Part 11

He walked through hours and nights of darkness. At last there were lights in front of him--great yellow balls of haloed flame, which danced in ecstasy to a passionate rhythm. He heard voices--a sea of whisperings which surged towards him on a great wave, breaking over him in one hushed sound. He tried to cling to it through his fading consciousness. It became a face, gazing down at him, serene, triumphant, pitying--it became a hand which touched him, held him in its iron gentleness. He could feel it holding to him surely, as all else broke from him, flinging him down into a bottomless silence.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*CROSSED SWORDS*

In reality, he had not gone more than half a mile. But things had happened to him of which he had had no knowledge--twice he had retraced his steps and once fallen to his knees and groped his way through the dust in a blind circle. The eternities had been less than an hour, the darkness no more than the clear nightfall, the lights a dozen lanterns twinkling from the trees of the dak-bungalow. His consciousness had been a dull, distorted thing, presenting the reality to him in shapeless exaggerations. He had heard music. It had sounded to him like a huge, throbbing symphony in which these nights and days in Bjura, the passions which had swept him out of his path, were mercilessly reiterated motives. In reality, it was just Carreno's unsophisticated little waltz which Sigrid Fersen drew out lightly from a Steinway already much the worse for its Indian sojourn. He heard voices. It was young Radcliffe lounging in the shadow of the trees, making a gloomy assault on the susceptibilities of the latest sweetest thing from England, the while his real deeply embittered self was in the drawing-room scowling at Rasaldu, who, still crowned with laurels, leant against the piano staring at Sigrid unrestrainedly and with a very naked passion.

The last voice that Tristram heard, the first and last face that he had seen, had been Sigrid's, but that was because she had swamped all other realization. It was Mrs. Smithers, roaming like a dutiful policeman through the compound, who found him lying huddled together just inside the gates. She made no sort of outcry. Having ascertained that he was alive, she did not even hurry herself. She went and stood primly at Sigrid's side, her mittened hands folded in front of her, her back to Rasaldu, whom she openly detested.

"He's there," she said, jerking her head towards the compound; "lying in a dead faint, poor dear. I guess it's your fault--you'd better do something, hadn't you?"

After one swift glance at the grim face, and without a word either to Smithers or Rasaldu, Sigrid had got up and gone down the steps into the darkness where Tristram lay. She knelt down beside him and touched him on his dry, burning forehead, on his throat, gliding down to his powerless hand. She spoke to him, calling him by name, and she knew that he heard, and recognized her. For a long minute she remained thus motionless, tasting her power to probe beneath his physical consciousness to the self in which he kept his dreams, his quaint beliefs, his simple, world-embracing love of things. And she knew that if he saw her, it was because her face lived in his inner vision, and that if he felt her hand it was because the memory of her touch was seared into his very flesh.

She granted him and herself that moment, and then she called for help. It came quickly, noisily. But though others intervened, she remained at Tristram's side. Her instinct told her that he knew she was there, and that she held him back from the abyss towards which he was drifting. They laid him between the faintly scented sheets of her bed. It was her order. The shaded lamp threw a subdued glow on the room's costly loveliness, on the scattered, cunningly grouped treasures of five continents, on fragmentary, priceless testimonies to a rare and varied taste. They exercised a curious influence on the grieved and troubled helpers. It was like a subtle intoxication, as though all that these things represented crept into their blood and fought there for mastery. And in silent, austere contrast was the man lying dimly outlined beneath the white sheet, the rugged, unkempt head tilted slightly back against the pillow, the thin, suffering features composed in a passing phase of grave serenity.

They knew whence he came and what he had accomplished, and the rarefied atmosphere of exquisite Paganism jarred on them. It was a challenge, a kind of sneer at his whole life. They did not reason about it, they could scarcely define it. But it made Meredith's manner cold to the point of antagonism as he turned presently to where Sigrid stood in the shadow, her eyes fixed on the old Italian vase which she had picked up casually. He hated her again--she was so calm, almost indifferent. He came and stood beside her, hushing his full voice.

