The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
He said it with a mixture of arrogance, complacency, and appeal which
elicited no more than an enigmatic "It may well be, Meester Barclay,"
from the expressionless Hindu Kara cross-legged on the carpet.
Barclay got up and stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his
riding-breeches, his eyes roving from one to another of the expensive
atrocities with which the room was crowded.
"I've begun here," he went on, in the same tone. "I daresay they would
have fought me tooth and nail for possession of the place if they'd had
the power. But they hadn't. Even in Gaya money spells the last word,
and I had money. There isn't another bungalow like this in Gaya."
"That also is true," Lalloo assented. He turned his head for a moment,
fixing an intent look on the curtained doorway as though it reminded him
of something. "I know the place well. It was here in this room many
years ago that I found the body of the great Tristram Sahib. He had been
murdered. There was blood on the floor--almost where Meester Barclay
stands now. The carpet hides the stain. We tried to wash it out, but
the blood had soaked into the wood." He made a little regretful
gesture. "It had flowed freely, and we came many hours too late," he
finished. He gave his account as casually, tonelessly as he had recited
his accounts, not noting the uneasy start of the man in front of him,
but seeming to fall into a mood of profound retrospection. Barclay came
nearer to the light again.
"Murdered?" he echoed. "In this room--by whom?"
The sharp brown eyes lifted for a moment.
"That is not known. One could tell, perhaps, but he has been long
silent. The young and foolish swear he has not spoken for a hundred
years, but that is vulgar superstition. I remember Vahana the Holy Man
when he was young and handsome and loved a beautiful wife." He jerked
his head significantly. "It was her body I found out in the garden well
yonder," he added.
"Murdered, too----?"
Lalloo smiled subtly.
"Tristram Sahib was handsome and brave and lonely. It was said that he
had a way with women--and he was Sahib. No doubt she came willingly.
In those days, Gaya was not as now. She lived with him for a year
before the--accident. There was a child, but that was never found."
"And Vahana?"
The smile, unchanged, gained in significance.
"He was on a great pilgrimage to Holy Benares, Meester Barclay." The
old usurer put his hand to the neck of his tunic and pulled up something
which hung there by a cord. The thing glittered yellow in the light.
"See, this is what I found on her body-0an old bracelet--strange and
wonderful in design, Meester Barclay. I wear it, for there is a saying
that a murdered woman's jewels shield a man from the evil eye, and I,
Lalloo, who believe in nothing, am cautious. There was a fellow to it,
but that I gave to Vahana in remembrance of the wife he had loved. He
thanked me and went his way--some say to Kailasa, but there is no
knowing, for since that day no man has heard him speak."
Barclay, who had bent down for a moment, let the bracelet slip from his
fingers. He turned away and went and stood near the spot which Lalloo
had indicated, frowning down at it as though the stain were still
visible or bore for him some deeper significance.
"And so, because of a sordid tragedy, many years old, the place is
boycotted by all save outsiders--such as I am. Is that the delicate
point of your story, Lalloo?" he asked.
"They say a spirit dwells in this room," Lalloo answered indirectly,
"--an evil spirit," he added.
"Or a living one. Ghosts, if there are any, are men's deeds which live
after them. But there are no ghosts." He shrugged his shoulders and
laughed. "Look about you, Lalloo. A ghost couldn't haunt this room
now. He'd lose his bearings. It's changed since those days, eh?"
Lalloo looked at the marble Venus with her lamp.
"It is indeed wonderful," he assented.
Barclay swung on his heel and came back. He was suddenly neither
arrogant nor pleading, but utterly and rather terribly sincere.
"You don't think it wonderful," he said, softly and bitterly. "What you
think, God knows, but at least it's not admiration for me that you're
hiding behind your damned impassivity. I'm your partner--a very rich
partner. I'm Meester Barclay, that's all. But the youngest
whipper-snapper with a pink and white face and a pair of epaulettes is
Sahib." He stopped, trying to master himself physically. The lean
brown hands were clenched at his side in the effort. "Why am I not
Sahib?" he asked.
Lalloo spread out his hands.
"I speak to you in English. Is not 'Meester Barclay' the English way?"
he asked with deference.
Barclay laughed. The muscles of his handsome features still quivered
with the gust of nervous passion which had swept over him, but there was
a certain satisfaction in his laughter.
"Well, you have always a soft answer--and I understood. I am simply not
Sahib. They--your masters--have not recognized me, so you do not
recognize me. But all that is going to change, and when you see me
cheek by jowl with the best of them you will salaam and ask the bidding
of Barclay Sahib." He paced restlessly backwards and forwards in his
excitement, the mincing quality of his accent asserting itself. "You
know the law, Lalloo. A man is what his father was. My father was
English--I have got good English blood in my veins. I've always known
it--it would be damned awkward for some of them if I proved it. But, at
any rate, they've got to have me. I'm forging a gold key to their
strongest locks, and if that won't do, then----" He broke off again,
changing his tone to one of trenchant decision.
"I've got to have money--money enough to swamp them. I've got to have
those weavers. Once get a hold on the throat of the industries and the
rest's easy. Start at Heerut, Lalloo. They've had an epidemic, and
will be ready to sell their souls. You can give them easy terms--"
Lalloo got up leisurely.
