Part 10

And now today there was added to this emotion the heat and intoxication of his own prowess, and the consciousness that, if she was not beautiful, she possessed something much more vital than beauty--the mysterious force of temperament which through all time has made plain women more dangerous, more powerful in the destiny of nations than women endowed with all physical perfection. Rasaldu had no talent for analysing temperaments, but he could analyse certain obvious factors in her charm--the pale gold hair, the perfect skin, unprotected by powder, the svelte, tiger-like grace and strength of her reposing body. Above all, he could analyse clothes. Gaya's women-folk, none too well blessed with money, lived in London's last year's creations and the clumsy imitations of the native tailors. But this simple white dress of some clinging, shimmering material, unknown to Gaya, and this simple straw hat almost unadorned, came from Paris. Rasaldu, who knew his Paris, knew that much. And, as a man worships a token from his native soil, so he worshipped Sigrid Fersen.

And presently he ventured to address her directly.

"Now you have seen what is best in India!" he said.

"The Rajah Rasaldu playing polo?" she asked, smilingly.

"You are unkind, Mademoiselle," he answered, with the hurt sensitiveness of a snubbed child.

"I did not mean to be unkind. There are so many wonderful things in India, Rajah, that I hesitated a moment to endorse your opinion. Still--yes, it was a fine sight. You should always play polo, Rajah. It suits you better than feting prima ballerinas in London restaurants."

He looked at her and saw that she was serious, and her seriousness mitigated the dubiousness of her compliment. He would have preferred it in the reversed sense, but he had to take what was offered him.

"I was not really alluding to myself at all," he said, naively, "but to the game. The game's the thing."

"Yes--and the man who plays it," she answered. She was smiling faintly, and he indulged in a flattered self-consciousness until he realized that the smile was a reminiscent one, and that she was looking through him to some invisible picture of her thoughts. Whereupon, Rasaldu hastily reverted to Mrs. Compton, whom also he feared, but in a lesser degree. Her tongue was sharp, but at least she did not attract him, and consequently her powers of offence were of a less painful order.

Sigrid Fersen did not notice his dejection. She was looking at Meredith, who at that moment had entered the awning. He still wore his clerical clothes, having come straight from the little chapel, where every afternoon he held his service. It was rare that more than one person should represent the congregation. Sometimes he managed to collect a few convert school-children, but always Anne Boucicault was there, devout and trembling, her brown eyes following his every movement with the reverence of a passionate believer in the initiated and anointed priest. That hour in the day was very dear to Owen Meredith. He believed that it was a religious ecstasy which flooded him as he listened to her low voice give the responses--or at least a pure joy in their fellowship in the one faith. He had not realized how lifeless and empty his own prayers could be without the inspiration of her presence. Now a kind of fear oppressed him--a fear of himself, a doubt in his own spiritual integrity. For this afternoon, she had failed him and he had failed himself. He had held the service, according to the law which he had made for himself, sparing no detail, but his heart had been dead. Now, as he saw her, it started to life again, to the knowledge of pain. She sat beside Colonel Boucicault, and there was that in her attitude which reminded Meredith of a frightened animal cowering under the threat of the lash. All the charm of youth had been twisted out of her by some invisible, iron-handed suffering. And without that charm, she was a drab, colourless little soul, almost ugly. But Meredith did not see that she was ugly, only that she was ill and unhappy. He thought he understood. As he came and sat beside her, she shot a quick, frightened glance at him.

"Father did not wish me to come," she said, in a hurried whisper. "He was fearfully angry about some letter----"

More she could not say. And even that much would have been dangerous, had not the man beside her been sunk in a sullen, inattentive brooding. She dared say nothing of the appalling scene which had followed on the receipt of that ominous official document, and which had left them stupefied and bruised and sick. In the final phase, Boucicault had forbidden her chapel attendance, not because he disapproved, or cared, but because he knew that she wanted to escape him. And all the afternoon he kept at her side, taking an ugly delight in her wincing, broken subservience, and in the knowledge that he held her with him in his self-created atmosphere of fear and hatred.

