Part 26

"I'll do whatever you want, Anne," he said heavily. "Everything on earth I can do. But I've got to think. I'll tell Martin I've had marching orders, or some lie. He knows the case, and can do everything as well as I could. I'll clear out to Heerut. I've got to see Ayeshi. In the meantime, you'll have breathing space to think things over too--and to decide. You can let me know." He went to the door and there hesitated and looked back at her with pitying wistfulness. "Anne, I don't repent much what I did to your father--I can't--but you didn't deserve to be hurt. And I've hurt you. I can't forgive myself that--ever."

He waited an instant. She did not move and he went out closing the door softly behind him.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*RETURN*

"When I heard folks say the place was haunted I just laughed in their faces," Mrs. Smithers asserted moodily. "I don't hold with ghosts and them sort, and in a general way I don't believe in them. But I believe in this ghost all right. We've tried to scrub it out, but it won't go and it's got the grouch on us for trying. It's just sucking the polish out of the furniture. And it's sucking the life out of me; I know that."

She turned to her companion lying curled up in the big basket chair and challenged contradiction with her own appearance. Sigrid looked back at her gravely.

"Your wig's crooked, Smithy dear. Of late its angle has been persistently drunken."

"What's it matter!" Mrs. Smithers returned. "Who cares? We might as well be drunk for all the notice these stuck-up nobodies take of us. What's the use of being respectable, if there's no one to see? Might as well fade away, comfy, that's my opinion." Whereupon, suiting her action to her words, she snatched the offending erection from her head, sat on it, and proceeded to rumple up the short grey hair till the last vestige of propriety was lost in a ludicrously rakish disorder. "Well, I've been respectable for your sake for two solid years, Sigrid, and it's nigh done for me. Now I'm myself again, and I mean to stick to meself or bust; so there."

Sigrid gave a laugh that ended with a sigh.

"Your nice, wicked, unprincipled self, Smithy! It reminds me of old times."

"H'm, does it? Well, nothing reminds me of old times in this horrible place. Nothing--not even you. You're just the outsides of what you were, Sigrid--a sort of husk. I don't know where you are--but the real you isn't here at all--and a good job too." She paused and then wistfully, rather shyly: "You don't even play nowadays, my dear."

Sigrid got up slowly.

"Smithy, one couldn't play in this room. I could play in a garret or in the streets, but not here. Fancy Beethoven and that marble atrocity! Even Elgar! No, no, I couldn't." She went out past Mrs. Smithers on to the verandah and there lingered for a moment. "Look at the sunshine!" she said dreamily. "That, at least, is always the same for the just and the unjust, the happy and the unhappy. Doesn't that console you?"

Mrs. Smithers shook her head.

"It isn't the same. It's an awful thing here. They say if it goes on beating down like that it will mean thousands and thousands of deaths. It's cruel. But, such as it is, it don't come inside this place, Sigrid. It beats down on the road out there, but it don't touch us. We're walled in--the Lord knows by what--but we're walled in."

Sigrid took her lace parasol and went down the steps to the wide avenue which swept round in a semicircle to the road. She still moved with her smooth, tigerish elasticity, but she herself was conscious of an overwhelming fatigue. It was as Smithy said--the spirit of the place had triumphed. Little by little it had overpowered the garish, incongruous splendours with which Barclay had sought to change its character. The life and gaiety which he had schemed for had never crossed the threshold, and now he no longer fought, but in sullen acquiescence watched gloom and decay rise like a sombre tide over its old ground. The place was moribund. The people in it moved softly and spoke instinctively in hushed voices as though somewhere in those empty rooms some one lay dead.

Sigrid reached the compound gates. It was still early in the morning, but the heat burnt down on the white road with the reflected fierceness of a near and monstrous fire. The air was thick and tasted metallic. A bullock-wagon toiled up towards Gaya, came to an exhausted halt, and then, in response to listless imprecations, creaked heavily on its way. The mingled sweat and dust lay in ridges on the animals' heaving flanks and scored the dark faces which were turned for a moment in Sigrid's direction. Man and brute were curiously allied in that blank and yet piteous stare. It was as though both visaged suffering and visaged it dumbly, patiently, accepting it as the decree of life.

