Part 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tristram nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

"In a sort of way--yes."

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

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

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

"What is it, you madman?"

"Drive me to Heerut."

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

He smiled wistfully.

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

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

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

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

He averted his face.

"Yes--Compton told me."

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

"Yes," he agreed simply.

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

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

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

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

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

"Is that a quotation?"

"A sort of one----"

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

They spoke very quietly, very naturally to one another.

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

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

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE WEAVERS*

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

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

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

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

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

"Getting on?" the latter asked.

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

Barclay showed his white teeth in a smile.

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

"Won't I?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barclay made a fumbling gesture.

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

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