But Meredith believed he knew more of her pallor than she even hinted at.

"I met Ayeshi on the way here," he said. "He gave me the news. Tristram is on his way back."

"Yes--?" she queried, dully.

"He has been very ill. Ayeshi has come on ahead to prepare quarters for him."

She was looking down at her hands. He could see how she fought to control their trembling.

"If only we could have put him up--but we can't--father wouldn't--oh, it is terrible to be so helpless."

"I told Ayeshi to bring him to my bungalow. I will let you know how he is--and perhaps, later on, you could help. I know what a fine little nurse you are----"

"You are very, very good, Owen----"

"I would be glad to do anything for him," he answered, without significance. Then chancing to look up, he found that Sigrid Fersen's eyes were fixed on him, and guessed that she had heard, or had wanted to hear badly. For an instant, on behalf of Anne, he hated her again, and the next he warmed towards her. She met his half-resentful stare as frankly.

"I am so thankful he is safe," she said.

Mrs. Compton thereupon chimed in.

"If anything happened to Major Tristram, I should die of a broken heart," she said, "--even if Archie divorced me for it."

She paid no attention to the laugh in which even Anne joined timidly. She was looking at Colonel Boucicault, who had shifted his position like a sleeper unpleasantly disturbed, but the remark which seemed on the edge of her compressed lips was not destined to be uttered.

At that moment a bell announced the next _chukka_; a stir passed round the enclosure and Mrs. Compton, who, in spirit, played a magnificent game for Gaya, forgot Boucicault and Tristram in her stern concentration on the field.

Rasaldu braced himself and turned with a smile to Sigrid. He felt more confident. In a minute she would be forced to look at him, to admire him, to acknowledge that he also "played the game."

"Wish me luck!" he begged cheerily.

"Return victorious!" she returned, in mock heroics. "For the victors, Mrs. Compton and I have prepared a mighty feast in the gardens of the dak-bungalow, and the vanquished shall sit afar off and partake only of the crumbs of our graciousness. Be not among the vanquished, O Rajah!"

"To win the place of honour, I will make a goal every five minutes, or perish," he boasted elatedly.

He swung himself on to the back of the pony which his groom held ready for him, and with a flourish trotted to his place on the field.

Boucicault awoke then completely from his black brooding. He bent forward, staring straight into Sigrid Fersen's face, his clenched teeth shown in a smile that had in its mirthless, contained fury the elements of insanity.

"You are a very great friend of Rajah Rasaldu, Miss Fersen," he said.

She looked at him steadily, measuring the quality of the challenge which he had thrown down.

"Does friendship follow on acquaintance?" she questioned back. "In that case, you and I should be friends, Colonel Boucicault, for I have met you more often than the Rajah."

"Then he has marked his joy in your acquaintanceship with remarkable generosity," he retorted.

"Is generosity your translation for hospitality, Colonel Boucicault?"

"The Rajah's hospitality is well known. He gives liberally. He expects a return. And he is impressionable. There is such a thing as love at first sight, Miss Fersen."

He was watching her with a hungry anticipation, but she neither winced nor turned from him. Her calm gaze met his, and there was no change in its rather sleepy placidity. But the enigmatic smile which he remembered quivered at the corners of her mouth.

"And there is also such a thing as contempt at first sight," she remarked casually, "and that is much what I felt for you, Colonel Boucicault."

"You are an outspoken enemy," he answered, with a quick drawing in of his breath. She looked down for an instant and saw that his big, brutal-looking hands shook.

"You have remarked on my outspokenness before."

"Yes, and I even admire it. But my admiration, Miss Fersen, cannot influence my sense of duty. I am chief in command in Gaya. The social as well as the military authority rests in me. And where I see that a certain individual is lessening our prestige, corrupting our morals, or even upsetting the routine of our social life, then I have the power to expel that individual--to make Gaya and India impossible----"

"If, to speak clearly, you refer to me, Colonel Boucicault," she interrupted, "then perhaps I shall have the pleasure of travelling in the same boat with you to England."

