Part 24

"He was murdered by my mother's husband. You see, he had betrayed her. It was a sort of insult to my people." The match went out almost at his finger-tips. He threw it away. "Strange how things happen, isn't it?"

She made no answer. Her cloak had slipped from her bare shoulders and she put her hand up and drew it back, holding it across her breast. He began to move restlessly about the room.

"And now Tristram Junior is in love with my wife."

"You do not know----"

"Oh, I know well enough, I've seen it. What was--is. I imagine a man doesn't forget you for that puling little saint. How he must wince! Or have you told him? Well, you'll have something else to tell him--tomorrow."

"We made a bargain," she said sharply.

"A bargain! What have you done of your share?"

"All that lay in my power."

He gave a wretched laugh.

"This evening, for instance? Well--it's finished, do you hear? I've done with the whole thing. I gave them and you a last chance. Now I'm going my own way--and you're my wife. I've got that right left."

"You've no right but what I choose to give you."

"You'll choose--you've got to--you're helpless." He paused, choking. He threw the half-burnt cigarette on the floor and ground it under his heel. "There's no one in this place that's going to bother about either of us. Tristram won't play _deus ex machina_ this time--you and I--we're going to have this out alone."

He saw her glance towards the door. "It's locked. You can scream to your heart's content. Your Smithy may hear, but she won't help. The servants have their orders. Besides--what right has any one to interfere. You're my wife. You swore before the altar----" He stopped again. Like an animal lashing itself to fury, he strode towards her and then turned and came back, his face swollen and quivering. His words came in a broken torrent of passion. "There's--there's a sort of compensation--in things--my mother's body was found out there in the well--she was good enough for an hour's sport--a native--what did it matter?--a sort of superior toy for an Englishman's pleasure-and the result--a half-caste, a mincing, feckless muddle of two races--let him rot in some stuffy Eurasian quarter and drink himself to death. If he dares rise--if he dares come among us--if he dares aspire to one of our blood--then spew upon him--roll him in the dust--kick him out--let him feel the whip like the misbegotten hound he is. As to our womankind--hands off, or heaven help him----"

"I understand," she threw in breathlessly. "I am to be your revenge--on them--on your brother----"

He turned back to her, staring at her. Then he burst into a laugh.

"Revenge? Oh, I don't know--nothing perhaps so--so high-flown as that. After all--they'd hardly know, would they? It's--it's a sort of instinct--to get level--in one way or another. Besides--I want you----" He measured her with a savage deliberation. "My God--it's natural enough." He was shaking from head to foot. Swift and soundless as a flash of light she put the table between them and stood confronting him. Her fair small head was thrown back, her mouth set in an unfaltering line. "By all means--it's useless--I've the right and the might----" Suddenly, like a tiger weary of toying with its victim, he flung himself on the table, lifting it with both hands. Then, as he did so--he stopped short--faltering.

A full minute passed whilst they remained face to face, neither moving. He drew himself slowly upright.

"Well--why don't you do it?" he asked.

"I don't want to--not unless I must."

"It would be an expensive business."

"I don't know. I've paid so much already--it might be better to go on paying----"

"To get what you set out to buy? You don't need to worry about that. I may still keep my share of the bargain. I have other plans. So you had the draw on me all the time? Who would have thought so gentle a bosom could hide so much deadliness?"

"I have always carried it," she answered simply. "It may seem theatrical--but I realized--this might happen."

He smiled ironically.

"You are very cool--very brave, Sigrid. You--you inflame my admiration. Won't you sit down? It is very early yet."

"I would rather you unlocked the door. I am tired."

"And sick with disgust? I can quite understand. You are white to the backbone." His voice shook with an uncontrollable despair. "Still, I warn you--if I open the door, I win. It is guarded. You see, I took precautions--but I don't want that. I--I have that much English blood in me--I'll fight fair."

"Very well. If there is anything you have to say----"

"Nothing--except perhaps that it is still early. I can display patience. Won't you sit down?"

"Since you wish it."

He took his place opposite her, the table still between them. It was a wide table and he could not have touched her. She rested her elbow on the polished edge, the little toy-like weapon held lightly but firmly in her lifted hand. He leant forward, his eyes on her, watchful, intent. All passion, all desire had died out of them. They were hard and cold with purpose.

"You will tire," he said softly.

"I am very strong."

"_A l'outrance_, then?"

She smiled faintly.

"_A l'outrance_."

But he had seen that flicker of amusement and winced under it.

"You think I am as absurd--as--as--I am beastly?" he asked.

"No--I couldn't think like that--at least, not at the bottom. I understand too well."

"You understand?" He stared at her hungrily. "What do you understand?"

"That you would have been glad to have acted--and felt differently."

He nodded.

"I would have been their friend--a good friend. It's too late now."

