Part 27

"No man can change the course of his fate, Sahib. But I have paid my debt."

He salaamed and slipped away into the irregular silhouette which the tumble-down huts threw into the palely-lit street.

Tristram lingered a moment. His pipe had gone out, and he lit it again with an affectionate care, which covered tension. An instinct, more delicate than a seismograph, inherited from men who had learnt at bitter cost the significance of a glance, had warned him. It fed itself on the unbroken silence, on the fevered, palpitating heat. The bo-tree, whose leaves quivered to the faintest breath, was still as though it, too, was aware of an approaching change and listened for its footfall. The very light which filtered down from the stars and poured in a pale stream between the black banks of the street carried with it a suggestion of a near and brooding menace.

Tristram walked slowly up towards the northern entrance of the village. In the past he would not have walked alone. There would have been Ayeshi on one side of him and some woe-begone villager on the other, with Wickie scampering in and out among the shadows, pursuing, with the uncrushable optimism of his kind, the elusive mouse. And Tristram, listening in memory to those past sounds and voices, was overwhelmed, not with a sense of an invisible danger, but with a bitter loneliness. He had now only one desire, and that to get away from these silent, watching walls, out into the open.

He walked fast, but by the time he had reached the narrow road along the river the first bar of moonlight had struck across the valley. He stood still again, for beneath the sullen muttering of the water he had heard other sounds.

Two horsemen rode out of the shadow. He made way for them, and as they came abreast the man nearest to him turned his head, so that the light fell full on to his face.

Tristram sprang to the horse's head, forcing the startled animal to its haunches. The rider made no sound, but his companion turned about instantly and bore down upon Tristram as though to force him back into the river. In that swift course of action not a word had been spoken on either side. The Englishman held his ground. With an iron skill, he dragged the plunging horse about so that it came between him and his aggressor, who reined in frantically on the very verge of the steep and muddy bank.

"Ayeshi!" Tristram exclaimed, imperatively.

The Hindu peered down into his face. The recognition for which Tristram waited with passionate hope did not come. Ayeshi drew himself up in the saddle.

"Let me pass, Major Tristram."

Tristram laughed between his teeth. The hope was dead in him. "No, by the Lord, I won't. You've got to listen to me first. I don't know what devil's game you're playing, but I know what you've done--what you've sacrificed for me--you've got to listen--I've a right to ask this of you----"

The second rider burst out laughing. Tristram could not see his face, but the laugh had a familiar ring. A pale satiric smile quivered at Ayeshi's mouth.

"I have ceased to be your servant, Major Tristram!"

"Have you ceased to be my friend as well?"

He waited. He heard a whispered appeal. Ayeshi's companion shifted his position and Tristram, though he could see nothing, knew that he was now covered by a revolver. He knew, too, that it was no threat but an intention. Death tugged at the leash. He drew himself up to meet it. Had he possessed a weapon, he would not have sought to defend himself. An overwhelming indifference akin to relief rested on him. He released Ayeshi's bridle and stood back a step. He was like a drowning man, fighting off the final and fatal apathy. "Is there no memory, Ayeshi, which gives me the right to appeal to you?" he asked.

The smile faded from the Hindu's haggard features. He threw back the loose white sleeve from his arm and pointed to the wrist.

"There is one memory, Major Tristram, against a hundred wrongs with which your race has afflicted me and mine. That memory has saved you. A life for a life----"

He made a gesture of proud authority. The next instant, both men were riding at a fast canter into the darkness.

Tristram listened absently to the water as it poured over the rhythmic thud of hoofs, till there was no sound left but its own languid murmur. The indifference with which he had faced the end receded from him like a narcotic before the returning tide of pain. He saw now that in that moment death had seemed not so much a release as a blotting out of failure, a passing on to the hope of a new and greater achievement. For he had failed. Upon the recognition Ayeshi had set the seal. He had ploughed and sown and watered the acre of earth which had been given to him in stewardship, and there was no harvest. He had poured out his strength and faith over that beloved ground, and it lay before him in hard unfruitfulness. The magnitude of his bankruptcy staggered and stupefied him.

