The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
"Why should you apologize? I also have my theories of life and death.
Yes--to die splendidly--on the mountain top, in a palace of gold and
silver, in the full tide of youth and strength, of one's own free-will,
not knowing decay or suffering--to look back on a life without ugliness,
without poverty or meanness--that is the goal--that is happiness."
"That is your vision," he said, smiling at her wistfully. "But you are
fire and air, and I am heavy earth."
She got up and went to the steps of the verandah, and stood there with
her back turned to him.
"Oh, your vision of me, Major Tristram--beware of it. Why do you make an
idol of me?"
But he did not answer.
Ayeshi came out of the shadow of the trees, leading the grotesque
Arabella and his own sturdy pony. Tristram half rose.
"No!" she said imperatively. "You have made me tired and wretched and
angry. You, a physician! You have got to cure me before you go."
"What shall I do?" he asked humbly.
She was quiet a moment, her finger to her lips. Her anger had gone, and
she was once more the being of swift and joyous fancies.
"Look--the moon is showing between the trees. It has made a white pool
at my feet, Tristram Sahib. Do you remember what you told me--how at
night-time you sat by the village fire and listened to Ayeshi's stories
of the great past? You promised that one day I should listen, too. Now
I claim fulfilment. We will sit round the moonlight and warm our hands
at it, and Ayeshi shall tell the story that his Sahib loves best. Shall
it be so?"
"Yes," he answered.
Both Mrs. Smithers and the soft-footed native servant, whom she now
marshalled in with a forbidding air of distrust, were waved imperiously
aside.
"No--coffee and Smithy are civilized--and we are miles from
civilization. We are on the borders of the jungle. If I listened, I
should hear the howl of the jackals--so I shan't listen, for I detest
jackals. There are monkeys overhead peeping at us and chattering soft
insults--and birds pluming themselves for sleep. The moonlight will be
on our faces, and it will be like the firelight. And the river shall
make the music to Ayeshi's story."
She slipped down on to the stone floor and sat there, cross-legged, her
chin cupped in her hand. The circle of pale silver reflected itself
back on to her earnest face and painted faint, mocking shadows at the
corners of her composed lips. Ayeshi crouched dreamingly on the lower
step of the verandah. On the other side of the little circle, Tristram
sat with Wickie drowsing at his feet, his hands outstretched as though,
to please her fancy, he warmed them at the firelight. Once, as Ayeshi
told his story, he looked across at her and his face was haunted with
weariness and suffering and famished desire.
Thus Ayeshi told of the Rani Kurnavati and her Bracelet Brother.
* * * * *
The moonlight faded. With Ayeshi's last words a chill darkness crept
over them, hiding them from one another and silencing them. It was as
though they had indeed warmed themselves at a fire which had gone out,
leaving them to the grey ash of their dreams.
Silently Ayeshi had risen and untethered the horses and led them towards
the gates of the compound. But Tristram lingered, standing on the steps
of the verandah, his face turned from the woman who looked down at him.
She laid her hands on his shoulders.
"And you who go out very gallantly, perhaps to meet the end which you
fear so little--have you nothing to ask first of life, nothing you
desire, no fulfilment of mad dreams dreamed by the river and by your
fireside--nothing that I might not grant?"
He made no answer. She felt him tremble under her hands. Her laugh was
subdued, pityingly triumphant.
"Oh, Tristram Sahib, do you think I don't know--do you think I haven't
read your heart?" she said.
And bent and kissed him.
*CHAPTER XI*
*INFERNO*
He pitched his tent outside the village in a paradise of brilliantly
painted flowers and high grass, whose bright emerald shone luminously
where the dying sun touched it. A pool in the shadow of the trees wore
a score of lotus-flowers on its still breast, and the ghosts of yellow
blossoms from the overhanging mango shimmered tremulously beneath among
the tangled undergrowth.
But there was no living thing. The sand at the water's edge was
unbroken by the familiar _pugs_, and the trees and the long grasses were
empty and silent. Death and over-abundant sensuous life lay side by
side. The very soil, rich and moist, gave out an aroma of sickly
sweetness tainted with corruption.
The native bearers shook their heads and crouched down near their
sleeping quarters, awaiting the loathsome, invisible thing with the
fatality of their race.
But Tristram shouldered his case of medicaments and sought the road
leading to the village.
The road was ankle deep in a fine powdery dust, which rose at each step
and hung in the dead air long after he had passed. There were
treacherous ruts which the dust covered, zig-zagging through what had
been slimy marsh-land and was now a crumbling, sun-baked bed of miasma.
Here, too, the stillness was absolute. The village roofs rose out of
the flatness like irregular ant-heaps, deserted by their once restless
workers. The night which came striding over the plain was a stifling
mantle, choking out the last breath of life under its smothering folds
of darkness. The quiet itself was eerie, unnatural, the terrible quiet
of a suffering which has passed protest.
Then at last there came a sound--a whimpering, inhuman cry--and the man
stood still, peering through the darkness. A form lay by the roadside
and held out thin arms of appeal towards him.
"Siva! Siva! Have mercy!"