"I think we've done all we can. He's pretty bad, I'm afraid. I'll have a wire sent to the next best station for a doctor and a nurse. Of course, he can't stay here--we'll try and move him tomorrow."

"I prefer him to stay here," she said, without looking up.

He frowned, wishing that Rasaldu had not been one of those to help carry Tristram and to share in the unconventional intimacy of the scene. It revolted him that he should stand there, watching and listening. The old ugly suspicions which he had sternly repressed in himself awoke again. They were not justly roused--it was only that he was human and incensed.

"I don't think Tristram would wish it," he said, and unconsciously his voice took on its heaviest Anglicanism. "He would not wish you to be put to any trouble. After all, he is almost a stranger to you."

"I know him very well," she returned. "I think he has known me all his life. He would leave the decision to me."

"At least, he would not wish you to be burdened with the--unconventionally----" He stammered, half expecting the vivid contempt with which she turned to him, and conscious of deserving it.

"Oh, you priest! You would rather your friend died than that your fetish of Other People's Respectability should be insulted." She waved him aside and flashed past him to the doorway, pulling the curtains noiselessly aside. In the second room, half-boudoir, half-dressing-room, she found Mary Compton and Anne. The rest of the guests had discreetly evaporated, or at most hovered afar off waiting news of the man whom, oddly enough, they loved without intimacy. He had lived so much his own life, they had so often laughed at his oddities, and it was something of a revelation to them that, now the inevitable disaster had overtaken him, they were sick and afraid and dumbly remorse-stricken.

Captain Compton stood at the compound gates under the dying lights of the lanterns with a couple of his brother officers, and smoked fiercely.

"Poor old Tristram--good old Hermit. It was bound to happen. No human being could go on like that and not crock up. Damn it, we oughtn't to have allowed it. We took him too much for granted. It's always the way. Good Lord, why doesn't some one come? What's Rasaldu doing in that _galere_, I should like to know? And what the devil is that tearing down the road----?"

Rasaldu meantime, delightfully conscious of his utility, had followed Sigrid and Meredith into the room where the two women waited. Mary Compton had remained boldly. She sat upright in her chair under the lamp with a rather bleak look of authority and ready-for-anything alertness, which had made her an adored terror in the grim days at Chitral. Her evening dress, an antiquity cunningly revised, fitted her badly, as though it knew she hated it and meant to pay her out. She jerked her shoulders as Sigrid entered, seemingly exasperated by the garment's stiff, restraining influence.

"Well?" she demanded. "How is he?"

"I don't know yet," was the low answer. "But I think he is very ill. I have only seen one person die--it was like that." She turned her fair, smooth head towards Owen, but did not look at him. "Mr. Meredith wishes him to be moved. He is afraid my reputation might suffer--or that there might be a scandal in his parish."

Mrs. Compton considered the young missionary with a cold curiosity, giving him an almost ludicrous consciousness of the oft-denied but very profound sex solidarity of women.

"How idiotic! Men are just like babies in a crisis--always fussing about the unessentials. Of course, Major Tristram must stay--at any rate, until he is out of danger. And, Sigrid, as a sop to a hopeless passion, let me help nurse him."

"We'll pull him through together," Sigrid answered.

"Mr. Meredith, don't you think with Mrs. Compton and Mrs. Smithers on guard, the situation should pass muster?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders. He was looking at Anne--Anne whose white, tear-stained face peered out of the shadow like a pitiful, frightened ghost's, and somehow the sight filled him with a cold anger.

"My suggestion was well meant," he said. "I made it for Major Tristram's sake as well as for yours. I thought he would prefer to find himself among old friends."

"He could have come to us," Anne said, in her thin, broken voice. "I have nursed so much--and mother understands sickness, too----"

Sigrid Fersen glanced at her.

"I suppose Colonel Boucicault is an old friend," she said. "Colonel Boucicault, who has helped to kill him----"

There was a second of strained silence. Anne's face had changed from white to red, and then to a deeper pallor. She dropped forward with a little moan, her face hidden in her hands, crying helplessly. Meredith took a step forward, as though to protect her. The veins on his low, broad forehead were swollen.