"At Heerut--no, Meester Barclay," he said. "Not there."
"And why not?"
"The Dakktar Sahib lives in Heerut. He is a strange man. He has no
love for my calling."
"Well, are you afraid of him?"
"No; he drove a devil out of my son," Lalloo explained, without
particular emotion.
Barclay laughed irritably.
"That means fear, right enough. You think if he can drive out devils,
he can also inflict them. I know your ways of argument. Well, in the
name of the devil he exorcised, who is the fellow?"
"Tristram Sahib."
"Tristram----?"
"The son," Lalloo explained, his eyes on the spot near the curtain.
James Barclay turned on his heel and went over to the window. For a
full minute he stood there motionless and silent, seemingly intent on
the sound of English voices which drifted towards him over the darkness
of the compound. When he spoke again it was with a drawling heaviness.
"Tristram----the son? That's a curious coincidence. Still, I see your
point, Lalloo. You could not very well oppose him. Leave Heerut to me.
I shall manage. You can go now."
The old usurer lingered. He was watching the tall, stooping figure by
the window, his head a little on one side, as though he, too, listened,
but apparently to other sounds. Presently he slid noiselessly to the
door and drew back the curtain.
A woman entered.
Lalloo greeted her with silent deference. He lifted his hand half-way
to his forehead, looking in Barclay's direction, and the gesture was
nicely expressive of a courteous equality. Then he was gone.
Barclay continued to stand by the window. He had noticed neither
Lalloo's departure nor the woman's entry. Evidently the English party
outside on the road had just returned from some entertainment. He could
hear a fragment of a laughing reference to champagne, then an
indistinguishable murmur pitched in a graver key, and a woman's
exclamation of contemptuous disgust. Some one called good-night, a whip
cracked, and a light-wheeled vehicle rolled on its way down-hill towards
the dak-bungalow.
Barclay drew in his breath between his teeth like some one who has
received a hurt, but he did not move. The woman came nearer to him.
Her movements were quiet and graceful, and curiously typical of the
whole of her. Everything about her was harmonious in a supple, boneless
way. The big straw hat, made garishly ornate with artificial poppies,
flopped over the dark little face and its untidy, beautiful frame of
straight, jet-black hair. The light sprig dress revealed the yielding
lines of her body, and was in itself pretty and badly made and
carelessly put on. She had all the charm, all the lithesome fascination
of a young animal, but there were also lines in her face, in her figure,
which gave warning of a less lovely maturity.
As she came softly forward she clasped her hands, half in excitement,
half in a childish appeal, and they were long-fingered, olive-tinted,
and gaudy with bright rings.
"Jim!" she whispered. "Jim!"
He started. The moody dejection passed. He swung round, his features
blank with the very violence of contending emotions. For a moment he
stared at her, whilst the breathless joy in her eyes faded into hesitant
questioning, then into fear. "Oh, Jim," she repeated helplessly.
"Jim!"
He strode up to her, catching her roughly by the wrist, shaking her less
with anger than in a kind of panic.
"Why have you come?" he stammered. "How did you get here?"
She cowered like a dog before threatening punishment, and her eyes,
lifted to his face, were dog-like in their steadfast, wistful appeal.
"By train to Bhara and then I drove--for two days, Jim. But no one knew
me. I didn't ask any questions--I didn't tell any one. Not a soul. I
just found my way here. I had your letters and they described things so
wonderfully, I felt I was coming home. Jim, how beautiful it all is!
Much more beautiful than I ever dreamed!"
Partly she was trying to propitiate him, but partly the exclamation was
sincere. Her brown eyes were wide and bright as they passed over the
room's treasures, resting at last on the culminating vulgarity of the
Venus. Barclay followed her gaze, then, without a word, he released her,
and going over to the lamp, turned down the wick. It sputtered feebly,
throwing up decreasing flashes of light on to the white, stupid
loveliness of the goddess, and then died out. Through the darkness,
Barclay's voice sounded thick with anger.
"Anybody might have seen us from the road," he said. "You must be mad,
Marie, or bent on doing for my chances. Don't you know what I told
you--or did you just choose to forget? Good God, don't whimper! You're
like a child. You smash something and then you cry as though you were
the injured party----"
"I was so awfully lonely----" she broke in, piteously.
He was silent. She could not read his expression, but the quiet
following on his first violence suggested a furious effort to regain
self-control. She waited, not moving or speaking, and presently he took
up her plea, scrutinizing it with the level coldness of suppressed
anger.
"Lonely, you say? Hadn't you friends enough? You used to make me sick
with your boasts about them. There were the Mazzinis and the Aostas--in
our Calcutta days they lived with us, fed on us, borrowed from us.
What's become of them? You had money enough to buy the lot. Lonely!"
He exploded on the word, falling on it with a raging bitterness, then
choked himself back to his pose of judicial deliberation. "It did not
at all occur to you that I might be lonely, I suppose. It did not occur
to you that whilst you were lolling comfortably in your rut, I was
cutting new roads for us both through a granite opposition with not a