Chapter IX: Part 9

"That's true." He came slowly towards her, reeling a little in his stride. "I want you--body and soul."

"I know--you told me----"

"When----?"

"The night you lay unconscious in my arms."

He put up his hand to his throat, as though something suffocated him.

"You had better let me go," he repeated doggedly. "We're both thrown out of our course. At my best, I'm not much--I've learnt that--if I resist--things it's because I don't care. And tonight----"

"You do care."

"Yes," he said, between his teeth.

"Why should we resist what is the most splendid thing in us?"

"Splendid?" he echoed. "My--my dreams were splendid. As you say--they've gone. And the reality--can there be any reality between us--between a divinely gifted woman and the loutish fool who dreams about her? If I'd thought so--I'd have gone away--but it seemed to me that you were just kind and pitying--amused even--and I dared go on. And it is impossible--we belong to different worlds--life isn't the same thing to either of us."

"We stand on different peaks of the same mountain range," she answered wistfully. "There is the same sun and sky and stars for us both. It seemed to me that we could have watched the sun rise together."

He held out his hand as though to touch her, and then drew back, his face drawn and hard with the bitterness of mastered passion.

"You don't know what you're saying, Sigrid," he began harshly. "Nor what you are offering me----"

"Myself," she flung in, with joyful fearlessness. "My love for you."

He began to pace the room backwards and forwards, in and out of the light, his hands clenched at his sides.

"I can't--oh, my dear--it's hideous, so hopeless." His voice shook with rough suffering. "Even if things were different--if I were cad--enough--you see, I am being desperately frank now--don't you realize what it would mean--can't you realize what you'd have to pay?"

She watched him patiently. Her first fierce energy had died down. The colour had faded from her cheeks, leaving her with a look of pathetic weariness.

"I've never bothered about the price of things. It's been a curse in my life, I daresay; I shall never be able to sink into a safe, comfortable mediocrity. I've burnt my boats too thoroughly for that. But, instead, I've had the highest and best in life. I've always dared to live to the utmost, Tristram. I wanted to be perfect in my art, and I gave my soul to it. I lived more austerely than a nun, more grandly than an empress. Men wanted to love me, but I never thought of them. There was only one thing for me then--it was like a mountain that I had sworn to climb. I climbed it. And then--then it was over. You can't understand--but I had paid the price to the last farthing. Now, before it's too late, I want the greatest, most splendid thing that perhaps a human being can pray for--the happiness of loving."

Her voice had dropped gradually, as though she had forgotten him. He stood still, frowning at her with a hopeless misery in his exhausted eyes.

"Sigrid--if I'd asked you a month ago would you have been my wife?"

She started a little, seeming to shrink from what was to come.

"No, Tristram--not then."

"And now--if things were different--if it were possible----?"

She shook her head.

"No--now least of all." She heard the sharp, painful catch in his breath. "It isn't possible--that's just it," she added wearily.

He resumed his restless pacing backwards and forwards.

"Then it was just a moment in your life you were offering me--I was to be part of a new and splendid episode----" He strode up to her and gripped her by the shoulders. "Oh--I'm not proud--you're a creature of fire and air, and I'm one of the earth. You could have walked over me and I'd have been content. And yet--I don't know. I might have cared too much. Perhaps I do care too much--but there's something besides that now. I'm not a moral or even a strong man, but there's only to be one woman in my life---the woman I marry."

"Yes," she said listlessly.

"And Anne has promised to be my wife."

She looked up at him for an instant. It grew very still.

"I might have told you that before. But it was to have been our day--with no one between us--no one to demand reckoning. I cheated myself. I'm a rotten sentimentalist, dear--and I've ended by doing something mean and low, like a thorough-paced cad. I deserve to lose--all that I have lost."

She shook her head. Something of her old detachment, a little of her demure humour, tinged with satire, shone in her eyes.

"It's almost funny--your blaming yourself. I hunted you down--and I am going to marry Mr. Barclay."

He swung round on his heel, white to the lips.

"That man----!" he burst out.

"That woman----!" she retorted cynically.

He fought desperately for self-control.

"Anne is a good woman----"

"Is she? A better human being than Barclay? Have you started to lay down the standard of values like the rest of us?"

For an instant they confronted each other as antagonists, then he made a gesture of despair, of fierce self-loathing.

"No--you're quite right. I don't judge--I can't. I seem going down-hill fast with my theories--my--my infernal humanity. I can't believe it--everything seems to have gone at once--you didn't care--it wasn't love you felt for me----"

"Aren't you glad--doesn't that relieve you of all responsibility?"

She watched him for a moment in silence. Then her face softened. He was standing against the table, his hand pressed upon it as though he held himself upright only by an effort of will. She laid her hand on his, diffidently, pityingly. "Tristram, we're both mad with pain, but don't let's hurt each other more than we must. It's no one's fault. We pick up threads in our lives carelessly and without a thought, and from day to day they weave themselves without our will into a pattern--into tragedy. That's all there is to it, Tristram." He nodded silently, and she turned away from him, sighing. "It's quite quiet now. I'll go back to Gaya, Tristram."

He went out beside her into the empty moonlit street. A black shadow lay huddled against the wall, and involuntarily he bent and touched it.

"Dead!" he muttered.

"The feast of Siva!" she said. "He who destroys!"

Her small pale face was lifted to the great silver disk above her. It seemed to his aching eyes that she was no more than a frail white ghost--a haunting spirit of the haunted moonlight.

"Sigrid----!" he whispered.