It would have been better for others had Ayeshi forgotten his debt--better for Anne, entangled innocently in the mesh of his blunders, for his mother who would have seen in that death only a mysterious, tragic repetition. Both would have been spared the pitiable anti-climax of his career, one at least the publicity of an incomprehensible dishonour. He stood at the edge of the water, listening to its luring whisper as it slid past in the blackness beneath him, thinking of those two women. For in them he had worked out his creed of happiness, in them he had failed most utterly. One other woman indeed crossed his thought, but she stood apart, neither failure nor success, but a golden figure of enigma, a fancy, a dream that had become a reality, and had separated itself from him and gone into the turmoil and mystery of life, a separate individuality lost to him forever.

The moon rose slowly and majestically above Gaya's mountain. It poured its pale splendour over the plain and changed the black-flowing river into a polished, glittering road of silver. The man wrestling with his last problem stood in the midst of the light, his shadow thrown in gigantic outline against the high-standing grasses. And little by little the light permeated his greater darkness and reached his knowledge. He lifted his eyes from the black temptation and despair of the waters to the faintly shadowed disk rising in serene immortality amidst the music of her million worshippers. And suddenly the tension and horror passed from him. He lifted his arms above his head with a gesture of release and greeting. His stifled lungs drew in the life which came down to him from those vast heights of infinity.

This much remained; for the foolish and the wise, for the successful and the failures, for Lazarus starving in the gutter and the rich man starving at his loaded table--the earth's godliness, man's oneness with her and with his brother, as yet but dimly felt and broken by devastating storms of passion, yet moving on triumphantly to the divine, far-off event of perfect unity. Thus in his isolation he was not alone, but could reach out in fellowship to the whole earth. It did not matter that he had failed. Others would follow stronger and wiser than himself. They would till his barren acre--perhaps out of his very dust would spring the harvest which had been denied him.

The moment's ecstasy passed, but behind it followed a deep and healing serenity. He walked on slowly. "Our dreams are real--reality is nothing," Sigrid had said, and now the words were illuminated with his own knowledge. They gave her back to him. They lifted her figure out of the sordid ugliness of the events which had blurred and marred his vision of her. He had known her best when he had known her least, and as he knew her so she would belong to him and go down with him through all the years.

He reached the temple gateway. He did not know nor care what power had drawn him there. He stood in the entrance looking into the moon-flooded court, remembering those far-off nights when he had come there to picture her as he had seen her amidst the trumperies of a stage churchyard, transfiguring them with the energizing spirit of her genius. His imagination had painted her amidst the grandeur of these broken pillars. In his romantic fancy it had not seemed incongruous that she should dance against the background of an alien thought and art. Fearlessly he had linked beauty with beauty, perfection with perfection.

And as he stood there gazing down the softly radiant avenue of columns towards the black entrance to the _antarila_ he saw her. He knew one moment's agony of doubt, of fear, of mental disintegration as though the marvel of it had torn down the walls of his mind and spirit, thrusting him out into a bottomless void. Then, as a falling bird spreads out its wings and swings back in safety to its old heights, his mind rose out of the moment's chaos and went to her in passionate recognition. It did not matter then whether she was fancy or reality, whether he was sane or mad. The splendour and wonder of it was all.

At first she was a shadow among shadows. She seemed to hover on the verge of the light as a thought hovers on the verge of form. Then, without effort, seemingly without movement, so still and quiet did she hold her whole body, she glided out of the darkness, and, with her arms raised above her head, her face lifted to the flood of moonlight, she stood still, _sur la pointe_, poised in attitude of joyful waiting.