His bloodshot eyes remained blank and stupid-looking for an instant, then lit up with an insensate fury of understanding. He stumbled to his feet.

"You--you----!" he muttered. She saw his clenched fists, and knew that, for all his position and the crowd of witnesses, he had come within an ace of striking her. She looked up at him over her shoulder and laughed.

"Keep that sort of thing for your family, Colonel Boucicault," she advised lightly.

Boucicault turned and pushed through the knot of spectators behind him. He made his way across the paddock where the ponies were being rubbed down, and out on to the high road. His orderly, seeing him, ran after him, and he turned on the man with a curse.

"Take the buggy back to the stables. I shall walk."

"And the Mem-Sahib----?"

"The Mem-Sahib can walk, too," he answered, grinning.

The man saluted, his face hard-set, his eyes meeting Boucicault's with military steadfastness. But for an instant the muscles about his mouth had quivered, betraying that there was that beneath the surface which even his native stoicism could not wholly master. And Boucicault saw and understood.

He strode on down the centre of the dusty, sun-baked road. He had drunk heavily that day, but there was more than drink fomenting in his inflamed brain. There was that letter with its bold, humbugging politeness--after so many years of service--an inquiry--certain charges--what charges?--by whom brought? He muttered aloud, dwelling on a name with a sneering hatred. Well--they should inquire--he could answer the lot. But then there was Anne cowering before him--why had God cursed him with a cowardly girl----? and that man---- There had been a time when, as a mere captain, his regiment would have followed him through the gates of hell--and now--now--if he went into action tomorrow--what then? He saw the soldier's face again and re-read its significance. Strong men made enemies, and he had always had enemies, but he had also had friends in the past. They had gone. The men who had believed in him--adored him--gone. He felt himself haunted by spectres of what was and what had been. They came out of the black abyss of his soul, whirled up by ugly, incoherent passions--regret and remorse, self-loathing and self-pity twisted out of recognition and melted down to one vast, corroding hatred. Every other emotion came too late. Only hatred remained to him--the last link between him and his fellow-creatures--that and the power to hurt, to inflict suffering--as he suffered.

Thus carried forward and half-blinded by the glare which emanated more from his brain than from the blazing roadway, he left Gaya behind him. He came to a bend in the roadway where a thin belt of trees curved down towards the plain, and there stood still, arrested by an unclear recognition. At first he scarcely knew what had attracted his attention; then little by little the red haze cleared, and something within him started awake, some dormant desire as yet unnameable.

Wickie lay on the fringe of shadow, his black snout between his paws, his ears pricked, his brown eyes, showing the whites, expressive of alert curiosity. A piece of broken cord attached to his collar testified dumbly to a determined and skilful evasion of Mrs. Smithers's coercive methods of adoption.

For a moment or two the man and the would-be Aberdeen considered each other. Probably in a spirit of good-natured triumph in his own prowess, Wickie had greeted Boucicault's appearance by a tattoo executed by his tail on the dusty road, and his eyes had twinkled an invitation to participate in the joke. Now he lay motionless, watchful, distrustful.