"Hush--it's no good. We've got to go on--Tristram Sahib----"

He walked beside her as she rode out of Heerut. It was very still---no sound but that of her horse's hoofs and the soft swish of the long Arab tail. They went out across the plain. The conflagration of the day had burnt itself out, leaving grey ash and a few stains on the white fields. The temple lay sinister and watchful beneath the shadow of the jungle. It was as though all life had been swept away in a deluge of destruction.

He looked up and saw how bravely she held herself.

They came within a hundred yards of the bridge-head, and she drew rein. They could hear voices and the jangle of steel. He stood close to her, touching her, feeling the warmth of her, drinking in a faint elusive perfume which was her own. His brain reeled. He was sick and faint at the nearness of the end.

Suddenly she bent down and took his hand. He felt something clasp itself about his wrist.

"I can't give you up--not altogether--I can't, Tristram. I want to keep you in my life--the dream of you--to haunt you a little--to claim you a little--in this world and the next--for good and evil--my bracelet-brother----"

She was gone. He stood there, listening to the thud of her horse's hoofs.

_*BOOK II*_

*CHAPTER I*

*MRS. COMPTON STANDS FIRM*

"Among all the noble, disinterested, selfless things I've done--and my life is full of them--this is the noblest, most disinterested, most selfless."

Mrs. Compton stood back and surveyed the dainty Dresden figure perched on the shelf with the dignity of renunciation. Mrs. Bosanquet sniffed. It was an uncorrected habit of hers when confronted with the incomprehensible and absurd.

"I don't see what you're so upset about," she commented from her large and comfortable pose in the most accommodating chair of which the rather shabby-looking room boasted. "Why, I've seen things just as pretty as that in sixpenny bazaars. I'm sure Anne won't like it. Anne's my type. We both have our spiritual homes in a London suburb--not a garden-suburb, my dear, with nasty modern folk in sandals and _djibba_--but in the old kind, with good old Victorian plush everywhere. It's just a tragedy that we should have to live in India with queer specimens like the Judge and Tristram." She chuckled. The serene detachment with which she regarded her own weaknesses and the weaknesses of her fellow-creatures had made her an institution in Gaya, and was a good substitute for a talent. Mrs. Bosanquet could not make a joke or tell a funny story without disaster, but she could hold up mirrors for herself and her friends and grimace into them with most excellent results, as far as the gaiety of the station was concerned. It was whispered, however, that the Judge's somewhat halting progress towards higher honours was not a little due to his wife's passion for showing plain but superior people just what they looked like.

Mary Compton continued to regard her treasure with wistful tenderness.

"Tristram will like it, anyhow," she said.

"H'm, poor Tristram!"

"Why 'poor Tristram'?"

"Oh, I don't know--a kind of inspiration. Anne did want him so badly, and now she's got him. It's a real triumph of goodness. Now she can pull long noses at dear, disgraceful Eleanor and be sentimental over dear, disgraceful Richard. Also she can make the place too hot for--for that woman. Altogether a wonderful strategic position for any one quite so harmless as dear, respectable Anne."

There was a distinct and unusual note of asperity in Mrs. Bosanquet's review of the situation, and Mary Compton turned to her with apparent puzzlement. But her eyes were bright and rather defiant, as though she was preparing for a long-expected engagement.

"Whom do you mean by 'that woman'?" she asked, not very steadily.

"My dear, there's only one 'that woman' in Gaya as far as I know. The rest of us are--what are we--ladies! or is that Victorian again?--in fact, I mean 'that woman,' and you're just pretending not to know whom I mean."

"I won't pretend." Mrs. Compton steadied to the attack. "If you mean Sigrid----"

"I do, my dear."

"Then I think it's mean and disloyal of you. You were one of the first to kow-tow to her----"

Mrs. Bosanquet settled herself back fatly and serenely unoffended.

"I did--I don't deny it. I kow-towed. Figuratively, I licked her boots. She could have walked over me if she'd had a fancy for mountaineering. She could have done a high-kick under the Viceroy's nose and I should have applauded to poor George's everlasting undoing. She could have eloped with that puppy Radcliffe. She could have become Rani of Gaya and worn a nose-ring. My ample bosom would still have welcomed her. But that man! No. It's not only the man, but it's what must be in her to be able to touch him with a fire-tongs. There's a rotten streak in her--there must be. And even if one got over that--well, it isn't feasible. One can't swallow her without him, and it's too big a mouthful. Can you imagine sitting down to dinner with him?"

Mary Compton faced her visitor. She held herself very straight, and her brown, alert face had a rigid look about it which boded trouble.

"Yes, I can," she said quietly. "It's a possibility everybody will have to face who comes here."

"Mary!"

She nodded confirmation. She lost her first rather tremulous aggressiveness and became quiet and resolute, her hazel eyes sparkling with the zest of battle.

"Yes, Archie and I figured it out as soon as we heard. We don't understand--we don't pretend to--and--and we hate it. Nobody can loathe it more than I do. I've run counter to that man, and I can guess what we're in for. But we're going to stick to her. We didn't become her pals on the understanding that she was to marry one of our nice select circle. She was just Sigrid. Well, as far as we're concerned, she's Sigrid still. Her husband's her business."

"Then," said Mrs. Bosanquet gravely, "you're in for a fight with the whole station--and, what's more, with an unwritten law which is based on sound principles. 'East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.' But they do meet occasionally, and it's then the trouble begins. We can do with a Rasaldu because we're not responsible for him--it's like watching a foreigner eat peas with his knife--but Barclay, no--he's a scandalous, illegitimate relation, and the more he claims us the more uncomfortable we get. My dear, we shall fight to the last ditch, and you'll be beaten, and badly beaten. You'll damage yourselves, and that's about all."