"Yes--too late. I can see that----"

It grew still between them. Once he moved suddenly, testing her, but her eyes and hand were unwavering, and he dropped back into his old position.

As the time passed blue shadows darkened her eyes and crept about her mouth. She seemed to grow smaller and paler, and a kind of wonder came into his patient watchfulness of her--an almost pitying admiration.

"Spare yourself!" he whispered.

She made no answer.

The hours passed. The man and woman became grotesquely like wax figures in their grey, pallid immobility. The lamplight began to fade. In the dusk the empty face of the Venus looked ghostly and unreal. They could hear a heavy bullock-wagon plough its way up the hill to the crack of whips and native imprecations.

Barclay rose slowly and stiffly to his feet. He went across to the window and pulled the curtains aside, letting in a flood of golden morning.

"You've won--this time," he said. "You won hours ago."

He did not look at her. He went down the verandah steps and did not turn even though he heard the thud of the revolver as it slipped from her unconscious hand.

*CHAPTER VI*

*"OF YOUR BLOOD"*

Gaya awoke the next morning depressed and rather incredulous. The daylight has a tendency to throw a chill interrogation at whatever the previous night has held either of greatness, tragedy, or passion. The blood cools to a little below the normal and the brain perceives things in their flattest, dullest colours. Indeed, until lunch-time the human constitution is too busy working up steam to produce emotion, or even to acknowledge the possibility of anything vital save the getting of the daily bread and the partaking thereof. So Gaya went lazily about its business, deferring serious consideration to a convenient future, and meantime vaguely aware of a foolish, unpleasant crack in the neat surface of its daily life which somehow would have to be patched up.

Barclay also went about his business. Beyond a certain sombre abstraction his manner gave no hint of any change. In the early morning a messenger mounted on his favourite Arab rode out on the Heerut road, and in the afternoon Lalloo, suave and impassive, made his appearance in a bullock-wagon which had performed a fifteen-mile journey over bad roads in little over three hours. The two, Lalloo and his patron, sat together in the very English library and talked subduedly until the first breath of nightfall rustled among the trees of the garden. Then Lalloo, as he had come, took his departure, nicely tingeing respect with disparagement and disparagement with respect.

Barclay himself did not set foot outside the bungalow.

At dinner he sat opposite his wife and ate whatsoever the noiseless servants placed before him. Contrary to his custom--for he had a morbid respect for all appearances he did not attempt to keep up the small talk which usually passed between them. He scarcely spoke to her, and only once looked in her direction.

Afterwards they stood for a moment together on the edge of the verandah, looking out into the quiet darkness. Here, too, custom was broken. It was the first time since their marriage that she had joined him after their ceremonious meal. A memory shot like a light through his moody silence.

"Aren't you afraid?" he asked brutally.

"No," she answered. There was no bravado--only a great physical weariness in her low voice. "I want to know what is going to happen," she said.

"Nothing."

"I thought--as I have failed so completely----"

"--that you could clear out?" He smoked for a moment in sombre consideration, then tossed his cigarette away from him. It glowed on the pathway like a tiny, watchful eye. "Of course you're free," he said finally. "I haven't any power to hold you. But if you go, then I shall be free too. The last article of our agreement will have been annulled. That's obvious, isn't it?"

"Yes--if you hold to your agreement."

"I shall." He gave a subdued laugh. "I am like Shylock, Sigrid. And you are one of those good Christians trying to cheat and possibly persecute their infidel creditor. What do you expect?"

"Just that." She waited an instant and then he felt rather than heard that she turned away from him. "That's all I wanted to ask you."

"Well----? Have you decided?"

"There was nothing to decide. I shall go on with it--whatever it is."

He heard the curtains fall. Throughout he had not looked at her. It was as though he withheld from her something which his eyes might have betrayed. When all was still again he took a book haphazard from the pompously crowded shelves and sat down beneath the light-bearing Venus to read. He sat very still, his dark eyes resting intently on a spot just above the page which was never turned.

The gold-faced clock on the table chimed ten o'clock. The thin, dulcet tones dropped into the quiet like pebbles into a still pool. They seemed to arouse the man beneath the lamplight. He got up and pulled the curtains across the windows. There was a door in the left-hand wall. It led into a room in which he kept his papers, and no one entered it but himself. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

"You are safe now," he said in the native tongue.

Ayeshi came out slowly into the light. His eyes were dazed-looking, but rest and food had restored something of their old fire, and that very return of life accentuated the deeper change in him. It was not only the lines which disease and want had chiselled among his features. The one-time boyish beauty had been hardened and sharpened by something more subtle than physical privation. His eyes, as they grew accustomed to the light, were no longer clouded with mystic dreams, but were stern and penetrating. His very bearing was profoundly different. His dignity had been gracious and unconscious; it was now conscious and commanding.

"You have done me great service," he said in an undertone. "I shall not forget when the time comes for remembrance."