Boucicault called him. He did not know why he called him nor as yet what he wanted with the dog. The tumult within his brain had died down. He had become calm and deliberate. The letter, the menacing future, the jumbled vision of failure which had been vouchsafed him in Anne's cringing body and in the eyes of his orderly, had given place to a sense of purpose, controlled, extraordinarily calculated, but as yet veiled even to himself. He called the dog again, and showed no signs of impatience when Wickie remained unresponsive. Underneath his own calm he felt the stirring of a curious pleasure, of a fierce thirsty joy which must be gratified only with an Epicurean restraint. And for that he held it back, curbing it, spurring it to the limit of his control, tasting its anguished appeal for freedom with a cruel delight in his own mortification. Then, without hurry, without show of passion, he came forward, and, catching hold of the trailing rope, dragged Wickie to his feet. The dog struggled and growled ominously, and Boucicault smiled, showing his set teeth. There was a broken stick of bamboo lying at the roadside, and he picked it up and tested its suppleness leisurely against his boot. The animal snapped at him, recognizing the enemy, and perhaps the impending danger; but Boucicault continued calmly resolved. He was like a morphia-maniac who, with the passionately desired drug in his hand, prolongs the delicious agony of desire. He tied the end of the cord round the stem of a young palm and stood back a moment looking down at his captive. Wickie sprang at him, and then, suddenly, terribly, he struck with his improvised weapon, bringing it down with a sickening thud on the animal's long back. The scream that answered him was half human. Boucicault drew in his breath. Like lava under a thin crust of restraining earth, his murderous hatred welled up in him, choking him. This cringing brute, its brown eyes turned on him in dumb horror--was Anne, Anne who always cringed, always truckled to him, whom he had so often wanted to strike down. And then Anne vanished from the whirling circles of his thoughts, and it was Tristram and that pale-haired woman--these two who, in their different ways, had thwarted and defied him, brought him face to face with himself. It was his wife, the officers of the regiment, the men--all with that smouldering, unspoken loathing in their eyes. And he struck like a madman, blow after blow, slaking his thirst for vengeance, making with each stroke a fresh breach in the wall behind which men imprison their infamous insanities. And sometimes the dog whined and sometimes, like a human being, set its teeth in stoic fortitude, and sometimes, as the pliant stick fell across its body, screamed uncontrollably.

It was one such scream that Tristram heard as he rode up from the plain towards Gaya. He hung in the saddle like a man whose backbone has been snapped, and the reins trailed from Arabella's weary neck. It was fortunate that the road was familiar to her, for Tristram neither knew his destination nor cared about it. Some one had helped him into the saddle, and there he had remained instinctively; but his mind was empty of all purpose, even of knowledge of himself. The scream roused him a little, but only for a second. There were so many strange sounds and scenes in his brain that he trusted none of them. It was only when Arabella jerked to a standstill and stood trembling with pricked ears, that he began to believe in the substantiality of what was before him. Even then he sat hunched together in the saddle, gaping stupidly. He had begun to realize, but there seemed to be a hiatus in his mind--a gulf between thought and action which he could not cross. Then Wickie screamed again, and he rolled off Arabella's back and stood there rocking like a drunken man.

"Colonel Boucicault!" His own voice sounded like a shout in his own ears, though in reality it was little more than a whisper, but it reached Boucicault, who turned round. Tristram knew then that what he saw was not a distortion of his fancy. "Colonel Boucicault!" he repeated heavily. He found nothing more to say. His inability to think coherently had become an acute suffering. He saw Wickie make a desperate effort to reach him, and the sight roused him to another effort. "Let my dog go!" he muttered.

Boucicault passed his hand over his forehead and laughed.

"You've just come back in time, Major Tristram," he said. "If you really lay claim to this cur, you can stay here and see it thrashed within an inch of its life. A dangerous brute----!" He kicked it, yelping, back against the tree. He had made an excuse and was ashamed of it. It spoilt his pleasure in his own untrammelled, inexcusable cruelty.

Tristram reeled forward, intercepting himself between Wickie and his assailant in time to receive a blow across the arm. The sting of it was like a tonic, driving the blood faster to his brain.

"You've no right--let my dog go!"

"Your dog--my dear Major! Stand out of the way. I am master in Gaya. If I may offer advice, I should suggest a bath and a change of clothes. You look--if I may say so--not quite worthy of your position. I doubt if even your admirers would care to recognize you."

"It would take more than a bath and a change to put me right," Tristram managed to return, and then, with the dull obstinacy of a sick man: "Let Wickie go!"

Boucicault's momentary self-restraint broke down. He lashed out savagely:

"Take it yourself then, you sneaking cur----!"

