The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India

shapeless ruin, whilst the _sikhara_ faded into the black background of the jungle. The Dakktar Sahib whistled softly; a horse whinnied in answer, and the amazing Wickie bounded forward as though recognizing an old acquaintance. The Sahib laughed under his breath. "We know each other, Wickie, Arabella and I," he said. "A wonderful animal that, Ayeshi." "Truly, a noble creature, Sahib," Ayeshi answered very gravely. A minute later they reached the carved gateway of the temple where two horses had been casually tethered. They stood deep in shadow, but the strange, unreal light which covered the plain filled the _manderpam_ with its broken avenue of pillars, and threw into sharp relief the carved gateway and the figure seated cross-legged and motionless beneath the arch. Both men seemed to have expected the apparition. Ayeshi knelt down before it and placed a bowl of milk, which he had been carefully carrying, within reach of the long, lifeless-looking arms. "For the God thou servest, O Holy One," he said, and for a moment knelt there with his forehead pressed to the ground. The old mendicant seemed neither to have heard nor seen. He was almost naked. The bones started out of the shrivelled flesh, and the long, matted grey hair hung about his shoulders and mingled with the dishevelled beard, so that he seemed scarcely human, scarcely living. Only for an instant his eyes, half hidden beneath the wild disorder, flashed over the kneeling figure, and then closed, shutting the last vestige of life behind blank lids. The Dakktar Sahib bent down and placed a coin in the upturned palms. "That also is for thy God, Vahana," he said, with grave respect. Receiving no answer, he turned away and untethered his horse, a quadruped which even the solemn shadow could not dignify. It must have stood over seventeen hands high and its shape was comically suggestive of a child's drawing--six none too steady lines representing legs, back, and neck. The Dakktar Sahib whispered to it tenderly and reassuringly: "Only ten miles, Arabella, on my word of honour, only ten miles. And you shall have all tomorrow. I know it's rotten bad luck, but then I have got to stick it, too--it's our confounded, glorious duty to stick it, Arabella, and you wouldn't leave me in the lurch, would you, old girl?" Then came the crunch of sugar and the sound of Arabella's affectionate nozzling in the region of coat pockets. The Dakktar swung himself on to her lengthy back. "Now, then, Ayeshi; now then, Wickie!" The three strange companions trotted out of the shadow, threading their way through the long, coarse grass in the direction of the river; but once the Englishman turned in his saddle and looked back. By some atmospheric freak, the temple seemed to have drawn all the green phosphorescent haze into its ruined self and hung like a great, dimly lit lamp against the wall of jungle. The Dakktar Sahib lingered a moment. "They must have dreamed wonderfully in those old days," he said, wistfully. "To have built that--think of it, Ayeshi! To have given one's soul an abiding expression to wake the souls of other men thousands of years hence--to bring a lump into the throat of some human being long after one's bones have crumbled to dust. Well--well----" He broke off with a sigh. "And you believe that tonight the Snake God will drink your milk, Ayeshi?" "He or his many brethren, Sahib. He lies coiled about the branches of the highest tree in the jungle and on every branch of the forest another such as he keeps guard over his rest." "No man has ever seen him, Ayeshi?" "No man dares set foot within the jungle, Sahib, save Vahana, and he is a Sadhu, a holy man. He has sat before the temple for a hundred years, and none have seen him eat or heard him speak." "You believe that, Ayeshi?" The boy hesitated a moment, then answered gravely: "Yes, Sahib. My people have believed it." "Your people? Well--that's a good reason--one of our pet reasons for our pet beliefs, if you did but know it, Ayeshi. There's not such a gulf between East and West, after all." He rode on in silence, and then turned his head a little as though trying to distinguish his companion's features through the darkness. "Who are your people, Ayeshi--your father, your mother, your brothers? You have never spoken of them. Are they dead?" "I do not know, Sahib. I have never known father or mother or brethren." The Dakktar Sahib nodded to himself. "You are not like the other villagers," he said. "One feels it--one doesn't talk in the same way to you. Tell me, Ayeshi, have you no ambitions?" "None but to serve you, Sahib." The Englishman threw back his head and laughed. "Well, that's a poor sort of ambition. Why, I might get knocked on the head any time--typhoid, cholera, enteric--I'm cheek by jowl with the lot of them half the days of my life. And then where would you be, Ayeshi?" "I should follow you, Sahib." "That sounds almost biblical. And what for, eh?" "Because of this, Sahib----" Suddenly and passionately, he discarded the English language which he used with ease and plunged into his own vernacular. "Behold, Sahib, there is the snake-bite on my arm, the wound which the Sahib cleansed with his own lips. Is that a thing to be forgotten? A life belongs to him who saves it." "Pooh, nonsense!" The Englishman leant over his saddle. "For the Lord's sake, Wickie, keep away from Arabella's hoofs! Are you a dog or an idiot? Ayeshi, you don't understand. That sort of thing's my job--there, now, you've nearly run us into the river with your silly chatter----" They drew rein abruptly. It was now close on the dawn, and the darkness had become intensified. The stars seemed colder and dimmer. Where they stood, their horses