"Are you going to help beat us?" Mary asked quietly.

Mrs. Bosanquet pursed up her fat, good-natured lips.

"I can't help myself. I'm really sorry----"

"Rubbish! If you were sorry, you wouldn't do it."

"I've got to think of the Judge----"

"Well, I've got Archie. He's got his career, too."

"He'll get into trouble with the regiment."

"It's more than likely. We're not going to--to behave like cads on that account."

Mrs. Bosanquet got up, leaning heavily on her gold-topped stick. She had reddened slightly, but otherwise remained benignly unruffled.

"Quite right, my dear. I applaud. The trouble is that the majority of us are cads at the bottom--that is, we think of our own safety first. I'm sure I do. The station will ostracize Sigrid--has begun to ostracize her already. I can't stem the tide, and I shan't try."

Mary Compton smiled bitterly.

"How pleased Anne will be!"

"Eh?"

"How pleased Anne will be," she repeated.

Mrs. Bosanquet paused on the threshold of the verandah. She had become suddenly very angry.

"You're a very annoying woman, Mary Compton. You said that just to upset me. You know I can't bear Anne. In a previous existence, I believe we were next-door neighbours in our suburb, and that she played hymns on a pianola. Please don't mention Anne to me."

"And you're fond of me, and you were fond of Sigrid," Mrs. Compton persisted, not without malicious amusement. Mrs. Bosanquet turned round as sharply as her bulk would allow.

"She's driving up now," she said helplessly. "My dear, for goodness' sake, get me out--I don't want to meet her--I haven't made up my mind--I'm really not in a fit state--have pity on an old woman with a weak heart and an Indian liver--let me out by the back--do, there's a dear--I'll think it over--I will really----"

"You can go out by the back," Mary Compton allowed coldly. "You'll probably give the butler a fit, but that doesn't matter. By the way, we're giving a dinner next week. We hope you and the Judge will honour us."

Mrs. Bosanquet glared from the doorway.

"I dislike you intensely," she said, "and I won't be bullied."

"Nor will I," Mrs. Compton retorted, and then with an uncontrollable burst of venom. "You nasty old woman!" The curtains fell with a furious rustle and Mary Compton returned to her Dresden shepherdess. Her interest was either very intense or very artificial, for she did not appear to hear the dog-cart which rattled up the drive, and started guiltily when she was called by name.

She turned and saw Sigrid standing on the threshold. The latter still carried her lace parasol over her shoulder, as though she were not certain of coming in, and the tinted shadow which veiled her head and shoulders afforded a delicious contrast to the unrelieved whiteness of her dress. Mrs. Compton, not given to poetic comparisons, was driven in the first breath to the memory of the cool, intoxicating seductiveness of a narcissus flowering in the fresh winds of an English spring-time. But, in the second breath, she was realizing, not without a little twinge of unreasonable disappointment, that the muslin dress was not English but Parisian, and that the graceful lines of the unpretentious garden hat represented an expenditure which would have covered the greater part of Mrs. Compton's yearly outfit.

"Can I come in, or are you not at home?" Sigrid asked. Her head was a little on one side and her eyes and mouth were quizzical. Mary Compton promptly kissed her and took charge of the parasol, which she handled with an almost masculine awe of its amazing daintiness.

"Sigrid, I'm just thankful. I didn't know it was you. I didn't recognize the cart."

"It wasn't mine." She hesitated for a second and her mouth was uncontrollably wry. "Jim brought me in."

"Oh!" For the life of her, Mrs. Compton could think of no better answer. She drew her visitor to the chair which Mrs. Bosanquet had just vacated. "Anyhow, you're just the person I was longing to see," she added lightly.

Sigrid's lips quivered.

"Am I? Well, that's more than Mrs. Bosanquet would have said! Poor lady, how she must have hurried. Which way did she go? Out through the servants' compound?"

"My dear Sigrid!" Mrs. Compton turned to her Dresden shepherdess to hide the fact that her face was suffused with the red of sheer panic. "Don't be so absurd! Mrs. Bosanquet and I have been 'having words,' as Mary Ann would say. She was too cross to face anybody."

The smile lingered about Sigrid's lips, as though some secret thought amused her. Her eyes, dark shadowed and rather wistful, were fixed absently ahead. Mary Compton trusted she had not noticed her own confusion. Suddenly, though she did not look up, she held out her hand.

"What have you got there, dear?"

Mrs. Compton responded thankfully. She came like an eager child, kneeling at Sigrid's feet, the Dresden shepherdess held up reverently for inspection.

"My pet shepherdess. I don't think you've seen her before, I've made up my mind to part with her. I've been almost in tears over it."

"Have you?"

Mary nodded. She was convinced that her visitor was not listening, but she rattled on determinedly, set on holding off an inevitable crisis.

"Yes. You know, our little bits of china are just like children to us. In fact, they're substitutes--only much nicer. They don't get the measles, they don't become increasingly expensive and unsatisfactory, they don't live to curse your grey hairs. On the contrary, they become increasingly valuable and lovable. You see, when Archie and I married, we were desperately in love, but we hadn't a single high-class interest. We adored dancing and tennis and theatres and expensive food at expensive restaurants. There were times when we felt we hadn't a soul between us. You don't know how it worried us, because we do want to go on existing and having good times together in the next world, and we felt we never should if we didn't cultivate our higher selves or something. We thought of children, but you know we don't like children a bit, and we've forty cousins between us, so that there's no chance of our families dying out. When we found we both loved beautiful china, we almost wept for thankfulness. We knew then that there was something in us above food and drink. And there's our most precious bit. Isn't she a gem?"