Then all was still again.

A man on horseback turned the bend of the road and came at a lumbering walk down-hill towards the bungalow. She stood and watched him and an odd, unsteady smile of recognition played with the corners of her lips. No other man in Gaya rode such a lank, spindle-legged mare, no other man cut so quaint a figure, no other man could have worn those clothes and borne himself so bravely. For, despite that touch of the grotesque, there was something splendid and royal about him, something in his bigness, in the grand lines of his body, in his freedom and unconsciousness that made him physically kin to those giants whose fearless, joyous living glimmers through history and legend--to the Siegfrieds and the Beowulfs and the Parsifals, men of the forest and the mountain, who drank deep of life at its source and died on heights which our day has forgotten.

He carried a yellow-haired dog under one arm and an ordinary covered wicker basket was tied to his saddle, and despite his efforts jolted somewhat to the plaintive protests of a cat's mewing.

She would have turned and avoided him, but the bigness of him had held her riveted too long. He drew rein and swung himself to the ground beside her.

"I've brought you Richard," he said simply. He did not offer her his hand or greet her, although they had not spoken to each other for many weeks. He seemed to sweep all ceremony aside.

"I ought to have brought him before--I promised, didn't I?--but somehow I couldn't. It was like a slight to Wickie. He's had a rotten time though, poor chap. You'll make it up to him, I know."

She patted the mongrel's distrustful snout. The man's proximity shook her composure so that she seized eagerly on the first thought that came to her.

"What other passengers have you on board?" she said, with a little nod towards the heaving and mysteriously creaking basket at his saddle.

"My tabbies," he said solemnly. "They've got rather obstreperous since we've been civilized. My wife doesn't like them running about after me, so they had to be shut up, poor beggars, and there's nothing like shutting people up for bringing the devil out of them. Now I'm taking them with me to Heerut." He smiled a little. "I'm going back to the wilderness," he said.

He took off his helmet and ran his hand through the thick, tawny hair with a gesture like that of a sleeper freeing himself from the clouds of an evil dream. The light striking through the branches of the mohwa-tree lit up his face, and, looking up at him and reading all that the last months had wrought, she felt a pang of angry pity. If this was Siegfried, then it was not the Siegfried of Bruennhilde's fiery mountain, but the man of the Rhine Valley, Gudruna's man, fettered by civilization and weakened by its trickery and dishonesty. Had he also drunk of the cup of forgetfulness, she wondered? Had he lost his vision of the fire-girded rocks above where he had won his manhood? A flicker of the old mockery shone in her eyes.

"You don't look very well, Major Tristram," she said.

He shook his head.

"Oh, I'm well enough--physically at any rate." He laid his hand on his heart with a rueful laugh. "I've got a sort of spiritual indigestion though--it's this life--it doesn't suit me or my tabbies. It's too neat and tidy. I'm like that what's-his-name person who had to put his hand to his mother earth to keep strong. I need to be doing and fighting, struggling for existence in my mother wilderness to keep decent. Well, I shall have enough of that out there. Unless the drought breaks soon we're going to have more trouble. The unhappy folk in the village are beginning to die off like flies, and when the famine comes----?" He shrugged his shoulders.

"You don't look fit for such work," she exclaimed bitterly.

"I'm tired--that's all. I had a stiff day of it yesterday." He looked at her with a flash of boyish enthusiasm. "Hasn't any one told you?"

"No one has told me anything," she said. "People don't rush here with their latest gossip."

He flushed painfully.

"Oh, well, it isn't exactly gossip. It's about Boucicault."

"Boucicault?"

"Yes. You know Sir Gilbert Foster gave him up. Well, I found something Sir Gilbert didn't--a little spot on the brain not bigger than a pin's head. I operated yesterday, and I believe he'll get well. Isn't that a feather in my cap?"

He looked up, smiling into the sunlight, and waited for her to speak, until the silence became oppressive. Then he turned to her, drawn by an instinct which the next instant he knew was justified. He caught her by the arm, shaken from all his resolute self-possession by what her face revealed to him.