snuffing nervously at the unknown, they could hear the steady hurrying of the water at their feet, but they could see nothing. The Englishman patted the neck of his steed with a comforting hand. "In a year or two, there will be a bridge across," he said. "Then Mother Ganges won't have such terrors for us." "Mother Ganges demands toll of those who curb her," Ayeshi answered solemnly. "You mean, that no bridge could be built here?" "I mean, Sahib, that the price will be a heavy one." The Dakktar Sahib made no answer. Suddenly he laughed, not as though amused, but with a vague embarrassment. "That was a fine story you told us tonight, Ayeshi. I don't know what there was about it--something that made one tingle from head to foot. I've been thinking of it on and off all the time. Those were days when men did mad, splendid things--bad too--worse than anything we do, but also finer. Sometimes one wishes--but it's no good wishing. The Rani Kurnavati and her bracelet are gone forever." "Humayun also is dead," Ayeshi said, in his grave way. "You mean----? Yes, that's true, too, I suppose. But oh Lord"--he lifted himself in his saddle with a movement of joyous, fiery vitality--"though I'm no Great Moghul, worse luck, still, if a woman sent _me_ her bracelet and she were being murdered on the top of Mount Ararat, I'd----" "The Sahib would come in time," Ayeshi interposed gently and significantly. The Englishman dropped back in his saddle. "Well, anyhow, Arabella, Wickie, and I would have a good shot at it," he said, gaily. He turned his horse's head eastwards and touched her gently to a trot. "But it's no good bragging. No one's going to make either of us bracelet brother. That's not for the like of us. And meanwhile, we've got eight miles to go and the dawn will be on us in an hour. I wish we'd got the seven-league boots handy. But you don't know the story of the seven-league boots, do you, Ayeshi? I'll tell it you as we go along. A story for a story, eh?" "Yes, Sahib." They trotted off along the bank of the river, Arabella slightly in advance, Wickie skirmishing skilfully on either hand, the Dakktar Sahib's voice mingling with the song of the waters as he told the story of the seven-league boots. Behind them the temple had sunk into profound shadow. Vahana, the mendicant, still sat beneath the archway. He took the bowl of milk and drained it thirstily. The coin he spat on with a venomous hatred and sent spinning into the darkness. *CHAPTER II* *TRISTRAM THE HERMIT* "Of course, all that one can do is to hope," Mrs. Compton said, ruffling up her dark, curly hair with a distracted hand. "I don't know who it was talked about hope springing eternal in the something-something, but he must have lived in Gaya. If we hadn't hope and pegs in this withered desert----" "My dear," her husband interposed, "in the first place, Gaya isn't a desert. It's the Garden of India. In the second place, no lady talks about pegs--certainly not in the tone of devout thankfulness which you have used. Pegs is--are masculine. They uphold us in our strenuous hours, of which you women appear to know nothing; they soothe our overwrought nerves and prepare the way for a liverish old age in Cheltenham. Praise be to Allah!" Mrs. Compton sighed and surveyed the curtain which she had been artistically draping. Her manner, like her whole wiry, restless personality, expressed a good-tempered irascibility. "Anyhow, they keep you human and grant us luckless females a lucid interval in which we can call our souls our own. What you men would be like if you didn't have your drinks and your tubs and all your other multitudinous creature comforts--well, it doesn't stand thinking about. Archie, do you like the curtain tied up with a bow or--oh, of course, it's no use asking you, you materialistic lump." She turned from the long, lean figure sprawling on the wicker chair by the verandah window and appealed to the second member of her audience. "Mr. Meredith, you're a clergyman, you ought to have a soul. Do you like bows or don't you?" Meredith looked up with a faint smile on his grave face. "I like bows, Mrs. Compton. I hope it's a good sign of my artistic and spiritual development?" "Yes, it is. I like bows myself. Oh, dear----" She stopped suddenly. "But supposing she's a horror! Supposing she paints and smothers herself in diamonds, and gets hilarious at dinner, and has a shrill voice! Goodness knows, I don't boast about our morals, but we're immoral in our own conventional way, so that it becomes almost respectable, and anything else would shock us frightfully. You know, I think we're running an awful risk." Captain Compton guffawed cheerfully, and the smile still lingered in Owen Meredith's pleasant eyes. "I shouldn't worry, my dear lady," he recommended. "After all, some of them are the last thing in respectability. It belongs to their profession. They're bound to be physically perfect, and physical perfection goes with morality. Besides, I understand that there can be genius in that sort of thing, and that she's a genius." "Well, genius doesn't go with respectability, anyhow," Mary Compton retorted. "A professional dancer and a guest of the Rajah's! What can one hope for?" Meredith compressed his lips and passed his hand over his black hair with a movement that somehow or other revealed the Anglican. A look of what might have been habitual anxiety settled on his square, blunt features, and he found no answer. Captain Compton got up, stretching himself. "The Rajah's the best guarantee we could have," he said lazily. "He's a harmless type of the little degenerate princeling who apes the European and lives in a holy terror of doing the wrong thing. He wouldn't set Gaya by the ears for untold gold. I know just what's happened. He saw