Chapter VI: Part 6

"No--not now--you must go--for pity's sake. I've carried you here--here--so long--through the burning days--since that night. You don't know--no other woman--there had been fancies--the flowers by the waterside--the lotus there in the shadows---the lizard in the long grass--you were the golden corn swaying in the wind, the flowers--the stars, the mountains, the slender trees in the storm--great ships sailed down the river--you came in and out of their ghosts flying over the water--I watched you till dawn--you were the dawn--dancing over the world's grey roofs--you were nature, life, God----" He raised himself on his elbow in a frenzied ecstasy. She put her arm round his shoulders trying to force him back. In a minute his voice had changed--grew dry and harsh and imperative. "Separate the living from the dead--no flinching--it's a miracle, this life--a mystery--sacred--fan the flames--the dead, too, are sacred--fire is pure--now it is over--finished--I can sleep--" He sat upright, head thrown back as one awaiting thirstily release, then lifted his arms high up in a gesture of despair. "The colours--down--down in the dust--a blow straight in the face of God--the goal missed--in a minute--oh! God!--if I cared less----"

He fell back exhausted, broken, his breathing so hushed that for a moment she believed that it had ceased for ever. She still held him, her arm crushed under his great shoulders, and she called him by name, recklessly. He turned over a little on his side.

"Wickie understood," he whispered. "Wickie knew I couldn't help it--but my mother--don't let her know--not yet. She's old--so old--one long sacrifice--and now to have failed----"

"She shan't know--I promise--I promise----"

He did not, could not have heard. His head tossed restlessly on the pillow. The collar of his shirt was open, and she caught a glimpse of a red swollen line across his chest. She drew her breath quickly--staring at it.

"You must go back, Sigrid--you must. You are not a dream--not now. Back up on to the mountain-top--to your golden palaces--where there is no meanness--no poverty--no sin--you could not go with me where I am going----"

She knelt beside him, holding, him with all her strength, his head pressed against her bare shoulder.

"I am going with you, Tristram Sahib--tonight at least I'll go with you wherever you go--tonight. I'll try your way of loving and dying--just this one night, Tristram."

There was a blue, unfamiliar shadow about her lips. The room with its dim treasures was no longer part of her. She had lost her serenity, her easy detachment. Not the triumphant quality of her power. This man was dying--not of the body, but of the soul. She could feel him sinking, and she went down with him--down into the vortex of his unknown struggle, fighting as she had danced and lived, with her whole will, with all the splendid vitalness of her being.

And his eyes, glazing already, were turned to her and saw her. They became peaceful--content. Whatever message she had willed to pierce the dense cloud of delirium had reached him. He sighed, and lay still in her arms.

Presently she saw that his eyes were closed. A faint moisture glistened on his smooth forehead, and the wild muttering passed into the quiet of an exhausted slumber.

Still she did not move.

The night sank into deeper darkness and stillness. The hours crept on their way, monstrous, heavy-footed. She measured her breathing to his, she held him in arms that had lost all feeling. The shadow about her lips crept over her whole face, blotting out its youth.

The dawn came at last, creeping in between the parted curtains, mixing pallidly with the dying lamplight. The rich embroideries and the glittering curios faded, the high carved chair by the dressing-table became spectral, unreal.

Ayeshi entered noiselessly, passing like a ghost to the quiet bedside. Tristram had turned over, his face to the coming day, his head resting in the curve of his arm. So Ayeshi had often seen him--by the camp-fire, after the day's work.

And beneath, on the great tiger-skin, huddled and still, a golden-clad, incongruous figure, which even in that moment retained something imperious, conquering, exultant.

Ayeshi bent down and touched the pale, disordered hair. He leant across and kissed the man's unconscious hand--lightly, as if it had been a sleeping child's.

Then, noiselessly as he had come, glided across the room to the open window and thence out into the morning.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*TRISTRAM CHOOSES HIS ROAD*

Dr. Martin from Lucknow had made his examination, and now he sat opposite to the woman on whose husband he was about to pass sentence, and told her the truth with all the delicacy at his command. He was a civilian with a considerable practice among women, and a corresponding belief in his understanding of the sex. But he did not understand Mrs. Boucicault. Possibly the long journey, partly on horse-back, partly on a bone-racking bullock-wagon, had upset his nerve and that nice balance of mind which made a correct analysis possible. He had felt oddly and ridiculously sickened by the man whose bedside he had just left. There was something revolting in that great hulk of over-developed, ill-conditioned strength, inert and helpless, without power of speech or motion, with nothing living in it but the eyes. Dr. Martin had seen a great many ugly sights in his career, but nothing uglier than those desperately living eyes in the dead body.

Now the wife sat opposite him and smiled at him--a slow, unending smile which might have pointed to a mind deranged by grief if she had not been so eminently practical and calm. She was dressed girlishly in white, with a red rose stuck gaily in her belt. The grey fluffy hair had been carefully yet loosely dressed, and there was a faint tinge of artificial colour on her cheeks. Her restless fingers glittered with valuable rings. It was still early in the day, and Dr. Martin had pronounced a sentence which was practically one of death, and he felt that the whole situation was horrid--a kind of _danse macabre_. The only person who gave him the remotest sensation of preserved decency was the daughter. She sat apart from her mother with her head bowed, her hands tight clasped in her lap, and he had seen a tear fall. He thought her rather pretty and feminine. With the rapid, constructive reasoning of his sex, he placed her in the catalogue of good daughters of adoring fathers and heartless mothers.

