Chapter XIII: Part 13

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."