Tristram flung up his arm. Instinctively, for his sight failed him, he warded off the blows which rained about him, but no more than that. His mind was working now, very simply, in the two fundamentals of its make-up--two vast forces fighting for supremacy, the one long dormant, suppressed, scarcely recognized, at the throat of his soul---his faith. So long as the blows fell on him, the latter remained triumphant. He shielded Wickie--that was what he had meant to do. He felt as yet no animosity towards the man whose discoloured face seemed to fill his vision. He felt very little pain--only a queer, alarming tightening of his muscles. Vague fragments of memory came to him--his passionate love of all things living--even to this man, his simple conception of duty--of life itself. They upheld him; they kept the vital part of him quiet and peaceful in the face of a gathering force of sheer physical revolt. His smarting body cried out for vengeance, but it had no power to move him. He stood there, taking the punishment patiently, almost listlessly.

Boucicault drew back from him a moment. He was breathing noisily between his teeth. In him the fundamentals had gone to pieces, and he was being carried forward on a flood-tide of ungoverned, monstrous passions. His mind, in the midst of its disruption, reasoned with the swiftness of insanity. This hulking, stupid giant who had set out to ruin him--who bore insult and pain with less spirit than his dog--he could be ruined, too. An inquiry? Good--let there be one--a court-martial--cashiered, both of them. But first this block had to be roused.

Possibly he was mad, but he had a madman's instinct and deep knowledge of the secret madness in others. He stepped suddenly on one side. The end of his stick was sharp and jagged. With the steel-wristed strength practised on many a day's pig-sticking, he lunged forward, driving the spike straight into Wickie's body.

Tristram had seen too late. He heard the yelp, broken and ending piteously in a child's whimper. Then it was done. Something in him snapped. Mind and body, instinct and reason leapt together. He struck out with all the terrible strength of his great shoulders, with all the force of his outraged love of life, with all his pity--struck to kill.

It grew very quiet. He had been battling in the midst of a titanic natural eruption, and now suddenly the violently aroused elements had dropped exhausted, leaving him standing in the midst of ruin. The tide which had flowed through his veins receded, and he became oddly tired and weak and helpless. The old blindness was creeping over him. Yet some things he saw in a kind of vague bigness. He did not bend down, but the man lying stretched in the dust seemed quite near to him--an austere, sinister shadow floating on a grey mist which rose higher--close to his face.

A faint sound reached him--a dull, soft thudding. He found himself on his knees, muttering incoherently.

Wickie lay full length, his short, crooked paws stretched out, seeking relief. There was blood on his brindle side. One brown eye looked out of its corner, half-puzzled, half-reassuring, a little glint of the old solemn humour showing through, as though the joke at Mrs. Smithers's expense still lingered in the fading brain. The tail beat the dust softly, and into that feeble movement there was compressed a love and understanding, almost a pity which defied death and rose above all language.

Tristram took the head on his arm. He saw that his hand was wet and knew that he was crying. Wickie turned a little, licking his hand feebly.

"Old fellow--dear old fellow--if I hadn't cared so much--if I'd been able to drown a kitten--it wouldn't have happened----" He bent lower, kissing the black snout. "My best pal!"

He went on talking under his breath. He did not know that he talked. Some one quite close whispered the words into his ear. He was not conscious of thinking. It began to grow very dark.

Presently Wickie sighed and stretched himself wearily, contentedly, as though it were no more than sleep that were coming--sleep by the camp-fire after a long day's march. Then lay still.

Tristram dragged himself to his feet. Out of the deepening blackness of things, an instinct asserted itself dimly.

"Help--we've got to get help--somehow----"

He said it aloud. It seemed to him that it had been shouted by the invisible monitor at his side. He stumbled over the prostrate figure lying so simple and still in the dust, reeling back from it, his face turned from Gaya. Then he began to walk. He walked long after the blackness had become impenetrable. He was no more than the one instinct, tragically dominant over the body which had betrayed him. His body was dead. He could not feel it. It was a machine that he willed to go straight forward to some dim, vast punishment.