"And so," said Mrs. Boucicault, summing up, "you don't think that there is much hope. He may live a long time of course--but like that--quite conscious, but helpless. On the other hand, the end might come suddenly. Isn't that what you mean?"

Dr. Martin fidgeted. He felt tact was wasted on her.

"Those are the two extremes of the case," he admitted. "But there are intermediary possibilities. He might get back a certain amount of activity--speech, for instance. It all depends on the treatment. All that I can advise for the present is that he should not be worried or alarmed. Get him a long leave--don't talk of retirement--keep him here, at any rate, for the present. That's the best you can do."

"It is what I intended," Mrs. Boucicault returned deliberately.

Again the little doctor felt himself vaguely upset. It was as though just as he was bowling smoothly along a familiar road, some one came and madly jolted him into an uncomfortable rut. He clung obstinately to his course.

"I can't say how I sympathize with you," he said. "No one can appreciate more than I do the courage of our women here in India. Literally we all go more or less with our lives in our hands. Of course, the vast majority of the natives are loyal, but in so many millions there are bound to be one or two degenerate fanatics with a grievance. I understand there has been some question of sedition in the native regiment--at least, a good deal of discontent. We had rumours of it even in Lucknow."

Anne Boucicault looked up. She had certainly been crying, but now her brown eyes were bright, and her lips straight and firm.

"It wasn't any of father's men," she said on a low note of defiance. "I'm sure it wasn't. Father is a fine soldier. When he was captain they used to call him the Bagh Sahib because of his fearlessness. They worshipped him. One of the older men told me--I know they wouldn't have touched him."

Dr. Martin smiled. He felt relieved and pleasantly moved by the quick and passionate championship of the hulk he had just condemned. He had, moreover, heard something of Colonel Boucicault's past and something of his present. For the latter he was prepared to find some explanation in the grey-haired, bedizened figure of indifference opposite him.

"One would be glad to believe that you are right, Miss Boucicault," he said courteously. "If only the dastardly coward could be got hold of----"

"I believe I know who he is," she interrupted in a hard quick way, which was new to her. "Ayeshi, Major Tristram's servant, has disappeared. He had some money which the Rajah gave him for his education, and he has stolen it and gone. I saw him that night when he came and told us that father had been found. I saw blood on his hand."

Dr. Martin hesitated an instant, as though in two minds as to his answer. Finally he looked up with a professional twinkle.

"Feminine intuition again! Well, since you've got so far on your own, Miss Boucicault, I might as well tell you that your surmise is shared by others. I met Captain Compton at the dak-bungalow, and he told me there's a hue and cry after this said Ayeshi. Only it's to be kept quiet. I understand the boy was a sort of protege of Major Tristram's, and there's a general opinion that, unless it's necessary, the latter is not to be told. He's pretty weak still, and it's something of a shock to get one of your pet theories bowled over in that way."

Anne's eyes sank to her clasped hands.

"Is Major Tristram better?" she asked.

"Fine. Well round the corner. But I fancy it must have been touch and go with him. That fair-haired woman--Miss Fersen, isn't that the name?--seems to have fought every inch of the ground." He reflected pleasurably for a minute. "Well, that's the sort of nurse a man wants on his death-bed--a real fighter and worth looking at to boot--something to make life worth struggling for. Great dancer, isn't she? Well, I'm a sort of back-number that never catches up, and there's always a different star on the horizon when I get home on leave, and even then I only get a glimpse. My people hang out in a God-forsaken spot in Yorkshire." He rambled on for a time with a man's affable, crushing indifference as to whether his listeners are bored or otherwise, but finally, chilled by Mrs. Boucicault's enigmatic smile and Anne's white silence, he got up.

"Well, I'll be getting along to the club----"

Mrs. Boucicault remained seated.

"Would you spare me a minute, Dr. Martin? A little trouble of my own--a bruise, a mere nothing, still perhaps you would look at it. Anne, run away, would you?"

Dr. Martin, a little irritated by this fresh and probably petty call on his services, wondered at the girl's dignity. It must be galling at her age to be told to "run away." He scented tragedy, and sized it up and turned to its creator with professionalism and small sympathy.

"Now, Mrs. Boucicault, if you could just tell me----"

Anne heard the last words and smiled bitterly to herself. She went out on to the verandah and stood there looking down into the sunlit garden with eyes that were blind with misery and anger and contempt. In that quiet room, listening to the doctor's pleasantly modulated voice, she had been through purgatory. She knew that the ways of God were inscrutable--it was the all-covering explanation of her creed--but they were sometimes hard to tread. Why had He given a bad woman the power to save the life of a good man? Why had He allowed Evil to creep in and take possession of peaceful Gaya? Was it perhaps a trial, a test of their strength? That seemed possible. At least she did not doubt the working of God's hand. She had seen it strike--strike terribly. In a few hours it had brought a miracle of change in her little cosmos. The figure of terror had gone down like some monstrous clay-footed idol, and become pitiful and pitiable. She no longer feared it--no longer hated. She yearned towards it as towards a sinner whose punishment has been meted out with an implacable justice. He was a symbol of Divine wrath, an awful admonition, but beyond man's hate or censure. He had become almost sacred to her. But her mother had drifted from her, had wilfully stood apart in that solemn moment, with that hateful smile on her lips had seemed to deny the very existence of God Himself. Anne shuddered. It was as though a mask had fallen from the grey-tinted, childish, wrinkled face, and that Anne saw her as she was, petty, cruel, mean-souled--a hard, unlovable woman who had perhaps driven her father to his destruction. Her father had been a great man--a fine soldier, brave, daring, much beloved. She thought of him with a dim, uncertain pride which grew stronger and clearer. But her mother sank into a shadow. She was little and selfish. In this awful hour when Death hung over them, she thought of her own petty ailments--of a trivial bruise, keeping Dr. Martin back to discuss herself with a nauseating self-pity.

