*The Hermit Doctor of Gaya*
A Love Story of Modern India
By
I. A. R. Wylie
Author of "The Native Born," etc.
"This kiss to the whole world"
_Beethoven's Ninth Symphony_
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY
I. A. R. WYLIE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
*CONTENTS*
_BOOK I_
CHAPTER
I.--The Story of Kurnavati
II.--Tristram the Hermit
III.--Tristram Becomes Father-Confessor
IV.--The Interlopers
V.--A Vision of the Backwater
VI.--Broken Sanctuary
VII.--Anne Boucicault Explains
VIII.--The Two Listeners
IX.--Lalloo, the Money-Lender
X.--An Encounter
XI.--Inferno
XII.--In which Fortune Pleases to Jest
XIII.--Crossed Swords
XIV.--Tristram Chooses his Road
XV.--The Weavers
XVI.--A Meredith to the Rescue
XVII.--Mrs. Smithers Does Accounts
XVIII.--The Feast of Siva
_BOOK II_
I.--Mrs. Compton Stands Firm
II.--A Home-Coming
III.--Mrs. Boucicault Calls the Tune
IV.--Anne Makes a Discovery
V.--Crisis
VI.--"Of your Blood"
VII.--The Price Paid
VIII.--Return
IX.--For the Last Time
X.--Anne Chooses
XI.--Freedom
XII.--The Meeting of the Ways
XIII.--To Gaya!
XIV.--Resurrection
XV.--The Snake-God
XVI.--Towards Morning
*The Hermit Doctor of Gaya*
_*BOOK I*_
*CHAPTER I*
*THE STORY OF KURNAVATI*
"Thus it came about that, for her child's sake, the Rani Kurnavati saved
herself from the burning pyre and called together the flower of the
Rajputs to defend Chitore and their king from the sword of Bahadur
Shah."
The speaker's voice had not lifted from its brooding quiet. But now the
quiet had become a living thing repressed, a passion disciplined, an
echo dimmed with its passage from the by-gone years, but vibrant and
splendid still with the clash of chivalrous steel.
The village story-teller gazed into the firelight and was silent.
Swift, soft-footed shadows veiled the lower half of his face, but his
eyes smouldered and burnt up as they followed their visions among the
flames. He was young. His lithe, scantily-clad body was bent forward
and his slender arms were clasped loosely about his knees. Compared
with him, the broken circle of listeners seemed half living. They sat
quite still, their skins shining darkly like polished bronze, their eyes
blinking at the firelight. Only the headman of the village moved,
stroking his fierce grey beard with a shrivelled hand.
"Those were the great days!" he muttered. "The great days!"
The silence lingered. The Englishman, whose long, white-clad body
linked the circle, shifted his position. He lay stretched out with a
lazy, unconscious grace, his head supported on his arm, his eyes lifted
to the overhanging branches of the peepul tree, whose long, pointed
leaves fretted the outskirts of the light and sheltered the solemn,
battered effigy of the village god like the dome of a temple. A suddenly
awakened night-breeze stirred them to a mysterious murmur. They rustled
tremulously and secretly together, and the clear cold fire of a star
burnt amidst their shifting shadows. Beyond and beneath their
whispering there were other sounds. A night-owl hooted, a herd of
excited, lithe-limbed monkeys scrambled noisily in the darkness
overhead, chattered a moment, and were mischievously still. From the
distance came the long, hungry wail of a pariah dog, hunting amidst the
village garbage. These discords dropped into the night's silence,
breaking its placid surface into widening circles and died away. The
peepul leaves shivered and sank for an instant into grave meditation on
their late communings, and through the deepened quiet there poured the
distant, monotonous song of running water. It was a song based on one
deep organ note, the primaeval note of creation, and never changed. It
rose up out of the earth and filled the darkness and mingled with the
silence, so that they became one. The listeners heard it and did not
know they heard it. It was the background on which the night sounds of
living things painted themselves in vivid colours.
The Englishman turned his face to the firelight.
"Go on, Ayeshi," he said, with drowsy content. "You can't leave the
beautiful Rani in mid-air like that, you know. Go on."
"Yes, Sahib." The young man pushed back the short black curls from his
neck and resumed his old attitude of watchfulness on the flames. But
his voice sounded louder, clearer:
"Thereafter, Sahib, the need of Chitore grew desperate. In vain, the
bravest of her nobles sallied forth--the armies of Bahadur Shah swept
over them as the tempest sweeps over the ripe corn, and hour by hour the
ring about the city tightened till the very gates shivered beneath the
enemy's blows. It was then the Rani bethought her of a custom of her
people. With her own hands she made a bracelet of silver thread bound
with tinsel and gay with seven coloured tassels, and, choosing a trusty
servant, sent him forth out of Chitore to seek Humayun, the Great
Moghul, whose conquering sword even then swept Bengal like a flail. By
a miracle, the messenger escaped and came before Humayun and laid the
bracelet in his hands, saying:
"'This is the gift of Kurnavati, Rani of Chitore.'
"And Humayun looked at the messenger and asked:
"'And if Humayun accept the gift of the Rani Kurnavati, what then?'
