compared to what he hoped was coming to them both, seemed a little thing and yet it chilled him. The cold shadows of the neglected garden laid hands upon him, checking and paralysing the headlong impulse and joyous confidence with which men win victories. With an effort he tried to free himself.

"You may be right," he said quietly, "I don't know. I'm no judge of character. But the truth is, I haven't thought about her. I haven't thought of any but the one woman—of any one but you, Anne." He paused a moment. He no longer dared to look at her, but leant forward, his hands tightly interlocked, his eyes fixed on the on-coming tide of darkness. He did not know that his voice shook. "Anne, I haven't dared boast to myself—and yet we have been so happy together—we love the same things and have the same faith; we look at life with the same eyes. All that is surely something. As to myself—God knows how little I have to give you—but I won't apologize for the rest—not for my work. That is the grandest, best thing I have to offer. I know you think so too."

"Yes, Owen." She put her small, unsteady hand on his arm. And for a second hope blazed up in him, dying down again to grey premonition. "And you weren't boastful to think I cared—I do—but not like that, Owen."

Something impersonal within himself marvelled at the banality of tragedy. People made fun of scenes like this—caricatured them. And he was sick with pain and weakness.

"Little Anne—you're so young—how should you know?"

"I do know," she answered.

Then he looked at her, driven out of himself by the simplicity and strength of her confession. She held herself upright and even though her face was full of shadow he could see the line of her mouth and it frightened him. He knew now what he had always refused to know. Ruthlessly, from the secret depths where we bury our hated truths, he drew out a memory and a fear and recognized them for what they were. The recognition was the end of the one hope of personal happiness he had granted himself, and it staggered him. Then the man and the Christian in him rose triumphant.

"I won't pretend I don't guess," he said quietly and naturally. "I do. And, Anne, though I was selfish enough to want you myself—still, there was one thing I did want more. It isn't a phrase—it's honestly true. I wanted you to be happy. I think you will be—I think you are—so I haven't the right to grumble, have I?"

He tried to smile at her. Commonplace as his form of renunciation had been, he was not conscious now of any banality either in himself or her. He stood on that rarely ascended pinnacle whence men look down on their daily life and see in its tortuous monotony the weaving of a divine pattern. He felt for the instant glorified as some men are who stand before a miracle of nature, or a great picture, or listen to grand music. It was his vision of the Beautiful—willing sacrifice, happy renunciation.

But Anne Boucicault got up and stood beside him, very straight, her hands clenched at her sides.

"I am not happy," she said. "I do not think I ever shall be."

And she left him standing there in the twilight, a very human and tragic figure, with the grey ash of his vision between his hands.