In that moment Anne's heart turned towards her father with an overpowering tenderness, a kind of comradeship of understanding.

How long they were! Presently she heard her mother's voice, high-pitched and steady. Mrs. Boucicault led the way out on to the balcony. She was toying with the red rose, smelling it with a deliberate epicureanism.

"I am so glad you are able to stay on a few days, Dr. Martin. I am giving a dinner and a little dance to the Station next week, and of course Miss Fersen will be of the party. She is rather a friend of mine. You will meet her then. Good-bye for the present, and ever so many thanks."

Dr. Martin muttered something. Even then Anne wondered at him. He took no notice of her, and went stumbling awkwardly down the steps like a man shaken out of his composure. His face was white and rather sickly looking.

The two women stood side by side, and watched him clamber up into the dog-cart and drive off. Even after he had disappeared they remained motionless as though both feared the first move, the first break in the long silence between them. Or perhaps it was only Anne who was afraid, for when she turned suddenly she found her mother's gaze fixed absently on the distance, her smile lingering at the corners of her mouth like the forgotten grimace of an actor who has suddenly ceased to act.

"Mother--you didn't mean it--it was a mistake--I didn't understand you, of course--it isn't true about the dinner----"

"Why not?" Mrs. Boucicault turned her faded blue eyes to her daughter's face. "Yes, it's perfectly true," she said.

Anne was shivering with an almost physical sickness.

"It isn't possible," she said breathlessly. "You can't realize--with father so ill--so terribly ill. How can you think of such a thing? It's wicked--cruel! What will people think?"

"I don't really know. But they'll come. Sigrid Fersen will come, I know. I wish she would dance--just once. I have never seen her."

"That woman! You mean to have her--now?"

"I thought you'd be glad. She seems to have saved Major Tristram's life."

"The Rajah's mistress!"

Mrs. Boucicault laughed lightly.

"My dear little daughter, how grown-up of you! Is that the sort of thing your religion teaches you?"

Anne made no answer. She was ashamed and sorry, but also full of a bitter resentment, as good people are when they have been goaded into an unjustifiable aggression, an ugly, unchristian outbreak. Yet she recognized her share of the fault with contrition, and in penance sought to retrace her steps, to bridge the widening gulf between her and the woman who one short week ago had been her companion, her half-protected, half-protecting comrade. She came and laid her hand gently on her mother's.

"It was horrid of me to say that--it was uncharitable. But I am so unhappy----"

"Unhappy--are you?" Mrs. Boucicault smiled vaguely down at the caressing hand as though it amused her.

"Why?"

"Mother--isn't it obvious?--Isn't it the most terrible thing that could have happened?"

"It doesn't seem to me terrible at all."

Anne held her ground. She was trembling with a kind of painful excitement. In her own mind there was a picture of herself fighting to bring this shallow little soul up to the heights of realization, to some dim perception of the real tragedy.

"It is terrible," she affirmed patiently. "Even if you don't love father any more you must see how awful it is to be struck down like that in a minute, without time to make his peace with any of us--and now to lie there dumb and helpless, never able to tell us things--never able to make up for anything. Isn't that pitiable? It's the very coldest way one can look at it. But you must feel more than that. After all, you did love him once. Of course he was different then, but you must try and remember him as he was in those days----"

Mrs. Boucicault patted the hand on her arm.

"That sounds quite pretty and nice, Anne. But I haven't time for remembering."

"Not time? You've got all your life. You must try and make a new picture of him. I shall. I shall think of him as the handsome, brave Tiger Sahib and learn to love him. We've got to hold together, mother, and make this awful trial bearable for him. After all, we can't tell--it may be a kind of test of us all--it may be the saving of him--of us----"

Mrs. Boucicault shook her head like a playful, obstinate child.

"I don't look at it like that at all. I'm free. I'm going to have a rattling good time."

"Mother!" She still retained her affectionate attitude, but it had become official, perfunctory. All the warmth in her died out, leaving a chill horror. "Mother--you can't mean what you say! If you do you must be mad or very wicked."

"I daresay both, my dear. I really don't care. I'm free--that's how I feel about it. I'm going to make up for lost time----"

Anne shrank away from her.

"It's awful--horrible----"

Mrs. Boucicault threw her rose petulantly into the garden. She had only worn it a short time, and it had already withered.

"I guessed you would feel like that. If you don't like it you could go down to Trichy and stay with the Osbornes. They are your father's relations, and they always hated me, so you'll get on. Of course I don't want to persuade you. I'm very fond of you, Anne. I should like you to stay."

"And watch you make a mock of my father's misery?"

"No, Anne--only having a good time."

"It would make me sick to see you."

"Well, then--of course you must go."

The two women considered each other for a moment. There was no pity, no relenting to be read on the older face, only an inflexible purpose softened by a childlike look of gay anticipation. Anne turned away.

"I couldn't bear it--I couldn't bear to live with you----"

She ran down the verandah steps into the garden as though flying from a revelation of evil.