"You are rested sufficiently to go on your way?"

Ayeshi nodded. He glanced keenly into Barclay's impassive face.

"You use our tongue to me?"

Barclay shrugged his shoulders.

"Is it not mine also?"

A faint hauteur compressed the fine lips. He turned away and lifted the edge of the curtain.

"I give you great thanks, Barclay Sahib."

"I ask no thanks of you, Ayeshi. You will find a horse at the gates. But first, can there be no trust between us? Can you not tell me whither you are going and to what end?"

Ayeshi turned, measuring the other man with a grave, scornful deliberation.

"I have learnt to keep my counsel where there is English blood," he said. He did not see the expression which passed like a withering flame over his companion's features. He lifted his hand in salutation, and the curtains fell noiselessly behind him.

Barclay waited, motionless. His breathing was quick and shallow, his whole body tense with pent-up excitement. As the muffled sound of hoofs reached him he turned the light out and the next instant was running towards the compound gates.

A syce leading a horse by the bridle came out of the shadow. Without a word Barclay caught the helmet and long cloak which was held out to him and swung himself lightly into the saddle.

"Which way?"

"Towards Heerut, Sahib."

"See that you remember my orders."

"The Sahib shall be obeyed."

Barclay's steel wrist brought his nervous, fidgeting animal to an instant's complete quiet. He listened intently. He could still hear the sound of hoofs, beating in the distance. He drove his heels into the Arab's flanks and rode out into the stream of pale starlight which flowed down towards the valley.

He rode at a quick canter, dangerous enough on the steep gradation and only justified by his knowledge of every curve in the narrowing roadway. His riding had nothing of the recklessness with which he had driven the night before. He held himself and his horse in the steel grip of a definite purpose.

At the bottom of the hill on which Gaya perched itself like a beautiful white bird he drew rein and again listened. There was no moon; the intense clarity of an Indian night covered the parched and gasping plain with a seeming luminousness in which nothing was visible but unrealities. Overhead the black burnished shield of the sky blazed with its mysterious, unreadable devices. But for the monotonous rhythmic thud dying in the distance the silence was absolute, painful, like the suspended breathing of a fevered body. The river was voiceless.

Barclay rode on. The road had narrowed to little more than a track which the drought and the passing of heavy wagons to and fro to the new bridge had made a trap of crumbling ruts and dust-covered holes. It was five miles to the river, and nearly two hours had passed before the rider caught the first murmur of water. It sounded faint and exhausted. In the vague light the new bridge looked like some monstrous dragon, its body spanning the half-empty river-bed, its thick-set limbs planted stolidly in the sluggish water. It needed no more than a ceremony for it to be complete. Yet Barclay turned up to the old bridge. In view of its approaching demolition it had been neglected and part of the wooden rail had been broken down, making the crossing at nightfall a matter of some danger.

Barclay chose it and rode across with slack rein. On the other side he dismounted and tethered his horse and went on on foot through the trackless jungle grass.

When he stood still he could catch no sound, neither the thud of hoofs nor the faintest movement. The high grass, as it yielded to his body, rustled and cracked deafeningly in his ears. His own breathing sounded like the loud panting of a hunted animal.

The temple lay sullen and dark and silent in the black shadow of the jungle.

Barclay reached the gateway. The obscurity was here so dense that his instinct alone guided him. He went forward deliberately, noisily, sensing the hands that waited for him, the eyes that watched him. Then he struck a light.

The next instant that for which he waited came, and, though he had waited for it, its swiftness and deadliness drove a scream from his lips--a scream that was smothered to a choking groan almost at its birth. He stumbled and fell, his hands twisted behind him, his unprotected face grazing the stones. He felt hot breath on his neck, the cut of a cord round his wrists. Gagged and helpless, he was jerked back to his knees and a dark lantern flashed its eye on to his bleeding face.

Beyond the dazzling circle he could see forms no more than shadows painted dimly against the dense blackness of the temple walls. Nearest to the light, Vahana's wild, expressionless eyes glittered with the cold lustre of a serpent's; but, as he grew accustomed to the light, Barclay recognized other faces, two headmen from neighbouring villages, a handful of priests wearing the Triple Cord on their shoulders, five non-commissioned officers from the native regiment. They crowded round him in a silent circle which contracted like a steel trap. But Barclay seemed neither to fear nor heed them. He threw back his head and looked up into Ayeshi's face. Then he drew himself together as a man does who knows that life and death hover in the balance.

"So you were a spy after all, Mr. Barclay?" Ayeshi said in English.

"No, Rajah, your servant," was the swift answer.

The fine nostrils distended with a deep-drawn breath.

"Do you know who I am, then?"

