The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
case, you and I should be friends, Colonel Boucicault, for I have met
you more often than the Rajah."
"Then he has marked his joy in your acquaintanceship with remarkable
generosity," he retorted.
"Is generosity your translation for hospitality, Colonel Boucicault?"
"The Rajah's hospitality is well known. He gives liberally. He expects
a return. And he is impressionable. There is such a thing as love at
first sight, Miss Fersen."
He was watching her with a hungry anticipation, but she neither winced
nor turned from him. Her calm gaze met his, and there was no change in
its rather sleepy placidity. But the enigmatic smile which he remembered
quivered at the corners of her mouth.
"And there is also such a thing as contempt at first sight," she
remarked casually, "and that is much what I felt for you, Colonel
Boucicault."
"You are an outspoken enemy," he answered, with a quick drawing in of
his breath. She looked down for an instant and saw that his big,
brutal-looking hands shook.
"You have remarked on my outspokenness before."
"Yes, and I even admire it. But my admiration, Miss Fersen, cannot
influence my sense of duty. I am chief in command in Gaya. The social
as well as the military authority rests in me. And where I see that a
certain individual is lessening our prestige, corrupting our morals, or
even upsetting the routine of our social life, then I have the power to
expel that individual--to make Gaya and India impossible----"
"If, to speak clearly, you refer to me, Colonel Boucicault," she
interrupted, "then perhaps I shall have the pleasure of travelling in
the same boat with you to England."
His bloodshot eyes remained blank and stupid-looking for an instant,
then lit up with an insensate fury of understanding. He stumbled to his
feet.
"You--you----!" he muttered. She saw his clenched fists, and knew that,
for all his position and the crowd of witnesses, he had come within an
ace of striking her. She looked up at him over her shoulder and
laughed.
"Keep that sort of thing for your family, Colonel Boucicault," she
advised lightly.
Boucicault turned and pushed through the knot of spectators behind him.
He made his way across the paddock where the ponies were being rubbed
down, and out on to the high road. His orderly, seeing him, ran after
him, and he turned on the man with a curse.
"Take the buggy back to the stables. I shall walk."
"And the Mem-Sahib----?"
"The Mem-Sahib can walk, too," he answered, grinning.
The man saluted, his face hard-set, his eyes meeting Boucicault's with
military steadfastness. But for an instant the muscles about his mouth
had quivered, betraying that there was that beneath the surface which
even his native stoicism could not wholly master. And Boucicault saw
and understood.
He strode on down the centre of the dusty, sun-baked road. He had drunk
heavily that day, but there was more than drink fomenting in his
inflamed brain. There was that letter with its bold, humbugging
politeness--after so many years of service--an inquiry--certain
charges--what charges?--by whom brought? He muttered aloud, dwelling on
a name with a sneering hatred. Well--they should inquire--he could
answer the lot. But then there was Anne cowering before him--why had
God cursed him with a cowardly girl----? and that man---- There had
been a time when, as a mere captain, his regiment would have followed
him through the gates of hell--and now--now--if he went into action
tomorrow--what then? He saw the soldier's face again and re-read its
significance. Strong men made enemies, and he had always had enemies,
but he had also had friends in the past. They had gone. The men who
had believed in him--adored him--gone. He felt himself haunted by
spectres of what was and what had been. They came out of the black
abyss of his soul, whirled up by ugly, incoherent passions--regret and
remorse, self-loathing and self-pity twisted out of recognition and
melted down to one vast, corroding hatred. Every other emotion came too
late. Only hatred remained to him--the last link between him and his
fellow-creatures--that and the power to hurt, to inflict suffering--as
he suffered.
Thus carried forward and half-blinded by the glare which emanated more
from his brain than from the blazing roadway, he left Gaya behind him.
He came to a bend in the roadway where a thin belt of trees curved down
towards the plain, and there stood still, arrested by an unclear
recognition. At first he scarcely knew what had attracted his
attention; then little by little the red haze cleared, and something
within him started awake, some dormant desire as yet unnameable.
Wickie lay on the fringe of shadow, his black snout between his paws,
his ears pricked, his brown eyes, showing the whites, expressive of
alert curiosity. A piece of broken cord attached to his collar
testified dumbly to a determined and skilful evasion of Mrs. Smithers's
coercive methods of adoption.
For a moment or two the man and the would-be Aberdeen considered each
other. Probably in a spirit of good-natured triumph in his own prowess,
Wickie had greeted Boucicault's appearance by a tattoo executed by his
tail on the dusty road, and his eyes had twinkled an invitation to
participate in the joke. Now he lay motionless, watchful, distrustful.
Boucicault called him. He did not know why he called him nor as yet
what he wanted with the dog. The tumult within his brain had died down.