Mrs. Boucicault looked after her, watching till the light-clad figure had disappeared among the trees. Then, plucking a fresh rose from the trellis-work, went back into her boudoir. A few minutes later she entered her husband's sick-room and motioned the nurse to leave them. In that simple action there was an authority, an easy self-assurance that seemed, to change even her appearance. She held herself well, with lifted head as a prisoner does who breathes the free air after many years.

Boucicault saw her. He could not turn his head, but she stood well within the range of his roving eyes. He stared at her, and she too studied him, the while scenting her rose delicately. He had changed almost beyond belief. The muscles of his face were withered so that it looked much smaller and weaker. The consuming, unappeasable temper was still marked about the mouth, in the black puckered brow, but now it was merely pitiable. It could never make another man or woman cower. It could never make _her_ cower again. Perhaps some such reflection passed through both their minds. Boucicault turned his eyes away like a sick animal. It was almost the first sign he had given of understanding. Hitherto, though obviously conscious, he had refused all response to the code of signals which Dr. Martin had planned for him, in his bitter humiliation of body seeming to cling to the utter isolation of his mind. Now, though he could not move, he appeared to shrink into himself, to cringe before an encroachment which he could no longer avert. His wife came and stood close beside him. She was playing idly with her rose, twisting the stem between her fingers. Her eyes were bright, wide open, with two sharp points of light in them which seemed to dance. There was real colour in her cheeks. She was not smiling now, and yet her face, her whole body, radiated a fierce vivid amusement.

"I've just seen Dr. Martin, Richard," she said. "You'd rather I told you the truth, wouldn't you? He says there's no hope of your getting well--not really well. Perhaps, after a long time, you may be able to move a little, but you might also die suddenly. No one can do anything for you. You'll just lie there. I thought I'd tell you. I'm going to have a good time. Anne doesn't think it quite proper, but I'm sure you'll understand. I haven't had much fun in the last few years, have I? And I was awfully gay before I married you. You don't object, do you, Richard? Do say so if you do."

She grew bigger--taller, like a bird of prey spreading itself over its maimed and helpless victim. The soldier's whitewashed room, blank of all beauty, made a simple frame for the artificial brilliancy of her. The man whose dead body outlined itself massively under the thin covering, burned and withered in it. His eyes met hers for an instant in understanding and mad defiance.

"Of course we'll do all we can, Richard. We shall stay in Gaya. Dr. Martin advises it, and I want to. It will be nicer for you too, because if we went to a new place--or to Cheltenham or something of that sort-nobody would bother about you. Here, of course, people are bound to take notice of you. They'll drop in and tell you about the regiment and all that. I shall come in every day, so that you shall hear all I am doing. I expect I shall be very busy."

She paused deliberately, assuming an attitude of closer interest. "Have you tried to tell any one who killed you? I wonder. Perhaps you don't want to. I expect it was something discreditable. Besides, even if he or they were caught and hanged it wouldn't help you much, would it? You couldn't see it done--unless we dragged you out in a long chair or something----" She laughed, and bent over him--a pale-tinted, delicate, very sinister figure. "Am I tiring you? You look tired. Smell that rose--isn't it beautiful?--you can smell still, can't you? But I forgot; you don't care for flowers. You wouldn't let me have any in the house. Well, perhaps you will grow to care for them. I will tell nurse to put some in a vase for you." She touched his cheek lightly with the flower and laughed again. "Well, good-bye for today, Richard."

She pirouetted on her heel like a girl, and went to the door. He could not see her, but he heard her give a little gasp and then utter a name. His eyes opened to the full--he began to breathe quickly and laboriously. The veins on his dark, wizened-looking forehead stood out in the frightful effort to break through, to move, to speak----

"Major Tristram--what a shock you gave me! I thought you were at death's door. You oughtn't to be here, I'm sure. I hardly recognized you."

"Yes--I am a sight, aren't I? Still, I'm not dead--not by some lengths. May I speak to your husband?"

"Oh, yes, you may speak to him. You won't mind a monologue, will you? You've heard about it, I expect--spinal column affected or something--but I'm so stupid about these things. Do come and talk to me afterwards, won't you, Major? I should like to hear all your news."

The door closed. Boucicault lifted his eyes. They were sunken--so black, so lightless that their expression could not be guessed at. It might have been an appalling hatred--anything.

Tristram did not return the gaze. He stood at the sick man's side, rocking on his heels, fighting a purely physical battle, then suddenly crumbled up on the edge of the bed, his shaking hands to his face. Thus he remained for a minute whilst Boucicault's eyes rested on him with mute, unfathomable intensity.

Presently Tristram raised himself, and the encounter had taken place, almost actual in the poignancy and force of the memory which flared up behind the mutual scrutiny. Neither man flinched.