"Sigrid--what is it--you're ill--in pain----"

But she freed herself almost violently, steadying herself, forcing the blood back into her cheeks by a sheer effort of the will.

"It's nothing--don't fuss over me. It's the heat--nothing more----"

"Then you ought not to be out here."

She laughed defiantly.

"You're not my doctor, Major Tristram, and I won't be bullied. Besides, you've whetted my curiosity. There now, I'm all right again. What were you saying about Colonel Boucicault? You--you operated, and now he's going to get well?"

"I think so." But he answered absently. He was still intent on her face, striving to get beneath the mask. The moment's livid pallor had gone, but she was none the less changed. Her voice, level and quiet, had yet a new tone in it--a kind of hoarseness which he knew as a symptom of exhaustion and pain. She turned away, trying to avoid his eyes.

"Has he been able to speak?"

"Not yet. He is not even properly conscious. It may last some weeks."

She gave a little cynical laugh.

"I suppose some one will be glad."

"Anne--my wife."

"Ah, yes--your wife." Some new thought struck her. She turned back to him, with a line of perplexity between her arched brows. "Aren't you leaving him very soon?"

He hesitated, and then answered slowly:

"Dr. Martin is with him. I have to go to Heerut. It's not only my work. I've heard that Ayeshi's somewhere in these parts, and I've got to find him."

"What do you want with Ayeshi?" she asked, no less deliberately.

"I've got to bring him back. I only heard yesterday of the suspicion which sent him into hiding, and, I am afraid, to the devil. The suspicion is unwarranted. He's got to come back and be cleared."

"Poor Ayeshi!" she said under her breath.

He nodded, his eyes darkened with pain.

"He has suffered horribly and unjustly."

"Needlessly!" she corrected vehemently. "Uselessly! Who minds sacrifice or suffering or injustice so long as the end--the purpose--is clear and attained? It's the pitiable uselessness----" She broke off, tapping the ground with an exasperated foot. But he had heard the tears in her voice.

"Isn't that the horror of all suffering?" he asked, wearily--"its apparent uselessness? We can only hope it leads somewhere."

"Oh, for pity's sake don't be platitudinous!" she burst out. "It's almost as though I was listening to Anne talking."

"My wife!" he reminded her sharply.

"Oh, you are very loyal!" she retorted.

He was silent a moment, and then laughed, covering over his own pallor.

"It's only a sense of justice. A wife isn't responsible for the poor qualities of her husband's brains, is she?"

"She may be responsible for his becoming a sleek prig," she said cruelly, then, with a quick, almost girlish gesture of appeal: "Don't be angry, Major Tristram! The heat has disagreed with me mentally and physically. Let's talk of something else. Tell me something about your mother."

He looked at her, puzzled, and naively pleased.

"What shall I tell you about her?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know--tell me if she is well and happy."

He bent down to stroke the dog at his feet, hiding his face.

"I believe she is. In her last letter she hoped to live to welcome us both home----"

"Will that hope be gratified, Major Tristram?"

"I fear not," he answered unsteadily.

She was silent, looking wistfully ahead into the white sunlight.

"Ever since that day I saw her picture and heard her story I have been interested in your mother," she said at last. "She is the sort of woman whom one wants to be happy--whose happiness one would like to shelter to the end."

"One can't protect another's happiness," he said. "I've learned that much."

"I also," she said gravely.

He straightened up. His blue eyes rested on her face with a treacherous, smouldering trouble.

"I can't help feeling that you're--you're suffering," he said. "It's the only thing I'm quick at guessing at--if it's only physical--please go in and--and rest----"

She shook her head. There was a tenderness in her faint smile which a woman may feel for some big, clumsy, loving boy.

"I'm not tired. I come down here every day and watch life go past."

"Sigrid----" He faltered. "Does that mean that you are very lonely?"

"No--not very. My husband is always away now. Mrs. Boucicault and Mary come sometimes--and even Mrs. Bosanquet. I think they all love me, but they can't alter circumstances, and it makes them desperately unhappy. Often I wish they wouldn't come----" She waited a moment, studying his set features with a pitying knowledge. "I know what you're thinking, Major Tristram. You're comparing this life with the golden palaces and the mountain-tops, with my splendid living and splendid dying."

