The Hermit Doctor of Gaya: A Love Story of Modern India
evening dress, an antiquity cunningly revised, fitted her badly, as
though it knew she hated it and meant to pay her out. She jerked her
shoulders as Sigrid entered, seemingly exasperated by the garment's
stiff, restraining influence.
"Well?" she demanded. "How is he?"
"I don't know yet," was the low answer. "But I think he is very ill. I
have only seen one person die--it was like that." She turned her fair,
smooth head towards Owen, but did not look at him. "Mr. Meredith wishes
him to be moved. He is afraid my reputation might suffer--or that there
might be a scandal in his parish."
Mrs. Compton considered the young missionary with a cold curiosity,
giving him an almost ludicrous consciousness of the oft-denied but very
profound sex solidarity of women.
"How idiotic! Men are just like babies in a crisis--always fussing
about the unessentials. Of course, Major Tristram must stay--at any
rate, until he is out of danger. And, Sigrid, as a sop to a hopeless
passion, let me help nurse him."
"We'll pull him through together," Sigrid answered.
"Mr. Meredith, don't you think with Mrs. Compton and Mrs. Smithers on
guard, the situation should pass muster?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders. He was looking at Anne--Anne whose
white, tear-stained face peered out of the shadow like a pitiful,
frightened ghost's, and somehow the sight filled him with a cold anger.
"My suggestion was well meant," he said. "I made it for Major
Tristram's sake as well as for yours. I thought he would prefer to find
himself among old friends."
"He could have come to us," Anne said, in her thin, broken voice. "I
have nursed so much--and mother understands sickness, too----"
Sigrid Fersen glanced at her.
"I suppose Colonel Boucicault is an old friend," she said. "Colonel
Boucicault, who has helped to kill him----"
There was a second of strained silence. Anne's face had changed from
white to red, and then to a deeper pallor. She dropped forward with a
little moan, her face hidden in her hands, crying helplessly. Meredith
took a step forward, as though to protect her. The veins on his low,
broad forehead were swollen.
"Surely----" he began hoarsely.
Sigrid made an imperative gesture.
"I cannot be bothered with your loves and hates," she said. "I'm going
to save Major Tristram--that's all that matters to me. You can stay
here if you want to--both of you--but on my terms."
It was like the cut of a whip across the face. Meredith found no answer
for a moment. He was sick with horror at the tide of anger which swept
over him. His primitive instinct was to strike back physically. He
knew now that all Anne's distrust was justified. The woman was
dangerous--dangerous, above all, to Anne's happiness. He had the right
now to combat her--to set himself squarely against her power in Gaya.
He wanted to assume the authority now, but it was too late. Moreover,
at the bottom, he knew he could not touch this enemy. She was of
another world, impervious to the penalties which his could inflict.
And Compton stood on the threshold--Compton, whose face was a sufficient
warning--and behind him Ayeshi. Both men had reached the verandah steps
at the run, and now Compton had pulled up, meeting his wife's stare of
reproof with a hurried apology.
"I'm sorry---I didn't mean to make a row or startle you. Ayeshi has
just come with bad news. Miss Boucicault--I think you ought to go home
at once. Your father has been badly hurt----"
"My father!" She sprang to her feet, her eyes wide with an incredulous
fear. "My father--hurt----?" she echoed.
"He was found half-an-hour ago, unconscious. Some one must have
attacked him. Of course, now Tristram's done there's no doctor. We'll
telegraph at once. Radcliffe's got his gig--I thought you might go with
him."
He was now honestly conscience-stricken. What happened was only
terrible to him because of its significance. It was like a signal of the
first break of the storm--the thing for which he had waited. That any
one should care personally for the injured man--least of all the girl
whose youth he had trodden underfoot--seemed incredible. Yet she stood
there, white and shivering with shock. He tried to apologize again, but
she did not seem to hear; only, as Meredith came to her side, she turned
to him like a panic-stricken child.
"Please take me home to him, Owen--please take me home."
Compton made way for them both. He beckoned to Rasaldu, who obeyed the
summons reluctantly.
"We'll clear out and leave you the field. Ayeshi can bring us the news
to the club. Suppose I shan't see you again for a bit, old girl."
"Not till my job's done here. Get the ayah to bring round some
reasonable clothes."
"Right-o! So long, old girl."
He came up to his wife and kissed her shyly. She patted him.
"So long. Not too many pegs."
The room emptied. Neither Meredith nor Anne had said good-bye nor
looked at Sigrid. Rasaldu bowed over her hand, but even he realized
that she was not conscious of him. As his broad, fat back vanished down
the verandah, Mrs. Compton got up, shaking herself.
"Now we can get to business. God defend me in my last hour from
sentimentalists of Anne's make. Can I borrow a dressing-gown, Sigrid?"
"Do. Smithy will give you one."
"Thanks. By the way, I expect Boucicault's not the last to go. It's
the first bubble on the water, and soon we shall all be in it, and
boiling nicely." She made her exit on this rather light-hearted
prophecy; but Sigrid, who had made a movement to follow her, lingered
for a moment. Her eyes were cast down as though in thought, but in
reality they were fixed on Ayeshi's hand. When she raised them
suddenly, she found that he too, was watching her. There was nothing
insolent, nothing inquisitive in his scrutiny. His expression was grave
and reticent. It made him seem much older. He was no longer the boy
who had cried on her doorstep. He looked at her with a man's eyes, with
a man's understanding and stern power of secrecy.