"I had the deuce of a business to get here," Tristram said at last quite simply. "I had to humbug and dodge any number of people, and get my own legs to crawl which wasn't easy. But I had to come. I've got to speak to you, Boucicault. I'd have come sooner, but I've been a raving lunatic most of the time and this was my first chance. You may think it damnable of me to hound you down when you can't hit back, as it were, but I can't help that, I've got to have it out." He paused a moment, running his hand over his close-cropped head. He seemed to be struggling for coherency. Boucicault's stare never wavered. "It's not very much I've got to say. I won't waste time and breath telling you what I feel--I've done something worse than murder you. I smashed you up when I ought to have realized that you were a man with a sick brain. I was a sick man myself and--and couldn't think clearly. I just heard poor old Wickie scream--well, we won't go into that--it's too beastly. But I've just come to tell you that I'm not going to give myself up to what some people would call justice. That's what I meant to do at first--but I see now that it was sentimentality and cowardice--the sort of thing that drives some people to confess--a kind of shaking off one's burden of responsibility on to some one else. I'm rambling--it's so infernally difficult to keep one's thoughts clear." He passed his tongue over his cracked lips. Boucicault's eyes closed for an instant. "Can you understand what I'm saying?" The eyes opened again to their full stare and Tristram went on more clearly. "Of course, it's possible you may get all right or even be able to denounce me without that. I shan't deny anything. I shall be jolly glad, I daresay. But until then I'm going on with my work. We're men, Boucicault--and I won't mince matters--you've smashed up a good many lives in your time--men in the regiment, your wife, Anne--and you and I have smashed each other but that's the end of it. You may or you may not believe me--but I'm not going to be dragged into disgrace if I can help it--for my mother's sake. She's old--very old--she can't last long---she's had a rotten time, and the last year or two--well, I shall protect them with all my strength." He straightened his shoulders as a man does who, groping through darkness, suddenly sees his way clear. "That's what I conceive to be my duty. You hate me, of course, but you're clever enough to know the sort of man I am and you know quite well that whether I'm punished or not, I've done for myself. That ought to satisfy you for the present." He got up. "So I'm going back to my work. I don't know whether you'll understand what I mean when I say that I'm going to try and balance the misery you and I have brought into this world--I've got your responsibilities as well as my own to shoulder because I've smashed your chance of making good. And there's something else--if it lies in human power I'll set you on your feet again. If I succeed I shall tell my mother the truth, and I think somehow that then she will feel differently about it--it won't be quite the same sort of failure. Of course you'll want other doctors--you mayn't trust me--but no one else will fight for you as I shall. Give me some sign. If you trust me close your eyes once. I shall understand."

In the long silence which followed the two men held each other in a gaze so ardent, so penetrating that it was like the physical grappling of wrestlers, one of whom at least knew no pity. The sweat of weakness and recent effort showed itself on Tristram's forehead, but his features wore a weary serenity.

Presently a change showed itself on Boucicault's face. There was a shadow at the corners of his stiff, powerless lips--a kind of smile, malicious, calculating, ironic. His eyes closed once.

Tristram nodded.

"That's all I have to say, then."

He made his way from the bungalow, circuiting the front verandah where he guessed Mrs. Boucicault would wait for him, to the compound gates. There Sigrid Fersen with the Rajah's dog-cart awaited him. She bent towards him, her face white with anger.

"How could you, Major Tristram! I guessed somehow you had come here and followed you. How could you do it?"

"I had to," he answered. He came up to the step of the cart, trying to support himself against the shaft unseen by her. "I had to," he repeated.

"A professional visit, I suppose?" she flashed scornfully.

"In a sort of way--yes."

"Well, anyhow--try and climb if you've the strength. I'll drive you back to bed."

He looked up at her and she frowned and bit her under lip to keep back an exclamation.

"Please--will you do something for me?"

"What is it, you madman?"

"Drive me to Heerut."

"Heerut--are you really insane? Do you want to die?"

He smiled wistfully.

"Oh, Lord, no--I've jolly well got to live. But I'm going back to work."

"You can't--it's absurd--I won't be responsible."

"You wouldn't be responsible," he interrupted earnestly. "Listen--I've got to go--there are my poor beggars in quarantine--all sorts of things--believe me, it's urgent, it must be--if you don't help me, I shall walk or get some one else."

"You know that Ayeshi has gone--gone to Calcutta."

He averted his face.

"Yes--Compton told me."

"And Wickie--disappeared. You'll be all alone."

"Yes," he agreed simply.

She bent a little lower. She was smiling as one does at an obstinate, unhappy child.

"In a few weeks I may have to leave Gaya. My time is almost up. Are you flying from me?"

He remained patiently, doggedly silent, and she sighed and drew back.

"_Kismet_! So you make Fate for us both. I won't try to thwart you. I will take you to Heerut. But I make one stipulation."

"Yes?"

"It is that before I leave Gaya we spend one day together--a kind of farewell picnic--a high and solemn feast to the end of all things. It is to be where and when I want it. Do you promise?"

He did not answer. He was still looking away from her--down the white line of dusty road which wound past the clustered barracks. A far-off, long-drawn-out bugle-call fluttered out on to the hot stillness. She looked down and saw his hand clenched on the splashboard, and the impatient mockery faded from her lips.

"I won't make any stipulation. You are too ill to be bargained with. And, after all, it lies in my power to seek you out when I choose--as I have done before"--her eyes became veiled and intent--"in and out of the ship's ghosts over the water--dancing over the grey roofs of the world----"

He frowned perplexedly, following her words through a labyrinth of memory and fancy and finding no end.

"Is that a quotation?"