She burst out laughing and patted him on the arm. "Oh, my innocent friend, don't you know us mortals better than that--don't you know how we love to air our borrowed souls and talk largely and pompously about the ideals we've cribbed out of a novel? There is nothing in it--nothing. I just sold myself for an easy life in a mud hut in the valley. Let that comfort you."

He threw back his head, looking her full in the face.

"That's a lie," he said. "You must have loved greatly."

For a full minute they remained staring at each other in defiant silence. And under his unhappy eyes her expression changed and grew careless and indifferent.

"Well--perhaps you're right, perhaps I did love with all my heart." She held out her hand. "But I am very, very tired now. The heat is appalling. I wish you God speed, Major Tristram."

He scarcely touched her. He swung himself up into the saddle with a suddenness which startled Arabella into a youthful curvet. The tabbies mewed protest, and Tristram laid his hand soothingly on their basket. Then he looked down and saw Sigrid standing at his knee. The change in her held him motionless for all that every nerve in him ached for motion and action. Her small, pale face lifted itself to his in breathless eagerness; her parted lips quivered, the eyes were fiery with the glitter of sternly mastered tears.

"Tristram--tell me--are all the old dreams gone?" she asked huskily.

His mouth under the short ruddy moustache hardened.

"I am going back to find them."

"That's well--go back, Tristram. They may be all that are left any of us at the end. Our dreams are real--reality is nothing. See--!" She laid her hand on her breast with a curious gesture of self-accusation. "I am all your wife would call me--just a mean, soulless fortune-hunter. You've found me out. There is not one fine or noble or high thing in me--and yet your vision of the woman who danced that night, who has played to you the finest music in the world is no illusion, but the truth. Keep it--remember it. Perhaps"--she smiled faintly--"your memory of her may bring Undine to her soul."

He looked away from her.

"I can't help myself----" he said roughly.

"Don't try. Let us keep all the beauty that we can."

She laid her hand on Arabella's long neck and stroked it caressingly. And now something elfish and illusive dawned under her expression of intense earnestness. "Do you remember--you used to go down to the temple when the moon rose and dream you saw me dance among the ruins----"

"I was a romantic boy--half crazed with loneliness----" he broke in with repressed vehemence.

"The moon rises tonight," she said, so gently that he scarcely heard her. Yet something insistent, patient in her forced him to meet her eyes. He saw that they were dry and brilliant, tragically exultant. They betrayed her careless smile, the affectation of demure mockery with which she once more gave him her hand. "Major Tristram, I have a foolish presentiment that we shall meet just once again--and after that no more. Good-bye till then."

He did not answer. She turned lightly away from him. And he rode on down towards the valley.

*CHAPTER IX*

*FOR THE LAST TIME*

Memory has many merciless weapons, but none keener, crueller than a room which has belonged to our dead. Who amongst us has escaped that moment of return after what seems the culmination of all agonies when the mere position of a chair, a glove thrown down idly and forgotten, a little touch of familiar disorder tears open the freshly closed grave and shows us on our way to a new, seemingly endless road of pain?

Something of that impotent grief laid hands on Tristram as he stood on the threshold of his old home. The barely furnished room was as he had left it that night of Meredith's visit. An instinct had forbidden his return. Shortly afterwards he had gone to Trichinopoly to be married, and since then the place had stood deserted.

The camp-bed had been tidied by Meredith's conscientious hand, and the few breakfast things washed and replaced, but there was cigarette ash on the table and the lamp stood where it had burnt between them. It had a grey, dead look, as though it had burnt itself out. The chair where he had sat in that final hour of reckoning expressed vividly the movement with which he had risen. There were small, regular fragments of torn cardboard beneath the table, and the dust lay thick and white over them like a shroud. The dust was everywhere. It veiled the photograph of his mother so that he could not see her face.