Sigrid took the shepherdess and considered it gravely.

"Yes--a real find. Tell me, what were you and Mrs. Bosanquet quarrelling about?" She waited a moment, and then, as Mrs. Compton, very red and almost sullen in her aggrieved sense of thwarted diplomacy, remained silent, she went on quietly: "You were quarrelling about me. You were discussing whether to cut me or drop me gently; isn't that so?"

Mrs. Compton looked up with a sudden resolution. "We were quarrelling about you."

"That's good. That's frank of you, Mary." She put the shepherdess on the table and took the elder woman's hand tenderly between hers. "What did you decide?"

"There wasn't anything to decide where we're concerned. You can do what you like, Sigrid. Archie and I are far too much in love with you----"

Sigrid laughed.

"Don't get me into worse trouble by making out that I'm a husband-snatcher. So you're going to stick to me. And the others----?"

"I don't know, dear."

"And you--you're both awfully shocked and horrified."

Mrs. Compton's mouth tightened with the struggle. She did not flinch under the steady, penetrating eyes.

"We don't understand--that's all."

"You loyal soul!" She was thoughtfully silent for an instant, and then went on: "But you must understand--at least a little. It's only fair, since you're going to fight my battle. If you'd decided differently, I shouldn't have told you. I'm an adventuress, Mary--I've never pretended to be anything else--not in a bad sense. I've lived very straightly in some ways, but I've always staked my all on a day. I've lived fabulously--like a Roman empress, Mary. And one day there was nothing left to stake. In ordinary language, I was bankrupt--or near it. So I took what was left and set out round the world--husband-hunting----"

"Sigrid!"

"Yes, that doesn't sound very ideal, does it? But in reality it was rather a wonderful quest. I was looking for a man who could give me all that I conceived necessary for life--who would share it with me in understanding and whom I could care for--deeply." She smiled in self-mockery. "That sounds better, doesn't it? But, unfortunately, I never found him."

"Never?"

There was significance in Mary Compton's eyes--a challenge.

"No, never. And three months ago, when Mr. Barclay asked me to marry him--I had one hundred pounds and my passage left me in the world."

Mrs. Compton sprang to her feet, her hands clasped in consternation.

"Why didn't you tell us--you could have come to us. Oh, no, I know that's nonsense--we're poor as mice. But you could have gone back--you could have danced again and in one night you would have made enough----"

She stopped short, arrested by something that passed over the other's face--a shadow, a wince of physical, deadly pain. "Sigrid, couldn't you----"

"Yes, I could have done that. And the money would have paid for a gorgeous funeral."

"Sigrid--don't joke--be serious----"

"I am serious----" Her voice hardened. "Horribly serious. One night's triumph, if you like--and then the end. That's what I came to tell you. No one else knows except Smithy. It's my secret. It's yours now."

Alary Compton stood transfixed. The colour had faded from her face, leaving it sallow with fear and grief. She bit her lips, trying desperately to hold back an overwhelming rush of tears. She hated tears. Now they choked her. Through a mist, she saw Sigrid lay her hand lightly on her side. "A little affair of the heart--_c'est tout_."

Mrs. Compton dropped on her knees. Reckless of the expensive gown, she buried her face on Sigrid's breast, clinging to her with a defiant fierceness.

"Oh, my dear, my dear--and we didn't know. I can't believe it--you so strong--so perfect----"

"Yes--almost perfect." She passed her hand caressingly over the grey-flaked, curly head much as though the grief was not her own. "Perfect in my Art--almost perfect in body. But the 'almost' was the price I paid. Oh Mary, just once again to glide out into the lights, to hear the music--to lose the sea of gaping faces--to rise right up on the crest of living----" She drew herself erect, her eyes burning. "Oh, my Art, the greatest Art of all! Scientists, musicians, painters--just so many lopsided distortions! But I was the soul and the body, the perfect union. I was music and poetry and speech. I was a miracle greater than the dreams of science. I was the perfect human body with an inspired soul----" Her voice failed. The life died out of her eyes. She sank back, laughing brokenly. "Isn't that absurd--funny--for I am going to marry Mr. Barclay."

There was a long, heavy silence. Both women faced the tragedy, the one with the bitter knowledge that her understanding could only be dim and incomplete. She roused herself at last, disengaging herself gently from the enfolding arm, rubbing the tears from her cheeks.

"Sigrid--there were other men--good men--of one's own blood----"

"Oh yes, I know. There was one in England. I meant--but things happened. I can't explain. You've got to take that much on trust. Mr. Barclay offered me more than money."

"You mean----?"

"Silence."

Mary Compton rose slowly to her feet. She was quiet now and very grave. She gazed at the woman in the chair and realized for the first time a change in her. The old serenity, the laughing, godlike attitude towards life had gone. She had the wan dignity of a fighter who, from a post of easy vantage, has gone down into the arena.

"I don't want to know any more. I do take you on trust."

"And there was more in it than that," Sigrid went on, following the train of her thoughts. "It was a bargain. I, too, had something to offer. That suited my pride. I could do for him what I could not have done for another man. I could give him what he desires, I believe, more than life----"

"Position----?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Compton shook her head. Her seriousness was now business-like, scarcely touched with emotion.

"And you think you are strong enough?"

"I don't know. I must be. Everything that matters to me now depends on it."

"If you went away--to another part of India--oh, I don't want you to go--I'm trying to think only of your good----"

"It would be useless. I have won my position here. I have friends. Anywhere else I should just be his wife."