"A sort of one----"

"It seems to express something----" He paused, meditating. The bugle sounded again, louder and more metallic and now in answer came the subdued hurrying of feet, the jangle of steel. Suddenly he faced her, fiercely, almost violently, like a man throwing off an obsessing weakness. There was a fire of energy in the throw-back of his great shoulders, in the clear passionate desire of his regard. She faltered under it. It swept her from her light fantastic dominion over him into deep, fast-flowing waters which engulfed her, stupefied her, shook her calm supremacy to its foundations. She did not know what had happened--what had wrought the change in him. He who had fought grimly and knowingly with the realism in the lives of others had somehow come to grips with reality in his own. He had ceased to weave dreams. It was not as a vision and a visionary that they faced each other, but as a man and a woman. A flash of lightning had burst through the unsubstantial mists of their relationship. And behind the figure of the dreaming Stoic there loomed the stark, primeval human being, vital, virile, armed with all the white, burning power of unsoiled, sternly guarded passions. They flared in his blue eyes which held hers for the first time with full recognition, with a daring, reckless revelation of their own existence. And though inwardly she faltered, her gaze was as steady as his own. She dared not turn from him. She felt that if she did she would come face to face with herself--as fiercely, as terribly awakened.

They spoke very quietly, very naturally to one another.

"I'll promise," he said. "A last day--no one could grudge it me?"

"No one." She held out her hand to him and it did not tremble. "Come, now I will drive you to Heerut."

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE WEAVERS*

Barclay rode past the Boucicaults' bungalow on the afternoon when Mrs. Boucicault gave her garden party in honour of the regiment's new commander and his wife. It was a very grand function, and rather gruesome if one stopped to think what lay inert and listening in a room somewhere at the back, but to stop and think was a mental pastime in which no one in Gaya indulged willingly. Mrs. Boucicault had been right. Gaya was not in the least outraged. It was not even very upset when it found that without a word of farewell Anne had gone south to Trichy to pay her father's people a long visit. In its casual, easy-going way, Gaya understood both points of view and sympathized.

The regimental band was playing a waltz and Barclay drew in his slender-limbed thoroughbred to listen. A little band of natives with a saffron-robed Sadhu in their midst coming round a bend of the white road, he drew out a gold case from his pocket and selected and lit a cigarette with an exaggerated deliberation. The procession drew on one side and the leader saluted the Sahib respectfully. Barclay took the salute with a curt, indifferent nod, but something in the episode must have changed the nature of his thoughts. He threw a glance towards the garden, walled from his view by a circle of high palms, and his black eyes were alight with a childish satisfaction. He heard voices intermingle with the music and two young men in immaculate tennis-clothes lounged out of the compound gates. They looked after the procession, and one of them laughed.

"It's nothing--you'll soon get fed up with that native stuff. When you've seen the festival at Heerut next week you won't want another dose for years--these sort of fellows with their humbugging old fakir will be pouring in till the place is like an ant-heap. Talk about self-governing India--oh, Lord!"

Barclay, a notable figure enough on his beautiful mare stood not three yards away from the speaker, yet he appeared to pass unnoticed. Neither of the two looked at him. He drove his spurs into the animal's silken sides, curbing her at the same instant with an iron hand, and set her at a nervous, tortured canter down the road. His tight mouth under the black moustache was curved with a deliberate pleasure as he felt her sweat and tremble under his mastery. He kept her at the pace for a mile through the blaze of sun which poured down upon the unsheltered plain and then, satiated, allowed her to drop to a quivering, resentful walk.

He reached the bridge-head half an hour before sunset. A D.P.W. man with a party of assistants was taking soundings for the new traffic bridge which was to link up Gaya and the administrative centre three hundred miles away with the never-ending chain of villages of which Heerut was the first and largest. He had had a bad afternoon of it with Mother Ganges, and he stared savagely at Barclay, who drew rein.

"Getting on?" the latter asked.

"Damnably. The river's never the same two days running."

Barclay showed his white teeth in a smile.

"That's her speciality. You'll never build that bridge."

"Won't I?"

"The natives have a superstition against it. No white man will ever bridge the Holy Place. This _is_ the Holy Place, you know--the spot where the sacred serpents come down from the jungle and take refreshment." He spoke with much the indolent amusement of the two young men outside the Boucicaults' compound. He aped it deliberately, not knowing whence came his smarting satisfaction. The Englishman mopped a moist and irate forehead.

"No, I didn't know," he snapped. "I'm not a native. I haven't got any damned superstitions. Perhaps you'd like to have a shot at it."

Barclay made no answer. The smile passed from his lips. He sat his horse motionlessly, staring at the faintly swaying native bridge in front of him. The Englishman, unconscious of his own success, stumped off angrily towards a fresh point of vantage.

Presently Barclay crossed to the farther side of the river, turning his horse from the path, rode through the long grasses to the temple, and here, within a few feet of the carved gateway, he dismounted, and, tossing the reins over the battered post which was all that marked the old Path of Auspiciousness, he strolled through into the Manderpam. The place was empty. Its usual inhabitant had vanished. Barclay stood a moment, looking about him with the detached, unfeeling interest of a tourist. The attitude was deliberate, as were all his actions. He was setting the gulf of race and tradition between himself and this austerely sensuous beauty. He held himself an alien, walking idly, but with loud steps over the grass-grown stones, humming to himself, and beating time with his crop against his riding-boots. But the silence, heavy with old dreams and drowsy, bygone meditations, the stately avenue of roofless pillars, daunted him. He came to a halt in the entrance to the _antarila_ and stared round furtively, peering into the purple-tinted shadows, listening as to a sound which troubled and escaped him. A little red-cheeked bulbul fluttered from its nest high overhead on the summit of the crumbling walls, and he watched its flight through the oblique bars of alternate light and shadow with a curious anxiety. It was as though he sought to rivet his attention on something trivial, so that he should not have to face whatever lay beneath the surface. The bulbul came to rest in some hidden rock among the deep-cut, fantastic reliefs of the frieze, and the soft, tender beating of its wings, like the last throb of a dying pulse, passed under the weight of a brooding, deathlike silence. Barclay turned and went noisily into the _antarila_. But here his footsteps rang with a different and startling resonance. They echoed among the broad, stunted pillars and died sullenly in a gloom which shrouded the place in unfathomable dimensions. Barclay, raising his hand instinctively, touched the roof, but its dank solidity could not remove the impression of a monstrous nightfall, of a sky black and unlit, stretching up into infinity. On either hand, his knowledge might have told him, were thick walls, but they too carried no conviction, and the darkness went on and on in narrow, endless passages leading down into the bowels of an unholy mystery. The faint gleam of light in front of him, the soft gold of the courtyard behind, were like ghosts, painted luminously on the solid blackness, themselves bringing no light, no relief.