"'Then shall Humayim be her bracelet-bound brother, and she shall be his
dear and virtuous sister.'
"And Humayun looked at the gift and asked:
"'And if I become bracelet-bound brother to the Rani Kurnavati, what
then?'
"'Then will the Rani of Chitore call upon her dear and reverend brother,
according to the bond, to succour her from the cruel vengeance of
Bahadur Shah.'
"And because the heart of Humayun loved all chivalrous and noble deeds
better than conquest and rich spoils, he took the bracelet and bound it
about his wrist, saying: 'Behold, according to the custom, Humayun
accepts the bond, and from henceforth the Rani Kurnavati is his dear and
virtuous sister, and his sword shall not rest in its scabbard till she
is free from the threat of her oppressors.' And he set forth with all
his horsemen and rode night and day till the walls of Chitore were in
sight."
"Well----?" The story-teller had ceased speaking and the Englishman
rolled over, clipping his square chin in his big hands. "Go on,
Ayeshi."
"He came too late." The metal had gone from the boy's voice, and the
firelight awoke no answering gleam in his watching eyes.
"The Rani Kurnavati and three thousand of her women had sought honour on
the funeral pyre. The grey smoke from their ashes greeted Humayun as he
passed through the battered gates. The walls of Chitore lay in ruins
and without them slept their defenders, clad in saffron bridal robes,
their faces lifted to the sun, their broken swords red with the death of
their enemies. And Humayun, seeing them, wept."
Ayeshi's voice trailed off into silence. The headman nodded to himself,
showing his white teeth.
"Those were the great days," he muttered, "when men died fighting and
the women followed their husbands to the----" He coughed and glanced at
the Englishman.
"But ours are the days of the Sahib," he added, with great piety, "full
of wisdom and peace."
"Just so." The Sahib rose to his feet, stretching himself. "And,
talking of wives, Buddhoos, if thou dost not give that luckless female
of thine the medicine I ordered, instead of offering it up to the
village devil, I will mix thee such a compound as will make thy
particular hereafter seem Paradise by comparison. Moreover, I will
complain to the Burra Sahib and thou wilt be most certainly degraded and
become the mock of Lalloo, thy dear and loving brother-in-law.
Moreover, if I again find thirty of thy needy brethren herded together
in thy cow-stall, I will assuredly dose thy whole family. Hast thou
understood?"
The headman salaamed solemnly.
"The Dakktar Sahib's wishes are law," he declared fervently.
"I should like to think so. And now, Ayeshi, it is time. We have ten
miles to go before morning. Give me my medicine-chest. I see that
Buddhoos has a longing eye on it. Come, Wickie!"
The last order was in English, and a small, curious shape uncurled
itself from the shadows at the base of the tree and trotted into the
firelight. The most that could be said of it with any truth was, that
it had been intended for a dog. Many generations back there had been an
Aberdeen in the family, and since then the peculiarities of that
particular strain had been modified to an amazing degree by a series of
_mesalliances_. In fact, all that remained of the Aberdeen were a pair
of bandy legs and a wistful, pseudo-innocent eye. Nevertheless, it was
evidently an object of veneration. The village elders made way for it,
regarding it with gloomy apprehension as it leisurely stretched itself,
yawned, and then, with the dignity which goes with conscious yet modest
superiority, proceeded to follow the massive white figure of its master
into the darkness.
The headman salaamed again deeply and possibly thankfully.
"A safe journey and return, Sahib!" he called.
The Sahib's answer came back cheerily through the stillness. He looked
back for an instant at the patch of firelight and the sharply cut
silhouettes of moving figures, and then strode on, keeping well to the
middle of the dusty roadway, his footsteps ringing out above the soft
accompaniment of Ayeshi's patter and the fussy tap-tap of Wickie's
unwieldy paws. He whistled cheerfully. So long as the sleeping,
odoriferous mud-huts of the village bound them in on either hand, he
clung tenaciously to his disjointed scrap of melody, but, as they came
out at last into the open country, he broke off, sighing, and stood
still, his arms outstretched, breathing in the freedom and untainted air
with a thirsty, passionate gratitude.
There was no moon. The luminous haze which poured out over the
limitless space before them was a mysterious thing, born of itself
without source, without body. Its pallid, greenish clarity stretched in
a ghostly sea between the earth and the black, beacon-studded sky,
distorting and magnifying, as still water distorts and magnifies the
rocks and tangled seaweed at its bed. It lapped soundlessly against the
cliff of rising jungle land to the right, and beneath its quiet surface
the shadow of the village temple floated like a sunken island, its
slender _sikhara_ alone rising up into the darkness, a finger of warning
and admonition. It was very still. The voice of the invisible,
swift-flowing river had indeed grown louder, but it was a sound outside
this world of shadows and phantoms. It beat against the protecting wall
of dreams, unheeded yet ominous and threatening in its implacable
reality.
The two men crossed the path which encircled the village and made their
way over the uneven ground towards the temple. As they drew nearer, the
light seemed to recede, leaving the great roofless _manderpam_ a