"Surely----" he began hoarsely.

Sigrid made an imperative gesture.

"I cannot be bothered with your loves and hates," she said. "I'm going to save Major Tristram--that's all that matters to me. You can stay here if you want to--both of you--but on my terms."

It was like the cut of a whip across the face. Meredith found no answer for a moment. He was sick with horror at the tide of anger which swept over him. His primitive instinct was to strike back physically. He knew now that all Anne's distrust was justified. The woman was dangerous--dangerous, above all, to Anne's happiness. He had the right now to combat her--to set himself squarely against her power in Gaya. He wanted to assume the authority now, but it was too late. Moreover, at the bottom, he knew he could not touch this enemy. She was of another world, impervious to the penalties which his could inflict.

And Compton stood on the threshold--Compton, whose face was a sufficient warning--and behind him Ayeshi. Both men had reached the verandah steps at the run, and now Compton had pulled up, meeting his wife's stare of reproof with a hurried apology.

"I'm sorry---I didn't mean to make a row or startle you. Ayeshi has just come with bad news. Miss Boucicault--I think you ought to go home at once. Your father has been badly hurt----"

"My father!" She sprang to her feet, her eyes wide with an incredulous fear. "My father--hurt----?" she echoed.

"He was found half-an-hour ago, unconscious. Some one must have attacked him. Of course, now Tristram's done there's no doctor. We'll telegraph at once. Radcliffe's got his gig--I thought you might go with him."

He was now honestly conscience-stricken. What happened was only terrible to him because of its significance. It was like a signal of the first break of the storm--the thing for which he had waited. That any one should care personally for the injured man--least of all the girl whose youth he had trodden underfoot--seemed incredible. Yet she stood there, white and shivering with shock. He tried to apologize again, but she did not seem to hear; only, as Meredith came to her side, she turned to him like a panic-stricken child.

"Please take me home to him, Owen--please take me home."

Compton made way for them both. He beckoned to Rasaldu, who obeyed the summons reluctantly.

"We'll clear out and leave you the field. Ayeshi can bring us the news to the club. Suppose I shan't see you again for a bit, old girl."

"Not till my job's done here. Get the ayah to bring round some reasonable clothes."

"Right-o! So long, old girl."

He came up to his wife and kissed her shyly. She patted him.

"So long. Not too many pegs."

The room emptied. Neither Meredith nor Anne had said good-bye nor looked at Sigrid. Rasaldu bowed over her hand, but even he realized that she was not conscious of him. As his broad, fat back vanished down the verandah, Mrs. Compton got up, shaking herself.

"Now we can get to business. God defend me in my last hour from sentimentalists of Anne's make. Can I borrow a dressing-gown, Sigrid?"

"Do. Smithy will give you one."

"Thanks. By the way, I expect Boucicault's not the last to go. It's the first bubble on the water, and soon we shall all be in it, and boiling nicely." She made her exit on this rather light-hearted prophecy; but Sigrid, who had made a movement to follow her, lingered for a moment. Her eyes were cast down as though in thought, but in reality they were fixed on Ayeshi's hand. When she raised them suddenly, she found that he too, was watching her. There was nothing insolent, nothing inquisitive in his scrutiny. His expression was grave and reticent. It made him seem much older. He was no longer the boy who had cried on her doorstep. He looked at her with a man's eyes, with a man's understanding and stern power of secrecy.

"Was it you who found the Colonel?" she asked.

"Yes, Mem-Sahib."

"He is badly hurt?"

"I think so. The blow was a terrible one. It seemed to me that he was conscious. Once he looked at me, but he could not move or speak."

"Do you think it was one of his men, Ayeshi?"

"I do not know, Mem-Sahib."

She turned away from him.

"There is blood on your hand, Ayeshi."

He salaamed imperturbably.

"I will wash it away. It is a cut--a little thing."