"His wife--you! Oh, it's hardly bearable! Just because we are your friends it hurts worse." She ruffled her hair with an unhappy hand. "Sigrid, you can count on us, of course. I believe you may count on Mrs. Bosanquet, and the Judge follows automatically. She's furious just now, but she has a regular schoolgirl rave on you and it will be too strong for her. I daresay the other women will follow. Even Anne----" She saw Sigrid move restlessly in her chair, and hastily swung off, moved by she knew not what consciousness of pain. "It's the men who'll be the hardest to fight. They'd forgive you most things--things we wouldn't forgive--a vulgar intrigue, an elopement with somebody else's husband--but this is against their code. Men are conventional, women moral. It's the one vital difference between the sexes. And then there are other troubles. Things are rocky in Gaya. We know that the regiment is disaffected. The new Colonel makes no headway. Boucicault's work was too thorough for that. Then there's Rasaldu. He regards your engagement as a sort of insult--and, weak tool though he is, we've got to keep him in hand. All that counts against you. Oh, it will be a fight, though we shall have Tristram. He's always ready for a lost cause----"

She stopped again. Sigrid had risen to her feet. She seemed not to have heard the last sentence. She picked up the Dresden shepherdess with a light, reckless hand.

"How pretty it is! Why are you parting with it? Who's the lucky recipient----?"

"It's a wedding present." She felt a sick misery creep over her. "For Anne and Tristram----?"

"Ah, yes--of course--for Anne and Tristram----" Her voice was very level and matter-of-fact, rather indifferent, as though she were echoing mechanically something that scarcely reached her intelligence.

Then a shadow fell across the sunlight patch on the worn matting, and both women looked up. James Barclay stood on the verandah. He raised his hand in a military salute.

"I've come for Sigrid, Mrs. Compton," he said. "She was such an unconscionable time, and one is naturally impatient. Please forgive, if you were discussing secrets."

His dark eyes were on Mrs. Compton's face, intent, curious, vaguely appealing. The thrill of loathing and contempt which had passed through her gave place to a bitter amusement. He was so wonderfully, correctly dressed, so desperately at ease. She stared back at him, burning with her first instinctive revolt against his presence. Then she remembered. She glanced at Sigrid, who was still toying idly with the Dresden shepherdess. Something in the resolute submission of that proud, self-reliant figure set fire to all the chivalry in Mrs. Compton's blood. She turned again. She heard herself speaking:

"We're very pleased--won't you both stay for tea? And--and I was just saying--I'm giving a dinner next week--to celebrate--your engagement--if it suits you----"

It was done. She felt as though she had cut through a dam, and that the torrent was on her. She saw Sigrid look up swiftly and then glance at the man by the window.

He bowed gravely, but she caught the triumphant flash in his eyes.

"It is very kind. We shall be delighted--this afternoon we've an engagement, haven't we, Sigrid?"

It was all Mrs. Compton remembered clearly. Looking back on the scene, she had a vague recollection of her own voice flowing on ceaselessly over a seething inner conflict, of a pale face watching her, half in pity, half in gratitude. Presently, when they had gone, she flung herself down by Sigrid's empty chair and cried with misery and humiliation. And, when the last tears had been shed, she picked up the Dresden shepherdess and put her back in her place in the glass cabinet, and turned the key with an air of locking up evil genii. Then she thought of her husband for the first time.

"Poor old Archie!" she muttered remorsefully. "Poor Archie!"

Meantime, Barclay drove his showy cob towards the dak-bungalow.

"So you've managed it," he said. "You've really managed. You're wonderful--even more wonderful than I thought."

She drew farther away from him.

"I have kept my part of the bargain."

He laughed.

"Which is fortunate for everyone concerned."

"Keep your part!"

He made her a little bow, his face suddenly flushed and heavy-looking.

"As much as it lies in human nature, dear lady," he answered.

*CHAPTER II*

*A HOME-COMING*

Mrs. Boucicault welcomed her daughter with the affable irresponsibility which had become her habitual mood. She bore no grudge--not more than a steam-roller bears towards the stones it has ground into acquiescence. She had got what she wanted and was quite pleased that Anne should have been equally successful. No one witnessing the warm, rather absent-minded embrace could have guessed at a very bitter parting or at a wedding at which the bride's family was conspicuous by its absence. As a matter of fact, the bitterness had been on Anne's side and the wedding had been so recklessly hurried on that Mrs. Boucicault's excuse that she could not leave poor Richard at such short notice sounded acceptable. Gaya knew perfectly well that the Governor-General's visit and its attendant gaieties was the real reason, but extended a charitable sympathy, and endeavoured to keep Anne in happy ignorance, guessing that her understanding would be altogether of a different kind.

Mrs. Boucicault kissed Tristram on both cheeks, putting her hands on his shoulder in order to pull herself up to the necessary altitude.

"My dears, how well you both look! Really, I believe you got married just for a month of the hills. How I did envy you! We've been positively baked alive. I nearly bolted, but of course your poor father could not have been moved. It was terrible."

She began to wander about the newly furnished room in a restless, over-excited way, giving neither the time to reply. "You must come and admire everything. We all did our bit. I had some furniture sent from Lucknow. Don't you like the chairs? They're a home product. Mrs. Bosanquet gave such a lovely tea-service. My ayah smashed a cup in the unpacking, but these accidents will happen. I hope the servants will be all right. You both know how they steal." She led them through the length and breadth of the bungalow, whose decoration had the charm of haphazard good taste. As Mrs. Boucicault had said, everyone in Gaya had taken a hand in Tristram's home and given of their best, attaining an unconventional success. But Anne followed silently and without expression of approval. Her natural composure of manner seemed to have developed. She looked very well and much older. Her girlishness had been completely swallowed up in a rather self-conscious womanhood, and much that her girlhood had promised had been fulfilled. The line of her mouth had stiffened. Her very clothes, well-made but severe, expressed a character already set within definite and inelastic boundaries. Once or twice she glanced back at her husband and her eyes were full of a half-timorous, half-proprietary tenderness.