He came nearer and knelt down. Once it had been a woman, but the
mysterious spectre which had laid hold of Bjura had laid hold of her and
twisted her out of human semblance. A child lay under her side,
round-limbed, smooth-cheeked, as sweet as the lotus-flower growing out
of the poisoned waters of the pool. The bloated, shapeless horror
slobbered and whispered over it.
"Siva--my little son--have mercy!"
Perhaps some knowledge of another, gentler faith had reached her that
she appealed for mercy to a power which knew none. Tristram bent over
her and drew the child away from her clawing, swollen hands.
"I am not Siva. I am the Dakktar Sahib come to help you. Do not be
afraid!"
"Have mercy, Sahib!" She lay on her back staring up at him through the
gathering gloom with terrible eyes. "Have mercy!"
"Give me your child. I will take care of it. It shall come to no
harm--I promise you. Trust me!"
She gaped at him with the chill non-comprehension of gathering
insensibility. Only the piteous appeal hung perpetually on her lips
like a maddening refrain. He took the child and freed it from its
filthy rags, and gave it to Ayeshi standing near him, impassive and
watchful.
"Take it back to the camp and do the best you can," he ordered.
"And you, Sahib?"
"I shall go on--presently."
He went back to the woman and knelt down beside her, taking the terrible
head upon his knee, and forcing a sedative between her lips. A
nauseating odour of disease rose up to him, but it did not nauseate him.
He knelt there and waited for the first sign of relief. And presently
the laboured, agonized breathing softened; she half turned, and her
palsied, distorted hand fumbled over his coat, groping its way down the
sleeve to his wrist. She took his hand and pressed it against her
burning cheek, against her lips. And he bore with her, holding her
closer as she neared the brink, whispering to her in her own tongue, a
medley of all the words of comfort that he knew. And all at once she
sighed deeply, and was quiet, with the quietness which was more than
sleep.
He got up and straightened out her poor body and covered her with her
rags, and went on towards the village.
It was night now. A smouldering fire from behind the first hut threw up
a sullen glow against which the low, ramshackle building stood out
spectrely. Tristram passed it, and a gust of foetid wind goaded the
flames to a sudden brilliance, so that he saw upon what it was they fed
themselves. A gaunt, naked figure crouched near the hideous embers,
and, turning as though to see whence the wind came, saw the Englishman,
and leapt up, wild-eyed, and fled, shrieking, into the black fastness of
the village.
Now the silence was gone, and in its place there were whisperings and
the pattering of naked feet. A woman's scream came from afar off.
Tristram stumbled over a body which neither moved nor cried out. He
stood still, knowing that he was no longer alone. The eye of the
electric torch which he carried flashed through the pitch darkness and
rested upon distorted faces, turned to him in an agony of dread. And
behind them, through the yellow haze, he caught a glimpse of bodies
heaped together in the gutter, of cowering figures, faces hidden against
the mud walls, of gaping doors, blacker than the pervading gloom, and
threatening a nameless horror. He himself stood out in the dim light,
tall and white and spectral. He moved, and the faces bowed before him
like the heads of corn in the wind, and a voice went up wailing,
piteous:
"Oh, Siva, it is the end--the end----"
The man whom he had seen crouching by the fire leapt suddenly out at
him, and he felt the cold breath of steel against his cheek. He warded
off the blow, and the madman came on again and again, and each time he
defended himself patiently and without aggression. The circle of faces
closed in. His light was out, but he could feel how the air about him
grew hot and stifling. They waited--stupidly, hungrily, with a frenzied
lust of death. If he fell--though they believed him God--still it would
be the end.
Even then he did not strike out. The last time, the delirious fanatic
stumbled and went crashing to the ground. Tristram bent over him,
turning his light on to the foam-flecked old face.
"He'll come round all right," he said calmly. "But we've got to get him
shut up somewhere before he does damage. Help me, some of you."
His voice sounded loud and clear amidst their low, formless whisperings,
but they did not move, and he picked the old man up as though he had
been a child. "Make way there!" he commanded.
They let him pass, but on the threshold of the hut he came to a halt,
arrested by a stench which was like a blow, staggering his senses. With
his free hand, he sent the light darting about the corners of the hut,
and then turned and came quickly out. There was nothing to be done.
Death, most hideous, had leered at him in triumph from a dozen frozen
distortions of the human body.
For one moment, as he stood there, choking down his physical sickness,
he may have known the agony of helplessness and isolation. But only for
a moment. He looked round, noting the gradual relaxation of the
fear-drawn faces about him.
"It's a pretty bad go," he said cheerfully, "and what your headman was
doing not to let us know before I can't think. However, we'll make the
best of it. Two of you go and pile up that fire I saw as I came in.
And I want at least five who aren't stiff with funk to carry these poor
devils out. There's not got to be a body left in this village by
daybreak. We'll get the rest out into the air where they can breathe,
and I'll soak you and the place in carbolic." They still hesitated, and
deliberately he turned the light on to his own face.
"Bless you, I'm not Siva. I'm the Dakktar Sahib--sent by the great
English Raj to put you all straight. But, by the Lord, if you don't do