He followed her into the next room with the unobtrusive decision of one whose right to enter could never be challenged. Mrs. Smithers had moved the lamp behind a screen, but Ayeshi, standing at the foot of the bed, looked down through the veil of shadow as though the sleeper's face was an open book in which he read intently. Then he looked at Sigrid. She had taken her place close to Tristram's pillow, and one hand rested lightly on the coverlet. There was a caress in that touch. Her fair head was bent in grave, pitying contemplation that was yet touched with a curious detachment, as though she looked down from a great distance. In the half-light, she seemed unreal, fanciful, the very spirit of that beautiful aesthetic Paganism which the room breathed.

Ayeshi shivered a little, and his slender, dark hands resting on the carved wooden bed, tightened their grasp.

"Mem-Sahib!" he said, softly.

"Yes, Ayeshi?"

"Mem-Sahib--I have seen so many die of late. Death at its best is sleep. The Sahib sleeps deeply. Perhaps it is the will of his God that death should come to him now that he has given so much for those he loves. Is there not a saying in your Book, Mem-Sahib---'Greater love hath no man than this, that he layeth down his life for his friend'?"

Sigrid Fersen lifted her head.

"Yes," she answered steadily.

"Meredith Sahib taught it me. I have forgotten much, but not that. It was true of him. Others--those who come here to teach us--preach to us, but he lived. He did not believe--no, not as Sahib Meredith believed. He believed in the flowers and the birds and the wind and the mountains--he believed in us." He put his hands to his breast, and his eyes glowed in the darkness. "I was his brother--his younger brother," he said proudly.

"And he loved you, Ayeshi."

"He loved all men--even the worst." He came a step nearer to her. "Mem-Sahib--a woman died out in Bjura--died horribly. He stayed with her to the end. She was hideous, and he took her head on his knee and comforted her as though she had been his mother. There was a little child, and he took it and promised he would care for it. She died happy."

Her head was bent again.

"That was like him, Ayeshi."

"Mem-Sahib--if the end comes now it will trouble him that he cannot keep his promise."

"He shall keep his promise. I will keep it for him. And you, Ayeshi--stay with me."

But he drew back, and the light died out of his face.

"This is the end, Mem-Sahib. His and mine. I loved him--I, too, would have given my life--remember that of me, Mem-Sahib."

She looked up at him, and the naked agony in his eyes was something that she indeed remembered long afterwards.

"I think he knows," she said.

He salaamed deeply.

"I will go and guard the door, Mem-Sahib."

He was gone without a sound. A shadow seemed to have passed from the room. His very voice had been so low, that now the silence flowed over it as though it had never been. Yet what he had said lingered.

Sigrid Fersen drew her chair close up to the bedside, and sat there chin in hand watching. The dim light of the lamp threw the shadow of Tristram's profile on to the white-washed wall beyond. Ugly enough--the pointed beard thrust out under the broad, unshapely nose--the big forehead made grotesque by the outline of disordered hair. But even the shadow gave a hint of what the face itself revealed in its unconsciousness. The mouth, tender and strong as a woman's may be, passionate and austere, laughter and the joy and love of life in the corners of the closed eyes, and over all, like a veil, pain. Quixote with a grain of English humour--Quixote at the end, vanquished and conquering.

He stirred a little in the first uneasiness of coming delirium, and she laid her hand on his and he grew still again.

Mary Compton came in presently. With Mrs. Smithers, she had been preparing a special fever antidote of her own, and there was an air of resolve about her neat, kimono-clad figure which made death seem afar off. She came lightly up to the bedside, stirring the contents of a malicious-looking medicine glass.

"Now, if we can only get him to take a few drops, they will help to keep him quiet. Of course, we don't know what in the world's the matter with him. It may be the ghastly thing they had in Bjura; but I don't think so. He wouldn't have come back. Are you afraid?" She glanced down at her companion, and Sigrid met her close scrutiny deliberately.

"No."

"Well, you've been crying, anyhow."

"That's possible."

"What for?"