"Do you like it all, Tris?"

He nodded, smiling down at her.

"It's first-rate. I don't know how they managed it."

"Yes--it's quite nice. Of course, we shall have to rearrange things. It's all so patchy, isn't it?"

He did not answer. Mrs. Boucicault came back to the drawing-room and gave them tea. It was then, seated, facing her with her back to the light that Anne noticed the too-vivid red of her mother's lips, the tinge of artificial colour on the grey cheeks. Her own eyes hardened a little.

"Is father better?" she asked coldly. "Is there any change? I asked you to write to me, mother, but you never did."

Mrs. Boucicault helped herself daintily to cake.

"There's no change--at least, not for the better. He had Sir Gilbert Foster here to see him. He happened to be in Lucknow, and, of course, I've spared no effort--no expense. Sir Gilbert agreed that there was very little hope. Sometimes I think it would be more merciful if the end came. He is so utterly helpless. He just lies there and broods. Even the official attempt to get at some clue with regard to the man who attacked him doesn't seem to rouse him--and Richard was always so anxious to get square with an enemy, wasn't he? Of course, I go and sit with him every day and tell him our doings. It's very dull for me, but one has to do all one can. Didn't I write? I'm so sorry. I meant to, but we've been so busy----"

"I've no doubt," Anne interposed, with contemptuous bitterness. "Gaya has been quite gay, I hear."

Mrs. Boucicault smiled happily.

"Yes, quite gay. And very upset into the bargain. It's like living on an eruption or a volcano or whatever it is I mean. I suppose you've heard, Tristram? The regiment is just seething with sedition. Poor Richard kept the lid on wonderfully, and now he's gone we're all waiting for the lid to come off with a bang. Colonel Armstrong is a dear, but he's got beautiful democratic ideas, and bullies and distrusts his equals more than any one I ever knew. So we're all waiting. And things have been made so deliciously worse by the advent of Mr. Barclay. You've heard of that, too? He's going to marry Sigrid Fersen in two months. Awful, isn't it?"

Anne turned her eyes to her husband.

"It's revolting," she said. "He's the kind of man a woman of her type would choose. The least she can do is to leave Gaya."

"She's not going to, though. The whole station is a divided camp and armed to the teeth about it. Half of us want to cut her and half want to swallow him for her sake. Mary Compton and Mrs. Bosanquet are for swallowing--and so am I. I don't see why people shouldn't do as they like."

Anne's lips curled.

"You would choose the easy way, mother."

Mrs. Boucicault shot her a glance, which was not entirely free from malice.

"Hardly easy in this case. Think of the complications! Think of Rasaldu going about like a comic thunder-storm! Think of our pet official snobs. Oh, we shall live to see exciting times. More tea, Tristram?"

He shook his head and placed a half-emptied cup on the table. Throughout Mrs. Boucicault's garrulous chatter he had been watching her narrowly and almost as though he were listening to something beneath her words. Now he turned and met his wife's eyes with an unflinching directness. It seemed to check an impulsive answer. She got up sharply.

"I'd better go and help the ayah unpack," she said. "I'll drive round and see father tonight, mother. Let him know."

"Of course, dear. He'll be so delighted. I'll go home now and leave you two to settle down. Tell the syce to bring round the cart, will you, Tristram?"

On parting, she kissed them again with her new absent-minded effusiveness and patted Anne's shoulder. "It's so nice to see you happy at last, child. By the way, you've never asked after poor Owen--and he's so devoted."

A faint flush crept into Anne's cheeks. For an instant, at least, her composure wavered.

"I hadn't forgotten. How is he?"

"Dreadfully disfigured, poor fellow--and his sight affected. But he goes on with his work just the same--like a real martyr. It's such a pity the natives don't appreciate it. They pretend he has the evil eye, and run away from him. Terrible, isn't it?"

"I shall have to look him up," Tristram observed.

"Do--you're so clever." She took her place in the dog-cart with the lightness and ease of a much younger woman. Then as the syce jerked the reins, she bent down. "Tristram, will you be coming round, too, this evening?"

"Yes," he answered gravely.

"Well--when you've seen Richard--will you have a talk with me--a professional talk? I believe I'm getting an Indian liver, and the natives seem to have such a holy terror of your concoctions that I'm sure they're effective. Will you?"

"Rather!" He laughed, though the blue eyes remained seriously intent. "And I'll bring my deadliest blue pills with me," he promised.

As the cart swung through the compound gates Mrs. Boucicault turned her head and looked back. Tristram waved, but Anne gave no sign. Her face was set and hard as Tristram turned to her. He slipped his arm with a rather shy affection through hers.

"Aren't you satisfied, dear?"

She looked up at him smiling, but perfunctorily, as a grown-up smiles at a child, concealing her real feeling.

"Oh, so satisfied with you and the home, Tris. But I wish mother hadn't welcomed us. She makes me sick to the heart the way she talks about father. I don't want to hate her--and yet sometimes I can't help myself. And I didn't want our first day here to be spoilt by hatred. It's like a bad omen."

He was silent for a moment. Had she been looking at him she might have seen the faint change which passed over his features. It was a change that had come to them more than once during these two months among the hills--a kind of troubled perplexity--of uneasiness.

