Part 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still she did not move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIV*

*TRISTRAM CHOOSES HIS ROAD*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne's eyes sank to her clasped hands.

"Is Major Tristram better?" she asked.

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

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

Mrs. Boucicault remained seated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne was shivering with an almost physical sickness.

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

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

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

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

"The Rajah's mistress!"

Mrs. Boucicault laughed lightly.

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Boucicault patted the hand on her arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne shrank away from her.

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

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

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

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

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

"It would make me sick to see you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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