Part 20

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

Anne turned her eyes to her husband.

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

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

Anne's lips curled.

"You would choose the easy way, mother."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," he answered gravely.

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

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

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

"Aren't you satisfied, dear?"

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

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

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

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

She interrupted him with an impatient, scornful gesture.

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

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

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

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

She shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She flushed girlishly.

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

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

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

He smiled.

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

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

He turned and continued to walk on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She smiled at him through her tears.

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

A scarcely perceptible line deepened about his fine mouth.

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

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

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

He felt Anne's fingers tighten on his arm.

"Look!" she said.

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

Anne's eyes were on his face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I must," he responded deliberately.

He felt her whole body stiffen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"If it was because I loved her, I shouldn't fight for her," he said hoarsely. "Don't you understand--it's not only her--it's Barclay, too--it's everyone. I'd trample on every feeling I had for your sake--but not on my religion--don't you understand?" He knew she could not, that the word "religion" had rung like blasphemy in her ears. But she leant against him, crying wearily like a tired child.

"And this is our home-coming, Tris!"

"It makes a mockery of all my promises!" he answered sadly. "What shall I do to make you happy again, little Anne?"

She bent and kissed his hand. "Oh, Tris, if we could only go away from here--from Gaya--somewhere where we should get away from everyone-everyone who makes me afraid--couldn't we? We could start afresh with no one to come between us----?"

It had grown very dark. Though she was watching him again, she could not read his expression. And he was looking past her, straight into the vision which she had called up before him. But it was a vision of all that had been. He saw the old landmarks--the river and the long, broken roads, the camping-place beneath the trees, the familiar faces whose solemn trustfulness he had fought for with his best years, with all the ardour of his youth. He saw the dreams he had dreamed--the hours tight packed with action, with all the glory of battle and victory. And now to begin again--to cut new paths through the waste tracts, to call up fresh springs of faith and hope from desert ground. He felt himself suddenly old and very tired.

"It should be easy enough," he said gently. "I could get a new district--I'm not popular and they've just left me here--but they'd do that for me, I daresay. Yes, we will go away and start again, Anne."

She was silent for a moment. She was breathing quietly and contentedly. In a flash of knowledge which he despised and hated, he knew that they had fought together and that she had won.

"You're so good, Tris, so good to me. Sometimes we don't quite understand each other. But we're husband and wife, and that's all that really matters, isn't it?"

He nodded. The tiredness stupefied him, bewildered him. He fancied he saw something white glide in among the trees--a slender figure that moved like a very spirit of Life. He fancied there was music in the stillness--afar off, intoxicating.

"All that matters, Anne----"

*CHAPTER III*

*MRS. BOUCICAULT CALLS THE TUNE*

The male-nurse had put the carefully shaded lamp on the table behind the bed and gone off to take an unobtrusive share in the festivities. Colonel Armstrong had lent the regimental band for the occasion, and what with the music and the superabundance of champagne and the pliability of the native character, the male-nurse recognized golden opportunities for a break in the tedium of his duties. Possibly he was quite justified. It was a dull business nursing a patient who could not even curse at you. Moreover, there was nothing to do. What could be done for a log that lay day in, day out, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, whose every desire, if desire still lived behind that appalling silence, had to be guessed at?

So the male-nurse threw a professional glance round the scene of his activities, noted the perfection of orderliness, and went his way.

Boucicault continued to stare upwards. The shadows were massed against the ceiling like sultry, motionless clouds. They loomed over the withering body stretched out beneath them in the rigidity of death, their stifling intensity loaded with an overpowering perfume. There were flowers everywhere--on the table, at the foot of the bed, on the chest of drawers, on the shelves, lighting the room's barren simplicity with fierce, burning colour. Their vividness seemed a part of the music that came light-footed into the sombre hush--an echo of the murmuring voices, the merry jangle of harness, the patter of naked feet, the clink of glasses. The room was like a white-cliffed, deserted island in the midst of a moonlit, tossing ocean of life. The wave slapped the walls, and rolled back from them as from something alien and repellent.

Or again, but for those eyes staring up at the ceiling, the place might have been a death-chamber. There was the same orderliness, the same white silence, the many flowers. And the long, shrivelled body outlined on the bed was quieter than any living thing.

A voice broke from the distant murmur and came nearer. It was a woman's voice, rather strained and high-pitched. Something white and shimmering fluttered against the darkness on the verandah.

"I'm sure it's awfully nice of you, Tristram. He'll be so pleased. I usually go in, but this evening I was too busy. Don't stay too long----"

The eyes distended and then closed. Perhaps the brain behind them became conscious of a vital change in the stillness, for a moment later they opened again and rested full and direct on the man standing at the foot of the bed. They stared at each other dumbly. The eyes became ironic and cruel in their knowledge of power. But, as the man moved and came nearer, they followed him, showing the whites like those of a sick animal.

Tristram sat down on the edge of the bed. The light from behind the bed drifted on to his face. He looked weary and composed, and there was no trace of discomfort under that watching enmity.

"I had to come, Boucicault," he said quietly. "It got on my nerves--the thought of your being alone like this. You may not want to see me, but, on the other hand, it may give you some satisfaction. I don't carry my secret very well, do I?" He spoke without bitterness or sarcasm, and the eyes gleamed. "And then there are things I have to talk to you about," he added.