"Anne, I'm not satisfied with your mother," he began suddenly. "I don't like the look of her. I believe she's hiding something from us----"

She interrupted him with an impatient, scornful gesture.

"It's just her way. She's always imagining there's something the matter with her. When father was almost dying, she worried the doctor about a petty ailment of her own. I think she does it to cover the way she behaves----"

"Aren't you a wee bit hard on her?"

"Hard? Tris, surely it's right to be hard sometimes? One can't be lenient towards what's wrong. And it is wrong to be cruel, and our duty is towards the sick and sorrowful, no matter what they've done. Don't you think so?"

"Yes," he answered thoughtfully. "Perhaps our only duty."

She shook her head.

"Our first duty is to God." Then, with a quick movement that was an instant's reversion to her girlhood, she slipped her hand into his, pressing it, and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. "Tris, that sounded as though I were criticizing. I didn't mean it. You're so good-natured and tender-hearted--perhaps too forgiving. But at the bottom we think and feel the same about things, I know. Only you're too good for me."

"Don't let's talk about our respective goodness," he implored lightly. "We shall quarrel. Let's go and prospect for your rose-garden instead."

They went down the steps together, her hands linked over his arm, and followed the path of sunlight through the wilderness of wild-growing flowers and high luxuriant trees which Gaya perhaps deliberately had left untouched.

"We shall have to make it trim and neat," Anne said, sighing. "My roses will never grow in all this shadow. Besides, it's so untidy. Those big palms ought to be cut down, too, don't you think?"

She always appealed to him differently, yet as though his agreement was an assured thing. He looked up, catching a line of azure between the foliage. It seemed to him that for an instant he breathed the scented virgin air of the forests, that soon night would be creeping in stealthily between the slender trunks of the trees and that he would lie full length by the camp-fire and watch the distant beacons flame up in the violet darkness. It was a picture flashed from his memory, perhaps in contrast to those smooth, cool, civilized days among the hills. He closed his eyes to it.

"You must have things as you like them, dear," he said. "I want you to have everything--everything that makes you happy."

"Really? Do you mean it?" There was a breathless eagerness in her voice, no mere acknowledgment. He paused an instant and looked down into her earnest face. In a vague, instinctive way she had often resented his eyes--or rather the something which their clouded introspection held from her. Now she thrilled under them. They were clear, intensely, fiercely living.

"Yes, I do mean it," he said passionately. "Anne--if I thought you happy, I should be content. If I knew of anything that would give you only a moment's pleasure, I wouldn't rest till I brought it you. I want you to be happy--more than I can say."

She flushed girlishly.

"Do you love me so much as all that, Tris?"

"Isn't that proof?" he asked back.

"You are very, very good to me." Still she held her ground, watching him with her strange mingling of diffidence and conscious power. "Tris--I do want something awfully--something that will make me perfectly content----"

He smiled.

"Then it's yours, if a poor Major can squeeze it out of his official fortune."

"I want my father here--with us." She saw no change in him, and yet, absorbed as she was in her own appeal, she felt the sudden check in his breathing, the tightening of the muscles under her hand. She became reasonlessly frightened. "Tris, is it too much to ask?"

He turned and continued to walk on.

"No--I meant what I said just now. Only--I don't understand, Anne--in the old days--before the accident--you were so afraid of him. You dreaded him--I think you hated him----"

"Don't!" she interrupted. "You can't think how it hurts to be reminded of all that. Yes, he frightened me. He made us all unhappy. Now he is helpless--broken. Sometimes, looking back, it seems to me that we were to blame--that perhaps mother was not the wife for him--that she didn't understand----"

He crushed back the exclamation that had risen to his lips. He dared not admit even to himself that it had been one of bitter impatience.

"That doesn't seem quite fair, Anne. He may have been ill, mad, if you like. It's the best one can say."

"He was considered a fine soldier," she returned, rather primly. "His men worshipped him."

"You live in the past, dear," he persisted.

Something had risen between them, a pulsing, quick-breathing irritation. She pressed his arm.

"You don't understand," she said forgivingly.

"No, perhaps not." They had reached the gates of the compound, and, arrested by sounds whose thrill for ever outlives familiarity, they stood still, their faces turned to the open high-road. Amidst the rattle of drums, and the shrill call of the fifes, the regiment slogged its way sullenly back to the barracks. The dust rose in silver columns under the tramping feet. The red sun, lying already westwards, fell aslant the dark, brooding faces and made a quivering stream of fire of the fixed bayonets. The new Colonel rode at the head of the column, chatting with his Adjutant. He had a resolute serenity about him, an unimaginative contentment. Tristram, saluting, knew that for him there was no significance in that fiery line winding its way up the hill in black silence--no hint of the future. Only the common, daily routine.

He heard Anne's voice at his side, broken and piteous.

"Oh, if only father were there--at the head of his men--if we could only bring him back----"

"I can't do that," he answered gently. "If I could, I would. I never realized how much you cared. It's taught me a lot about life--your caring. But if you think he wishes it--he must come to us, whatever it may cost."

She smiled at him through her tears.

"I know he would wish it. Mother is cruel to him--I know she feels cruelly. He will be happy with us. He will get to understand that we both care--oh, Tristram, I can't thank you enough. I promise you it shan't trouble you."

A scarcely perceptible line deepened about his fine mouth.

"Don't promise rashly, dear. And remember, I said, whatever it costs----"

It became very still about them. The tramp of feet and the rattle of drums grew muffled and rumbled into silence. They could see the column wind its way up in and out of the broken avenue of trees like a monstrous glittering serpent. The dust sank back peacefully in golden particles, and with the deepening silence there came a sense of relief, of healing. The vague spirit of irritation and opposition laid itself.