She wore the low bodice and short, full skirts of the old classic ballet. A slender wreath of laurel crowned the smooth, fair head. Though as yet she stood afar off from him, he knew that her eyes laughed, that her mouth was open in that wide, frank smile of happiness, that she was breathing deep with the foretaste of ecstasy. He knew, too, for what she waited--for the bar of music which should set her free.

It came at last. He heard it rush down through the stillness. It caught her up on its crest and swept her down the path of silver towards him. He knew it and recognized it. Its delirious beauty poured through his blood. And even if his instinct had not seized it she would have taught him. Her movements, her hands, her feet her body sang it to him.

She danced. Even in these moments when all clear thought was suspended he knew that this was something that his generation had never seen. It was the final word of a great art, often debased, now lifted to the heights where the soul pours through the body to triumphant expression.

She danced. Her shadow rose and fell upon the grey, time-defaced columns not more silently. There was no technical feat that she did not strike like a note of music in her passage, but the marvel of it was lost. As the daring flight of a gull, swooping from precipice to precipice, becomes a simple thing of ease and beauty, so her laughing, dangerous steps over the uneven flags seemed no more than an instinctive, effortless volition. As the brook leaps and sparkles over its rocky bed, now in sunlight, now in shadow, now rushing forward in headlong eagerness, now caught in a clear pool and held an instant in quivering suspense, so joyously and fearlessly she passed from the quick, brilliant passage of the waltz to its slower, deeper movement.

She danced. And it was a religion. Amongst the shades of departed worshippers she was the living spirit. She called them back from their dust-strewn oblivion to the rites of their mystic faith. She leapt the barriers of time and race. The ruined Hindu temple, its towering _sikhara_ rising up over its holy mystery to the stars, identified itself with her; she became its priestess, it became her natural background, the splendid shrine of her genius.

She danced. As David danced before the Lord, so she offered up the incense of her art to whatever was divine in that crumbling monument to man's faith in God. Greater than prayer or praise was the joy of her body and the laughter of her face lifted to the moonlight.

She danced. She had the austerity of nature. Her appeal to the senses was the appeal of a flower, of a butterfly's wing, of a lark singing amidst the azure, of the forest and the mountain and the running water. It was the appeal by which the earth calls men back to their sonship and the knowledge of her divinity.

She danced. And to the man who watched her she was all things that he had ever loved, ever believed in, ever hoped for.

A cloud passed over the moon and threw the temple into obscurity. She was for the moment only the shadow of herself. It seemed to him that the music had broken off and that she too had faltered. Then, as the light came out from behind the drifting darkness, he saw her glide down the avenue of columns, on tip-toe, her arms raised, her small fair head thrown back as though she drank in the growing radiance.

But her expression had changed. Her face had a look of child-like awe, of breathless, startled wonder.

She danced. It was the apotheosis.

She came like a leaf blown before the wind and like a leaf sank slowly to the ground. She was so small, so frail and white, she seemed no more than a flower lying on the great stone flags beneath the pillars.

He ran out to her. He knelt beside her and gathered her up with her head against his knee, calling her by name. But it was only the half-dazed dreamer who called her, for one glance at that white still face, with the faintly shadowed lips, told him that she could not answer. He lifted her in his arms. For all the sick horror that drove its claws into him he was still too much the man of action to hesitate. She was so light. It seemed to him that he carried a tired, sleeping child--something so frail and tender that his own strength seemed giant-like and almost brutal. He scarcely felt the burden of her, and yet before he reached the outskirts of the village he knew himself broken by her nearness. Her warmth enveloped him. He could feel the faint, irregular breath against his cheek. A perfume more subtle than a flower's reached his senses and stirred them to an exaltation that was beyond reason, far beyond desire. Her face rested against his shoulder and he could have bent and touched her cheek with his lips. He did not. He carried a Holy Thing--a vessel into which the Creator had poured all beauty--a lamp whose flame of genius flickered beneath the breath of death, a woman whom he loved with all the force and passion of his manhood. Beneath great banks of sullen cloud rolling up over the moon's silvered field, the village slept or seemed to sleep. He strode through its forbidding silence like a man possessed. He had become invulnerable, omnipotent. There was no force on earth that he could not have met and scorned in that hour save the invisible spectre stalking at his elbow.