He had become calm and deliberate. The letter, the menacing future, the
jumbled vision of failure which had been vouchsafed him in Anne's
cringing body and in the eyes of his orderly, had given place to a sense
of purpose, controlled, extraordinarily calculated, but as yet veiled
even to himself. He called the dog again, and showed no signs of
impatience when Wickie remained unresponsive. Underneath his own calm
he felt the stirring of a curious pleasure, of a fierce thirsty joy
which must be gratified only with an Epicurean restraint. And for that
he held it back, curbing it, spurring it to the limit of his control,
tasting its anguished appeal for freedom with a cruel delight in his own
mortification. Then, without hurry, without show of passion, he came
forward, and, catching hold of the trailing rope, dragged Wickie to his
feet. The dog struggled and growled ominously, and Boucicault smiled,
showing his set teeth. There was a broken stick of bamboo lying at the
roadside, and he picked it up and tested its suppleness leisurely
against his boot. The animal snapped at him, recognizing the enemy, and
perhaps the impending danger; but Boucicault continued calmly resolved.
He was like a morphia-maniac who, with the passionately desired drug in
his hand, prolongs the delicious agony of desire. He tied the end of
the cord round the stem of a young palm and stood back a moment looking
down at his captive. Wickie sprang at him, and then, suddenly,
terribly, he struck with his improvised weapon, bringing it down with a
sickening thud on the animal's long back. The scream that answered him
was half human. Boucicault drew in his breath. Like lava under a thin
crust of restraining earth, his murderous hatred welled up in him,
choking him. This cringing brute, its brown eyes turned on him in dumb
horror--was Anne, Anne who always cringed, always truckled to him, whom
he had so often wanted to strike down. And then Anne vanished from the
whirling circles of his thoughts, and it was Tristram and that
pale-haired woman--these two who, in their different ways, had thwarted
and defied him, brought him face to face with himself. It was his wife,
the officers of the regiment, the men--all with that smouldering,
unspoken loathing in their eyes. And he struck like a madman, blow after
blow, slaking his thirst for vengeance, making with each stroke a fresh
breach in the wall behind which men imprison their infamous insanities.
And sometimes the dog whined and sometimes, like a human being, set its
teeth in stoic fortitude, and sometimes, as the pliant stick fell across
its body, screamed uncontrollably.
It was one such scream that Tristram heard as he rode up from the plain
towards Gaya. He hung in the saddle like a man whose backbone has been
snapped, and the reins trailed from Arabella's weary neck. It was
fortunate that the road was familiar to her, for Tristram neither knew
his destination nor cared about it. Some one had helped him into the
saddle, and there he had remained instinctively; but his mind was empty
of all purpose, even of knowledge of himself. The scream roused him a
little, but only for a second. There were so many strange sounds and
scenes in his brain that he trusted none of them. It was only when
Arabella jerked to a standstill and stood trembling with pricked ears,
that he began to believe in the substantiality of what was before him.
Even then he sat hunched together in the saddle, gaping stupidly. He had
begun to realize, but there seemed to be a hiatus in his mind--a gulf
between thought and action which he could not cross. Then Wickie
screamed again, and he rolled off Arabella's back and stood there
rocking like a drunken man.
"Colonel Boucicault!" His own voice sounded like a shout in his own
ears, though in reality it was little more than a whisper, but it
reached Boucicault, who turned round. Tristram knew then that what he
saw was not a distortion of his fancy. "Colonel Boucicault!" he
repeated heavily. He found nothing more to say. His inability to think
coherently had become an acute suffering. He saw Wickie make a desperate
effort to reach him, and the sight roused him to another effort. "Let
my dog go!" he muttered.
Boucicault passed his hand over his forehead and laughed.
"You've just come back in time, Major Tristram," he said. "If you
really lay claim to this cur, you can stay here and see it thrashed
within an inch of its life. A dangerous brute----!" He kicked it,
yelping, back against the tree. He had made an excuse and was ashamed
of it. It spoilt his pleasure in his own untrammelled, inexcusable
cruelty.
Tristram reeled forward, intercepting himself between Wickie and his
assailant in time to receive a blow across the arm. The sting of it was
like a tonic, driving the blood faster to his brain.
"You've no right--let my dog go!"
"Your dog--my dear Major! Stand out of the way. I am master in Gaya.
If I may offer advice, I should suggest a bath and a change of clothes.
You look--if I may say so--not quite worthy of your position. I doubt
if even your admirers would care to recognize you."
"It would take more than a bath and a change to put me right," Tristram
managed to return, and then, with the dull obstinacy of a sick man: "Let
Wickie go!"
Boucicault's momentary self-restraint broke down. He lashed out
savagely:
"Take it yourself then, you sneaking cur----!"
Tristram flung up his arm. Instinctively, for his sight failed him, he
warded off the blows which rained about him, but no more than that. His
mind was working now, very simply, in the two fundamentals of its
make-up--two vast forces fighting for supremacy, the one long dormant,
suppressed, scarcely recognized, at the throat of his soul---his faith.
So long as the blows fell on him, the latter remained triumphant. He
shielded Wickie--that was what he had meant to do. He felt as yet no
animosity towards the man whose discoloured face seemed to fill his
vision. He felt very little pain--only a queer, alarming tightening of
his muscles. Vague fragments of memory came to him--his passionate love
of all things living--even to this man, his simple conception of
duty--of life itself. They upheld him; they kept the vital part of him