Sigrid's lips were twisted with a wry smile.

"I don't know--I was touched about something, I suppose. I think it was because I never thanked him for something he gave me--I never gave him anything to take with him when he went out there--I've just remembered."

"H'm! How many times have you two met?"

"Twice--no, three times, and the first time counted most of all."

"Are you in love with him, too?"

"I've been trying to decide--yes, I think so."

Mary Compton poured out the medicine into a tea-spoon.

"Do you mean to marry him? Because, if you do, you will."

"No, I'm not going to marry him."

"Why not?"

She made a gesture, brief, impatient.

"My dear, can't you see? We live at the opposite poles of things--he, the unbelieving Christian, I, the believing Pagan. Look at his life--look at mine. Look at this room--these things. You have a _flair_ for what is precious and beautiful--can't you see?"

Mary Compton continued to balance the spoon. Her bright hazel eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the other's face.

"Yes, I see. And I love you, Sigrid, as Gaya does, without caring who or what you are, or what you mean to do with us. But just sometimes I'm afraid--sometimes I think it would have been more merciful to have let us go on our own old, stodgy way."

"You mean--him? He sought me out. I believe he brought me here. There are more things in heaven and earth, Mary, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. And even if that weren't true--he knew as well as I did what I was--what I wanted---adventure, knowledge of the finest and the best in life and in men--a last splendid hour--he would not have denied it me."

The last words had sunk below the whisper of their brief conversation, and Mary Compton did not hear them. Very skilfully she forced the opiate between the unconscious man's lips.

"At any rate, we're a nice couple of nurses chattering over poor Tristram's head. Will you watch for a little? Mrs. Smithers and I will relieve you."

"If you want him to live leave us alone. I shall not sleep tonight."

"In those clothes?"

She glanced down at her quaint, gold-brocaded dress.

"Yes. He loves beautiful things."

"He may think he is in Paradise and you an angel," rather satirically.

"Or perhaps men so near death see clearer----"

Mary Compton sighed and bent and kissed her.

"Good night, then. If there is any change, send for us. Ayeshi is at the door."

"Goodnight."

Now the last sound was gone. Even the man's shallow, irregular breathing became for the moment quieter, as though peace had crept into his troubled oblivion. Sigrid sat motionless at his side. The light touched her with a dim brilliance; it dwelt on the smooth gold hair, on the gold of her dress, on the rich living whiteness of her arms and shoulders. She shone subduedly like an image on an altar-shrine--an image of life and of life's splendour faced with the shadow of death.

Presently Tristram stirred and muttered to himself. The words were at first thick, indistinguishable, but suddenly he roused himself. She caught sentences, rapid, fever-stricken--the incoherent risings from the depths of the man's soul. It was his credo--a fragment of that faith of which Ayeshi had spoken, perhaps never before formulated, now poured in a molten stream of delirious sincerity.

"I believe in all things living--I believe in beauty--I believe in the goodness of men and in their immortality. I believe in the immortality of the flowers, of the trees, of the grass in the wind--I believe in God who is all things, who is myself and her. I believe in the sacredness of all life----" An intolerable agony crept into his voice. He repeated the last phrase on a rising inflection. "Oh, God, I believe in the sacredness of life----"

She bent over him. She laid her hand on his forehead and suddenly his eyes opened. They rested full on her face, but she knew, for all their extraordinary brilliance, that they did not see her. It was not to her that he spoke, but to the vision of her. "You must go, you too--everything. A man who has broken faith--there is a curse on us--an awful curse. We kill what we love--we kill what is holy, unfathomable--every day of our lives--for pleasure, because we must. We're doomed to destroy. We try not to--we try to save--but the curse is on us--the curse of Cain----" His voice had dropped; it broke now with a groan and the brief glimpse of coherent thought was over. He began to mutter again--isolated words, a name, constantly a name. Still she remained bent over him. Her small face had lost colour, and something of its aloof pity. She was breathing quickly, through parted lips.

"Tristram!" she whispered.

He raised one burning hand and pushed her back.