Tristram drank in the silence. In that subconscious self where no thought or desire is formulated, he prayed for its continuation. He held himself motionless so that no movement of his should rouse his companion from her seeming abstraction. For a moment, she had relaxed her hold of him and he shrank back into himself, into a loneliness where he seemed to draw breath, to lay down a burden which he never acknowledged, and to stretch his cramped soul in exquisite relief. The perfumed air, the golden lights and splendid purples of a brief twilight penetrated below his senses, and with light, magic fingers opened the closed doors behind which he had imprisoned all that the woman beside him could not understand, all that was repugnant to her. They came out, these ghostly figures of his fancy, and played before him. At first they had been pale and wan, but as they drew in light and air, they regained their youth and glowed with their old splendour. He watched them, fascinated. His blood began to move more swiftly. A thought shaped itself out of the depths--the thought of the nights and days out there on the fringe of the jungle--of the work that would claim him back--of life as it might still be to him. Service! that remained.

He felt Anne's fingers tighten on his arm.

"Look!" she said.

The scorn and anger in her voice stung him. The lights grew suddenly dim and the fancies faded. He looked the way she pointed, and his pulses stood still. Two riders were coming slowly down the hill towards them. Their white-clad figures shone ghostly in the shadow of the trees. They came on, up to the gates. Tristram's pulses resumed their beating, heavily, suffocatingly. His hand went up to his helmet, and the fair-haired woman on the Arab bowed with grave indifference. The man beside her smiled, showing his white teeth. Then it was over. He heard the man's voice break on the silence--he was making some ironic comment--and then the beat of horses' hoofs at a mad gallop.

Anne's eyes were on his face.

"Tris, how could you!" she said bitterly.

He turned and looked at her. He felt stupid and heavy, as though some one had struck him between the eyes; but even then he realized her expression, the unbreakable will showing through the mask of her femininity.

"What should I have done?" he asked, and was conscious of a wry amusement. Beneath the surface their wills grappled together. She was so small, so strong. He would be so utterly beaten.

"I don't know--You didn't even wait for her to bow. It's not for me to dictate--surely it wasn't necessary to know her--she's outside the pale--and that man--oh, it was sickening, horrible----!"

Her voice quivered. He put his arm about her shoulders,

"Did you want me to--to cut them?" he asked.

"Why not? I think it would have been better to do what we must do right from the beginning. We can't _know_ them, Tris."

"I must," he responded deliberately.

He felt her whole body stiffen.

"Why?" Her voice was very low now, subdued so as to cover its real timbre. "Why?" she repeated.

"Because I have no reason not to," he returned.

"A half-caste and an adventuress----"

Something tortured and leashed within him leapt up flinging itself savagely against his self-control.

"What is an adventuress, Anne? A woman who ventures? What better thing can any of us do?" He spoke half-jestingly, striving to ward off the issue that was to arise between them; but there was no pity in the hard eyes which she lifted for a moment to his face.

"Are you going to be one of those who are prepared to sneer at our morality--at the whole prestige of our race?" she asked.

Even then he marvelled at her. She had been so young, so childish. She challenged him now with a mature fixity of outlook and of character. She might have been an old woman. And he knew that it was no sudden development. It had been there always, a deep-rooted inheritance of her kind.

"I cannot be other than I am," he said steadily. "As to prestige--doesn't it belong to our English greatness to shoulder our responsibilities? We're responsible to a man like Barclay. He belongs to us more than any man of our own blood. Don't you realize--he's our fault--we've flung him into his position. We've made him what he is. He had an English father--Anne, and he has a claim on me I cannot and will not ignore."

He saw the curl of her lips. It was an answer straight from those past generations stronger than all reason.

"We must stamp out our sins--not foster them. And that woman--do you expect me to meet her--the Rajah's mistress--this man's bought property----"

"Anne!" A sick horror surged up within him--horror of his own passionate anger--horror in some dim way mingled with a vicarious shame. He turned away from her. But the instinctive chivalry which prompted the action was unnecessary. She held her ground with the resolution of justification. "Anne, you're speaking recklessly. I know that what you say is not true. And even if it were--I can't judge other people--it's not in me--I feel no right in me to judge. There's only one distinction I can make between men and women--the happy and the unhappy, the blessed and the cursed----"

"The good and the evil," she interrupted stonily. "There is only one morality, Tristram----"

He drew himself to his full and splendid height. The red sunlight glowed on his impassioned face, in his blazing eyes. For an instant he forgot her--became free, breathing in the glory of his faith.

"--That ye love one another," he exclaimed with happy triumph. Her eyes sank. For that instant her instinct told her that she could not touch him--that he had passed beyond her reach. But, behind their lids, her eyes were bright with a bitter resentment.

"Do you love Sigrid Fersen, Tris? People said you did----"

He came slowly back--down to the level, arid country where he was to live his life. He stared down into her white face. "Do you, Tris?"

He caught her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. Her eyes were sullen and unhappy. Their unhappiness shattered his anger, changing it to a burning remorse and pity.

"You're my wife. There can be no other woman for me but you. That's my little fragment of morality. Isn't that enough?"

"You stand up for her----" she persisted, with a sudden break in her hard voice. She put up her hands, clinging to him. "Oh, Tris, you make me afraid----" she cried miserably. "I couldn't bear to lose you----"

He held her with a desperate tenderness. He had groped his way to the source of her outburst, and the dawning knowledge threw a pitiless light into his own heart. All the antagonism had gone. In the moment's revulsion he saw her as justified.