Barclay stopped, and, with his insolent deliberation, lit a cigarette, afterwards holding the match overhead. He saw that his hand shook and the tiny flame quivered an instant and went out as though a secret breath had blown against it. Barclay cursed and bit his teeth together as the echo gibed at him from its invisible lurking-place, and then went on, hushing his footsteps so that they should not follow him. In the Holy of Holies there was neither light nor darkness, but a haze which at once hid and revealed all things. It was like a pall shrouding the sun, or a gauzy, luminous veil of sunshine thrown over nightfall. It came filtering down from the great sun-window which, high overhead in the slender _sikhara_, looked out eastwards whence at daybreak Laksmi, surrounded with the golden-haired divas of morning, rises up to meet Vishnu, who watches for her. It fell softly on the gigantic, monstrous effigy of Vishnu himself, cross-legged on his altar, in either hand a writhing serpent, his black eyes fixed in cruel, aloof contemplation on an existence which knew neither joy nor sorrow, neither humanity nor its desires and prayers. As in the old days when men and women had passed worshipping through his temple, so now that the worshippers were still and the courtyard empty and his altar bare of offerings, he remained indifferent and omnipotent. Men, generations, and religions pass, the temple crumbles. But so long as death remains, so long are the gods immortal. The knowledge of its immortality was graven into the image's mocking mouth, into the sightless, all-seeing eyes.

Barclay stood with one foot on the altar steps, and stared up into the frigid face and blew rings of smoke into the wide, cruel nostrils. There was more than a sightseer's insolent disregard in the action. It was a sneer and a defiance. He spat on the altar-step. But when a hand striking invisibly out of the darkness sent him staggering to the wall he screamed like a child whose nerve has snapped suddenly under a long, agonizing tension. His mouth was open, changing the character of his whole face. The cigarette had fallen and lay like a tiny burning eye on the stone flags. Vahana, the Sadhu, ground his heel upon it. Whether he had been kneeling in the shadow or whether he had crept after the interloper could not be told. Gaunt and naked, the bones of his chest and ribs starting out under the straining flesh, the wild grey hair tossed back from his face, he sprang up before the idol, protecting it with outstretched arms whose long, attenuated lines flung the shadow of a huge cross on the wall beyond.

Neither man spoke. Barclay bent down and picked up his helmet, which had been knocked off, and, obeying the Fakir's imperative gesture, went out of the Holy of Holies through the priests' place into the columned, sun-lit outer court. There he laughed.

"You're a pretty custodian," he said loudly in English. "Enough to frighten a harmless globe-trotter out of his five senses. What sort of tip do you expect after that? Or does one pay extra for the thrill?"

There was no answer. Vahana went past him and squatted down in his accustomed place by the gateway. The fierce outburst was over, and he seemed to have forgotten Barclay's presence. The latter stood beside him, propping his shoulders against the lintel, and searched fumblingly for his cigarette case.

"I suppose it's allowed here, eh? You should put up a notice, 'No smoking.' Oh, I forgot--a vow of eternal silence is your speciality, isn't it? You needn't keep it up with me. I shan't tell." He laughed again. "You old humbug! I _could_ tell a tale if I chose. What about that evening I caught you sneaking out of Gaya? Been having a compensating orgy, no doubt."

The Fakir shot a rapid upward glance which Barclay caught with a grunt of satisfaction.

"Well, you understand English, anyhow, which is a good thing because I want a word with you."

He lit his cigarette deliberately, and, folding his arms, surveyed the wide stretch of plain before him. Save for the high grass, it was barren to the river edge, but beyond that broad, swift-flowing barrier it became rich with pasture and golden harvest. Barclay's eyes narrowed at the still ardent sunlight, but beneath the heavy, drooping lids there was a gleam of some smouldering passion, triumph--resentment.

"Not much of that crop that isn't mine," he said loudly. "They needn't call me Sahib--not yet--if they don't want to--but I'm lord here, for all that. I've got the whip hand, and that's what matters."

The Fakir paid no heed to an outburst which was indeed not intended for him. He bent forward from the hips and whistled softly, on one monotonous note, the while swaying from left to right with rhythmic precision. In a minute the tangled growth which, like the first low waters of an incoming tide, spread out from the jungle and lapped the temple walls, rustled, parted, and a black glistening body writhed out into the sunshine. There it paused, listening, its arrow-shaped head lifted out of the tight coils, and moving to the measure of its enchanter. Barclay looked down and started and then laughed.