He reached his hut at last and laid her on the camp-bed. He lit the lamp and with ruthless, skilful fingers ripped open the close-fitting bodice about her breast. He forced a stimulant between the blue lips. In everything he was as swift and sure as though no fear knocked at his heart, as though his own pulses beat with the smoothness of old custom.

It was done at last--all that he could do. She lay there in her deep unconsciousness like a fair princess from a child's dream. The laurel wreath had freed itself from the pale gold of her hair and fallen back upon her pillow, making a dark frame for her ethereal pallor. He took it gently and laid it on the table. Up to that moment he had held himself in an iron calm, but the touch of that simple ornament, with its poignant significance, struck deeper than all his memories. He turned to her and knelt down beside her, pressing the still hand to his lips in an agony of helpless pity.

The seconds passed. Each one, for the man kneeling there, was measured by the sound of the quick-drawn, shallow breath. Each one, as it passed, left behind a deepening hope. His fingers rested on her pulse, and as though his will drew her back from the depths into which she had been sinking, he felt it slowly steady and strengthen.

And suddenly he looked up, knowing that her eyes were open.

They were very clear--very peaceful. They looked down into his haggard face with a wondering tenderness. Her lips moved. Twice she essayed to speak. He drew closer to her.

"Wasn't it the end----?" she whispered. He shook his head. He could not have answered her. "Isn't it the end, Tristram? I'm--I'm dying, am I not? Tell me--I'm not afraid--not very--tell me----"

"No--please God----"

She smiled with a ghostly touch of her old mockery.

"You--you believe in God, Tristram. Do you care so much?"

"Yes--I care."

She lifted her little hand as though it was almost too heavy a burden for her weakness, and laid it on his bowed head.

"It doesn't matter what we say to each other now--we don't need to pretend. I'd hoped there would be no coming back, but now I'm glad. I love you, Tristram."

"I love you," he answered.

And therewith there came silence and peace into his tumult. The warring events of their lives poured into a deep and tranquil river flowing on irresistibly seawards. They knew now with the great certainty which comes in such moments that there was no end, no power in heaven or earth to blot out that simple confession and all that it must mean, now and in whatever hereafter awaited them. He could look into her face over which death had passed its hand, without fear, almost without pain. She too had ceased to suffer. Her hand caressed him softly.

"I knew you would come, Tristram."

"I had to--all the time I was coming to you."

"I danced for you. I've never danced like that before--it was the last time----"

"Sigrid--if you knew--why did you do it?--why have you hurt us both?"

"Have I hurt you?" She drew herself up a little, looking down at him with an exquisite compassion in her fading eyes. "Dear, it was to make you happy--to give you back all you had lost--I wanted you to see me--at the last--on the mountain-top--in my golden palace--don't you remember----? Not in decay and ugliness--but in beauty."

"It has always been in beauty!" he cried out in passionate protest.

She shook her head. Her eyes no longer saw him. They were fixed ahead on some brightening vision.

"Not always. You and I--we saw the same sunrise but we were afar off from each other. We stood on different mountain-peaks--there was a great valley between, which one of us had to cross before we could stand together. And one night--I couldn't bear to be so far off from you and I saw that your mountain-peak was higher than mine and nearer to the sun--and I made up my mind. I came down from my heights and went through the valley. It was so ugly--quagmire and darkness--and loathsome things--sometimes I felt I could never be clean again and sometimes that I should not have the strength to reach you--and in that time you could not see me but in the end we stood together--we're near each other now, Tristram----"

Her voice faded into an exhausted silence. He knew that her mind was clouded with a rising mist of old memories, old doubts and struggles. He could not wholly understand, and yet the recognition of an immeasurable, fearlessly born suffering came to him with her broken, fevered murmurs.