And the dead man whose personality the place expressed so poignantly was himself. He felt towards it as a spirit may do, looking down on the body which it has quitted for ever. Not years, but a deep, narrow gulf of experience separated him from the grown boy who had lived out his joyous, romantic creed between these wooden walls, who had striven and dreamed in their cool solitude, and gone thence day after day to fight the bitterest of all realities, human suffering, himself living in a world of his own imagining.

Looking back, he saw that those had been winged days of inspiration. He saw that in his dreams he had stood close to the inner life of men which is greater than reality and had seen visions and been dimly, gloriously aware of great truths. These things had gone from him. He stood with his feet planted on firm earth and knew nothing but the dust and the turmoil and the darkness.

But because there was stern stuff in him, he went about his work patiently. With the help of the servant who accompanied him, he dusted and tidied like a woman, unpacked his medicine-chest and set out his instruments in their glass cases. The two tabbies which he had set at liberty prowled disconsolately about their old home, seeming to miss something. He called to them and fed them, but they did not respond, and presently they slipped out into the street and vanished. He let them go. He felt that they would not return. They had forgotten him and had grown wild in their captivity.

The brief dusk which precedes the Indian night shrouded the village street, when at last, his work done, he came out and closed the door of the hut behind him. The street was empty. That fact did not as yet appear strange to him, for the murderous heat of the day, far from relaxing, seemed to have become intensified and hung thick and sullen in the tainted air. Overhead the sky threw off its brazen robes and came out in a luminous purple, whose darker brilliancy was no less sinister. As yet there was no sign of the break for which the land waited in gasping agony.

Tristram went on his way towards the cross-roads. He passed a little group of old men returning from the river and would have spoken to them, but they salaamed and there was something in that ceremonious greeting, in their stony, expressionless faces which chilled the blood and forced him to go on wordless.

It was dark by the time he reached the council-tree. As he approached he had heard a murmur of voices, which were hushed as his shadow loomed up over the circle of squatting figures. In the brightening starlight, he recognized Lalloo in the place of honour at the foot of the battered idol. Other forms he recognized, and for the first time he became aware that he had seen only old men since his return.

The circle greeted him gravely. He sat down at Lalloo's side and filled his pipe. He talked of the drought and of the coming famine and asked after those he knew. The glowing bowl of his pipe threw a dull reflection on his face, and he felt that their eyes were fixed on him. They answered his questions with a measured slowness as though each word had to be chosen and weighed, and when his questions ceased they too became silent. One after another a shadow rose from the circle and glided out into the darkness.

Presently only Lalloo remained.

Tristram got up.

"Tell me," he said, "what is happening here?"

Lalloo lifted himself slowly and stood deferentially bowed, his hand caressing his beard.

"Nothing, Sahib."

Tristram smoked placidly.

"That is a lie, Lalloo. Once you were my friend."

"It is long since the Dakktar Sahib lived amongst us."

"Is friendship forgotten from one day to another?"

"There is a saying, Sahib, that it must be won every day afresh."

Tristram was silent for a moment, hiding from the other's eyes how sure and deadly the thrust had been. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm afraid fate means to give me another chance to serve you and win your friendship, Lalloo."

"The wheel turns but once in a life-time," was the enigmatic answer.

"That may be. Well, I don't intend to cadge for your good-will. I shall stay here and see you through whatever is coming. In the meantime, tell me where can I find Ayeshi?"

Lalloo gave no sign.

"Ayeshi comes no more----" he said.

"Doesn't he?" Tristram laughed grimly. "Well, the next time he doesn't come, will you tell him that I must see him. Perhaps his friendship will have worn better. Tell him that he may return to us in safety and honour."

"There is no return for Ayeshi, Sahib."

"Dead----?"

Lalloo glanced up through the darkness into the Englishman's face. For a minute his own manner changed, losing something of its impassive reticence.

"Sahib, there are things which no man may forget and prosper. For the sake of one memory--leave here, leave Gaya--there is an illness coming which even the cunning hand of the Dakktar Sahib cannot stay----"

"Is that a threat, Lalloo? Do you know me so little that you think I should turn tail----"

The old money-lender lifted his hand almost with authority.