"I know that you are Ayeshi, the son of Ram Alla, who was deposed and driven into exile by the English. I know that you were saved by a few faithful who feared to breathe the secret even to you. I know that you have borne willingly a stigma which is another's. I know that you have starved and suffered and learned in the gutters of Calcutta that an unworthy English Sahib should go unpunished."

Ayeshi lifted his hand imperatively.

"How have you learnt these things?"

"I have ears in every village, Rajah."

"Why did you follow me?"

"I have a wish to serve you."

"You are English----"

"English!" Barclay laughed. "Yes, I have English blood in my veins. I am the son of the old Tristram Sahib who seduced my mother and brought about her death, who hunted down my brothers and our father's servants and shot them from the cannon's mouth, who gave honourable life to Tristram Sahib, the wealthy and happy and honoured, who gave life to me, an outcaste----"

"Yet a night ago you sat and ate with these, thy people----"

"That also is true. I fought for their friendship, Rajah, I grovelled for it. I schemed for it. I would have sold you and all these, my brothers, if they would have made me one of them. But they would not. They have chosen, not I. Last night, Rasaldu, the swineherd's son, would not sit at table with me. That was the end."

"You have an English wife."

Barclay laughed again.

"Who sold herself to me for a high price, who would rather die ten deaths than be a wife to me, who loves Tristram Sahib----" He broke off and jerked his head towards the intently watching Sadhu. "Vahana here knows something of what I say. Let him testify for me."

The shadowy, unreal circle of faces turned for an instant. Vahana bowed his head in assent.

"I have told you the truth," Barclay went on. "The best and the worst. I have risked life to tell it you. I knew what might await me here--a knife in the dark perhaps without a word spoken--and yet I had to come. Life can be more bitter than death. A man cannot live alone as I have done--there comes a time when his soul cries for his people."

They looked at him silently, without pity. The agony in his hoarse voice did not touch them. For them also he was the Pariah--the outcaste. He read their answer in their eyes and turned back to Ayeshi with a burst of passion.

"Take me--claim me--make me one of you! I have power--I have money--I can do for you what no other man could do. Either you must kill me or make me one of your blood. I know too much. There is no other way out for either of us."

Ayeshi did not move or speak. One of the two priests crept closer, avoiding Barclay's shadow.

"What can you do for us?" he whispered.

"You know very well, O Heera Singh! The drought is on us. The crops will fail. Is there a man in your village who does not owe all that he has to me? What if I make our Lord Ayeshi their deliverer--if he should free them from me? And I have money. Is all that nothing?"

The priest was silent, fingering his sacred cord with eager fingers. But Ayeshi knelt down and looked full into the Eurasian's face.

"You said that you would have betrayed us for their friendship," he said. "What if they came now and offered you their hands----"

"It is not in their power," was the swift and bitter answer. "They have tried--the river is too wide for them."

There was silence again. The yellow light revealed figures lurking behind them, black, vaguely defined forms which glided softly up and down the temple walls. Vahana had bent down and with his claw-like finger drew a pattern in the dust. It was the sign of Swashtika. Barclay drew his breath between his teeth. He laid his hand on the rough-drawn symbol and Vahana's hand closed down on his. The priest wetted his forefinger with his tongue and touched Barclay's forehead, tracing two horizontal lines. But Barclay did not feel him. He was only conscious of that hand, cold, hard, scaly. It seemed to envelop him, to glide up his arm and to reach down and close about his heart.

"One of our blood," the priest muttered, "for evil and for good we claim you one of us."

But Ayeshi made a gesture of proud impatience.

"There can be no evil," he said. "The worst that can come to any of us is death. And what is death but release? We who have seen our faith insulted, our gods denied, our dreams shattered--what is death to us? Each one of us has his own bitter wrong. Let him avenge it under my banner." He turned authoritatively to one of the native officers. "We have had enough of words. From henceforward there shall be nothing said which does not translate itself into action. You, Parga, what have you to tell me?"

The man answered with a military salute.

"All is ready, lord. We are patient. We do but await your signal."

"We have planned for the twenty-fifth of this month, lord," his companion added.

Ayeshi nodded.

"By that time we shall have our forces on this side of the river ready. Give me the map."

The map was spread out on the ground. Ayeshi traced a line down the length of the river, whispering his orders. Here and there one of the soldiers assented or offered a suggestion. The priests were silent but watchful. Their faces glistened like burnished bronze in the yellow light.

But Barclay felt and realized only that hand which had rested on his. It was as though he had plunged his arm into icy water and the chill had begun to creep through his whole body. His blood had become cold and sluggish in his veins.

He listened, and beyond the subdued voices he heard strange sounds--an intermittent rustling amidst the long grass, a hushed, sibilant whispering, the crack of a branch under the weight of a writhing, twisting body.

He lifted his head and it seemed to him that the jungle towered over him, roofing the broken walls of the temple with its sinister shadow.

Vahana watched him unceasingly.

* * * * *