"Was it you who found the Colonel?" she asked.
"Yes, Mem-Sahib."
"He is badly hurt?"
"I think so. The blow was a terrible one. It seemed to me that he was
conscious. Once he looked at me, but he could not move or speak."
"Do you think it was one of his men, Ayeshi?"
"I do not know, Mem-Sahib."
She turned away from him.
"There is blood on your hand, Ayeshi."
He salaamed imperturbably.
"I will wash it away. It is a cut--a little thing."
He followed her into the next room with the unobtrusive decision of one
whose right to enter could never be challenged. Mrs. Smithers had moved
the lamp behind a screen, but Ayeshi, standing at the foot of the bed,
looked down through the veil of shadow as though the sleeper's face was
an open book in which he read intently. Then he looked at Sigrid. She
had taken her place close to Tristram's pillow, and one hand rested
lightly on the coverlet. There was a caress in that touch. Her fair
head was bent in grave, pitying contemplation that was yet touched with
a curious detachment, as though she looked down from a great distance.
In the half-light, she seemed unreal, fanciful, the very spirit of that
beautiful aesthetic Paganism which the room breathed.
Ayeshi shivered a little, and his slender, dark hands resting on the
carved wooden bed, tightened their grasp.
"Mem-Sahib!" he said, softly.
"Yes, Ayeshi?"
"Mem-Sahib--I have seen so many die of late. Death at its best is
sleep. The Sahib sleeps deeply. Perhaps it is the will of his God that
death should come to him now that he has given so much for those he
loves. Is there not a saying in your Book, Mem-Sahib---'Greater love
hath no man than this, that he layeth down his life for his friend'?"
Sigrid Fersen lifted her head.
"Yes," she answered steadily.
"Meredith Sahib taught it me. I have forgotten much, but not that. It
was true of him. Others--those who come here to teach us--preach to us,
but he lived. He did not believe--no, not as Sahib Meredith believed.
He believed in the flowers and the birds and the wind and the
mountains--he believed in us." He put his hands to his breast, and his
eyes glowed in the darkness. "I was his brother--his younger brother,"
he said proudly.
"And he loved you, Ayeshi."
"He loved all men--even the worst." He came a step nearer to her.
"Mem-Sahib--a woman died out in Bjura--died horribly. He stayed with
her to the end. She was hideous, and he took her head on his knee and
comforted her as though she had been his mother. There was a little
child, and he took it and promised he would care for it. She died
happy."
Her head was bent again.
"That was like him, Ayeshi."
"Mem-Sahib--if the end comes now it will trouble him that he cannot keep
his promise."
"He shall keep his promise. I will keep it for him. And you,
Ayeshi--stay with me."
But he drew back, and the light died out of his face.
"This is the end, Mem-Sahib. His and mine. I loved him--I, too, would
have given my life--remember that of me, Mem-Sahib."
She looked up at him, and the naked agony in his eyes was something that
she indeed remembered long afterwards.
"I think he knows," she said.
He salaamed deeply.
"I will go and guard the door, Mem-Sahib."
He was gone without a sound. A shadow seemed to have passed from the
room. His very voice had been so low, that now the silence flowed over
it as though it had never been. Yet what he had said lingered.
Sigrid Fersen drew her chair close up to the bedside, and sat there chin
in hand watching. The dim light of the lamp threw the shadow of
Tristram's profile on to the white-washed wall beyond. Ugly enough--the
pointed beard thrust out under the broad, unshapely nose--the big
forehead made grotesque by the outline of disordered hair. But even the
shadow gave a hint of what the face itself revealed in its
unconsciousness. The mouth, tender and strong as a woman's may be,
passionate and austere, laughter and the joy and love of life in the
corners of the closed eyes, and over all, like a veil, pain. Quixote
with a grain of English humour--Quixote at the end, vanquished and
conquering.
He stirred a little in the first uneasiness of coming delirium, and she
laid her hand on his and he grew still again.
Mary Compton came in presently. With Mrs. Smithers, she had been
preparing a special fever antidote of her own, and there was an air of
resolve about her neat, kimono-clad figure which made death seem afar
off. She came lightly up to the bedside, stirring the contents of a
malicious-looking medicine glass.
"Now, if we can only get him to take a few drops, they will help to keep
him quiet. Of course, we don't know what in the world's the matter with
him. It may be the ghastly thing they had in Bjura; but I don't think
so. He wouldn't have come back. Are you afraid?" She glanced down at
her companion, and Sigrid met her close scrutiny deliberately.
"No."
"Well, you've been crying, anyhow."
"That's possible."
"What for?"
Sigrid's lips were twisted with a wry smile.
"I don't know--I was touched about something, I suppose. I think it was
because I never thanked him for something he gave me--I never gave him
anything to take with him when he went out there--I've just remembered."
"H'm! How many times have you two met?"
"Twice--no, three times, and the first time counted most of all."
"Are you in love with him, too?"
"I've been trying to decide--yes, I think so."
Mary Compton poured out the medicine into a tea-spoon.
"Do you mean to marry him? Because, if you do, you will."
"No, I'm not going to marry him."
"Why not?"
She made a gesture, brief, impatient.