"Practising for the great show, eh? I suppose it'll keep the old story going--the jungle of serpents. Lord, how you must hate us, with our education and uplifting of the masses. One of these days I'll clear the jungle and build a factory, and you can go out of business. That old trick----!"

Still laughing, he crouched down on his heels and hissed gently, his black eyes intent on the reptile's poised and swaying body. Vahana continued to whistle. They had entered into a competition which to Barclay was a mere jest. But the serpent had grown still, attentive, its ugly head drawn back in an attitude of cold deliberation. From time to time its lithe, evilly forked tongue shot out and then an expression seemed to dawn on the flat face--a kind of satanic pleasure. Then, suddenly, as though arrived at a decision, it uncoiled and came gliding towards Barclay. Barclay no longer called to it. His eyes were clouded and stupid-looking. He glanced up at Vahana and found that he was being watched. Between the old man and the uncannily moving adder there had developed an affinity. The Fakir's face seemed to have narrowed and sharpened. From the wide cheek-bones down to the chin there were two straight converging lines between which ran the cruel curve of the mouth. The eyes were hard and dead as a basilisk's. But, like the reptile's, they expressed something--a sinister amusement, a soulless, ageless wisdom.

Barclay made a fumbling gesture.

"Look here, I didn't know--call the brute off--I never tried----" He was stuttering. The defiant arrogance had gone out of him. He had become curiously afraid. Vahana whistled again, and within a foot of Barclay the adder recoiled, hissing resentfully, and swung to one side. Vahana held out his wrist and the sinuous body twisted itself about him in a monstrous bracelet. Barclay watched, with a sick fascination. His fear had been neither physical nor passing. In some odd way the incident had shattered his self-assurance, even his self-control.

"I didn't know----" he began again. "It must just have been chance. I had never tried----"

His voice failed, and died into a shaken silence. The reptile, lying with its head on the back of Vahana's fleshless hand, held the Eurasian in the malevolent circle of its watchfulness. Its beady, unflinching eyes neither appeared to move nor to be fixed on any definite object, yet when Barclay shifted his position they did not leave his face. Thus they remained, staring at each other. Vahana had sunk into an apparent apathy of meditation. But it was no more than an appearance. Between the three there was now a living, feverish communication.

Barclay roused himself at last.

"Look here--I didn't come here for this tomfoolery. Look at this. It was my mother's. Some one--Lalloo the Kara--told me a tale about it. Said it belonged to--to your wife. I want to know. I want to know who the devil I am. If it's true then I shall know."

Vahana glanced at the gold circlet held out towards him. The adder hissed furiously and he whistled it back to its sluggish content. But he had nodded in assent, Barclay drew his breath between his teeth.

"So that much was true. I've got to think this out. I'm not your son. I've good English blood in my veins, I've known that since I was a kid. If it was Tristram, senior----" He stopped. Vahana had lifted his head, and the change in him struck Barclay silent for a moment. Then, gathering his determination, he added rapidly, scarcely above a whisper--"whom you murdered."

But it seemed that the Fakir had not heard, or that if he had heard the words reached him only as an echo, a shadow of something terrible and actual. The change in him was indefinable. He had scarcely moved. Yet Barclay stared at him stupidly, and a moment looked round to follow the gaze of the fierce expressionless eyes. Then he, too, became silent.

A horseman rode along the river-bank. Evidently he had come some distance, for the nose of his amazingly lean, steed grazed the ground and he himself hung in the saddle. As he passed he turned his head towards the temple, but either the sun, setting with long upward striking rays behind the hills, blinded him, or the watchers were too well hidden in the shadow of the gateway. He did not see them, and, coaxing the dejected quadruped to a canter, disappeared presently in the direction of Heerut.

"Tristram Sahib by the grace of God!" Barclay muttered. "Tristram Sahib!" He repeated the name, pressing into it a restrained bitterness which suddenly burst from him in a wild incoherent deluge. "Sahib--Sahib! Good God--and what am I--with blood as good as his--his blood--Meester Barclay, eh?--damn him--damn them all. What right has he got to treat me like dirt--or any of them? What right? Aren't I one of them? Have I got to pay for their low, mean sins--their little, back-door intrigues? I'm English too--it's their law--why don't they keep to their laws, damn them----"

His voice quivered. He broke down pitiably. It was as though a garment which he held jealously about him had been torn from him and with it his manhood, his mincing, insolent, yet timorous pride. As he crouched there, the tears of mortification and rage on his cheeks he underwent a mysterious change. The over-perfect English clothes no longer disguised him. They had become grotesque.

Vahana looked at him, looked long and intently, and then at the bracelet lying between them. He touched Barclay on the arm, and with his forefinger began to write in the thick dust.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*A MEREDITH TO THE RESCUE*

In the belt of fertile land about Heerut the work of irrigation for the _khareef_ had already begun. Half-naked men and women in gay-coloured _chudders_ laboured in the slanting ruts which stretched down from the river and criss-crossed over the wide fields in a maze of intricate cunningly calculated lines. They worked in complete silence, like a colony of ants, hurrying backwards and forwards, their lean, fragile-looking bodies bent under crushing burdens of freshly turned earth, their faces set in patient acceptance. So much depended on the _khareef_--a meagre sufficiency or a dearth that was always complete--an avalanche of famine sweeping whole communities from existence. Not that life or death was of much significance. They fought for life half instinctively, half because the Sahibs willed it so. It was a hard business either way, and that much they realized dimly.