He bowed his face upon her hands.

"My mountain heights--oh, Sigrid, they have been low enough--if you knew how low----"

"I know everything--everything----"

He was silent. The certainty, serene and complete, broke in a shaft of light through his darkness. He lifted his face to hers. Her eyes were closed. Her fair head had fallen a little on one side in an attitude of great weariness. Slowly, in answer to his imperative appeal, her eyes opened. They were at first dim and expressionless as though she withdrew her sight from some inner vision.

"Everything--Sigrid?"

"Everything," she answered.

"Barclay----"

"He told me--but I knew more--I knew everything. Because I loved you I understood."

A fine, contemptuous smile touched her suffering lips. "I knew Anne, too. I knew how she had chosen----"

He got up, driven to his feet by an intolerable knowledge.

"Then you shielded me----"

"Do you grudge me that little comfort?" she whispered. Then as he stood staring down at her, she made a little helpless effort to touch his hand. "Bracelet--brother--you mustn't be too proud----"

"Oh, God----" he burst out. "It isn't that--don't you know I love you too--and you've suffered----"

"I've lived as I wished to live," she said with a sudden thrilling clearness, "and when I couldn't help you any more--when I saw that it was all useless I made an end--my end. I didn't mean to tell you--I meant to leave you a perfect memory--and to go silently. But you called me back. You made me--if you love me--you will be glad."

She struggled up on to her elbow, gasping for breath, and he saw the greyness creeping to her cheeks. He turned to fetch fresh stimulants, but she clung to him with an incredible strength.

"No--stay with me, Tristram--these must be perfect minutes--we've earned them--they're ours--there's nothing to regret--a happy death--it's what we live for--I'm happy--madly happy. Stay with me, Tristram--don't leave me in all this darkness----"

He dropped to his knees beside her. He slipped his arm beneath her shoulders, holding her in an embrace of desperate tenderness. She threw back her head, smiling.

"Kiss me, Tristram."

Their lips met. She fell back with a short sigh and lay still, her mouth a little open as though in the midst of a laughing triumph she had fallen asleep. But presently she stirred and drew closer to him.

"Happy, Tristram?"

"Yes," he answered.

And indeed all anguish, all fear had gone from them both. They had gone down together into a sea in which there was no thought, no memory, no desire. The coming night enclosed them, shielding them from the future.

"It's because I'm dying----" Then suddenly she laughed softly, contentedly. "Those steps--in the fast movement--no one--no one has ever dared them--no one has ever danced like that--it was a great triumph--the greatest----"

He bent and touched her forehead with his cheek, soothing her. She smiled a little as though in gratitude, and sighing, fell asleep.

He did not move. He knelt there listening to her breathing. It hypnotized him, drowning his consciousness in its sweet, unbroken rhythm. It conveyed no meaning to him. He had passed out of the regions of hope and dread into the serenity of resignation.

Far off, in some other world, he heard the whisper of rain, the patter of heavy drops in the dust-laden street. He heard voices--exultant, hysterical. A pregnant coolness crept into the suffocating quiet. He knew that the drought had broken--that the rains had come.

But it was another world. In this world there was nothing but himself and this one woman.

He bent lower to catch a murmur from her parted lips. One small hand still rested on his breast, clinging to him. Its hold was greater than death--stronger than the threat of life. It drew him down with her into her peace.

* * * * *

She awoke as the grey, rain-swept dawn crept sullenly through the open doorway. Only little by little had she fought back the engulfing oblivion. The shadow of the man standing beside her, watching her, had loomed huge and unreal. But now she saw his face and knew him.

"Tristram!" she whispered.

He seemed to draw himself up to a greater height. His features were haggard and painted with the livid pallor of the light.

"A messenger has gone to Gaya," he said. "They will send Smithy with a litter----"

"Tristram--I'm going to live?"

"Yes," he said, "the danger is over."